Summary
Hearthstone’s newest expansion,Perils in Paradise, is a fun, summery jaunt into a set that is equal parts fun and innovative. In my third or fourth hour of Standard deck exploration, however, a familiar feeling of apathy started to emerge. Looking to switch things up, I dove into Arena for another three or so hours, enjoying the blend of class cards and abilities that are currently part of its features. Again, that same feeling, a malaise that drained some of the color out of Azeroth’s most famous beachgoers, slowly built up. It was time forBattlegrounds- but wait, that mode doesn’t update with the release. Maybe Duels - no, that got shuttered.
Well, then. It was time to take another break and wonder why I’m not playing a few weeks later when I inevitably enter the same cycle - a few hours each day for a week or less, gradually becoming disinterested until the next wave of content draws me back in.Perils in Paradiseis a good time. It’s even advertised right in the client, a giant splash image of a beach party and excitement. What it isn’t is a fix toHearthstone’s biggest problem and a design philosophy that has plagued my personal enjoyment of the game for a long time now -it has too many modes without the full attention and support to make them compelling.
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Earlier - just a week ago, in fact - I wrote about how thefuture ofHearthstonelooked bright. In speaking with its team members, it’s clear they have a passion for the game that transcends my humble interest in it; these are people who have a fundamental understanding of what makes the game so desirable to so many. But even in that interview, there was a nagging sense that maybe there wasn’t a focus on every game mode equally, and my worry is that it’s juggling a bit too much, even as it scales down its number of options, to make the core product as good as it was at its peak.
Hearthstone’s Standard Mode Has Gotten Wildly Out Of Control
One of the unique strengths ofHearthstoneover competitors like, say,Magic: The Gathering, is that it is wholly digital. That means if a card is a problem, it can simply reword it or redesign it within the game client. These reworks also offer players the ability to disenchant the changed cards into their full worth of Arcane Dust, so players who spent money on packs and got a sweet Legendary that’s no long as good can simply get rid of it and acquire a new one at no additional cost. That’s the theory, anyways - in reality the cost is time sunk into learning a deck, or building a strategy, or the other cards that were made using Arcane Dust that aren’t going to be played now but are still part of your collection.
That alone isn’t enough reason to find the current design system abrasive, but having spent a few days playing around with a format that was supposed to get healthier, I’m skeptical that’s ever going to truly be the case again.Hearthstonehas aggressively nerfed cards over the past year - perhaps the best example being the Patch 29.2.2.198608 update in late April, when 36 cards received changes, whether that be adjustments to scale down their power or increase their effectiveness in the hopes they’ll see more play. It feels like that system will be needed once more inPerils of Paradise, which features some truly powerful strategies in its early days that feel just as oppressive as the Dragon Druid deck that necessitated a sudden Splish-Splash Whelp nerf right before the release ofPerils.
To be clear, I don’t think the team is designing bad cards.
To be clear, I don’t think the team is designing bad cards. I love the Tourist mechanic, which puts restrictions on player’s deckbuilding but introduces the ability to blend two classes together in a way that’s totally different to the Dual Class Scholomance cards. I am a big fan of the increased focus on locations, which are a recurring mechanic that taxes decision-making and introduces fun sub-games to board states that can already get extremely complex for a game with such short turn timers. I just feel like a lot of the more fun-looking strategies suffer at the hands of power creep.Hearthstonehas had a long history. Keeping long-term players interested usually means creating designs that are very different from past ones, or callbacks to previous iterations of heroes that have gotten stronger or more complicated abilities in their new version.
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Unfortunately, I feel like we’re at a point whereHearthstonedecks are so powerful that they overly punish players for having rough draw sequences. While the evergreen Discover mechanic has been a favorite of mine since it was introduced, instead of alleviating the problem, I think it’s actually made it worse - a bad mid-game Discover can feel back-breaking, and sometimes it decides a game even if it takes five or ten turns to finally reach the end. Everything feels like a game of extremes, wherein both players feel tension over the outcomes of chance-based play but feel little to no satisfaction with having crafted a gameplan that they were actually in control of.
All of this is to say that I miss Chillwind Yeti. I know that the old formats had their warts too, but falling behind now feels a lot worse than it did back then, and so much of the game feels out of my hands even when I’m winning that it’s tough to really get the same level of enjoyment out of it that I did when Warlock Zoo was running rampant on ladder. And don’t get me started about Wild, a format that could easily have beenHearthstone’s answer toMagic: The Gathering’s Legacy and Vintage formats, but instead is an afterthought that barely feels like it’s meant to be competed in at all beyond revisiting old favorites for a quick game or two.
Hearthstone Arena Has Too Many Cards & Not Enough Consistency
There’s a different issue at the heart of my gripe with Arena mode, which has always been my favorite way to engage withHearthstone. In Arena, there’s simply too many cards, and starting every player with a Legendary feels like it creates games where whoever draws theirs first wins - or, heaven forbid, a player has a dud as their Legendary, which makes every battle that goes beyond mid-game feel like a Sisyphean task. The wide array of cards to draft from makes the three-card packs shoulder a lot of strain, and strategies can really struggle to come together.
Excavate is a great poster child for this particular problem. Plenty of classes have cards that use that mechanic, but there are also cards that explicitly pay off that mechanic after its used a few times. With so many keywords and cards available, it’s hard to reliably draft more than one Excavate card - which means taking something like Rogue’s Antique Flinger, even as early as pick three or four after an equally early Excavate enabler, a complete risk. And Arena’s best deck variants are inevitably so streamlined that playing a 4/3 for 3 with no abilities might as well be not taking a turn at all.
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Arena desperately needs to be streamlined into a smaller pool of perhaps the most recent set and a supporting cast of Classic cards that are always present there. It’s a shame, too, because the way Arena is inPerils of Paradiseright now is some of the most funI’ve had playingHearthstonein years, and I’d highly recommend setting up dual-class drafts as a permanent fixture. But right now, it’s another game mode that feels like it scales up too quickly in power level and is far too punishing for a draft gone slightly awry or a hand that doesn’t curve out the way you might want.
My lamentation is that for all of the good thatHearthstoneis doing, it feels like it never picked a lane and is paying for it now.
Believe It Or Not, I Actually Really Like Perils In Paradise
After all of that discussion, it’s probably a little surprising to find that my final thoughts onPerils in Paradisestill contain quite a few positives. I think the design is a home run for blending card mechanics into the idea of one giant summer getaway, and so many of the cards are fun to go hands-on with and build around. I’ll still play Arena off-and-on throughout the expansion, and when there’s inevitably a 45-50% against the field type of deck in Standard, I’ll probably play that, too, hoping to avoid how bad it feels to queue into intensely polarized matchups.
My lamentation is that for all the good thatHearthstoneis doing, it feels like it never picked a lane and is paying for it now. It wants players to take it seriously. There’s a ranked ladder, competitive play, and a real community that wants to find edges wherever it can in designing their decks. It also wants players to treat it like a fun little diversion, where gaps in skill can be made up for by an inherently large amount of RNG. It wants to have multiple formats, an accessible Standard and a deeper Wild and a draft in Arena - but only the former feels fully supported, with less incentive to engage in the others. It’s an uneven experience, and one that constantly teases how good thingscouldbe but always leaves it just a little unfulfilled.
DoesHearthstonewant me to treat it like a side game I return to sometimes when I’m bored of other card games? Or does it want me to grind ladder for rewards and see if I can test my mettle against some of the best on the server? Does it want Arena to be a totally chaotic and uncontrollable game mode, or does it want draft to feel rewarding and cohesive?I honestly think the current answer is all of the above, and I also think that’s why I’m having so much trouble sticking withPerils in ParadiseandHearthstoneas a whole, even when I love the game and find so many parts of it alluring.There’s a reason thatHearthstoneis celebrating its 10th anniversary, and it’s a quality title, but I’m fixated on the fact it could be even better, and arguably has been before.
Screen Rant was provided with aPerils in ParadiseMega Bundle for the purpose of this article.
