I could almost see an "explorer mode" or "decktester mode" where you'd play against the AI with the standard three "suggested deck" options that you could see playing Whizbang, but not against other players.
//
Something nice, however: if there were a bit more gold, and a bit more dust available.
0. More Classic Pack giveaways for leveling new accounts.
1. Put some dust in each packs. An arena prize bundle will often have a 5-50 dust pile reward in it (the rewards go up at higher win counts, but still). Do that, with each pack rewarding some small amount of dust.
2. Those events where daily quests give Dust in addition to gold are great. It'd be sweet to have some of that all the time. Maybe a standard quest provides 60 gold and 30 dust as a default.
3. Maybe a bit more gold from quests, or more quests per day (could folks do 2 per day?), or increase the amount of gold you can get for wins outside of quests.
More classic packs for newer players means they don't start as far on the back foot. More gold becomes more packs. More dust means you'll have to disenchant fewer of the cards you get out of packs, which is always feelsbadman. When you finally get pitty-timered and get a Legendary minion, and it's something meh and you've got to dust it for *one fourth* of a card you actually want? That's pretty rough. Having a bit more dust laying around means maybe more players who are on the F2P end of the game can hold off on deleting their collections to make a single deck.
Stuff like that would make it a little easier for FTP players, but doesn't significantly discourage the $150 "preorder subscription" players, or those folks out there who spend even more than that.
Yeah, it's a pretty laughable idea. It would be cool if there were rental tickets though that are given out here and there and are rewards for arena or end of the months chest. That way you can play a legendary you had your eye on for a week or something.
At least there's tavern brawls like this one where you can realistically play any card in the game after so many games of it.
That's what I have been telling. Heartstone should be free, everyone starts with the full collection, they should only sell cosmetic things like golden cards, hero portraits, card backs etc.
Since the game is very expensive and super hard for new players to create cool decks and be part of the community,
Expensive where? If you buy the $50 bundles, they sum $150 per year, which when divided by 12 (months), you get $12.5 per month.
And that's not counting the free packs given every expansion + the gold you get by playing and quests.
Don't have work? Do chores and get paid, or get a job. Stop going to Starbucks, McDrugs or BK so much and use that money for HS. $12.5 is what, 3 coffees?
I get the point you're trying to make but spending 150$ on a game a year is a lot of money.
Hearthstone ranked (or core mode) is in a long decline, it's a fact and highly reflected in Streamers viewership.
Something major needs to be done.
I think that game Economy / card collection is the main barrier that prevents game popularity.
If Blizzard will not change the Economy model the game will keep it's decline and eventually become non relevant and we will all lose as a community (and Blizzard as a company).
My assumption is that battlegrounds popularity is mainly since it's free. this mode is mediocre and quiet boring.
According to this post below Battlegrounds is more popular than ladder:
Do you have any evidence that can backup your statement? All you are refering to is a YouTube vote, that doesnt reflect the game or is significant at all.
And like others said, your suggestions would completely kill the game. No money to blizzard means no game. Do you think they work for free?
Free to play players should be happy they can play this game for free because of us that chose to spend money. So stop being so greedy.
Surprised at how strongly people are defending blizzard's right to charge like a wounded bull.
Sure, the OP's suggestions are unfeasible. But hearthstone is definitely not a cheap game (whether you pay in time or money).
Which makes Hearthstone special and mostly for an elite of gamers: those who spend most of their free time playing the goddamn game and those who decide to pay a lot of money for it; which is perfectly fine and very probably what Blizzard had in mind since the beginning. If anyone out there would be able to have an entire collection from the start, Hearthstone wouldn't feel the same for us. This game is special and so we are!!! ;)
Non ranked is Free to play: Full collection available to all players.
Ranks 10 and below the Game is "Free", (like non ranked)
Ranks 5-9 the Game is Free (full collection) in certain period - maybe in the the last season/ month of each expansion (since it's the most "boring" time and players not investing in packs on that period)
The game needs some dramatic change regarding Economy and card collection in order to sustain the players base.
[...]
I would like to hear good productive advice regarding improving game Economy in order to increase popularity and get the streamers back to the game.
While I agree that the game could be a little more fair and rewarding all around (it's not like paying customers get much for their investment either), I think your suggestion is going in the wrong direction, especially if you ultimately want to increase popularity.
I'd agree that the playing experience isn't very rewarding, which is sort of a problem. But I think it would be better to tweak things a little, like 100g per daily quest, or maybe 10 dust for disenchanting common cards, or maybe slightly increasing the droprates for golden cards, or maybe rewarding 5g per win instead of 10g per 3 wins. I certainly wouldn't remove the entire point of the reward system, which you effectively aim for.
I think you underestimate that it's actually fun to get new cards and improve decks. And you might overestimate how many people even bother playing up to rank 10 or 5 for that matter. With your suggestion, a LOT of people would play the game entirely for free, but also with no real purpose. While "fun" is a purpose in itself, just about every single other videogame comes with something you play it for, to have fun playing, starting with things like stories and exp-bars, all of which Hearthstone is mostly lacking in already. Hearthstone has no real story to speak of (maybe on the level of a cartoon), a fairly unimportant level-system (meaningless beyond level 10), and very few unlockables or things to pursue altogether. The single player content these days doesn't even require any cards anyway.
So, while the game would be easier to get into with your idea, it would also end up as rather uninvolving. It might be somewhat more interesting upfront, but then requires a fundamental restructuring of just about everything to stay interesting. Playing Ranked all day to see how far you can get is very motivating to some, but not so much for others (like me). And I wonder if it's really more fun when literally every player has the means to just copy the best deck they can find on some website.
And yes, as others have pointed out, the economic aspect on the developer's side would have to change as well. Other F2P games can be profitable with cosmetics entirely, i.e. microtransactions/loot-boxes to obtain clothes, weapon skins etc, but those games focus massively on such items. Hearthstone, for some reason, is putting very little effort into cosmetics, and just makes limited offers on hero skins and card backs every couple months. Certainly enough to make some extra profit, but likely not enough to keep the game running and profitable. I'm not sure if I would like to have Hearthstone go big on cosmetics, since that would again likely change the entire game fundamentally, and not necessarily for the better.
Anyway, to make the game more popular, the developers would have to figure out what makes the game more and less appealing to different audiences, and address these things accordingly. And I don't think it's enough to make the game more accessible and rewarding. Improving the game's economy is not a bad idea, but the economy isn't the only flaw of the game.
The game is still very successful, mind you. And changing things too drastically could very well result in alienating the large audience you still have. But to really attract new audiences, I think Hearthstone would have to reconsider its design and marketing. How exactly, I cannot say, and it might even be impossible to do so with a 6 year old game, but it seems like it can't attract as many people anymore as it used to, and it would have to be more aggressive about getting people's interest again.
After getting used to the speed on battlegrounds regular play feels so goddam slow.
Seriously, i have to waste so much time while in regular play, I'm just not sure I can go back to it properly anymore - its too damn slow. If they won't do something about the rope we need a new mode, a faster mode, that still counts as ranked or competitive.
And yes, it's way too hard for new players to get into the game- I competed the classic set like 2 years ago now, without ever buying any classic packs - it's about time they gave the classic set away to new players IMO.
also it's not a law court here, its a community forum, we want to improve things.
Twitch number doesnt necessarily reflect the number of active players. These numbers doesnt say anything about active players dropping.
- See here: hearthpwn.com/news/6420-dean-ayala-asks-what-would-get-you-back-into
- the game popularity decline is a fact, Dean Ayala himself confirms that and asks for advice from the community.
- Game cost is an issue - it's a fact, players says that here in the forum. when players has no access to cards they cant craft good decks and loose interest (or just play cheap aggro hunter/zoo decks and destroy the game experience even more)
- Twitch numbers are very good indication for game popularity.
- Game cost is an issue - it's a fact, players says that here in the forum. when players has no access to cards they cant craft good decks and loose interest (or just play cheap aggro hunter/zoo decks and destroy the game experience even more)
Yeah, it is an issue at this stage, but the solution is NOT what you proposed. It is incredibly extreme, as if the game was no longer played by anyone.
I would like to think the opening post is just a bad joke, but unfortunately it isn't. Oh, and I'm not provoking you on purpose, I'm genuinely surprised by such a ridiculous suggestion. Sigh... -.-
- Game cost is an issue - it's a fact, players says that here in the forum. when players has no access to cards they cant craft good decks and loose interest (or just play cheap aggro hunter/zoo decks and destroy the game experience even more)
Yeah, it is an issue at this stage, but the solution is NOT what you proposed. It is incredibly extreme, as if the game was no longer played by anyone.
I would like to think the opening post is just a bad joke, but unfortunately it isn't. Oh, and I'm not provoking you on purpose, I'm genuinely surprised by such a ridiculous suggestion. Sigh... -.-
Don't forget the delusion that giving player's all of the cards will magically make them play bad decks. You've just given every player in the game the ability to play the best decks in the game. Yes, I'm 100% sure that they wouldn't play the decks that ''totally destroy fun for everyone else'' but instead everyone will be playing big paladin and aggro priest instead.
- Game cost is an issue - it's a fact, players says that here in the forum. when players has no access to cards they cant craft good decks and loose interest (or just play cheap aggro hunter/zoo decks and destroy the game experience even more)
Yeah, it is an issue at this stage, but the solution is NOT what you proposed. It is incredibly extreme, as if the game was no longer played by anyone.
I would like to think the opening post is just a bad joke, but unfortunately it isn't. Oh, and I'm not provoking you on purpose, I'm genuinely surprised by such a ridiculous suggestion. Sigh... -.-
Don't forget the delusion that giving player's all of the cards will magically make them play bad decks. You've just given every player in the game the ability to play the best decks in the game. Yes, I'm 100% sure that they wouldn't play the decks that ''totally destroy fun for everyone else'' but instead everyone will be playing big paladin and aggro priest instead.
Yeah, haha. XD As if most people would care about random strangers having fun when playing against them... XD
i get the spirit of this post but frankly speaking making the game free for a month is quite possibly the worst idea i've ever read in my life.
I'd like you to explain how does such a thing increase twitch views when literally every streamer has an entire collection available to them, encourages new players to play the game when frankly speaking they could just wait for end of year and play to their hearts content.
You're trying to tackle the popularity problem thinking its caused by hearthstone being too expensive, which is quite obviously wrong.
You should make up your mind about what the goal of the post is, help newer players? or increase popularity?
The game could do with some recurring rewards, similar to the packs new players earn on their road to rank 25. How about some gold or dust (or god forbid, a small number of packs) attached to certain rank milestones such as 20-15-10-??? Also, the event that temporary awarded dust in addition to gold for completing your daily quests should return more frequently. That would go a long way towards creating more incentives for people to actually play ranked mode instead of grinding until rank 5 for their monthly golden epic.
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Totally free collection can't really exist.
I could almost see an "explorer mode" or "decktester mode" where you'd play against the AI with the standard three "suggested deck" options that you could see playing Whizbang, but not against other players.
//
Something nice, however: if there were a bit more gold, and a bit more dust available.
0. More Classic Pack giveaways for leveling new accounts.
1. Put some dust in each packs. An arena prize bundle will often have a 5-50 dust pile reward in it (the rewards go up at higher win counts, but still). Do that, with each pack rewarding some small amount of dust.
2. Those events where daily quests give Dust in addition to gold are great. It'd be sweet to have some of that all the time. Maybe a standard quest provides 60 gold and 30 dust as a default.
3. Maybe a bit more gold from quests, or more quests per day (could folks do 2 per day?), or increase the amount of gold you can get for wins outside of quests.
More classic packs for newer players means they don't start as far on the back foot. More gold becomes more packs. More dust means you'll have to disenchant fewer of the cards you get out of packs, which is always feelsbadman. When you finally get pitty-timered and get a Legendary minion, and it's something meh and you've got to dust it for *one fourth* of a card you actually want? That's pretty rough. Having a bit more dust laying around means maybe more players who are on the F2P end of the game can hold off on deleting their collections to make a single deck.
Stuff like that would make it a little easier for FTP players, but doesn't significantly discourage the $150 "preorder subscription" players, or those folks out there who spend even more than that.
Yeah, it's a pretty laughable idea. It would be cool if there were rental tickets though that are given out here and there and are rewards for arena or end of the months chest. That way you can play a legendary you had your eye on for a week or something.
At least there's tavern brawls like this one where you can realistically play any card in the game after so many games of it.
That's what I have been telling. Heartstone should be free, everyone starts with the full collection, they should only sell cosmetic things like golden cards, hero portraits, card backs etc.
Dead but dreaming
I get the point you're trying to make but spending 150$ on a game a year is a lot of money.
Give all players the entire collection in a card game (CCG / TCG).
Loses the sense of collecting and there is no incentive to play.
You can also get a good amount of cards with events, taverns brawl packs, rewards for starting the expansion, arena, etc.
It's not a problem for Blizzard to provide access to Full collection just for a limited time (like the last month of each expansion),
At least for non ranked or low ranks.
it will not impact revenue, it has only an upside that will make players engage with the game,
streamers might get viewers boost and HS will become great again.
currently the popularity is in dramatic decline and bold steps must be taken by Blizzard.
Do you have any evidence that can backup your statement? All you are refering to is a YouTube vote, that doesnt reflect the game or is significant at all.
And like others said, your suggestions would completely kill the game. No money to blizzard means no game. Do you think they work for free?
Free to play players should be happy they can play this game for free because of us that chose to spend money. So stop being so greedy.
The decline in popularity is very clear, You can ask any HS streamer in chat about this.
For full stats See here:
https://twitchtracker.com/games/138585
also it's not a law court here, its a community forum, we want to improve things.
Twitch number doesnt necessarily reflect the number of active players. These numbers doesnt say anything about active players dropping.
LMAO XD
Yeah, this is such a terrible idea... -.-
Which makes Hearthstone special and mostly for an elite of gamers: those who spend most of their free time playing the goddamn game and those who decide to pay a lot of money for it; which is perfectly fine and very probably what Blizzard had in mind since the beginning. If anyone out there would be able to have an entire collection from the start, Hearthstone wouldn't feel the same for us. This game is special and so we are!!! ;)
While I agree that the game could be a little more fair and rewarding all around (it's not like paying customers get much for their investment either), I think your suggestion is going in the wrong direction, especially if you ultimately want to increase popularity.
I'd agree that the playing experience isn't very rewarding, which is sort of a problem. But I think it would be better to tweak things a little, like 100g per daily quest, or maybe 10 dust for disenchanting common cards, or maybe slightly increasing the droprates for golden cards, or maybe rewarding 5g per win instead of 10g per 3 wins. I certainly wouldn't remove the entire point of the reward system, which you effectively aim for.
I think you underestimate that it's actually fun to get new cards and improve decks. And you might overestimate how many people even bother playing up to rank 10 or 5 for that matter. With your suggestion, a LOT of people would play the game entirely for free, but also with no real purpose. While "fun" is a purpose in itself, just about every single other videogame comes with something you play it for, to have fun playing, starting with things like stories and exp-bars, all of which Hearthstone is mostly lacking in already. Hearthstone has no real story to speak of (maybe on the level of a cartoon), a fairly unimportant level-system (meaningless beyond level 10), and very few unlockables or things to pursue altogether. The single player content these days doesn't even require any cards anyway.
So, while the game would be easier to get into with your idea, it would also end up as rather uninvolving. It might be somewhat more interesting upfront, but then requires a fundamental restructuring of just about everything to stay interesting. Playing Ranked all day to see how far you can get is very motivating to some, but not so much for others (like me). And I wonder if it's really more fun when literally every player has the means to just copy the best deck they can find on some website.
And yes, as others have pointed out, the economic aspect on the developer's side would have to change as well. Other F2P games can be profitable with cosmetics entirely, i.e. microtransactions/loot-boxes to obtain clothes, weapon skins etc, but those games focus massively on such items. Hearthstone, for some reason, is putting very little effort into cosmetics, and just makes limited offers on hero skins and card backs every couple months. Certainly enough to make some extra profit, but likely not enough to keep the game running and profitable. I'm not sure if I would like to have Hearthstone go big on cosmetics, since that would again likely change the entire game fundamentally, and not necessarily for the better.
Anyway, to make the game more popular, the developers would have to figure out what makes the game more and less appealing to different audiences, and address these things accordingly. And I don't think it's enough to make the game more accessible and rewarding. Improving the game's economy is not a bad idea, but the economy isn't the only flaw of the game.
The game is still very successful, mind you. And changing things too drastically could very well result in alienating the large audience you still have. But to really attract new audiences, I think Hearthstone would have to reconsider its design and marketing. How exactly, I cannot say, and it might even be impossible to do so with a 6 year old game, but it seems like it can't attract as many people anymore as it used to, and it would have to be more aggressive about getting people's interest again.
After getting used to the speed on battlegrounds regular play feels so goddam slow.
Seriously, i have to waste so much time while in regular play, I'm just not sure I can go back to it properly anymore - its too damn slow. If they won't do something about the rope we need a new mode, a faster mode, that still counts as ranked or competitive.
And yes, it's way too hard for new players to get into the game- I competed the classic set like 2 years ago now, without ever buying any classic packs - it's about time they gave the classic set away to new players IMO.
- See here: hearthpwn.com/news/6420-dean-ayala-asks-what-would-get-you-back-into
- the game popularity decline is a fact, Dean Ayala himself confirms that and asks for advice from the community.
- Game cost is an issue - it's a fact, players says that here in the forum. when players has no access to cards they cant craft good decks and loose interest (or just play cheap aggro hunter/zoo decks and destroy the game experience even more)
- Twitch numbers are very good indication for game popularity.
Which is quite obvious and applicable to virtually any game out there as time goes by.
Yeah, it is an issue at this stage, but the solution is NOT what you proposed. It is incredibly extreme, as if the game was no longer played by anyone.
I would like to think the opening post is just a bad joke, but unfortunately it isn't. Oh, and I'm not provoking you on purpose, I'm genuinely surprised by such a ridiculous suggestion. Sigh... -.-
Don't forget the delusion that giving player's all of the cards will magically make them play bad decks. You've just given every player in the game the ability to play the best decks in the game. Yes, I'm 100% sure that they wouldn't play the decks that ''totally destroy fun for everyone else'' but instead everyone will be playing big paladin and aggro priest instead.
Yeah, haha. XD As if most people would care about random strangers having fun when playing against them... XD
i get the spirit of this post but frankly speaking making the game free for a month is quite possibly the worst idea i've ever read in my life.
I'd like you to explain how does such a thing increase twitch views when literally every streamer has an entire collection available to them, encourages new players to play the game when frankly speaking they could just wait for end of year and play to their hearts content.
You're trying to tackle the popularity problem thinking its caused by hearthstone being too expensive, which is quite obviously wrong.
You should make up your mind about what the goal of the post is, help newer players? or increase popularity?
The game could do with some recurring rewards, similar to the packs new players earn on their road to rank 25. How about some gold or dust (or god forbid, a small number of packs) attached to certain rank milestones such as 20-15-10-??? Also, the event that temporary awarded dust in addition to gold for completing your daily quests should return more frequently. That would go a long way towards creating more incentives for people to actually play ranked mode instead of grinding until rank 5 for their monthly golden epic.