Dean Ayala Asks: What Would Get You Back Into Hearthstone?
Hearthstone's Dean "Iksar" Ayala had a question for those that used to main Hearthstone as a game but no longer do.
What do they need to do to get you back?
We're actually quite interested in knowing too. With many old Hearthstone players still frequenting our site to see what the game is up to or to chat with old friends, there has to be something the Hearthstone team could do to reel you back in?
Quote from Dean AyalaIf Hearthstone used to be your main game but isn't anymore, what would get you back?
What I like about old hearthstone was the LORE . I dont play Wow but i love the adventurers and the hidden dialogs between the Wow characters and the fake ones it made me want to play the cards more and it felt that it was an inside thing/jokes that made me look up there lore and get excited when they trigged and know what was up
E.g Hakkar, the Soulflayer is a bid dick God in the Gurubashi Tribe but the is no mention of it and all we got in this exnention that was Gurubashi was 3 dead card in the form of Gurubashi Offering , Gurubashi Hypemon and Gurubashi Chicken with has no mention of a connection or even synergy and Bwonsamdi, the Dead and the new Sharma hero not a peep
tbh I dont want tournaments mode I play this game as casually and you'll want a battle royal mode that takes like +2hr to complete an I dont know what you can get if you win it . If it was a card back pass but if it was pack you know it would cost gold or dust to play and it would just be constructed arena. it might be fun but the is a lot of ways hearthstone can fucked it up . it just my opinion
When you ask that kind of question it shows what kind of state that the game is.
Are you so desperate to the point off begging for players.
Afraid of getting fired like the 800 before you?
Hello Dean!
For me it's definitely new features and new possible achievements, along with meta diversity.
For this i suggest for instance, weakly rewards for winning X games, some new cosmetic stuff for rewards like hero power particles colored.
To meta diversity you guys could introduce new cards every month, let's say 5 to allow to improve the less played classes. Those cards could be acquired by dust or some game play reward. Along with that banning problematic synergistic cards for 1 month or so could be healthy for the game.
Greetings
Bringing back Ben Brode.
The fact that 75% of every expansions is just pack fillers that will never ever see play in any deck whatsoever and blizzard knows it.
If you would just release expansions full of cards that have similar power levees you’d see much more variety instead of releasing an expansion with 200 cards, only 30 or 40 of which are actually playable.
I’ve seen a ton of responses about little thing that seem really irrelevant in whether someone is actually gonna stop playing a certain game and more just little things they have gripes about
i think one of the main reasons people develops issues with this game is the power range of a given card. In MtG a certain card, even if is a common, has a given range in which the card could be useful. Ina certain deck maybe that common card could have a serious impact on the game based on the theme of the deck and the other cards it has synergies with. So each card has a ceiling power and a floor power. Floor power being it’s lowest possible power level like including in a deck with no synergies whatsoever and it’s just gonna help you at all. This range in MtG is much bigger for each card. In HS that range is super SUPER small. If a card is good, it’s probably going to be good in most decks, and if a card is bad, it’s probably going to be bad in most decks. A card ceiling and floor are very close together.
I think some of that comes down to how many cards magic has and HS just doesn’t have anywhere near that number but a lot of it is more so the fact that HS releases 75% of an expansions as pack fillers that will NEVER be used in any deck whatsoever and they know it
Sideboards. No more best of one crap, real in client tournament stuff.
Progressivos. Dailys are the only reason I play.
There’s many things that I would come back for.
Adventures like Naxx/BRM.
Quicker content releases. Takes way too long in my mind for new cards to come out. I’d rather get less cards more often than the way it is now. More cards that change how you play like Quests or old gods. Cthun was my favorite to play with by far. I’d also want to see some new game modes. Give us something to grind towards or work to. Half the time I feel like I’ve got no reason to play past my dailies unless I’m just having fun. Fun is great but so is working towards things.
Expand on the Dungeon Run. I specifically enjoyed the Dungeon Run released with Kobolds and Catacombs and played that much more than I found myself playing constructed Hearthstone. I wish there were new bosses added, or updated buckets of cards, that would increase the playability of the mode. I think that if the Dungeon Run was expanded on, rather than imitated - I might be inclined to play more Hearthstone.
My only gripe with the game is the cost to play. I still play very often, but I've played since Old Gods was the newest expansion. To this day after pre-ordering most of the expansions that have come out since, it still will take 133,700 dust just to craft every card from classic through this year's rotation (Witchwood, Boomsday, RR) not including the Mammoth cards. Is someone supposed to fully collect ALL the cards? No. But the fact that to stay with the game and be able to play more than 2-3 decks means dropping triple A title money 3 times a year is pretty pretentious of a game this large scale. Out of the 100 million unique accounts (this obviously increasing since the milestone) I find it hard to believe the money isn't already there for the game to create more incentive to save and play?
I want to see both various tournament modes AND leagues (like M:TG used to have, where you use packs as buy in and can rebuild your deck EACH game, from that pool, playing ONLY others in the league, for a set time, like 30 days, with all league finishers with a positive win rate getting packs, more for better records, and then the packs you put in the league are also available in your collection). I would also like to see different ladders like others have mentioned (a league ladder for example), and other play modes (different set restrictions).
All the above would contribute to freshness. Standard, Wild, Brawl (ugh so random), and Arena are the only four play modes currently and only Arena has any long term freshness (with that even limited for periods when it contains broken cards). To increase freshness, you either need more game modes, or more frequent, smaller set releases (smaller so you aren't just causing people to have to spend more money... will only work if they can divide what they currently spend across more set releases).
Tournament mode needs serious prioritization. That could open tons of new play modes by itself. Could have free modes with no prizes, just bragging rights and its own ladder, paid modes for prizes, and qualifier modes only open at certain times (as ways to get invites to bigger events, playable from home).
A customizable mode would be a huge draw, where players set various construction limits (sets, rarities, bans by card/keyword etc., required cards, whatever) and then some bulletin board post would have entries available and when it starts, people entered get paired with each other. This would let Blizzard please a lot of players while also data mining it for popularity of various player designed modes over time.
1. Personally Id like to see less cards ever year. Most suck. 90% are never used. Return to the old aventure/expasion cycle.
2. Stop nerfing everything. Seriousy, people put a lot of time, effort and money into building decks. Some times nerfing 1 card ruins their investment.
3. Make a core set that rotates. Bring some cards back from wild to play in standard
4. More game modes (formats)
5. Hidden quests.
6. Better value for dusting cards, less cost for crafting.
7. Daily login rewards.
8. More hero skins.
9. Another class or two?
10. Make the ladder less time consuming.
Thank you.
More nerfs would be welcome except do it to the right cards not the support cards.
1) The amount of cards isn't an issue. Your inability to use them doesn't mean that they're bad, it likely just means that they aren't useful in every deck but instead have strengths in a single/particular type of deck.
2) Sometimes cards NEED to be nerfed. That's just how it goes. It happens with every card game, digital or analogue. The folks that blow their load on one particular broken deck type that suddenly become upset because it's no longer stupid strong.. they can dust those cards for a full refund. That's how Blizzard's done it for the past good bit now.
3) This is an awful idea. Look at your point, then read this one. Do you see how the two don't make any type of sense together? When cards rotate, you don't get full value dust (if memory serves) and if Core cards rotated every year then you (and everyone else) would need to fork over ~$100 or so in order to have a stable amount of Core cards. Terrible idea.
4) That's what Tavern Brawl's for. Now, yeah, sometimes the Tavern Brawl is disappointing but it always changes after a week and then you'll have something to new to play with.
5) There already are a few. Collecting all of the Standard as an example.
6) This wouldn't improve the game. This would make everyone have a power deck and thereby remove the reason that many play the game. I remember when I first started playing and wanted more packs I grinded each day for 100 gold (beyond the quest gift) so I could open a pack. It took ages but I enjoyed myself and I learned a whole lot of the core strategy through my play.
7) There are daily quests for free gold. What more do you want? Just logging in for a random card/pack? That's pretty dumb, I feel.
8) This would be cool! Maybe have a marketplace where you could buy more hero skins.
9) Nope. This will never happen. Think about it. The new class would be incredibly underpowered no matter what. It may be useful in Standard.. but anything in Wild it wouldn't stand a chance. I REALLY hope that Blizzard never adds another class to the game.
10) Less time consuming? xD What?! The only reason why people should be playing ladder is to compete. That's what the ladder is for. To see who's the best out there. If you don't like the speed of games, play something else maybe?
There's clearly a whole lot of conflicting opinions out there, most notably whether to have more/fewer nerfs, more/fewer sets, rotate/stop messing with Classic.
To me the best change would 'simply' (I accept it is not very simple) be an effective environment where people didn't feel an incentive to play top tier decks. Casual certainly isn't it, and I understand the various conflicting viewpoints on what Casual is 'meant to be' so just leave that as is. What is desperately needed is a Super-casual mode that doesn't require having friends online and willing/able to play for a while. Probably it has no gold rewards and quests cannot be completed there (not for any ideological reason, just to keep gold farmers away), but at least make it somewhere there was no pressure to win quickly or even to win at all.
Spikes can be Spikes on ladder or Casual and be rewarded for it, but Johnnys and Timmys have had 5+ years of being punished for being Johnnys and Timmys everywhere they go. If Super-casual existed they could at least be rewarded with the more varied and dynamic games they are trying to play in the first place. Perhaps F2P players who have been forced into competitive decks could finally feel more able to craft the cards/decks that interest them rather than the ones that climb the ladder quickly.
A free arena per day !!
making wild sets free, a majority of the player base lost will get back into hearthstone via wild, while saving up for standard decks.
and give a giant fuck you to everyone who have purchased wild pack and not dusted them for crafting standart decks...
If blizzard ever did this they would have to give out an dust equal to the cards wild players have
Not that I think Dean is reading this, but, as a former main-HS now main-Shadowverse, what got me to make the switch (to SV, and thus what could make me switch back to HS) is:
1) Free stuff. I am f2p in both games. In HS, I get 60-ish gold per day, for which I have to do a quest which is sometimes difficult and always time consuming. In SV, I get 20-40 gold per day just for logging in, plus sometimes I get a free pack or a free arena run. On top of that I get 3 quests per day which pay between 20 gold and 1 pack, so at minimum I get 60 gold, sometimes I get 3 packs! On top of THAT, they also have 8 cards per pack (compared to 5 cards in HS) so the pack value is 1.5x in SV compared to HS. On top of THAT, SV also has promotions where they just randomly give you a free pack a day, every day, for a week, and this happens roughly once a month. On top of ALL of that, whenever a new set comes out, SV just gives you 10 free packs, easy peezy, no questions asked. There's more free stuff as well that I didn't even mention.
2) SV has way less RNG. "Random" is an actively bad word in SV; if you see "random" on a card, that card is unplayable. Compared to HS, we have lots of RNG, including Deathstalker Rexxar, Shudderwock/Tess battlecry order, Lightning Storm, and historically cards like Implosion and Crackle. SV has none of that, the cards just do what they say they do.
3) SV is way more balanced than HS, although this is starting to change. When HS had decks like Quest Rogue and Shudderwock Shaman which could easily combo kill you on turn 8-9 with nothing you could do about it in Standard, the premier combo deck in SV equivalent of Wild had a turn 9 combo kill which wasn't reliable, and more commonly killed on turn 11-12. And that's in Wild! I don't play a lot of SV standard so I can't make a direct comparison, but SV Wild is balanced like HS Standard, and SV Standard is actually fairly balanced. That said, SV has been going more broken recently so this is changing towards the more broken side (which I don't really like...)
4) SV is more stable as a mobile experience than HS. When my SV game disconnects, if my connection comes back up within ~20 secs, the game just reconnects me and I'm back in 10-20 secs. In HS, if my connection goes down for even a split second, I have to completely reboot the client, which can cause me to lose minutes of game time. On top of which, the HS client is just slower and less responsive than SV. Loading my collection in SV takes about 15 seconds from home screen to browse. In HS it takes well over 30 secs just to load the first page of my collection, then each page load takes 2-5 secs (in SV it's basically seamless).
There are other reasons too, these are just a few.