This is not really much of a topic I suppose, it's more of something that has been gnawing at me since I've started playing this game - something that I've encountered only on Hearthstone on a constant basis, and sometimes from companies that were going under. (mostly Early Access developers) This becomes especially bothersome when there are issues to handle, like overpowered classes or gamebreaking bugs that take months to solve. Why is it that Hearthstone, from the base game mechanics to the marketing, pack deals and development, is kept in such secrecy? Is this a Blizzard thing?
- It's hilarious to me when I watch a player like Kolento or Firebat that every once in a while they encounter a mechanic or stack that they don't fully understand or agree with, and they openly say that the information they need to conclude the correct outcome is not available to them.
- We had the recent Chinese pack selling issue, selling dust instead of packs so they don't need to disclose the drop rate information. This is, by all means, actively avoiding the law, the requirement of transparency in fair trade.
- The information for the new expansions and cards come slow, late and vague, and although there's a understandable need for some hype building, we have things like Corridor Creeper dropping in so close to release date that you don't even have time to look at them.
- Top players have no idea how MMR works, they just do guesswork on experience. Your top competitive players are unclear on your rules and points.
- Tournaments that overlap, clash and the players in them need to be ready 24h to be able to participate, as there's not really a schedule.
- Changes to the game that are unclear, the explanations unsatisfactory. Hex and Fiery War Axe are some of the most powerful removals and needed addressing, but Shaman and Warrior are a dead class now. The timing could have been better, no? Patches the Pirate warped decks for almost 2 years and was everpresent in tournaments in like +30% decks... Was this card not more urgent business? You still have Mana Wyrm as is in the game, and even less things to answer it now.
- The developers made some effort in talking to the community, I will grant them that. The problem here is that most of the time the topics or information they bring is just fluff. There were some explanations on minor mechanics and interactions that were interesting, and some talk on development (which is also pretty great) but the majority were nothing but community control babble.
- There is no clarity to anything they announce. This card is under watch, this class has X% winrate so is not a problem, we're releasing something for this and that class, but there are no dates, no information, no sharing. Why is this all such a secret?
...
There are more and more examples of this, the well just keeps getting deeper. I just wanted to bring this up as someone frustrated by the awkward communication we get by Blizzard, something that I do not understand at all and have only ever experienced from Hearthstone and games/companies that are being abandoned.
Honestly I think part of the reason is that most developers might not even know the answer to a lot of those questions. I mean, we had a pretty minor change (in terms of how easy it should have been to code) to how ranks work and it shut the game down for an absurd amount of time, and their fix seemed ilke some hastily slapped together thing that introduced problems on its own with people who should have been at rank 4 at rank 1 full stars.
People always race to blizzard's defense and say the hearthstone team isn't very big, it's free we have no right to complain, etc but that's BS. If they don't have the right people working on it, that's on blizzard and it's perfectly fine to criticize them for it. It is clear they don't do extensive enough playtesting before releasing things and they really need to be more proactive about card changes instead of waiting for months/years before even acknowledging it is a problem.
That said, I can kind of understand their reluctance to make changes or be more transparent. I don't like it, but I understand it - they think it's a slippery slope where if they make more changes or explain things more, the playerbase will keep demanding more and more and will never be fully satisfied short of them making the source code open source. They could at least be more sincere about the bones they do throw us occasionally though.
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This is not really much of a topic I suppose, it's more of something that has been gnawing at me since I've started playing this game - something that I've encountered only on Hearthstone on a constant basis, and sometimes from companies that were going under. (mostly Early Access developers) This becomes especially bothersome when there are issues to handle, like overpowered classes or gamebreaking bugs that take months to solve. Why is it that Hearthstone, from the base game mechanics to the marketing, pack deals and development, is kept in such secrecy? Is this a Blizzard thing?
- It's hilarious to me when I watch a player like Kolento or Firebat that every once in a while they encounter a mechanic or stack that they don't fully understand or agree with, and they openly say that the information they need to conclude the correct outcome is not available to them.
- We had the recent Chinese pack selling issue, selling dust instead of packs so they don't need to disclose the drop rate information. This is, by all means, actively avoiding the law, the requirement of transparency in fair trade.
- The information for the new expansions and cards come slow, late and vague, and although there's a understandable need for some hype building, we have things like Corridor Creeper dropping in so close to release date that you don't even have time to look at them.
- Top players have no idea how MMR works, they just do guesswork on experience. Your top competitive players are unclear on your rules and points.
- Tournaments that overlap, clash and the players in them need to be ready 24h to be able to participate, as there's not really a schedule.
- Changes to the game that are unclear, the explanations unsatisfactory. Hex and Fiery War Axe are some of the most powerful removals and needed addressing, but Shaman and Warrior are a dead class now. The timing could have been better, no? Patches the Pirate warped decks for almost 2 years and was everpresent in tournaments in like +30% decks... Was this card not more urgent business? You still have Mana Wyrm as is in the game, and even less things to answer it now.
- The developers made some effort in talking to the community, I will grant them that. The problem here is that most of the time the topics or information they bring is just fluff. There were some explanations on minor mechanics and interactions that were interesting, and some talk on development (which is also pretty great) but the majority were nothing but community control babble.
- There is no clarity to anything they announce. This card is under watch, this class has X% winrate so is not a problem, we're releasing something for this and that class, but there are no dates, no information, no sharing. Why is this all such a secret?
...
There are more and more examples of this, the well just keeps getting deeper. I just wanted to bring this up as someone frustrated by the awkward communication we get by Blizzard, something that I do not understand at all and have only ever experienced from Hearthstone and games/companies that are being abandoned.
''He traded sands for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand.''
(.o.))~ ~(('o') (.o.))~
Honestly I think part of the reason is that most developers might not even know the answer to a lot of those questions. I mean, we had a pretty minor change (in terms of how easy it should have been to code) to how ranks work and it shut the game down for an absurd amount of time, and their fix seemed ilke some hastily slapped together thing that introduced problems on its own with people who should have been at rank 4 at rank 1 full stars.
People always race to blizzard's defense and say the hearthstone team isn't very big, it's free we have no right to complain, etc but that's BS. If they don't have the right people working on it, that's on blizzard and it's perfectly fine to criticize them for it. It is clear they don't do extensive enough playtesting before releasing things and they really need to be more proactive about card changes instead of waiting for months/years before even acknowledging it is a problem.
That said, I can kind of understand their reluctance to make changes or be more transparent. I don't like it, but I understand it - they think it's a slippery slope where if they make more changes or explain things more, the playerbase will keep demanding more and more and will never be fully satisfied short of them making the source code open source. They could at least be more sincere about the bones they do throw us occasionally though.