I've noticed that the number if viewers on Twitch for HS Streams has massively decreased. Streams like Hafu and Xixo struggled to break the 1000 viewers. Outside of a few top Streamers that still pull 10-12k viewers like Amaz, Savj and Silvername; most of the others have pitiful numbers. Does this mean that people are becoming less interested in watching the game as opposed to playing it? Or was it because everyone in the HS Community used Viewbots and Twitch cracked down on them? If it's the former, does it mean that Competitive HS is losing momentum? Hopefully the new changes can renew interest in the more competitive side of HS.
Well, I don't watch tournaments anymore... HS has never been a big staple of competitive gaming, but recent design developments have made tournaments plain silly and completely pointless. They could just flip the first 6 cards and decide who wins based on that in 95% of the matches (this trend is worse in tourneys than ladder, so not taking shots at ladder with this).
Arena has become very boring to watch due to the limited cardpool and slanted card selection towards Un'goro, but Amaz at least can liven it up (I know he grates on many people, but I find him enjoyable in small doses).
And too many upcoming streamers just try go for silly meme-stuff, engage in drama or are just plain rude. I'll just stick to ThijsNL and Savjz.
But yeah in general, watching HS streams have become less interesting.
Viewership for Player Unknown's Battlegrounds and Overwatch have gone up quite a bit over the last few months. Two games that lots of my Hearthstone friends have switched to.
The two big problems with Hearthstone my friends say is the preorder bundle does not give enough and the epic/legend drop rate is too slow.
I'm a Hearthstone addict so I'll stay, but I'm going to start spending more time in Battlegrounds with my friends if they don't fix the card distribution system next expansion.
Problem is with the current meta almost half of the games are decided based on your opponent's class. It is good that every deck has hard counter/s but not like this. Some match ups are simply not worth to play. There are also lots of stupid going face types aggro decks if they get the mulligan right, there is almost no way of beating them. Both Quest Rogue and Quest Warrior are not that powerful but extremely annoying to play against. Other games are won or lost based on mulligan and first four draws almost no skill involved. This is the worst meta ever, just RnG fiesta nothing more.
Well, today I drew a hungry crab + shadowstep in my opening hand vs a murlocdin. That game was decided right then and there. In the past there were definitely situations where the game was hugely tilted at the mulligan, but never really where someone's opening hand is so powerful the other person has 0 chance whatsoever.
1 thing I notice with hearthstone streamers is this. Whenever I want to watch a streamer like dog, sjow, j4ackiechan etc, sometimes they have their title as "FUN DECKS ALL DAY!" I go to click the stream and all they are playing is meta decks, not fun decks. What streamers should be more aware of is the way they present their stream by adding in their title. They need to do better when it comes to advertising themselves/ I know it's not the #1 issue, but I can guarantee that this is one of the reasons. It's pretty much click bait leading into false hope for those who actually want to see streamers play some messed up unique decks.
Problem is with the current meta almost half of the games are decided based on your opponent's class...Other games are won or lost based on mulligan and first four draws almost no skill involved.
Do you know that 90% of statistics are made up 80% of the time? ; )
I didn't use twitch until Hearthstone in 2014 so I don't have much history. However, I am curious how long streamers can stay relevant within a single game? I wonder if HS just needs some new blood after 3+ years?
I don't have any May & June 2017 stats, but Hearthstone has been among the top 4 viewed games since 2014 and looks to continue that trend. It was #2 in April due to Un'goro launch. We are entering the 3rd month of the expansion and I think that has a lot to do with a viewership decline (if it is happening). There were similar declines in viewership from June (5 weeks after Old Gods) - August last year (TGT launched last week of Aug). Plus it is the summer time. Maybe we are just seeing a similar decline from Un'goro being out for 8+ weeks plus nice weather reducing viewership. Battlegrounds also looks like it is a Twitch hit with legs, so I am sure that is stealing viewership from a lot of games as well.
TL;DR: It is typical for viewership to decline this far into an expansion release and it should pick up again with another expansion.
I don't know if others are like me (and I'm certainly not insisting they are -- just mentioning a possibility), but I watch far less Hearthstone than I used to. The main reason is, I don't feel like I'm learning as much as I once did.
The law of diminishing returns definitely applies here. My game isn't going to improve as much with each video/stream I view, so there's less incentive for me to do so.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Mostly where we are in the expansion cycle. Everything is a couple months old, seeing several problematic cards not changed just provides more PTSD when you see a streamer run into them (or actually playing them), whereas balance changes always freshen things up a bit. Won't be long before an expansion announcement, card reviews, probably another Heroic Brawl. Do agree that polarizing match-ups are hurting as well - it isn't fun to see someone try an interesting deck then run into the sub-30% match-ups until they give up, since deck match-up influences outcomes so heavily.
Problem is with the current meta almost half of the games are decided based on your opponent's class...Other games are won or lost based on mulligan and first four draws almost no skill involved.
Do you know that 90% of statistics are made up 80% of the time? ; )
60% of 70% agree with you, according to polls with 95% accuracy
Damn that feels so sad xD But its true. There is a large variety of classes but why would it matter if you cant enjoy a single game on ladder.
For me a simple solution was switching to casual and not giving a fuck about conceding to quest rogues and mages. But i totally agree. The level of stupid RNG deciding a game is way too high that it makes me laugh seeing people looking at this game competitively.
Well, a large part of this game IS an RNG crapshoot.
Let's put it this way, if I were to play one of the best players in dota for 1 game, 1 v 1, I would have maybe a 1% chance of winning if that. They'd have to have a really bad day to lose that match. Even if I got to pick both heroes so that my hero counters theirs, I still wouldn't win. If I were to play a BO7 vs one of the best hearthstone players, I'd probably have maybe a 1 in 4 chance of winning. I can probably win a game or 2 just purely off the matchup if there's a matchup where they just have no chance in, and I might win more games just by RNGing the shit out of them. And if I got to choose which decks both players had to play each round, they'd have no chance since the matchups are so polarizing in this game.
I've noticed that the number if viewers on Twitch for HS Streams has massively decreased. Streams like Hafu and Xixo struggled to break the 1000 viewers. Outside of a few top Streamers that still pull 10-12k viewers like Amaz, Savj and Silvername; most of the others have pitiful numbers. Does this mean that people are becoming less interested in watching the game as opposed to playing it? Or was it because everyone in the HS Community used Viewbots and Twitch cracked down on them? If it's the former, does it mean that Competitive HS is losing momentum? Hopefully the new changes can renew interest in the more competitive side of HS.
Viewbots are everywhere...
English isn't my first language, so please excuse any mistakes.
Well, I don't watch tournaments anymore... HS has never been a big staple of competitive gaming, but recent design developments have made tournaments plain silly and completely pointless. They could just flip the first 6 cards and decide who wins based on that in 95% of the matches (this trend is worse in tourneys than ladder, so not taking shots at ladder with this).
Arena has become very boring to watch due to the limited cardpool and slanted card selection towards Un'goro, but Amaz at least can liven it up (I know he grates on many people, but I find him enjoyable in small doses).
And too many upcoming streamers just try go for silly meme-stuff, engage in drama or are just plain rude. I'll just stick to ThijsNL and Savjz.
But yeah in general, watching HS streams have become less interesting.
We need a Hearthstone 2.0.
I am not a Mage player, just thought my avatar would go with my name.
'How many Blizzard employees do you need to fix a lamp? It does not matter, because they cannot balance the ladder.'
Check out my homebrewn Paladin deck.
Viewership for Player Unknown's Battlegrounds and Overwatch have gone up quite a bit over the last few months. Two games that lots of my Hearthstone friends have switched to.
The two big problems with Hearthstone my friends say is the preorder bundle does not give enough and the epic/legend drop rate is too slow.
I'm a Hearthstone addict so I'll stay, but I'm going to start spending more time in Battlegrounds with my friends if they don't fix the card distribution system next expansion.
4x Top 150 arena player
#95 June 2017 6.80, #108 Aug 2017 7.67, #127 Feb 2018 Wildfest 7.7, #33 Nov 2018 7.53
HCT Challenger Finals qualifier: 2018 Season 1, 2, 3
Problem is with the current meta almost half of the games are decided based on your opponent's class. It is good that every deck has hard counter/s but not like this. Some match ups are simply not worth to play. There are also lots of stupid going face types aggro decks if they get the mulligan right, there is almost no way of beating them. Both Quest Rogue and Quest Warrior are not that powerful but extremely annoying to play against. Other games are won or lost based on mulligan and first four draws almost no skill involved. This is the worst meta ever, just RnG fiesta nothing more.
Dead but dreaming
Well, today I drew a hungry crab + shadowstep in my opening hand vs a murlocdin. That game was decided right then and there. In the past there were definitely situations where the game was hugely tilted at the mulligan, but never really where someone's opening hand is so powerful the other person has 0 chance whatsoever.
S39 Legend - Quest Rogue, S38 Legend - Murloc Paladin, S37 Legend - Miracle Rogue, S36 Top 200 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S35 - Finished Rank 51 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S34 Legend - Aggro Shaman
1 thing I notice with hearthstone streamers is this. Whenever I want to watch a streamer like dog, sjow, j4ackiechan etc, sometimes they have their title as "FUN DECKS ALL DAY!" I go to click the stream and all they are playing is meta decks, not fun decks. What streamers should be more aware of is the way they present their stream by adding in their title. They need to do better when it comes to advertising themselves/ I know it's not the #1 issue, but I can guarantee that this is one of the reasons. It's pretty much click bait leading into false hope for those who actually want to see streamers play some messed up unique decks.
"There is no spoon"
I didn't use twitch until Hearthstone in 2014 so I don't have much history. However, I am curious how long streamers can stay relevant within a single game? I wonder if HS just needs some new blood after 3+ years?
I don't have any May & June 2017 stats, but Hearthstone has been among the top 4 viewed games since 2014 and looks to continue that trend. It was #2 in April due to Un'goro launch. We are entering the 3rd month of the expansion and I think that has a lot to do with a viewership decline (if it is happening). There were similar declines in viewership from June (5 weeks after Old Gods) - August last year (TGT launched last week of Aug). Plus it is the summer time. Maybe we are just seeing a similar decline from Un'goro being out for 8+ weeks plus nice weather reducing viewership. Battlegrounds also looks like it is a Twitch hit with legs, so I am sure that is stealing viewership from a lot of games as well.
TL;DR: It is typical for viewership to decline this far into an expansion release and it should pick up again with another expansion.
I don't know if others are like me (and I'm certainly not insisting they are -- just mentioning a possibility), but I watch far less Hearthstone than I used to. The main reason is, I don't feel like I'm learning as much as I once did.
The law of diminishing returns definitely applies here. My game isn't going to improve as much with each video/stream I view, so there's less incentive for me to do so.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Mostly where we are in the expansion cycle. Everything is a couple months old, seeing several problematic cards not changed just provides more PTSD when you see a streamer run into them (or actually playing them), whereas balance changes always freshen things up a bit. Won't be long before an expansion announcement, card reviews, probably another Heroic Brawl. Do agree that polarizing match-ups are hurting as well - it isn't fun to see someone try an interesting deck then run into the sub-30% match-ups until they give up, since deck match-up influences outcomes so heavily.
CCGing since '98.
The game is so shit currently that even watching streams is not interesting any more.
Well, it's summer (for the northern hemisphere). Some people actually go outside.
Damn that feels so sad xD But its true. There is a large variety of classes but why would it matter if you cant enjoy a single game on ladder.
For me a simple solution was switching to casual and not giving a fuck about conceding to quest rogues and mages. But i totally agree. The level of stupid RNG deciding a game is way too high that it makes me laugh seeing people looking at this game competitively.
Well, a large part of this game IS an RNG crapshoot.
Let's put it this way, if I were to play one of the best players in dota for 1 game, 1 v 1, I would have maybe a 1% chance of winning if that. They'd have to have a really bad day to lose that match. Even if I got to pick both heroes so that my hero counters theirs, I still wouldn't win. If I were to play a BO7 vs one of the best hearthstone players, I'd probably have maybe a 1 in 4 chance of winning. I can probably win a game or 2 just purely off the matchup if there's a matchup where they just have no chance in, and I might win more games just by RNGing the shit out of them. And if I got to choose which decks both players had to play each round, they'd have no chance since the matchups are so polarizing in this game.
S39 Legend - Quest Rogue, S38 Legend - Murloc Paladin, S37 Legend - Miracle Rogue, S36 Top 200 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S35 - Finished Rank 51 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S34 Legend - Aggro Shaman