Halo Wars 2 Blitz mode was a dream come true game for me. A combination of a Card- and RTS game in the Halo Universe? Shut up and take my money, that’s a lot of cool stuff I love come together! I was really hyped.
Many ideas are great.
-Stronghold instead of the usual kill all units or destroy their base was a great idea for a card game scenario.
-Keywords on cards like siphon and blast (and all the other stuff) make some awesome cards.
-Leader powers as cards work like spells in other card games and feel right.
-Collecting energy on the battlefield to play cards is also a great idea.
-You even thought about paying energy to mulligan your cards.
-Only having one map is also a smart choice. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it makes sense because that way, only your deck matters.
-Units being visible in the FOW is also smart because it works better with the card game aspect if you instantly know what you are up against and it also makes stealth cards shine.
The core system is great and I enjoyed playing the beta.
But let’s be honest, aside from a small community inside an already small HW community that still plays this mode, Blitz failed miserably. And that’s due to the following 2 major flaws:
1.Not F2P. Gotta pay 60$ to play that mode and then have to pay more to get cards? No way.
2. Card leveling. Terrible Idea. Card games are always p2w. It’s just how it is. The more you play and/or the more you pay, the higher the chance that you get the good cards or the cards that just work great in your deck.
But with card leveling, the more you play or pay the better your cards get. Newcomers have to deal with 2 systems that work against them. They probably don’t have the good cards + their cards are just straight up weaker. That’s just stupid and nobody wants to keep playing after experiencing a match vs lvl 10 cards.
As I said, the core game is great. It’s just the system around the cards that is bad.
So what should MS/343/CA do?
Make Blitz a new stand alone game that is F2P.
Have a system like magic the gathering (or any other card game). Have 60 cards (or 50, or 30 whatever). If you really want a good chance to play a card, you can just add 4 (which would be the max number of cards of the same type in your deck) of the same kind in your deck. Have cards that you don’t necessarily need to fulfill your strategy but that might counter certain units also in your deck but maybe only 1,2 or 3 of the same kind. That way you can collect a set of 4 for each card which will require a lot of card packs.
But what happens when you get a card you don’t need because it doesn’t fit in your decks or it’s the 5th card of the same kind (if the cap is 4)?
Let us salvage it! To get an idea of how this should work, play Fable Fortune. It’s genius!
By salvaging a card you earn a certain amount of Credits depending on it’s power and rarity. You can use these Credits in 3 ways.
- Buy new card packs. - Turn a card into a foiled card, so the unit get’s a shiny new skin. - Craft certain cardsFoiled cards should also be able to get by buying card packs. They should be rare and earn you a lot more credits if salvaged.
Also instead of having to buy a lot of card packs to eventually get the card you want to have you can craft it by using the credits (like Fable Fortune does)
How do you (343/CA/MS) earn money?
By letting us buy Credits in the store.
Also:
Combine it with Arena. You know, the feature that is in Beta for like 10 years right now and that only KI supports from time to time.
The winner of an arena tournament should get rare foiled cards and/or 25%/50% off for crafting a certain number of cards.
Have different leaders with unique cards but let most cards be universal without faction restrictions (UNSC fights alongside Covenant a billion times throughout the Halo campaigns)
Have more card types. U already have cool key words like siphon and blast etc.
You can vary a simple Marine unit by just changing the damage output (give it a new weapon e.g.), giving it more health or letting it run faster. Or you give it blast or siphon or whatever. It’s easy to get many new cards.
Have special cards that block card mulligans for a certain time or just make your opponent unable to heal his units for some time. Get creative.
Compensate the players that already played a lot of Blitz.
Everybody that bought HW2 should get a couple of card packs. Everybody who bought a card pack with real money should get the same amount of card packs in the new game.