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?
Bring back Blade Flurry , we don't need this card deal dmg to the face!! But give it 2 mana.
less rng
I played a lot of HS the first years, it truly became my main game, but ever since the old gods my interest gradually diminished. I used to play half the classes, try out new decks, try to build my own decks, strive to climb the ladder to at least rank 5 and follow most tournaments. In time I stopped doing all that and now I just try to do quests from time to time, sometimes even in friendly matches with my wife, who usually can't be bothered to do even that. That way my collection is somewhat up to date as otherwise I would quit and never return. Hearthstone for me has become a game I'd rather not play, but just something I'd watch on Trolden or Kripp from time to time. It's like the sets are made mostly with providing clips for youtube in mind.
I haven't moved to Gwent or MTG or Artifact or w/e, nor do I plan to. I played physical MTG a little, a little of physical WoW TCG and HS since beta. I liked the early days of HS the best. Nowadays either Blizzard makes HS a game I'd want to play or I'll just stick to other genres.
1. What I hated the most was the introduction of extreme RNG, RNG upon RNG and RNG for RNG's sake. Everything became random. My favorite class, Mage, at one point became the epitome of RNG. I hated that. Watching tournaments became boring - everything is decided by RNG. If at first it was Overspark and MCT that could make or break a game, overtime half the cards became like this. Now it's a little better in that regard, I'm thinking of checking out some tournament, probably not wild though.
2. I hate all these extremely powerful cards, that the devs like to introduce. A month into an expansion makes it clear you'll have to suffer them for 2 years. The DKs were fun at first, but then they were given new tools with each expansion and the most powerful ones are all over the place. It's just one card, why not have an option of infinite value?
3. A 2 year standard cycle feels too long. Probably because some cards are too strong and are included in half the decks on ladder. I wouldn't mind a yearly set rotation if the cards were more affordable. Or keep the 2 year cycle, but make a year old cards cheaper to craft and old packs cheaper to buy - I would rarely craft legendaries on their second year anyway.
4. The rock-paper-scissors approach that was so prevalent after MSoG (Gadgetzan) is awful. You start a match, realize your deck has next to no chance to win and there goes all fun you expected from the game.
5. I absolutely despise solitaire decks. All this cycle-through your deck and Mechathun crap, cycle and swap decks, do a quest and auto-win.
6. Too many effects are absolute. Bring back ALL demons, ALL taunts, create infinite number of beasts with just 1 card, play ALL spells, battlecries etc.
7. Very slow nerfs for new OP cards and combos, unneeded or inappropriately timed nerfs for classic and basic cards.
8. Outright refusing to provide options and change the game. Auto-squelch should've been in the game since day 1. More deck slots should've been there when I wanted to play more and test more stuff. There's no reason whatsoever not to have an active brawl the whole week. Many quests are a chore - I won't suddenly play my favorite murloc/pirate/dragon/combo/overload deck to complete a quest. I don't have such a deck and I never will. What I will do is mindlessly put all cheap required cards and draw and go play them in wild r25 until I complete the quest and then concede. I don't think my opponent is overly happy with a free win at this rank too.
9. Most card backs are boring and all look the same - wide lines and heavy curves of what looks like colored rock to me. The cards from latest sets all look the same. All mech, great - we've already seen that before. All trolls - great, let's make the next set all jade golems, from different kinds of stones ofc. I haven't cared for minion art design for a long time. From troll set I only like Shirvallah and Hunter lynxes, but I just like cats. Same with Boomsday, Kobolds and Catacombs - it's dull and looks indistinguishable. KotFT is mostly the same too. Witchwood was better. The last designs I really liked were in Un'goro. Also where are new class heroes?
10. To this day I don't understand the reasoning behind paywall arena. When I played a lot I used to play arena too - I became better at it and soon went infinite. Now I don't want to play HS as much and I only play arena when the game's free. If arena became free, with proportionally less gold rewards, I could play that when I get sick of seeing all the same decks on ladder.
11. PVE modes need to be more varied. KotFT was ok, but the formulae got stale, Kobolds was unusual and interesting for the time, yet the remaining quests to go play it are annoying. I don't want to play it anymore even though I haven't completed it with all classes! Witchwood was more of the same and the reward system ironically punished players for not completing it. My wife didn't want to play it at all, so she had only 2 slots for quests until the next set. Now we have Rastakhan, which I haven't even completed as it is all the same once again. I lost a 33% winning RNG roll and then 50% twice a row to the last boss and never returned. The puzzles were great though, except for the last heal fatigue one, it was so annoying I looked it up and called it a day.
100% agree to No.2,4 and especially 5
Holy shit. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
This comment right here is everything we needed. You, kind sir, are an absolute madman. Kudos.
One win = 10 gold + 10 dust.
More anti-OTK cards for all classes.
More fun cards.
More events.
No more OP hero cards (DK Gul'dan, DK Rexxar).
When you announced RR you let us fill information about what team we like. And then on launch you gave us free loa. Why it wasn't the 1 we wanted and filled that in? I got akali and I haven't put her into deck since release. But since I don't want to get her again it is better to keep it than disenchant. Then you nerfed several cards. Nerf to wild growth and nourish was too big. Yet you didn't nerfed few cards. Sap is too cheap. Vanish need rework. Shadow visions might discover copy of a card instead of spell. Since losing to turn 4 1/4 to 20/20 is stupid. Give us more deck building cards like espionage for more classes. I would like to see some nerfs targeting agro decks. Im fine if I lose to a board state that I have a way to deal with as a class but I didn't draw/ not in deck. I'm not fine with opponent killing me just because early lead. Like when you finnaly destroy his board. And he topdecks leeroy kill command lava burst fireball. And please Nerf explosive runes and counterspell
1. I don't mind farming but the problem is the consistency. A deck needs to have at least a weakness, not the whole archetype. Simply promoting consistent decks/cards makes the game extremely boring. We need a high-roll potential, in which reduces the consistency of the deck, but may very well change the tide of the game if play it on time.
2. Aggressive tactic. Aggressive here means hyper-agressive tactic, like we saw with pirate warrior. Not some sort like random hybrid midrange deck, with the draw ability. Without DK Rexxar and Divine Favor, many current Hunter/Paladin decks become really weak against slow decks. I personally want them to be less depended on those cards.
3. If you want to pull players back, you might consider the achievement, with special cards effect, heroes, cards back, something that money can't buy. Now they have to play for it. And players use it as a prove showing that I have this, that. All of the above mentioned, there is only 1 thing in present, the legendary card back.
4. Small expansion (which is included in the large one). I have played many games CCGs and it works like a charm. People normally get boring during the mid of the expansion, and this is when it works. Instead of trying to make changes on cards, making cards that counter them is the solution. If you make this an adventure/puzzle it would be even better. If you play the game continuously, you don't feel like a huge blank between expansions anymore. It creates hype for oldbie, and with newbie, they will have different experiences through months.
Double post (remove if possible). Damn browser..
Well Gwent isn't as fun as HS I ust admit but the interface is done right, in the end it seems the "HS killer" is autochess
Double post (remove if possible).
I won't get into QoL things (for now) or rewards except for this; I think the reward system is fine, but the dust refund can be a little higher for epic and legendaries as the are already pretty rare. I would like to see 400 dust for epics and 800 dust for legendaries.
What i would like to see;
1) More game modes! At the moment casual is just ladder without... well... the ladder. There is no place where you can bring your wacky deck without getting stomped by tier 1-2-3 (ladder) decks / the same decks over and over. I would like to see game modes like, to speak in MtG terms, peasant (commons only), pauper (commons + 4 rares, 2 epics and 1 legendary), block (i.e. only cards from the latest 3 expansions), or / and a mode where your deck is scored and that score can't be higher than a certain value (cards will be scored based on popularity).
2) A (rotating) core set! Again like MtG. Many people suggested it and many want it for years now (see 3).
3) Listen better to your community! See point 2 for example.
Regarding point 2. I know (read: guess) you (Blizzard / the Heartstone team) want to be different than MtG and therefor keep a (non rotating) Basic and Classic set but better well 'stolen' than badly iinvented'.
Pretty simple, in my opinion.
Show me that you actually care about the game.
Tavern Brawls most of the time feel like there is no effort put into them at all.
UI has bugs that have been there forever and still are not fixed.
Tournament mode has been announced decades ago.
Tyrande Wisperwind
We need a weekly and a monthly quest to go with the dailies..
I really like the way other games do by letting you to buy decks by gold 500 or $10 and those decks can give you around the 80% of the expansion + just log in will give something and once in the month a free random legendary in Elder Scrolls Legends and the game coming to console now also from Hi-rez (hand of gods) you can buy the whole expansion by $30. better than depending on gambling loot boxes(waste so much effort and money).
Simple:
Two expansions max per year, and back with adventures.
You are ripping off your fans!
Also, if f2p players go away, it's bad for everyone. It's not the streamers that give you revenue, it's the average player.
A paying player should get the full collection each expansion with some time/money.
Again, STOP BEING GREEDY! And ffs, get blizzard back and leave activision.
p.s. REVERT the Yogg nerf, let it keep casting spells, with treachery and cataclysm (for example), the punish is already too high. And that Naga screw up, damn is that a chaos... You buffed the card by no reason, it backfired, and then, instead of just reverting the mistake, you nerfed it to the ground, why? That was the most simple thing to revert, just to put it as it was, and you blew it all completely. The constant nerfs (expecially on basic cards) are ruining old and specially new players experience with hearthstone.
For me, it‘s plain and simple: I hate the stale, boring meta that‘s been reigning for months, if not years.
I’ve been a player since day 1, but have not played any games for a few months. For me, the latest expansions have killed the game. The individual games have become incredibly stale, repetitive and boring for me. I loved the creative chaos that reigned with RNG-based cards, especially those that added a twist, making each game unique and new (like changing the hero power, giving you cards from a different class etc.) - it made games feel fesh and exciting, and required quick thinking and adapting to new situations.
I‘m incredibly tired of facing the same Archetypes since ages. I hate the odd-and-even-decks. I absolutely detest Shudderwok, Mecha C’Thun and similar shenanigans - all types of decks where you either win before the combo is complete, or you lose, with no possibility to prevent the combo by playing smart (like Loatheb, Armoring up enough etc.). I hate the fact that all games „feel and play the same“ - as soon as you know what your opponent is playing, you know how it‘s going to end.
Where are those wacky, exciting, cool games? Where are those memorable „WTF-moments“? Where is the familiar, triumphant „I’ve wrecked you combo, mate“-feeling ? Where are the new archetypes? Where are the completely new, fresh, game-changing cards (c‘Thun)?
Hey Guys. This will be a long list with examples. This is just my opinion, i dont know how the game works and what is possible and what is not (technically).
So my first and for me the most important thing has to be the Tournament Mode.
I want BO3 tourney/ladder with sideboard or ban system. I think this could be a constant mode with the current standard set. Although i want exlusive events(i dont know how to call it) which changing every week/month. These events are tourney's as well. But for example one of these event is using a previous standard year expansions example: Year of the Kraken cards only. Because i bought every expansion for ever not just until the next rotation, and i know if i want to use those cards, there is the wild ladder but wild is just wild, it isn't fun for me, and i guess a lot of people loved a few previous meta/decks and i think it could be fun to play it again even if it's there just a week/month.
Second thing: PvE
I love PvE content, but there is no reason to play it again after you get your rewards.
I think something like a Rift in Diablo could be nice. (sry i have no better example :D). The base mechanichs could be the same as a Dungeon run or Rumble run. But i dont want to finish at 8 wins, not even at 50 wins. I want to go until i can, until i loss once. And there could be a table/ladder what show's to everyone who get's the most wins, something like a top 200 list. You should get rewards for it, a special card back, a special hero portrait or anything. But there is the "competitive" side where i want to be on that list, or i just want to get more wins as before. You know, you challanging yourself and other players. I think this could be a rly good thing. I know a lot of people now thinking, that could be boring, playing with the same deck a lot of games. Yeah maybe, but what if after a player reach the deck limit (i guess 30 cards) there should be always a new 3-4-5 cards pick and you can choose to put those cards into your deck(if you want) instead a 3-4-5 cards what you want to cut off. I think this could keep it fresh IMO.
Another PvE suggestion
Update every 2-3 months the puzzle lab. It was rly fun but after you finish it there is no reason to play it again.
Last thing
I dont know how shall i call it, But i need a "point's system". I wrote a short example. Here it comes:
I suppose we get weekly quests, for example 3 quests/week, you have 1 week to complete those. Those quests are the same for everyone. If you complete a weekly quests you get points, depend's on how hard was it. So at the end of the month there could be a "End of the Season shop" when you claim your rewards. In that shop you can exchange your points. Every season shop contains different stuff's for example: exlusive hero portraits, card backs. These item's has cost's obviously. Let us assume that, the max points what you could earned for that month is 30 points. You can spend your collected points for like i said exlusive hero portraits, card backs, but those are expensive and you didnt collect that much points. Its fine, you can buy some free arena tickets let say: 10 point's is 1 arena ticket or event ticket or whatever ticket, you can buy a few packs, you can buy a "random legendary card", a "random epic card",Or you can exhange your points for gold if there is nothing for you, like 1 point=15 gold. In that case, i have a reason to sign in and play everyday, and i get rewarded as well. The points collecting start again every month, so you cant bring it to the next season.
Thank you if you read it, sry for my language, im not speaking english at all, but i hope you guys get it what i want.
Im not a gamer, Hearthstone is the only game which has a part of my life and i love it.
Have a nice day!
Mecathun and Malygos in Hall of Fame !