Oh, without a doubt the schedule has made me play less. My favourite format is draft, and the current draft format is great, but after 6 months you really want a change. I do like the weekly quests for developing the story and differing win conditions. The slow drip feed of new cards tends to mean Expedition slowly changes as well which is good.
End of the day, releasing half the amount of cards halves the development costs. For a game that can't bring in much income and I think is only still around to prove that Direwolf can continue to support games for years and years, they're still doing a good job.
As a fairly casual player personally, I like the slow release cycle. I usually get to diamond each month in both exp and throne with brews. At least in those brackets, I still see a ton of variety in decks, and also, due to the small player base and chapter cards, the meta gets figured out slower imo (if ever).
Contrast this with mtg arena where releases come out at break neck speed, meaning the power creep is staggering and thus (atleast as of a few years ago) the meta and queues (even mid ranks) are dominated by a small number of net decks with must have cards from recent sets) feels like a total.chore and net decking is so prevalent it's near impossible for a.casual brewer to get competitive games after a certain rank.
While I totally understand the slow release cycle is harming the game, at this point, the degree to which it does imo is small (since the player base is small and loyal) if I had more time to play I would enjoy a faster paced cycle but honestly being selfish I find the cycle a perfect fit for me.
I'd mostly agree. I'd love a new set to shake things up, I've lost motivation to grind ladder and even gauntlet. Especially gauntlet which was always my favorite format. Mono Justice is still far and away the best deck there and has been for years now with very few new cards to update the list. The new campaign just doesn't excite me and I'm not even sure I'll buy it yet, I had high hopes for it. I like the killer berserk Bear though and the Frog making five drop.
That said, sealed has been fun each month (other than some LOOOONG queue times) and the draft format has been one of the most challenging I can remember! And I appreciate that DWD has kept the game truly free to play and doesn't have to answer to greedy shareholders like mtg does.
Play maybe one night a week or so just to finish some quest and then a few games against throne and sling decks remind me why I barley play. Really hard to take this game seriously when it feels like it's been abandoned and meta decks are all about answer me or lose cards.The game is just dull. And no way am I touching expedition with wasp and recruit still a thing. Why didn't wasp rotate with the new mini set? Got all excited about expedition being playable and saw that wasp is still in it.
To be fair, "answer me or lose" cards are *okay*--when they have a large cost associated with them.
Answer me or lose on something like a 5 or 6 cost card such as Tavrod, Grodov's Stranger, etc. is *fine*.
Answer me or lose on a 3 or 4-cost relic defended by face aegis **AND MULTIPLE ROUNDS OF NERFS?**
No, not at all fine.
I used to buy those purple gem things to buy the small sets with.
This enabled me to spend my gold on drafting.
The draft does not seem to have rotated for ages, and now I have a huge stack of gold.
Don't think I will ever spend more money on this game now.
it's because Eternal is just a side hustle to them, even if it's their original IP. it practically bleeds money with running the servers alone. they want to make money selling cosmetics through FOMO with miniscule playerbase. it's literally a diminishing return, that's why they're slowing down the releases to basically drip feed. they have to sunset create-a-card just because they lack the man power to QC said cards. remember sanctioned Worlds? yeah, no more money for that dawg.
tl;dr - no money, no progress.
There's no way server upkeep is that expensive.
Arena Net is providing server upkeep for Guild Wars 1 for all eternity specifically stating that the cost is minimal. And that's a fully fledged RPG with MMO elements to it.
So if they can do it so can DWD.
And besides, they ran their own game into the ground with laughable design decisions and philosophies, despite community efforts. So they're not really getting any symphathy from me.
Personally, what drove me away from the game is the amount of hard counters. One or two cards can completely stall my game plan. I don't want to market the counter to my counter. The game just got esoteric for me. For the record I don't like MTG either, only stuck with hearthstone for a long time
It's not just a slow release schedule, though.
It's also just sheer negligence of not doing anything with 14 sets (and at least as many expansions) of nerfed/underplayed cards that could use buffs or reverts, or wildly *overplayed* cards (wasp) that could use another smack.
How many new cards find their way into throne? 35 or so? That's a number that can be addressed in a patch, especially /w regard to underplayed factions and such.
Heck, even reverting some of last set's nerfs in light of the current expedition meta seems like a good idea. Just Ziat1 to 4/4 for 4SS might put a big wrench in Praxis + X's recruit ramp plans, along with reverting Karrina to 4/3, or maybe reverting longbow as well (though that can go *into* Patrice/boars).
Hard disagree - comparing anything to the MtG release cycle as worth mirroring gives me the ick. Draft change-ups would be great, sure, but I enjoy being able to play casually and collect most of a set without pressure.
If they rotated what packs were included in draft every month or two, cool. But I'm 100% cool with the pace of new sets, especially with weekly free story cards.
I think you misunderstood the post. I never compared The cycle to mtg or ever said it should be similar to that. The cycle before was way slower than MtG and I was fine with it.
The game has honestly lived for a lot longer than anyone expected, but it can't live forever. My guess would be the servers will be shut off in the next few years. Enjoy while it lasts!
Oh, without a doubt the schedule has made me play less. My favourite format is draft, and the current draft format is great, but after 6 months you really want a change. I do like the weekly quests for developing the story and differing win conditions. The slow drip feed of new cards tends to mean Expedition slowly changes as well which is good. End of the day, releasing half the amount of cards halves the development costs. For a game that can't bring in much income and I think is only still around to prove that Direwolf can continue to support games for years and years, they're still doing a good job.
As a fairly casual player personally, I like the slow release cycle. I usually get to diamond each month in both exp and throne with brews. At least in those brackets, I still see a ton of variety in decks, and also, due to the small player base and chapter cards, the meta gets figured out slower imo (if ever). Contrast this with mtg arena where releases come out at break neck speed, meaning the power creep is staggering and thus (atleast as of a few years ago) the meta and queues (even mid ranks) are dominated by a small number of net decks with must have cards from recent sets) feels like a total.chore and net decking is so prevalent it's near impossible for a.casual brewer to get competitive games after a certain rank. While I totally understand the slow release cycle is harming the game, at this point, the degree to which it does imo is small (since the player base is small and loyal) if I had more time to play I would enjoy a faster paced cycle but honestly being selfish I find the cycle a perfect fit for me.
I'd mostly agree. I'd love a new set to shake things up, I've lost motivation to grind ladder and even gauntlet. Especially gauntlet which was always my favorite format. Mono Justice is still far and away the best deck there and has been for years now with very few new cards to update the list. The new campaign just doesn't excite me and I'm not even sure I'll buy it yet, I had high hopes for it. I like the killer berserk Bear though and the Frog making five drop. That said, sealed has been fun each month (other than some LOOOONG queue times) and the draft format has been one of the most challenging I can remember! And I appreciate that DWD has kept the game truly free to play and doesn't have to answer to greedy shareholders like mtg does.
Play maybe one night a week or so just to finish some quest and then a few games against throne and sling decks remind me why I barley play. Really hard to take this game seriously when it feels like it's been abandoned and meta decks are all about answer me or lose cards.The game is just dull. And no way am I touching expedition with wasp and recruit still a thing. Why didn't wasp rotate with the new mini set? Got all excited about expedition being playable and saw that wasp is still in it.
Rotation out happens with the big set only. If you dip back into Expedition it's more than Wasp and Recruit, but you do need answers to Wasp
To be fair, "answer me or lose" cards are *okay*--when they have a large cost associated with them. Answer me or lose on something like a 5 or 6 cost card such as Tavrod, Grodov's Stranger, etc. is *fine*. Answer me or lose on a 3 or 4-cost relic defended by face aegis **AND MULTIPLE ROUNDS OF NERFS?** No, not at all fine.
I used to buy those purple gem things to buy the small sets with. This enabled me to spend my gold on drafting. The draft does not seem to have rotated for ages, and now I have a huge stack of gold. Don't think I will ever spend more money on this game now.
it's because Eternal is just a side hustle to them, even if it's their original IP. it practically bleeds money with running the servers alone. they want to make money selling cosmetics through FOMO with miniscule playerbase. it's literally a diminishing return, that's why they're slowing down the releases to basically drip feed. they have to sunset create-a-card just because they lack the man power to QC said cards. remember sanctioned Worlds? yeah, no more money for that dawg. tl;dr - no money, no progress.
There's no way server upkeep is that expensive. Arena Net is providing server upkeep for Guild Wars 1 for all eternity specifically stating that the cost is minimal. And that's a fully fledged RPG with MMO elements to it. So if they can do it so can DWD. And besides, they ran their own game into the ground with laughable design decisions and philosophies, despite community efforts. So they're not really getting any symphathy from me.
Personally, what drove me away from the game is the amount of hard counters. One or two cards can completely stall my game plan. I don't want to market the counter to my counter. The game just got esoteric for me. For the record I don't like MTG either, only stuck with hearthstone for a long time
It's not just a slow release schedule, though. It's also just sheer negligence of not doing anything with 14 sets (and at least as many expansions) of nerfed/underplayed cards that could use buffs or reverts, or wildly *overplayed* cards (wasp) that could use another smack. How many new cards find their way into throne? 35 or so? That's a number that can be addressed in a patch, especially /w regard to underplayed factions and such. Heck, even reverting some of last set's nerfs in light of the current expedition meta seems like a good idea. Just Ziat1 to 4/4 for 4SS might put a big wrench in Praxis + X's recruit ramp plans, along with reverting Karrina to 4/3, or maybe reverting longbow as well (though that can go *into* Patrice/boars).
Hard disagree - comparing anything to the MtG release cycle as worth mirroring gives me the ick. Draft change-ups would be great, sure, but I enjoy being able to play casually and collect most of a set without pressure. If they rotated what packs were included in draft every month or two, cool. But I'm 100% cool with the pace of new sets, especially with weekly free story cards.
I think you misunderstood the post. I never compared The cycle to mtg or ever said it should be similar to that. The cycle before was way slower than MtG and I was fine with it.
It's too bad they don't just make new expeditions with existing cards. Even better if there was a second expedition for more options to jump between
The game has honestly lived for a lot longer than anyone expected, but it can't live forever. My guess would be the servers will be shut off in the next few years. Enjoy while it lasts!