[Hero Academy 2] Hearthstone meets Clash Royale?

MNC Dover

Welcome to the Hero Academy 2 thread!

This will be where we discuss the upcoming HA2 game from Robot Entertainment.

Info is a bit limited, but I'll update the OP with more info as it becomes available.


Wait, this is Hero Academy 2? Do I need to play Hero Academy 1 first?

Nope! HA2 is way different than HA1, retaining only a few small elements.

HA was a turn-based strategy game released back in 2012 for iOS and Android. You'd have 5 actions on your turn to move units, attack, or place new units/upgrades into play. Then you'd wait for your opponent to respond. It was a great game and highly recommended, although currently only available these days on Steam after the iOS 11 udate.

HA2 is all real-time combat that includes deck-building and card collecting. You'll open chests to get more stuff. Think how Hearthstone and Clash Royale work...both the good and bad.


How does it play?

Your goal is to destroy your opponents Crystals. Do that and you win! But before you do that, you'll need to make a deck.

If you've played Hearthstone or Dualist, you'll have a nice headstart on how the game works. You start by creating a deck of 30 cards consisting of Heroes, spells, and weapons. Once you've got your deck finished, you'll jump into a duel.

At the start of your turn, you gain mana to spend on your cards. You can save mana for bigger cards if you like, but beware your max mana count is 10. Also, your max handsize is 5, so make sure to cycle some lower cost cards to keep things moving.

Games last 12 rounds normally. If the game is still going after that, each player gets a 0-cost spell which deals damage to enemy Crystals and gives you bonus mana. This will end the game quickly.


How much does it cost?

The game is Free To Play! Which basically means you'll have the option of spending money to speed things up. You open Chests to unlock cards. You also have in-game Gold currency to buy things. If ya' want, you can buy gems with real money to purchase more gold. There are up to 3 daily quests ala Hearthstone for more gold. And like Clash Royale, you can log in at certain times to get free chests.

Cards are broken into (you guessed it) different 4 rarity types (common, rare, epic, legendary). Once you max out on a card type (4 commons for example) each extra card becomes Ink, a currency used to craft new cards. I don't know how it works completely yet, so I'll update this when I do.


Great! Let's play!

OK, we can once the game is released. Just soft launched in Canada, so it should be available soon.

Spaffy

Oh! I loved Hero Academy! This sounds super different. But I’ll definitely check it out.

kime

hrm.

I liked Hero Academy a lot.

This doesn't sound like Hero Academy...

taliosfalcon

Just tried a few games since i'm in Canada (yay). it's not bad, but it's nothing like hero academy 1 =/ and I loved hero academy 1. So i'm not sure how I feel about it. How different it is may be making me judging it harsher then it deserves.

kime

taliosfalcon wrote: »

Just tried a few games since i'm in Canada (yay). it's not bad, but it's nothing like hero academy 1 =/ and I loved hero academy 1. So i'm not sure how I feel about it. How different it is may be making me judging it harsher then it deserves.

Is there anything that would make me want to play this over other digital card games in which I'm already invested?

taliosfalcon

kime wrote: »

taliosfalcon wrote: »

Just tried a few games since i'm in Canada (yay). it's not bad, but it's nothing like hero academy 1 =/ and I loved hero academy 1. So i'm not sure how I feel about it. How different it is may be making me judging it harsher then it deserves.

Is there anything that would make me want to play this over other digital card games in which I'm already invested?

Well i've only really played clash royale and hearthstone extensively. It does have the tactics/turn based strategy elements of the original Hero Academy, aka much, much more than Clash Royale but watered down a bit from HA1.

I am enjoying playing it, it's just kinda hurting as it does feel like a step back from HA1. (this might change once I unlock some more races/decks. I only have the council so far and all of my matches have been council vs council)

MNC Dover

They've changed the health and attacks to be more like Hearthstone. Units have stats like 1/3 or 2/4 instead of the 200/1000 base attack/health of HA1. It's definitely different from HA1, but I'm willing to give it a shot. If I don't like it, I'll just drop it.

Just trying to stay positive on the changes. We'll see...

ObiFett

I can't find this on the Android Play Store. Whens this coming out?

MNC Dover

ObiFett wrote: »

I can't find this on the Android Play Store. Whens this coming out?

It’s soft launched in Canada and “sometime in 2017” for everywhere else. I’m guessing “Soon(tm)”.

MNC Dover

I got a request to get onto the beta test flight of the game. Installing now and will let you all know what I think later on.

kime

2017 is running out of time for a launch...

I needed anime to post.

what, you didn't want to let us know what you think when you made the thread two months ago nerd????

kime

I needed a gnome to post. wrote: »

what, you didn't want to let us know what you think when you made the thread two months ago nerd????

He didn't have it then..? I feel like I'm missing a joke ahhh

I needed anime to post.

MNC Dover wrote: »

I got a request to get onto the beta test flight of the game. Installing now and will let you all know what I think later on.

liar

kime

I needed a gnome to post. wrote: »

MNC Dover wrote: »

I got a request to get onto the beta test flight of the game. Installing now and will let you all know what I think later on.

liar

That said, it looks like it launched officially worldwide 2 days ago. I'm going to download it and see how it is.

Not gonna tell you anything though, ha!

MNC Dover

I needed a gnome to post. wrote: »

MNC Dover wrote: »

I got a request to get onto the beta test flight of the game. Installing now and will let you all know what I think later on.

liar

Technically speaking it is later on now. Since the game just launched, I decided to write a my thoughts on the Hero Academy Facebook page:

I've been playing HA2 before launch after getting an invite from RE. I played thousands of hours of HA1 and was almost in the top 100 in wins for each team. I even designed my own team (The Crystal Keepers) which was featured on this very Facebook page. Needless to say, I was eager to see what the sequel would bring to the table.

HA2 feels like a combination and melding of Hearthstone and Clash Royale. That could be good, but the game is currently missing the mark. There are a lot of with the existing version of HA2 that I think need to be addressed.

First, let's discuss the UI. On my older iPhone 5s, everything was too small and a pain to navigate. Buttons need to be resized or combined into bigger areas and/or open sub menus. When trying to read the text on a new unit, my finger would cover the area where the card description would pop up. Quite annoying, but these can be fixed over time.

Second, we have the pricing structure. The drip-feed of gold and gems are pretty sad. The daily gems chest maxes out at 30 for 7 days of logging in (99/week). It maxed out at 70 before launch and even that was too low. That means in order to purchase a single pack of Premium cards (150 gems), you'd have to wait about 10 days or so. A little less if you do your Duel Chest each day. The equivalent pack in Hearthstone is 100 gold, which can be earned through daily quests at a much quicker pace. On average, you can buy a pack of cards in Hearthstone every 2 days. That's a huge difference.

Third, the waiting game. This is a plague on mobile games and a trend I wish would go away. I was happy to see I could delete my quests only to find out they then have a 24-hour waiting time to reload? Like, I get only having one quest a day like in Hearthstone, but why not let the player reroll once per day?

Fourth, crafting cards. Again, this system changed a lot (for the better) during the beta. There used to be Ink for each type of card which could be converted to better ink types (Common ink upgraded to Rare Ink, etc). This was dumped for a universal ink system. Good! Way less confusing and streamlined. But let's look at those costs....

...are you crazy? If I want to make a specific legendary card, it costs 5,250 ink? That is absurd and you know it. And don't get me started on the wait period either, because that needs to go right away. How dare you overcharge for cards and then not let players use them immediately in their decks? The wait time is there just to force players to spend gems to speed things up. Completely unacceptable and shameful.

Fifth, single player stuff. Why are all of the campaigns and some challenges locked behind gem only pay walls?

Sixth, the gold. Um, why does gold exist in the game? As near as I can tell, gold is only spent on Basic Card packs which give you 3 cards for 1,500 gold?! Am I missing something? What else is gold used for?

OK, I don't want to be all negative here, so let's talk about what could be done to fix things up a bit:

Combine your currencies into one. Either gold or gems, not both. Reprice everything to be a bit more fair. If I'm playing the game every day or two, I should be able to buy a pack of cards. As a baseline, make Premium packs 1,000 gold (remove the Basic packs) and make bigger bundles of packs costs more gold but at an overall discount.

This then trickles down to the solo content. You can price them high, but not to unreasonably. I can start saving up my gold to buy packs or campaigns. For players that don't want to wait, they can purchase a bunch of gold and buy the campaigns out right.

Next let's get rid of the waiting game. The only timers should be a 24 hour wait period between duel chests and getting a new daily quest. The ink crate is fine being an every 2-hour thing I guess.

Restructure the card crafting costs. Get rid of the "Random crafted card" and create a fair baseline crafting structure. 5250 for a Legendary is way too high and you know it. Drop it down to 2,400 or less. And remember, no timers! You can slow down the ink economy by simply removing the Ink Crate.

Please note that I haven't discussed the gameplay itself. I honestly can't comment on too much since I have seen less than 10% of the cards. From what I've seen it's, okay I guess? This is certainly not the HA1 I know and love though.

Keeping that in mind, why not create a Classic Mode that attempts to mirror the first game in some regards? This would literally be a 1 to 1 version of the original game. Turn based game play, no premade decks, 5 actions per turn, Physical/Magical attack types, and so on. Tie it into your existing system and make each team cost real money only (no FTP versions of teams).

This would please the older fans, and judging by the comments, there are a lot and not too happy. It would generate some guaranteed revenue and give players a choice of what mode they'd like to play. I'm guessing this is a pipedream though since the support for HA1 dwindled away after a few years.

So yeah, that's my super long post about HA2. I think the game has potential, but needs a LOT of polish and shine. There is a great game waiting for us all if you really want to make it happen.

I hope to hear back from you and maybe see some changes going forward.

As of this writing, they haven't responded to my post, even though it has the most number of "likes" of the lot. I won't be surprised if they never do either, since I went fully in-depth on the glaring issues in the game and pulled no punches in my thoughts. I'm pretty disappointed in the game as a whole. HA1 was one of the best, if not the best, game I've played on the iPhone and the sequel is a huge letdown. I get why, but it doesn't change the fact that it needs a lot of work.

kime

Well, that's disappointing. I wonder if HA1 just didn't make enough money on it's own to justify that pay structure, or if they were blinded by mobile-app greed.

I'll still try it out, at least to say I have. But if it's as your post describes, I guess I won't play long. Like you, all of those things would bother me a lot before even getting to the gameplay

MNC Dover

kime wrote: »

Well, that's disappointing. I wonder if HA1 just didn't make enough money on it's own to justify that pay structure, or if they were blinded by mobile-app greed.

I'll still try it out, at least to say I have. But if it's as your post describes, I guess I won't play long. Like you, all of those things would bother me a lot before even getting to the gameplay

I think HA2 is what it is because of the greed. HA1 started you off free, then charged $5 for each team. Then there was the customized colors and artwork you could buy, which I'm guessing most people didn't.

So if your player base bought all the teams on mobile, they'd have spent $25. There is no doubt in my mind that HA2 is mobile-greed driven. Why make only $25 when you can make Te$as money. They want there game to be the next Clash Royale or Hearthstone, but fell way short of the mark. I don't think the game will pull the money in like they want it to. It lacks the name recognition and ease of play of both CR and HS.

If only they could release an HD Remaster or something of HA1. I'd happily pay full value for it. That game is super near and dear to my heart.

KoopahTroopah

Honestly I think the only thing wrong with the game is the mobile aspect of it. Granted I played on my PC, it actually plays well enough, the challenges are enjoyable, and real time duels are waaaaaay better than the waiting for turns IMO. The campaigns behind real money paywalls, the overly long training (which is practically forced btw), and the paint drying slow drip of currency earning are all pretty god awful. The only thing I thought was interesting or unique in their P2W aspect, was the ability to buy gem currency that was unlocked over a whole week, but was cheaper than buying it all straight. I.E. buying 2k gems that was distributed in equal unlocks each day for seven days only cost $5, but buying 2k worth of gems right now costs $10.

So, yeah. I agree with Dover. Their marketing needs work, but the game itself is decent enough. I've only played with the council and the dark elf decks so far, but they seem familiar enough. Definitely more streamlined in their gameplay.

MNC Dover

I loved the waiting aspect of the original game. I didn't have to sit there and wait for my opponent to make a move. Sure it sucked waiting an hour or a couple of days, but that's why you have multiple games going at once. There's always a game or three waiting. It my HA1 peak, I would have 30 games going at once, 5 with each team (Council, Dark Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Shaolin, and TF2). It was glorious.

kime

MNC Dover wrote: »

I loved the waiting aspect of the original game. I didn't have to sit there and wait for my opponent to make a move. Sure it sucked waiting an hour or a couple of days, but that's why you have multiple games going at once. There's always a game or three waiting. It my HA1 peak, I would have 30 games going at once, 5 with each team (Council, Dark Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Shaolin, and TF2). It was glorious.

Agreed, it was one of the best parts. I don't often have fifteen minutes or whatever of uninterrupted phone time, but thirty seconds at a time to take a turn? I can do a lot of that!

MNC Dover

I ended up doing the same thing with Ascension later on down the road. 5 games for each set, averaging 20-25 games at any given time.