Ben Brode: "Keeping Hearthstone Spicy is Important"
Earlier today, Blizzard announced that we'd be having a Free Card Day event this weekend on May 20th. There's been a lot of people wondering what's up with it and Ben Brode decided to tell us a bit more about the reasoning behind it.
- They like doing special events and they've got more planned, both bigger and smaller, down the line.
- Giving out a free card was something easy they could do as a fun one-off.
Quote from Ben BrodeLots of folks in this thread wondering: "Why? Are they testing something?"
Honestly we just think it's fun to do surprising things. We like the feel of our Winter's Veil event, our "Hearthstone New Years" event, and the (now-redundant) Friendly Feud, and we've been ramping up our events team to do even more. We have some stuff planned that I think will be pretty hot. Keeping Hearthstone spicy is important... and giving out a free card seemed like something easy we could do as a fun one-off. We have some bigger (and smaller) events planned... we're just getting warmed up!
Enjoy the free card! (or the dust!)
Yea, this is totally not testing the waters with an epic quality card to see what kind of traffic it brings in on a random day in May.
It's to keep Hearthstone spicy.
What kind of test is that? The numbers of log ins go up. Maybe some of the players who log in start playing again? That's true of every cool event we could create. It's like, do we need to test if people like free stuff? My guess is no. I'm fairly certain they do.
Have you all looked into doing daily login rewards like other digital CCGs do?
Yes, we did it leading up to Un'Goro launch and it was pretty fun.
In general, putting aside the question of "how much is the right amount of free stuff", the question is "what's the right way to deliver the free stuff". For example, we added ranked rewards, better quests, tavern brawl packs, etc. I'm not against finding other ways to reward stuff, but is daily log-in the best way? I tend to find it tedious to have to remember to log in every day. It makes me sad when I miss a day.
Our daily quest system for example, could have a single slot for your quests, instead of 3. 'Log in every day and complete your quest'. It's the same total amount of stuff given out (1 quest a day), but you'd have to make sure to log in daily to get that value, as opposed to getting some slack and letting you miss a couple days without losing any of that value.
I do think it's cool to have a fun present to open every day, though. There are pros and cons to a system like that.
What Kinds of Events Would YOU Like to See?
Here's a question for the comments below. What kind of events do you want to see the Hearthstone team do? Personally, I'd love to see them play more with the Warcraft-themed holidays through either Tavern Brawls or flavorful takeovers of normal assets. Some Quests for those events would be A+.
lmao you are so unbelievably stupid it actually hurts
You could add a daily event: first pack you buy on this day with real cash is 50% off..
How about kill most of the rng in the game. I don't even feel like winning when i won by rng. But when i lost to rng, i guess everybody who play know how sad it is, of course after 100 unlucky rng. There should be an achievement for that. How many bad rng that happened to you.
Btw, gwent will have auto squelch in their open beta. Did they already do this in HS? I stopped playing for a while so idk
RNG is literally the most fun part of this game, why would they take it away?
My favorite things to do are Arena and brawls like Randomonium, I'm sorry that you don't like it but then maybe this game isn't for you.
Removing RNG would mean removing:
All Ogres
Any card that adds a random card to your hand
Any Discover card
Anything like Arcane Missiles or Avenging Wrath, or hell Knife Juggler
Anything like Piloted Shredder
Anything similar to Joust
Anything with Adapt
So you'd be losing some of the best cards in the game, for example Dr Boom would never have existed (granted he was a bit broken, but still). No Kazakus. The entirety of Grimy Goons. Kabal Courier. Any of the current Adapt cards, or the taunt turtle, or Lyra, etc. The game would be fucking boring as shit.
"Most" is the key here..
I'm currently on my way of switching to Shadowverse, because there is much less RNG (but there is) and more challenging..
Much RNG is fine for Brawls :-)
They couldn't give a better heads up about this? I play regularly, but this weekend I took some time off HS - and miss out on the free epic card (which I was looking forward to since seeing it in the datamined info). For me as a casual regular player this feels super bad. It's not giving something nice extra, it's "be on your toes and on the lookout all the time, or you'll miss out on big extra bonuses just because there was no warning". Great. :( Just giving my subjective feeling from this event.
I think unfortunately that is part of the plan...They want you to fear not logging in everyday to keep you turning up in hopes it will generate revenue. I know a lot of people will say "Why complain about free stuff?" but really big companies like this don't give away revenue and unfortunately blizzard has become one of the worst at really giving the least possible to still placate the community and min/max their profit/loss.
They say things like oh this is a test and we will see if it generates interest before doing more to keep us baited. If the game starts to lose market share to competitors they will immediately say "Hey it turns out that test was super positive have some more free stuff!"
Same thing with Heroic Tavern Brawl , It was going to be a rare event but it generated a lot of revenue and suddenly it has become more frequent despite the reaction of the general public being mixed. Blizzard is a company and you can't really fault them for wanting to profit but unfortunately for the past few years a lot of their games have become increasingly about profit and not customer loyalty.
I appreciate free stuff as much as the next guy but I am not fooled into thinking it is because blizzard loves me.
(This is based on games I play as I am aware there are insanely worse micro-transaction games that try bleed their player base dry! )
I think he meant that you can play all cards in the game, even if you don't have them.
You do have ALL cards? Wow..
Lol how would that be a reward? We already saw how bad "Play X games" was when they did the Overwatch/HoTS promotion; people will enter the game and surrender immediately.
The 10g/3 is a bonus. Most gold comes from quests and, to a higher extent, Arena, because the cards you own don't matter and the gold you get is much higher, you get a net + as long as you get 4 or more wins, which is extremely easy.
I do agree with the legendary thing, you should start each set with enough (some way or another) to make one decent deck.
And lol on the Quest cost nerf. Besides the fact that about half of them are absolutely worthless anyway, that makes no more sense than dropping the cost of legends in general.
On this lucky day (insert a date) periodically putting 1 gold to be discovered and received by clicking on features in the game board. (Only one a game tops) Perhaps have a cue that tells players that something is hidden like a shiny reflection or bright spot or a murloc sound at the beginning of the game.
50% off on arena days once a quarter = 75 gold or whatever for arena run.
This event could be used before the release of more game content (i.e. expansions)
I have stated this other places but to address the prompt:
I would like to see lunar events (an event tied to the moon's calendar to tie into the zodiac) or quarter events (four times a year in each session) or twice a year where the events are based off the equinox and solstice during such events a different event would be available where a select number of cards can be used from wild and standard to be played. Blizzard could make crazy restrictions and it would be okay.
The reason why such an event would be great is because Blizzard could peel back tier 1 cards and/or tier 2 cards and allow for exploration of all the other cards in the game.
God that first idea is terrible, I don't want to sit there looking at my gold count be like "157 gold" permanently because there's no way to spend a non-10 amount of gold
Maybe it would be good if they add a feature to choose your opponent (class) in ladder, like discover mechanic, not just a random aggro cancer. Or maybe sometimes we would be able to ban a class that we don't want to play against
No
So what you're saying is that the game should be pay-to-win
I would like to see a St. Patrick day event where the ladder invaded periodically by random heroic bosses. Defeat them for 100 gold. Should be challenging and anti-meta decks.
Man, there's a whole bunch of stuff I'd like to see.
Class Highlights - some kind of mechanism to stress using a particular class, maybe on a weekly set. One week might be rogue focused and all wins with that class yield extra gold (maybe 20 per 3 wins). The chosen class should be random by user to prevent too many people from playing the same damn deck all at once.
Achievements - but not what you're thinking. As a mechanism to help newer players flesh out their classic set, I'd have achievements that result in earning certain legendaries. Things like, 'finish an opponent 20 times with a card with Charge to earn Leeroy Jenkins' - that kind of stuff. Stress learning certain combos, game mechanics, and class archetypes and, at the same time, help players get those cards they may be missing. It's all a great way to help the new player experience.
Event Cards - I love the occasional one-off card that's not necessarily part of a set. Seeing a new card for Winter Veil, maybe one that addresses certain meta concerns, would have been a lot of fun. Keep on with the special events, but add some cards, too. We like cards. Cards in a card game are good. Especially when a single new card can shake the game up a little when it gets stale between sets.
I agree. I'm still salty that I missed out on a free Old Murk-Eye. I think rewarding certain classic Legendaries for completing certain in-game achievements is a fantastic idea.
I would be very happy to see one extra card each month or so awarded through events or as part of the monthly reward bundle. And yes, it should be targeted at meta concerns, either buffing the under-performing classes or targeting the strongest meta decks. This would help some with the feeling that the meta stagnates for 2-3 months each cycle.