Hearthpwn

Quote from EternalHS >>

All of the names that you've mentioned stream HS regularly to this day.

 Except Savjz, fully MTGA now.

Quote from DarkJak >>

Quote from Zerti >>

unless you're an arena player, there is literally no point in playing hearthstone anymore. 

single player is boring... and ladder is even more boring. like, why would you play ladder?

i have fun playing arena. but besides that, Hearthstone is boring af.

 You might want to look up the word "literally" before making  point. It's a card game, people don't play card games for rewards. That is how your mind works because you are on the Blizzard incentive wheel. Ladder just has you test the meta decks.

lol, ok. like, do you comprehend the english language? when was i talking about rewards? yea, ppl play card games to have fun. and there is no fun in something that is boring.

pls miss me with that bs if you can't read

Quote from DoubleSummon >>

Well https://www.twitch.tv/directory

HS is losing quite badly to TETRIS from all things

4K viewers less than MTG ATM, yeah I am aware it's a low period for HS but that's when the game loses a lot of players.

 I really can't understand people who open the Twitch at a specific time, look at the viewers and make their minds.

Ok I NOW opened the twitch and HS has 5,475 viewers and MTG:A has 2520. so? Dead games? HS more boring than MTG:A but has 2 times more viewers?

Relax everyone. I suggest to look at last week's Omnizone that they show charts of the viewership on Twitch for Hearthstone and card games generally, the numbers of ALL of them were declining. Maybe some people just fed up viewing/playing online card games, maybe they found a job and unemployment went down, which is a good thing, and they stopped watching Twitch.

And besides criticizing, if I have to offer something in this post, I will offer my personal opinion. I started playing on January 2018, just a year ago. At first cards like Rexxar seemed so funny to me, but now that I have played so much this game, I find these kind of infinite value cards, a cancer. I disagree with the majority of the community as it seems from the posts here, for the last 2 expansions. I really like that they brought down the powerlevel, because on APril the game will be more healthy than ever, except some odd decks(Genn and Baku are not in general a problem, they may limit the card design, as they have to be careful with some cards, but they offered 18 new archetypes. Odd Paladin, Odd Warrior are now the main problem , because if someone tells me that he has a problem with Odd Priest or Even Druid, I rest my case.

I still need to see 2 pages but I think this staleness and not so impactfull sets will be good for the long run (they should adress baku and genn though) 

They are not powercreeping anymore and when these sets are the only left, the experience will be much more varied and balanced in my opinion. I dont want blizz to create another MSG/KFT/K&C anymore people. It may be a metachsnger expansion, but that doesnt make it a good one for the long run

Edit: Lol ninja'd by Tzone!

Quote from Keko >>

Is too late now. This game is not going to survive until next set of cards.

Blizzard deserve what is happen right now. It is almost bankrupt.

Every since the announces of the past Blizz Con is a big mistake after big mistake after big mistake.

 

 Wow, this is some next level of pure idiocy

I don't think that hearthstone is in a problem zone. However, I do think that the playerbase is decreasing. One indication is the question that Dean Alaya asks about how to get Ex-HS-Players back playing hearthstone. Another is my personal (and of course anecdotal) experience that I and a lot of my friends stopped playing. In conclusion I am convinced that the playerbase is decreasing, BUT:

That doesn't mean much though since the playerbase was growing every year is now massive and eventually it had to stop growing. Hearthstone does very well in what it is supposed to do: Enable casual playing. It provides a mobile platform, it is super easy to learn and to play and it has quick games if you want to. Thus I am not worried that HS will die, but it will not grow as fast as it did, if at all. But looking at all the other games like elder scrolls legend, gwent, faeria etc and the fact that they are still available and can be played), HS will surely stay as a game for another 3-5 years at least...

Because there is nothing to do in this game. Decks and some cards are just broken. I try to play half of the hour a day just to do daily and maybe one arena run in a week or two if I have spare time.  Even playing half of the hour I get frustrated. Constantly facing Priests, Odd paladins, Secret paladins. There is literally no fun anymore... just grind grind grind. 

Arena is actually the only good thing in Hearthstone right now and even that should get some updates. But Blizzard just doesn't care. 
Tavern Brawl is just boring for most of the players. One win mode to get a pack and that's it. 

I could complain all day long what is wrong with that game... I miss the old days

I felt like this in 2017 as well on MSG I guess HS recovered it's status as my main card game after unguru but this time around I want something else.. they should really do something new and this time I hope that ayala takes a bit of feedback from the fans and do something apart from a new expansion + PVE content .. they could introduce a new card every 2 week or something to experiment with, The game has the same UI and design since beta with nothing new apart from tavern brawl.

I feel like Blizzard doesn't do enough to keep players interested between expansions, after all have been solved in the meta there isn't much to experiment with, nerfs are nice but I really hated the flametongue  totem nerf which just felt bad.. so was the equality just shows the problem of classic set not being rotated as part of a core set.

I strongly agree with one of the answers for ayala's tweet, the game didn't feel like it was evolving this year, most mechanics introduced this year were boring just more of the same, also a lot of solved synergies on release, it would be nice if they changed something about the system of rotations cause it sucks to craft cards now, cuase they might be totally irrelevant in 2 months.

People act like streaming games has always been a thing.  Are we sure it isn't streaming and video that is fading?  I mean it wasn't long ago that people watched 7-second videos of people being idiots, and there was no video of people playing games.

Quote from DoubleSummon >>

I felt like this in 2017 as well on MSG I guess HS recovered it's status as my main card game after unguru but this time around I want something else.. they should really do something new and this time I hope that ayala takes a bit of feedback from the fans and do something apart from a new expansion + PVE content .. they could introduce a new card every 2 week or something to experiment with, The game has the same UI and design since beta with nothing new apart from tavern brawl.

I feel like Blizzard doesn't do enough to keep players interested between expansions, after all have been solved in the meta there isn't much to experiment with, nerfs are nice but I really hated the flametongue  totem nerf which just felt bad.. so was the equality just shows the problem of classic set not being rotated as part of a core set.

I strongly agree with one of the answers for ayala's tweet, the game didn't feel like it was evolving this year, most mechanics introduced this year were boring just more of the same, also a lot of solved synergies on release, it would be nice if they changed something about the system of rotations cause it sucks to craft cards now, cuase they might be totally irrelevant in 2 months.

Most of us just want tournament mode and I'm pretty sure they are fully aware of that. Is it really that hard to implement?

The comparisons that are made between Hearthstone and other CCG's is just pure nonsense. Nobody wants to mention how much money developers of games like Auto-Chess and MTG have pumped into rewarding streamers to play their games. Comparing viewer numbers is so incredibly inconclusive, it surprises me that it's still a thing at all.

Yes, Blizzard has messed up the past meta, and arguably made things worse with Genn and Baku, but streamers also just move on. Imagine playing nothing but the same game every day, for 6 to 8 hours, for 2 years. I don't care what you say, no game has that big of an attention span (maybe LoL). People, and streamers are people too, want to experience different things. We're all too quick to point fingers at how bad Team 5 is, while willingly ignoring how long the game was so prevalent on Twitch and other platforms. I still think the past 3 expansions were good for the game's power level, but its downside was always going to be less crazy shit happening. They're trying to bring power-level down, and this dip in so-called viewership/playerbase is only natural, as it is with all games.

Quote from Aeris >>

Given that Dean Ayala even asks on twitter how to get back people how quit / play less, I think it is pretty safe to assume that the game indeed loses ground quickly. Whereas MTGA rises, and I also moved from playing lots of arena in HS to just doing dailies, if even, while playing much more MTGA. 

The game is just too expensive and sorry, but MTG is just the better game. Where HS basically plays in autopilot mode (ANY deck does, only arena is somewhat challenging), MTG allows more complex interactions and is just more fun once you get into it.

 Hold on - you mean to suggest MTGA is cheaper option? 

Hearthstone is my favorite game ever - even If I don't play for over a year. It was so brilliant in so many ways not worth repeating to you :). I put over 1000 hours in this, which I suspect is the same I put in all the other video games I've played combined

However hearthstone was my free f2p game, and I did not know companies are so greedy nowadays.  I spent around 150eur and many hours of grinding in this game, which I seriously regret.. read on:

During BRM times, I posted that Blizzard would need to do a rotation, and I was wondering how they would make it up for the players that spent money. Well, months later they did and they decided to:

1) Rotate out cards from expansions periodically.
2) Create a secondary less balanced game mode, restricted for new players, without tournament scene. They even went as far as eliminating card belonging to that mode from the shop! You could play your content in this mode.

Now that would not be a problem if.. we did not know that this would happen when we bought the content. When we contacted blizzard this is the answer we got:

"I understand you have some concerns regarding the changes made to Hearthstone with the Expansion [..]
Now with Hearthstone I can confirm changes will continue to be made [...] but sadly we will not be providing any players compensation, dust, packs, etc.. for the changes made. I apologize again for any problems this has caused you but do hope this helps explain the situation. Thanks"

Too many of the readers in this page tend to get emotional at this point and say "go play wild" "they didn't delete your content". The reality is:

- We bought the content to play THE MAIN GAME MODE.  Not "wild" or whatever secondary mode they wanted to create

From this point on, blizzard increased prices of packs, increased the amount of legendaries in each set, removed  the cost efficient adventures from the game, did a dirty trick selling dust with a "free pack attached" to avoid regulations in some countries, and:

-They made more legendaries per class , and more narrow legendaries - all  to avoid reusability of them.
- They started a gradual systematic nerf of the classic set, you know, the most accessible one - to force players to need much more dust for new decks.  If you believe the "staleness" excuse then, please ignore everything I say, this is not for you.

This all made me not able to ignore how they base every gameplay decision in monetizing terms, and the game became just too damn expensive. I used to have 40+ players online in 2016 in my friend list.. all but 2 left by 2018, most commented how expensive the game was. I sometimes come around here because I am genuinely intrigued by how the community behaves and I want to see if Hearthstone will fail or remain strong as WoW has.  Also, I admit I've been around because I was looking for ways to... mitigate.. the money I spent on this.. and I did ! ;) ;) ;) actually became profitable.

To you guys who still love this game I tell you in good faith:  Pressure all you can so that companies don't implement any measure they can to ADDICT you and make their games arbitrarily expensive.   We're talking a game that costs 600$+ each year per player - if the player values his time- , this is simply ridiculous, communicate here and don't react emotionally to those who dare offend you game.
I am sure this game could be much more alive, if it was more affordable and fair to the customer.

Quote from Claeshj >>

Quote from Aeris >>

Given that Dean Ayala even asks on twitter how to get back people how quit / play less, I think it is pretty safe to assume that the game indeed loses ground quickly. Whereas MTGA rises, and I also moved from playing lots of arena in HS to just doing dailies, if even, while playing much more MTGA. 

The game is just too expensive and sorry, but MTG is just the better game. Where HS basically plays in autopilot mode (ANY deck does, only arena is somewhat challenging), MTG allows more complex interactions and is just more fun once you get into it.

 Hold on - you mean to suggest MTGA is cheaper option? 

 Ofcoure it is, after 4 months and only 6$(welcoming deck) i have nearly every meta deck available to me. While it took serious management and competitive constucted farming, just the fact that is possible speaks volumes for the game. I remember that in hs it took me 6 fucking months to finally make a budget version of demon handlock lol...

Plus now that we  have dublicate protection, i will spend money on it for the next expansion! In which by the way, THE BEST DRAGON EVER BOLAS will dominate >:D

To me the game has reached the point we were in during the cubelock era. Basically all you saw was cubelock or controllock, and three variants of priests, and maybe dude or murloc paladin. Druid was still strong then, so I suppose that too. Everything else was sort of low tier 2. It wasn't a great meta at all. It's weird how control priest always seems to surface when things stagnate. Things will change - personally I'm looking forward to a new meta without all the worst mechanics - abuse of deathrattle and infinite resource generation, DKs, recruit, too much resurrection / cheap tempo swings via spellstones, etc. Quests are also horrible. I am really excited to see what happens next. I only started in KOFT so I have little attachment to the older Dev team - from what I can see, the new designers are undoing lots of the damage done in the past. Let's be hopeful.

I agree that HS is fading out but it is NOT an expensive card game. Only people who never ever played card games say that because they never saw how expensive others are (Magic, Yugioh). You literally have to pay 200$ for 3 cards that you need in your deck in order for it to be relevant at all.. for that expansion! It gives you an idea how expensive is to build a deck in those cards games just for new expansion's meta.

Quote from Dendroid >>

Quote from Aeris >>

Where HS basically plays in autopilot mode (ANY deck does, only arena is somewhat challenging)

 Nope, this is objectively false.  Some decks operate specifically so that every time is different, and you have to decide what your win conditions are.  I get it, you want to make a point, but by deriding a game into a polar extreme is weak thinking dude, it makes whatever point YOU are making objectively wrong, since your judgement is questionable af.

Feel free to disagree, but I absolutely feel the way I say. Maybe it is because I played this game for so long, but in constructed I almost never get into a situation where I actually need to think about what the best play is. I know my deck inside out after a couple of matches, I know my opponents (net)deck inside out, and have the experience to make a quick educated guess which play is the most likely one to lead to victory. Like I said, basically autopilot with very few exceptions.

Quote from One_Man_Army >>

I agree that HS is fading out but it is NOT an expensive card game. Only people who never ever played card games say that because they never saw how expensive others are (Magic, Yugioh). You literally have to pay 200$ for 3 cards that you need in your deck in order for it to be relevant at all.. for that expansion! It gives you an idea how expensive is to build a deck in those cards games just for new expansion's meta.

 This is a man who has played IRL CCGs before.

---

While I don't know if HS is in any sort of critical decline, I do think they recognize that there have been some disturbing recent trends.

- Casters at HCT events are openly criticizing the state of the game
- Big streamers are splitting their time with other games
- People like Dean are openly asking questions about the state of the game

A lot of the "state of the game" things will work themselves out. I think they learned a good lesson in their second year of Standard format. They have been increasingly nimble in trying to fix it. I think they could probably stand to be even more nimble.

I think that the more pressing issue boils down to the fact that ladder is pretty garbage, and it has been for some time. It is too limited to be the primary (and for all intents and purposes the only) way that your base interacts with the game.

While they've made a lot of changes to try to make the ladder grind feel less awful, it's still just the same old fucking ladder. There's very little else to do that *matters.*