*I realize this post got super long, but please forgive me as I've had more than a few adult beverages in the hopes of getting my mind off some stressful medical shit tomorrow*
I'm wondering if there's already a thread that compiles concrete suggestions for HS devs in one place in the hopes of actually having our voices heard? (either through Hearthpwn readership or a singular link that could be added to forums HS devs follow like Reddit)
I probably didn't search hard enough, but I'm starting this thread in the hopes of hearing the best of the best suggestions (i.e. ones that have been battle-tested in prior posts like the Achievements forum that went up recently). The motivation is simply that I've seen a lot of great ideas on here and would like to increase the chances that they're heard (and sometimes it's tough to condense to 280 characters).
Please post your best suggestions below!
In collating our ideas I think it might be helpful to tag suggestions in terms of appealing to various player bases as few things will be optimal for everyone. Potential broad categories include:
New players and recent F2P players with limited collections (e.g. only Witchwood through present)
Regular F2P players since Year of the Kraken and long-term occassional players
Long-term F2P players and the hardcore peeps we know and love since Beta
However, I'm going to violate those suggestions and just spew some general ideas that have resonated with me across forums:
A pure "Free Play" mode that grants no gold for wins and no progression for quests. The purpose is simply to be a safehaven in Standard and Wild for homebrews to play against homebrews without worrying about gold and quest farmers.
Increasing the gold for 3x competitive wins to 20 and upping the gold cap to 200. The increased cap makes grinding more appealing for the hardcore players and keeping rewards in Casual allows less hardcore folks to still earn Gold while hopefully pushing some of the more serious folks into Ladder for efficiency reasons.
I could see it making sense to keep the cap at 100G and just reduce the Casual reward to 5G per 3 wins; but, psychologically, people hate getting things taken away from them so I don't think you can realistically reduce the rewards in Casual.
I'd also like to suggest multiple tiers for quests. There'd be a Tier 1 quest that resembles the current quests, but then there'd be harder versions with even more rewards, that potentially add requirements such as winning the match, for more serious folk.
9 additional deck slots - unlock 1 for each character you earn 1,000 points with. I say points because, personally, I'd like to make this achievement possible for both Ladder and Casual folks. I'd suggest 1pt per 1 win on the Ladder and 0.5pts per 1 win in Casual (0pts per win in Free Play mode). This would encourage playing every class while discouraging people from farming Casual if they have limited time.
Additional quest slots - up to 3 daily, another 3 weekly, and another 3 monthly that could be refreshed daily, weekly, and weekly respectively. The daily quests would incorporate more Solo content (including old adventures, though they could obviously be refreshed), the weeklies would involve Tavern Brawls, and the monthlies would reference the new Brawl format described below...
Monthly Tavern Brawls that introduce restrictions to encourage creation of new meta decks. This would just be a combination of previous Tavern Brawls that have limited deck building to certain sets, including wild sets, as well as numerous bans on certain meta cards (e.g. Genn, Baku, DKs, 7+ cost cards, etc.). The nice part about them being monthly is that it allows time for optimization within the new format and there could be rewards associated with reaching Rank 5+ in the monthly Tavern Brawl in addition to usual monthly Ladder rewards.
Achievements that unlock hero skins, card backs, and emotes. This feels like the lowest hanging fruit compared to other games and a certain proporition should be purchasable through a large amount of gold and perhaps seasonal gold that you earn through special events such as weekly/monthly Tavern Brawls. They could also freely release certain skins/card backs/emotes for a month at a time, like they do in League of Legends, to get people excited about the cosemetic changes and increase the odds of purchasing them after the special event ends. Anything that encourages purchases outside of card packs would hopefully be enough to drive down the cost of packs so that it's cheaper to play the game for new folks while keeping profits consistent through alternative means. Again, it seems difficult to take away things from players, but adding new stuff that isn't core to the game seems feasible.
Tournament mode within the game interface. I don't know enough about these modes to say anything original, but enabling some sort of best-of-3 "specialist" format for all players with unique rewards (e.g. monthly currency) that can be improved by beating players who have a similar win rate in say a best-of-16 format makes sense.
Releasing fewer cards at more regular intervals (e.g. 4 or 6 expansions a year with a similar number of total cards released). I like this idea as the meta would change more frequently, but they may have to release more cards overall to shake things up enough.
Firebat has suggested an arcade mode for prior Tavern Brawls that would be a cool way to play with different cards for new folks. As with many of the previous suggestions, I think stunting the rewards from these modes (5 gold per 3 wins) would limit farming but still reward trying to put the best deck forward.
He also suggested a host-your-own mode where users could decide on the deck restrictions to see what ideas emerge from the community. Personally, I find deck building to be the best part of the game and love the idea of queuing into unique matches where you have to construct a deck under a time constraint. However, this seems the least feasible from a mobile perspective....
A variety of more significant changes - a new class every 2 years, cards that require certain achievements to unlock or cards that gain a buff once you earn certain achievements, seasonal packs that can only be opened with seasonal gold, etc.
As mentioned in the second-to-last suggestion, all changes obviously need to be balanced against the feasibility of implementing them in the game's intereface (with Mobile being the largest constraint), but hey, we're not going to solve everything today ;P
Auto-Squelch should've been #1 ;D I was honestly one of those mobile users who didn't realize you need to click on the Hero Portrait + Squelch Bubble for the longest time! I mean, it was the only bubble so why wouldn't that be my intent upon clicking on the hero portrait, haha, faillllll.
Thread like this will be useless since everybody wants different and sometimes even opposite things. Devs can't please everyone. Some of the changes you listed might be good, but they are really influential. It's like you are dictating for devs what to do precisely. This is not good, it is their game and they should develop it. Although sometimes they might need something like a little advice that happened on Dean Ayala's tweeter couple of days ago.
Thanks Kamroni, that's a fair criticism. I can certainly understand devs wanting to have autonomy over their product and that different users want different things. I was just coming from the opposite angle where some of the (tweeted) suggestions were vague/inconclusive so it might be useful for devs to see a list of the most agreed-upon ones. I definitely didn't mean to step on any toes, just provide a curated list of food-for-thought from a popular forum.
About Auto-Squelch. There are hundreds of pages of players arguing about it on Blizzard forum, they have been doing it since beta. Now your only option is hsreplay plugin us you don't want to do it manually.
Wouldn't it be really easy and simple to build an interface where, upon entering play mode (or any mode you choose your own decks), all nine classes are present. Once clicked upon, the classes will display 9 deck options with a "back" button conveniently placed in the bottom corner.
I know I would use most of these.
Having heaps more skins released would be awesome for this kind of thing too. Unfortunately, blizzard knows how to milk that cow, so tough luck there.
Can we make a shortcut from the Mobile 'Shop'-page to the Mobile 'Open Packs'-page? Always fet like bad user experience to me that whenever you buy a pack, you have to do three clicks to be able to actually open the pack, should be easy to make that faster.
Keep in mind, though, that new playmodes spreads playerbase over them all. For example Wild queue waiting times will become longer. Blizzard will try to avoid this especially with declining population.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Infinite" doen't mean "big" - it can be small and have no end.
Some good suggestions and having a repository of these ideas in a pinned thread might be a good idea. I would keep the thread about suggestions and explanations of those ideas, if necessary.
For example, I have come up with my own list of ideas in other threads as well, and would throw them in a dedicated thread if it was available.
Another idea I have seen in other games is to play with copies of Competitive decks.
You could change Whizbang to reflect this idea or simply create a new game mode. Call it 'Play like the Pros' mode.
'Play like the Pros' mode is for people that don't have the cards to build the most popular decks but want to try them out. This mode would allow you to choose a 'Pro Recipe' based on a changing metagame or championship scene. You get to play the decks that you seen streaming on Twitch or that a recent Hearthstone champion used for victory. You could even offer twitch streamers and popular personalities a 'Deck Spotlight' in which they create a deck or have used a deck on stream and you get to play that deck as well. That deck becomes available for casual players even if they don't have the cards now. You could even create an achievement or special quest for this purpose.
New Quest - Play 10 Deck Spotlight games. Reward - Gain a card from that deck you don't already have in your collection.
New classes? Hell no, Blizzard is having hard time balancing 9 classes you want to add more? We rarely have a time all classes even have a viable deck to play.
What we could get is new hero powers for classes that can function for different deck types for example a new mage hero power could be "freeze a character" or a new Paladin one could be "give a minion +1/+1"or "discard a (chosen) card and draw a card" for warlock I could give an example for every card.. how would you implement those? achievements rewards, gold not ANOTHER LEGENDARY CARD with START OF THE GAME.
Something that isn't an upgrade but different and works with different set of cards.
the design space of HS is huge they didn't change anything with the client. since tavern brawl 3 years ago.
New players and recent F2P players with limited collections (e.g. only Witchwood through present)
Regular F2P players since Year of the Kraken and long-term occassional players
Long-term F2P players and the hardcore peeps we know and love since Beta
However, I'm going to violate those suggestions and just spew some general ideas that have resonated with me across forums:
A pure "Free Play" mode that grants no gold for wins and no progression for quests. The purpose is simply to be a safehaven in Standard and Wild for homebrews to play against homebrews without worrying about gold and quest farmers.
I believe this can be best placed with a guild system.
As in, we #()$#)( need a guild system. Then you can group up with FELLOW players that think like you do and start a match with them. Maybe have it so that you can either choose a member to play with (similar to friend lists) or just click a button to open yourself to anyone coming. And have a chat to talk to these members WHILE YOU WAIT so you aren't shut off of them.
So not only do you get your 'free mode' but you KNWO your opponent will be someone who plays like you do instead of random.
Increasing the gold for 3x competitive wins to 20 and upping the gold cap to 200. The increased cap makes grinding more appealing for the hardcore players and keeping rewards in Casual allows less hardcore folks to still earn Gold while hopefully pushing some of the more serious folks into Ladder for efficiency reasons.
I could see it making sense to keep the cap at 100G and just reduce the Casual reward to 5G per 3 wins; but, psychologically, people hate getting things taken away from them so I don't think you can realistically reduce the rewards in Casual.
Does that honestly help most people though? Established F2Pers aren't that bad off. Casuals can't use that at all. Cash folks don't need it.
So this only helps new players that can heavy dose on the game. Is that a large number of the playerbase?
I'd also like to suggest multiple tiers for quests. There'd be a Tier 1 quest that resembles the current quests, but then there'd be harder versions with even more rewards, that potentially add requirements such as winning the match, for more serious folk.
I kind of like this, though it might be best to lay this into the achievement system instead of hte daily quest. It..hurts when you see that you couldn't complete your quests in time. completing it, then seeing a Tier 2 fill up the slot that you may not have time to finish, is punishing, even if, technically you didn't lose anything just doing Tier 1s.
9 additional deck slots - unlock 1 for each character you earn 1,000 points with. I say points because, personally, I'd like to make this achievement possible for both Ladder and Casual folks. I'd suggest 1pt per 1 win on the Ladder and 0.5pts per 1 win in Casual (0pts per win in Free Play mode). This would encourage playing every class while discouraging people from farming Casual if they have limited time.
NO ON!NO!ON!ON!ONO!NON!ONO!NO!
JUST *#$(#* open the deck slots. That's it. don't make it a challenge, or a grind, or anything. We don't need more grind for something important.
Though honestly the best is probably just encouraging people to use a deck tracker so that they can easily save/archive/load their decks.
Additional quest slots - up to 3 daily, another 3 weekly, and another 3 monthly that could be refreshed daily, weekly, and weekly respectively. The daily quests would incorporate more Solo content (including old adventures, though they could obviously be refreshed), the weeklies would involve Tavern Brawls, and the monthlies would reference the new Brawl format described below...
Keep it varied. The 'Do 2 of this, do 1 of that mode, do 5 of this third mode' is something a LOT of games are doing and it really..>REALLLY makes for turning the things into chores. At least here I can look at my quest and go "oh, I haven't touched rumble run in a while. Let me try that." I don't want to be FORCED into it every single @(# week because it's in the 'weekly' queue.
Though yes, daily/weekly/monthly quests are awesome.
sidenote: let people change quests as often as they want, but only the first has the chance to 'upgrade'. So if you get a 50 gold, you can swap ONCE a day to make it a 60+. But if it's another 50, you can keep swapping it into a different 50 (so that priest quest can turn into a mage quest, or a Rumble quest). Keeps people from abusing the swap feature while still being able to play how they want.
Monthly Tavern Brawls that introduce restrictions to encourage creation of new meta decks. This would just be a combination of previous Tavern Brawls that have limited deck building to certain sets, including wild sets, as well as numerous bans on certain meta cards (e.g. Genn, Baku, DKs, 7+ cost cards, etc.). The nice part about them being monthly is that it allows time for optimization within the new format and there could be rewards associated with reaching Rank 5+ in the monthly Tavern Brawl in addition to usual monthly Ladder rewards.
Dislike. All of those things can do well enough in the curren tavern brawl setting. And remember that most brawls get boring before the 4 days are up.
If we have a monthly anything, I'm for rotating sets. More likely to be balanced, doesn't require them to keep thinking of new 'creative' ideas that may turn to crap (you can literally just randomize the sets each month).
Achievements that unlock hero skins, card backs, and emotes. This feels like the lowest hanging fruit compared to other games and a certain proporition should be purchasable through a large amount of gold and perhaps seasonal gold that you earn through special events such as weekly/monthly Tavern Brawls. They could also freely release certain skins/card backs/emotes for a month at a time, like they do in League of Legends, to get people excited about the cosemetic changes and increase the odds of purchasing them after the special event ends. Anything that encourages purchases outside of card packs would hopefully be enough to drive down the cost of packs so that it's cheaper to play the game for new folks while keeping profits consistent through alternative means. Again, it seems difficult to take away things from players, but adding new stuff that isn't core to the game seems feasible.
why 'purchasable'. No seriously. It's archievements. WHY DO WE NEED TO SPEND GOLD ON THESE!
We've been having achievements in games since the NES. Stick some goals up on the board. Put some stupid stuff for rewards. Post into the game. GO!
It's the lowest fruit in the world. Don't abuse them to try to force some agenda. And no, adding additional revenue will NOT reduce the cost of cards. Companies don't set prices based on how much money they want. They want infinity money. They base the price on what gives the maximum profit while not harming the product itself. Revenue from Achievements just becomes More Money..that's it.
And no power upgrades with achievements. No buying power. Don't complicate it with mess that may break balance.
Tournament mode within the game interface. I don't know enough about these modes to say anything original, but enabling some sort of best-of-3 "specialist" format for all players with unique rewards (e.g. monthly currency) that can be improved by beating players who have a similar win rate in say a best-of-16 format makes sense.
The problem with tournament mode is the same since back in TGT. No one can come up with a DETAILED plan for tournaments that'll work in client. Everyone just speaks vaguely about the subject and just screams ADD THIS. I know I had given up trying to figure out a system that'l work, and I'm not surprised Blizzard did as well (that they even announced it was the surprise for me. as in, WHY SAY ANYTHING!?)
I'm now on the boat that we have other priorities to take up. Guilds with a free mode within it. Achievements. Get the ACTUAL TOURNAMENT SYSTEM working right. Add more modes in general. Get a better handle on the PvE content. A lot of folks, I think, are asking for tournament mode wanting something specific (more variety, something to strive for, ext.) when one of those other ideas will give a better punch.
Fix those other things, THEN we can look at if/how a tournament system in game would look like.
(exception, have a UI system for official tournaments to use. They should be able to organize HTC and the like in game.
Releasing fewer cards at more regular intervals (e.g. 4 or 6 expansions a year with a similar number of total cards released). I like this idea as the meta would change more frequently, but they may have to release more cards overall to shake things up enough.
Someone came up with the idea of 100 cards at 4 expansions (instead of 130 at 3). THIS I like. If it's an issue of theming, they could have the 4th expansion be a 'summary' of the first three to flesh out or balance the set.
Firebat has suggested an arcade mode for prior Tavern Brawls that would be a cool way to play with different cards for new folks. As with many of the previous suggestions, I think stunting the rewards from these modes (5 gold per 3 wins) would limit farming but still reward trying to put the best deck forward.
I think the issue Blizzard may have is in how ot find a game when you want to play THAT SPECIFIC TAVERN BRAWL.
So I suggest putting it into the Guild system. Let you play whatever brawl you like with your guildmates.
He also suggested a host-your-own mode where users could decide on the deck restrictions to see what ideas emerge from the community. Personally, I find deck building to be the best part of the game and love the idea of queuing into unique matches where you have to construct a deck under a time constraint. However, this seems the least feasible from a mobile perspective....
Again, dump it into the guild system. That way everyone is familiar with each other and can organize things however they want.
A variety of more significant changes - a new class every 2 years, cards that require certain achievements to unlock or cards that gain a buff once you earn certain achievements, seasonal packs that can only be opened with seasonal gold, etc.
F NO to new classes. I probably have 100 pages now throughout the years talking about why we can't add new classes, especially not willy nily. So go read those. And no. JUST NO!
In fact, ALL of those just sound like hoops, turning achievements from a fun goal into a requirement just to keep up. I don't want to have to spam 500 paladin wins in a month to get That Card that's in a Tier 1 deck. I don't want to deal with 5000 different currencies to go open a fall loot box to try to get That Card that's in the tier 1 deck I need to make.
I PLAY games like that, but they are mobile asian grinders with cute art. Team 5 will never be able to match Lidica's smile in my eyes, so they don't get to make me grind for 5 hours a day just to see it.
As mentioned in the second-to-last suggestion, all changes obviously need to be balanced against the feasibility of implementing them in the game's intereface (with Mobile being the largest constraint), but hey, we're not going to solve everything today ;P
Pretty much.
As far as my ideas, I already peppered them but:
A guild system, with guild chat, the ability to easily play a game with specific members OR maek yourself free for any challengers, apply free mode and those other 'play your way' features into it.
Achievements, without 'new powers/cards' attached. Add gold/dust ONLY for the easy to access ones for new players to (ab)use. Add emotes, cosmetic changes to long grindy quests that aren't hard to do. For example, win 500 games with Hagetha and you get an alternative art to the card. Or add hidden things like, say, if you beat a certain person in Rumble run often enough, then when your OPPONENT plays him then YOU get a new voice que of them recognizing and vying for REVENGE! ("You got me in the ring, but here.. it's my world now!").
And easter eggs. Lots of aachievements with known requirements hidden rewards.. where you complete them but aren't told what they do. you do 50 damage in one go with C'thun, get a ??? reward. Then if you play C'thun (and the game doesn't end) the background music changes to Radio Free Zerg.
Add a rotating set mode that changes monthly. Add Classic/basic as OPTIONS that don't have to show up.
Add some #()$#)( stats to the game. I want to be able to see how well my decks are doing WITHOUT running an outside program.
I'm still up for letting people customize the Legend card back with stars/banners of their achievements (i.e. you can add a star that shows a number for every top 100 win, a bigger star that marks top 1st finish in ladder, and additional decals for things like world champion or top 8 in a global event, or so on.
Use PvE to try out new modes liek 2v2 mode. If it fails, it can pass on with rotation. If it works, it can stay as a permanent mode.
Sidenote, make Dungeon run a permanent mode and update it occasionally. Beats making 'new' versions of it over and over.
From there small things. A low-graphics mode for mobile. make it so that seeing the opponent's cards in spectator mode lets you SEE their cards.. think how tournaments show everyone.
Sorry for the delay as last week was just a little crazy for me.
But a big thanks to everyone who replied! I definitely learned a bunch from reading your comments and will provide some brief reactions below:
moshi_mosh - The interface you mentioned with a 2nd-level for 9 deck slots within each class sounds interesting and I would definitely use it too! However, I'd like to petition for 2 pages of decks within each class as I currently have 17 Hunter decks between Standard and Wild ;P (and for the Hunter haters I'd like to note that my list includes 0 aggo, 0 netdecked midrange, 0 spell/secret hunters, and 0 netdecked deathrattle). But a separate page for each class would allow me to save some of the decks I build for Quests along with the non-Hunter archetypes I really enjoy like Pogo Rogue.
Oneru - I mainly play on mobile and agree that minimizing clicks between purchasing and opening would be a quality of life improvement for me, personally. And a lot of times I'm just buying a single pack with Gold so I wonder if there could be a Purchase + Open option where the card pack bursts open on the purchase screen and you get that instant gratification. Opening packs from within the shop would also help in those instances where I have a stockpile of gold and just want to buy packs from an expansion until I hit the pity timer for a legendary and then want to switch to buying packs from a different expansion.
Darq1 - This is a really good point that I wasn't thinking about in my post! You're absolutely right that diluting the player pool across modes is a real constraint on what they can add.
badhank14 - Yeah, the impetus for this post was to petition for a pinned thread of ideas so people like me don't reinvent the wheel or step on a landmine like suggesting a new class when the arguments against it have been made elsewhere. I was thinking something like a description of the idea, a brief summary of the best argument for and against it, and then its poll results from the community. As for your "Play like the Pros" idea, I think that could definitely be cool for new folks and think you'd get a lot less salt creating a new mode for it as opposed to a Whizbang-type card within the current modes. But I can definitely see this being a win-win in terms of getting more people to watch streamers to learn how to play their decks and then those streamers having more of an incentive to broadcast HS as opposed to say Auto Chess. From the Blizzard perspective, it could also increase pack purchases to build you favorite pro deck to use on the ladder once you get good with it.
DoubleSummon - Yeah, I didn't think the whole new class thing through very much and was just including it on the list because I've seen it mentioned in other places. I agree that'd it be hard to balance/print cards for yet another class and they probably shouldn't do it. However, I still find it fun to theorize about the least offensive way to do this while still drumming up excitement to come back to the game. For example, what if they released a nerfed version of the final boss from each solo adventure (e.g. Lich King, Hagatha, etc.) that you could play once you cleared all solo content and was only available for that season. You could nerf its cards (and restrict neutral additions) so that it'd never be Tier 1 or 2 worthy and I think people would still want to unlock it for the memes and challenge of climbing the ladder (could even offer achievements if you manage to get to Rank 5 or something like that). Again, I agree this is probably a terrible idea... However, I do like your idea of adding new hero powers to enable different archetypes for the existing classes and think this would definitely scratch the same itch in terms of changing up playstyles. For example, I always wanted to like Dinomancy, but making a beast build is what Hunters do already so it didn't make for a fresh experience.
iandakar, thanks for all the detailed feedback!! I'm not going to copy the text, but will respond in order and try to give context so you don't have to scroll up.
- I'd be totally up for a guild system! I definitely agree that HS could use more (healthy) interaction among the players and chatting with guild members and have guild-related achievements sounds good to me.
- Upping the gold cap was really a way to increase the rewards from competitive wins to 20G per 3 wins while keeping the daily max proportionate for those who like to grind. The main goal was to encourage gold farmers to play the ladder so that Casual wasn't as filled with netdecks. Though again, if there was a "free play" mode I'd be less concerned about the Casual experience.
- I think you raise an interesting point regarding the idea of tiered quests. I was viewing it as a win-win, you could cash in the quest at Tier 1 value if it wasn't your favorite/you needed space, but you could also push on for Tier 2 rewards if you wanted to maximize your gold/liked the quest/wanted a challenge. However, you're absolutely right that it may feel bad to see you had to give up some of your Tier 2 progression to free up space for a new quest. I definitely wouldn't be against moving something like this to the achievement system.
- Haha, I'm with you on the deck slots and would love it if they just gave them out. But for whatever reason they seem really hesitant to do so and I was just thinking we could appease two birds with one stone. Bird 1 - people complaining that there's nothing to shoot for once they get 500 wins and their golden portrait; Bird 2 - resistance to releasing 9 more deck slots. But I'd definitely vote for free deck slots if that was an option!
- I can see how additional quests with mode constaints can feel like chores, but I was just trying to think of a way to incentivize returning to content after you've gotten the static rewards (e.g. I rarely replay the Tavern brawls after I get my pack unless I really really like the gameplay or can complete a quest easier there). However, I agree that people don't like feeling forced into doing stuff so maybe freeing up where the daily/weekly/monthly stuff applies and allowing you to re-roll them would be a better idea. And I really like your idea for re-rolling a given quest reward, e.g. 50G, an infinite number of times within that reward class. There are definitely some that I dislike doing and they just take up a slot for days until I reroll them into something better.
- I agree that most brawls get boring in a week, but I feel like that's due to the limited rewards and the fact that any time invested in optimizing is just thrown away in a week. However, I'm happy with the new 2-month Arena rotation and think that satisfies the itch I wanted to scratch with monthly tavern brawls.
- I don't see how having a subset of skins/card backs/emotes/whatever that are purchasable (with gold or $) takes away anything from the game. If you're a hardcore player you can earn them all without spending any resources. But if you're a kid who just wants the card back that his favorite streamer is rocking and wants to blow his/her gold/grass cutting money then I don't see the harm in that. Sure, it takes away some of the prestige in having that card back because people don't know whether you bought it or "earned" it, but that's why I said only a certain proportion should be attainable through other means. And we'll just have to disagree as well on whether a company would ever reduce the cost of a product if their economic profits (including the opportunity cost of reallocating human and physical capital) suddenly jumped into the positive. It's certainly not guaranteed to happen (they can re-invest in the company, give themselves a bonus, etc.), but I also don't think it's an impossibility as there are worlds in which demand would increase as price decreased.
- I agree that tournament mode should be on the back-burner in lieu of some of the other priorities you mentioned. It also makes sense that actually instituting such a mode must be more complicated than folks realize if they haven't done so after all this time. I just added this to the list as the purpose was to collate ideas that I've seen on this site.
- I'd be on board with your idea for 100 cards from 4 expansions and think they could definitely tackle the theming issues, potentially like you suggested.
- I also agree with you concern surrounding Firebat's Arcade mode for Tavern Brawls and the difficulty of finding a match. A guild system would definitely address those problems and I could imagine 3rd party apps being developed that host a looking for group for certain modes kind of like how that was done with Destiny well before they developed their official app.
- Again, the list I made was an attempt to compile ideas I've seen all in one place so I don't feel strongly about any of them. However, if we had a pinned thread that summarized the pros and cons of ideas then I could've read your 100 pages on adding new classes and most likely would have been convinced that it was a bad idea. The idea of enabling players to add card buffs wasn't flushed out either (I was drinking and it was late), but what I was thinking was a mode where the game would have some aspects of its RPG roots. Maybe that's just in a solo adventure or possibly on a separate ladder where you only play against people with the same XP (and therefore buff points unlocked) as you. But I agree that seasonal packs are a bad idea...I was just thinking of how I liked the seasonal currency in Rocket League as it enables a F2P person such as myself to get some of the cosmetic items other people have (either through direct purchase or buying a decryptor to open chests I've never been able to touch before). So maybe 1 seasonal currency that expires after that season and can be used towards (seasonal) cosemetics wouldn't be so bad.
- I liked a lot of your ideas at the end and would definitely bump adding stats to the game, allowing a customizable legend card back, and adding a low-graphics mode. I'm a little worried about 2v2 just in terms of the wait time between moves, but I think this would be a ton of fun in your Guild mode!
I play beside a little Handy Game named "Empire and Puzzles" beside Hearthstone. This was sold for over 600.000.000 Euros. Why?
Because the can motivate the players to much mircotransactions and that is the point that blizzard would have. Things that bring the Players more Fun AND they pay more or the same money as last year was the focus of blizzard. All The Speach about "bring in new players in" or "how can we hold the f2p Players in the game" is only true if you hear that they whisper "because some part of this people pay later".
And: It is ok, because blizzard is a company and not blizzard-care ;)
To the Ideas of the Discussion: I think the Guild-System is fair for both sides. And I think we sould have some Guild Wars after that. The Guild will bring in some Group-dynamic pressure to the members to have good decks to compete with other Guilds and that means that the members will pay for that AND have fun with this competitive format. It bring in some teamspirit and you the players don´t leave the game fast. All what Blizzard want and that´s why they should think about it.
What will ne need in for this:
a) Rewards only for Guildwars, Games with Guild Members .... cardbacks like the legendary one ... some with gold, most of it cosmetic
b) A Tourney-Mode like the Members want for years now. It the Guild-System works, it it easy to manage tourneys without guilds it the want.
c) With the last prio a new chat or mail system to communicate. I Think they sould cooperate offical with discord or somethink else or ignore this because the members will use teamspeak ... like in other games.
Greetings
Chris
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*I realize this post got super long, but please forgive me as I've had more than a few adult beverages in the hopes of getting my mind off some stressful medical shit tomorrow*
I'm wondering if there's already a thread that compiles concrete suggestions for HS devs in one place in the hopes of actually having our voices heard? (either through Hearthpwn readership or a singular link that could be added to forums HS devs follow like Reddit)
I probably didn't search hard enough, but I'm starting this thread in the hopes of hearing the best of the best suggestions (i.e. ones that have been battle-tested in prior posts like the Achievements forum that went up recently). The motivation is simply that I've seen a lot of great ideas on here and would like to increase the chances that they're heard (and sometimes it's tough to condense to 280 characters).
Please post your best suggestions below!
In collating our ideas I think it might be helpful to tag suggestions in terms of appealing to various player bases as few things will be optimal for everyone. Potential broad categories include:
However, I'm going to violate those suggestions and just spew some general ideas that have resonated with me across forums:
As mentioned in the second-to-last suggestion, all changes obviously need to be balanced against the feasibility of implementing them in the game's intereface (with Mobile being the largest constraint), but hey, we're not going to solve everything today ;P
Praise Rang.
Don't forget about Auto-Squelch.
Auto-Squelch should've been #1 ;D I was honestly one of those mobile users who didn't realize you need to click on the Hero Portrait + Squelch Bubble for the longest time! I mean, it was the only bubble so why wouldn't that be my intent upon clicking on the hero portrait, haha, faillllll.
Praise Rang.
Thread like this will be useless since everybody wants different and sometimes even opposite things. Devs can't please everyone. Some of the changes you listed might be good, but they are really influential. It's like you are dictating for devs what to do precisely. This is not good, it is their game and they should develop it. Although sometimes they might need something like a little advice that happened on Dean Ayala's tweeter couple of days ago.
Thanks Kamroni, that's a fair criticism. I can certainly understand devs wanting to have autonomy over their product and that different users want different things. I was just coming from the opposite angle where some of the (tweeted) suggestions were vague/inconclusive so it might be useful for devs to see a list of the most agreed-upon ones. I definitely didn't mean to step on any toes, just provide a curated list of food-for-thought from a popular forum.
Praise Rang.
About Auto-Squelch. There are hundreds of pages of players arguing about it on Blizzard forum, they have been doing it since beta. Now your only option is hsreplay plugin us you don't want to do it manually.
Wouldn't it be really easy and simple to build an interface where, upon entering play mode (or any mode you choose your own decks), all nine classes are present. Once clicked upon, the classes will display 9 deck options with a "back" button conveniently placed in the bottom corner.
I know I would use most of these.
Having heaps more skins released would be awesome for this kind of thing too. Unfortunately, blizzard knows how to milk that cow, so tough luck there.
Can we make a shortcut from the Mobile 'Shop'-page to the Mobile 'Open Packs'-page? Always fet like bad user experience to me that whenever you buy a pack, you have to do three clicks to be able to actually open the pack, should be easy to make that faster.
+1 to the OP :)
Keep in mind, though, that new playmodes spreads playerbase over them all. For example Wild queue waiting times will become longer. Blizzard will try to avoid this especially with declining population.
"Infinite" doen't mean "big" - it can be small and have no end.
Some good suggestions and having a repository of these ideas in a pinned thread might be a good idea. I would keep the thread about suggestions and explanations of those ideas, if necessary.
For example, I have come up with my own list of ideas in other threads as well, and would throw them in a dedicated thread if it was available.
Another idea I have seen in other games is to play with copies of Competitive decks.
You could change Whizbang to reflect this idea or simply create a new game mode. Call it 'Play like the Pros' mode.
'Play like the Pros' mode is for people that don't have the cards to build the most popular decks but want to try them out. This mode would allow you to choose a 'Pro Recipe' based on a changing metagame or championship scene. You get to play the decks that you seen streaming on Twitch or that a recent Hearthstone champion used for victory. You could even offer twitch streamers and popular personalities a 'Deck Spotlight' in which they create a deck or have used a deck on stream and you get to play that deck as well. That deck becomes available for casual players even if they don't have the cards now. You could even create an achievement or special quest for this purpose.
New Quest - Play 10 Deck Spotlight games. Reward - Gain a card from that deck you don't already have in your collection.
New classes? Hell no, Blizzard is having hard time balancing 9 classes you want to add more? We rarely have a time all classes even have a viable deck to play.
What we could get is new hero powers for classes that can function for different deck types for example a new mage hero power could be "freeze a character" or a new Paladin one could be "give a minion +1/+1"or "discard a (chosen) card and draw a card" for warlock I could give an example for every card.. how would you implement those? achievements rewards, gold not ANOTHER LEGENDARY CARD with START OF THE GAME.
Something that isn't an upgrade but different and works with different set of cards.
the design space of HS is huge they didn't change anything with the client. since tavern brawl 3 years ago.
I believe this can be best placed with a guild system.
As in, we #()$#)( need a guild system. Then you can group up with FELLOW players that think like you do and start a match with them. Maybe have it so that you can either choose a member to play with (similar to friend lists) or just click a button to open yourself to anyone coming. And have a chat to talk to these members WHILE YOU WAIT so you aren't shut off of them.
So not only do you get your 'free mode' but you KNWO your opponent will be someone who plays like you do instead of random.
Does that honestly help most people though? Established F2Pers aren't that bad off. Casuals can't use that at all. Cash folks don't need it.
So this only helps new players that can heavy dose on the game. Is that a large number of the playerbase?
I kind of like this, though it might be best to lay this into the achievement system instead of hte daily quest. It..hurts when you see that you couldn't complete your quests in time. completing it, then seeing a Tier 2 fill up the slot that you may not have time to finish, is punishing, even if, technically you didn't lose anything just doing Tier 1s.
NO ON!NO!ON!ON!ONO!NON!ONO!NO!
JUST *#$(#* open the deck slots. That's it. don't make it a challenge, or a grind, or anything. We don't need more grind for something important.
Though honestly the best is probably just encouraging people to use a deck tracker so that they can easily save/archive/load their decks.
Keep it varied. The 'Do 2 of this, do 1 of that mode, do 5 of this third mode' is something a LOT of games are doing and it really..>REALLLY makes for turning the things into chores. At least here I can look at my quest and go "oh, I haven't touched rumble run in a while. Let me try that." I don't want to be FORCED into it every single @(# week because it's in the 'weekly' queue.
Though yes, daily/weekly/monthly quests are awesome.
sidenote: let people change quests as often as they want, but only the first has the chance to 'upgrade'. So if you get a 50 gold, you can swap ONCE a day to make it a 60+. But if it's another 50, you can keep swapping it into a different 50 (so that priest quest can turn into a mage quest, or a Rumble quest). Keeps people from abusing the swap feature while still being able to play how they want.
Dislike. All of those things can do well enough in the curren tavern brawl setting. And remember that most brawls get boring before the 4 days are up.
If we have a monthly anything, I'm for rotating sets. More likely to be balanced, doesn't require them to keep thinking of new 'creative' ideas that may turn to crap (you can literally just randomize the sets each month).
why 'purchasable'. No seriously. It's archievements. WHY DO WE NEED TO SPEND GOLD ON THESE!
We've been having achievements in games since the NES. Stick some goals up on the board. Put some stupid stuff for rewards. Post into the game. GO!
It's the lowest fruit in the world. Don't abuse them to try to force some agenda. And no, adding additional revenue will NOT reduce the cost of cards. Companies don't set prices based on how much money they want. They want infinity money. They base the price on what gives the maximum profit while not harming the product itself. Revenue from Achievements just becomes More Money..that's it.
And no power upgrades with achievements. No buying power. Don't complicate it with mess that may break balance.
The problem with tournament mode is the same since back in TGT. No one can come up with a DETAILED plan for tournaments that'll work in client. Everyone just speaks vaguely about the subject and just screams ADD THIS. I know I had given up trying to figure out a system that'l work, and I'm not surprised Blizzard did as well (that they even announced it was the surprise for me. as in, WHY SAY ANYTHING!?)
I'm now on the boat that we have other priorities to take up. Guilds with a free mode within it. Achievements. Get the ACTUAL TOURNAMENT SYSTEM working right. Add more modes in general. Get a better handle on the PvE content. A lot of folks, I think, are asking for tournament mode wanting something specific (more variety, something to strive for, ext.) when one of those other ideas will give a better punch.
Fix those other things, THEN we can look at if/how a tournament system in game would look like.
(exception, have a UI system for official tournaments to use. They should be able to organize HTC and the like in game.
Someone came up with the idea of 100 cards at 4 expansions (instead of 130 at 3). THIS I like. If it's an issue of theming, they could have the 4th expansion be a 'summary' of the first three to flesh out or balance the set.
I think the issue Blizzard may have is in how ot find a game when you want to play THAT SPECIFIC TAVERN BRAWL.
So I suggest putting it into the Guild system. Let you play whatever brawl you like with your guildmates.
Again, dump it into the guild system. That way everyone is familiar with each other and can organize things however they want.
F NO to new classes. I probably have 100 pages now throughout the years talking about why we can't add new classes, especially not willy nily. So go read those. And no. JUST NO!
In fact, ALL of those just sound like hoops, turning achievements from a fun goal into a requirement just to keep up. I don't want to have to spam 500 paladin wins in a month to get That Card that's in a Tier 1 deck. I don't want to deal with 5000 different currencies to go open a fall loot box to try to get That Card that's in the tier 1 deck I need to make.
I PLAY games like that, but they are mobile asian grinders with cute art. Team 5 will never be able to match Lidica's smile in my eyes, so they don't get to make me grind for 5 hours a day just to see it.
Pretty much.
As far as my ideas, I already peppered them but:
A guild system, with guild chat, the ability to easily play a game with specific members OR maek yourself free for any challengers, apply free mode and those other 'play your way' features into it.
Achievements, without 'new powers/cards' attached. Add gold/dust ONLY for the easy to access ones for new players to (ab)use. Add emotes, cosmetic changes to long grindy quests that aren't hard to do. For example, win 500 games with Hagetha and you get an alternative art to the card. Or add hidden things like, say, if you beat a certain person in Rumble run often enough, then when your OPPONENT plays him then YOU get a new voice que of them recognizing and vying for REVENGE! ("You got me in the ring, but here.. it's my world now!").
And easter eggs. Lots of aachievements with known requirements hidden rewards.. where you complete them but aren't told what they do. you do 50 damage in one go with C'thun, get a ??? reward. Then if you play C'thun (and the game doesn't end) the background music changes to Radio Free Zerg.
Add a rotating set mode that changes monthly. Add Classic/basic as OPTIONS that don't have to show up.
Add some #()$#)( stats to the game. I want to be able to see how well my decks are doing WITHOUT running an outside program.
I'm still up for letting people customize the Legend card back with stars/banners of their achievements (i.e. you can add a star that shows a number for every top 100 win, a bigger star that marks top 1st finish in ladder, and additional decals for things like world champion or top 8 in a global event, or so on.
Use PvE to try out new modes liek 2v2 mode. If it fails, it can pass on with rotation. If it works, it can stay as a permanent mode.
Sidenote, make Dungeon run a permanent mode and update it occasionally. Beats making 'new' versions of it over and over.
From there small things. A low-graphics mode for mobile. make it so that seeing the opponent's cards in spectator mode lets you SEE their cards.. think how tournaments show everyone.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Sorry for the delay as last week was just a little crazy for me.
But a big thanks to everyone who replied! I definitely learned a bunch from reading your comments and will provide some brief reactions below:
moshi_mosh - The interface you mentioned with a 2nd-level for 9 deck slots within each class sounds interesting and I would definitely use it too! However, I'd like to petition for 2 pages of decks within each class as I currently have 17 Hunter decks between Standard and Wild ;P (and for the Hunter haters I'd like to note that my list includes 0 aggo, 0 netdecked midrange, 0 spell/secret hunters, and 0 netdecked deathrattle). But a separate page for each class would allow me to save some of the decks I build for Quests along with the non-Hunter archetypes I really enjoy like Pogo Rogue.
Oneru - I mainly play on mobile and agree that minimizing clicks between purchasing and opening would be a quality of life improvement for me, personally. And a lot of times I'm just buying a single pack with Gold so I wonder if there could be a Purchase + Open option where the card pack bursts open on the purchase screen and you get that instant gratification. Opening packs from within the shop would also help in those instances where I have a stockpile of gold and just want to buy packs from an expansion until I hit the pity timer for a legendary and then want to switch to buying packs from a different expansion.
Darq1 - This is a really good point that I wasn't thinking about in my post! You're absolutely right that diluting the player pool across modes is a real constraint on what they can add.
badhank14 - Yeah, the impetus for this post was to petition for a pinned thread of ideas so people like me don't reinvent the wheel or step on a landmine like suggesting a new class when the arguments against it have been made elsewhere. I was thinking something like a description of the idea, a brief summary of the best argument for and against it, and then its poll results from the community. As for your "Play like the Pros" idea, I think that could definitely be cool for new folks and think you'd get a lot less salt creating a new mode for it as opposed to a Whizbang-type card within the current modes. But I can definitely see this being a win-win in terms of getting more people to watch streamers to learn how to play their decks and then those streamers having more of an incentive to broadcast HS as opposed to say Auto Chess. From the Blizzard perspective, it could also increase pack purchases to build you favorite pro deck to use on the ladder once you get good with it.
DoubleSummon - Yeah, I didn't think the whole new class thing through very much and was just including it on the list because I've seen it mentioned in other places. I agree that'd it be hard to balance/print cards for yet another class and they probably shouldn't do it. However, I still find it fun to theorize about the least offensive way to do this while still drumming up excitement to come back to the game. For example, what if they released a nerfed version of the final boss from each solo adventure (e.g. Lich King, Hagatha, etc.) that you could play once you cleared all solo content and was only available for that season. You could nerf its cards (and restrict neutral additions) so that it'd never be Tier 1 or 2 worthy and I think people would still want to unlock it for the memes and challenge of climbing the ladder (could even offer achievements if you manage to get to Rank 5 or something like that). Again, I agree this is probably a terrible idea... However, I do like your idea of adding new hero powers to enable different archetypes for the existing classes and think this would definitely scratch the same itch in terms of changing up playstyles. For example, I always wanted to like Dinomancy, but making a beast build is what Hunters do already so it didn't make for a fresh experience.
Praise Rang.
iandakar, thanks for all the detailed feedback!! I'm not going to copy the text, but will respond in order and try to give context so you don't have to scroll up.
- I'd be totally up for a guild system! I definitely agree that HS could use more (healthy) interaction among the players and chatting with guild members and have guild-related achievements sounds good to me.
- Upping the gold cap was really a way to increase the rewards from competitive wins to 20G per 3 wins while keeping the daily max proportionate for those who like to grind. The main goal was to encourage gold farmers to play the ladder so that Casual wasn't as filled with netdecks. Though again, if there was a "free play" mode I'd be less concerned about the Casual experience.
- I think you raise an interesting point regarding the idea of tiered quests. I was viewing it as a win-win, you could cash in the quest at Tier 1 value if it wasn't your favorite/you needed space, but you could also push on for Tier 2 rewards if you wanted to maximize your gold/liked the quest/wanted a challenge. However, you're absolutely right that it may feel bad to see you had to give up some of your Tier 2 progression to free up space for a new quest. I definitely wouldn't be against moving something like this to the achievement system.
- Haha, I'm with you on the deck slots and would love it if they just gave them out. But for whatever reason they seem really hesitant to do so and I was just thinking we could appease two birds with one stone. Bird 1 - people complaining that there's nothing to shoot for once they get 500 wins and their golden portrait; Bird 2 - resistance to releasing 9 more deck slots. But I'd definitely vote for free deck slots if that was an option!
- I can see how additional quests with mode constaints can feel like chores, but I was just trying to think of a way to incentivize returning to content after you've gotten the static rewards (e.g. I rarely replay the Tavern brawls after I get my pack unless I really really like the gameplay or can complete a quest easier there). However, I agree that people don't like feeling forced into doing stuff so maybe freeing up where the daily/weekly/monthly stuff applies and allowing you to re-roll them would be a better idea. And I really like your idea for re-rolling a given quest reward, e.g. 50G, an infinite number of times within that reward class. There are definitely some that I dislike doing and they just take up a slot for days until I reroll them into something better.
- I agree that most brawls get boring in a week, but I feel like that's due to the limited rewards and the fact that any time invested in optimizing is just thrown away in a week. However, I'm happy with the new 2-month Arena rotation and think that satisfies the itch I wanted to scratch with monthly tavern brawls.
- I don't see how having a subset of skins/card backs/emotes/whatever that are purchasable (with gold or $) takes away anything from the game. If you're a hardcore player you can earn them all without spending any resources. But if you're a kid who just wants the card back that his favorite streamer is rocking and wants to blow his/her gold/grass cutting money then I don't see the harm in that. Sure, it takes away some of the prestige in having that card back because people don't know whether you bought it or "earned" it, but that's why I said only a certain proportion should be attainable through other means. And we'll just have to disagree as well on whether a company would ever reduce the cost of a product if their economic profits (including the opportunity cost of reallocating human and physical capital) suddenly jumped into the positive. It's certainly not guaranteed to happen (they can re-invest in the company, give themselves a bonus, etc.), but I also don't think it's an impossibility as there are worlds in which demand would increase as price decreased.
- I agree that tournament mode should be on the back-burner in lieu of some of the other priorities you mentioned. It also makes sense that actually instituting such a mode must be more complicated than folks realize if they haven't done so after all this time. I just added this to the list as the purpose was to collate ideas that I've seen on this site.
- I'd be on board with your idea for 100 cards from 4 expansions and think they could definitely tackle the theming issues, potentially like you suggested.
- I also agree with you concern surrounding Firebat's Arcade mode for Tavern Brawls and the difficulty of finding a match. A guild system would definitely address those problems and I could imagine 3rd party apps being developed that host a looking for group for certain modes kind of like how that was done with Destiny well before they developed their official app.
- Again, the list I made was an attempt to compile ideas I've seen all in one place so I don't feel strongly about any of them. However, if we had a pinned thread that summarized the pros and cons of ideas then I could've read your 100 pages on adding new classes and most likely would have been convinced that it was a bad idea. The idea of enabling players to add card buffs wasn't flushed out either (I was drinking and it was late), but what I was thinking was a mode where the game would have some aspects of its RPG roots. Maybe that's just in a solo adventure or possibly on a separate ladder where you only play against people with the same XP (and therefore buff points unlocked) as you. But I agree that seasonal packs are a bad idea...I was just thinking of how I liked the seasonal currency in Rocket League as it enables a F2P person such as myself to get some of the cosmetic items other people have (either through direct purchase or buying a decryptor to open chests I've never been able to touch before). So maybe 1 seasonal currency that expires after that season and can be used towards (seasonal) cosemetics wouldn't be so bad.
- I liked a lot of your ideas at the end and would definitely bump adding stats to the game, allowing a customizable legend card back, and adding a low-graphics mode. I'm a little worried about 2v2 just in terms of the wait time between moves, but I think this would be a ton of fun in your Guild mode!
Thanks again for all the great food-for-thought!!
Praise Rang.
I play beside a little Handy Game named "Empire and Puzzles" beside Hearthstone. This was sold for over 600.000.000 Euros. Why?
Because the can motivate the players to much mircotransactions and that is the point that blizzard would have. Things that bring the Players more Fun AND they pay more or the same money as last year was the focus of blizzard. All The Speach about "bring in new players in" or "how can we hold the f2p Players in the game" is only true if you hear that they whisper "because some part of this people pay later".
And: It is ok, because blizzard is a company and not blizzard-care ;)
To the Ideas of the Discussion: I think the Guild-System is fair for both sides. And I think we sould have some Guild Wars after that. The Guild will bring in some Group-dynamic pressure to the members to have good decks to compete with other Guilds and that means that the members will pay for that AND have fun with this competitive format. It bring in some teamspirit and you the players don´t leave the game fast. All what Blizzard want and that´s why they should think about it.
What will ne need in for this:
a) Rewards only for Guildwars, Games with Guild Members .... cardbacks like the legendary one ... some with gold, most of it cosmetic
b) A Tourney-Mode like the Members want for years now. It the Guild-System works, it it easy to manage tourneys without guilds it the want.
c) With the last prio a new chat or mail system to communicate. I Think they sould cooperate offical with discord or somethink else or ignore this because the members will use teamspeak ... like in other games.
Greetings
Chris