I have to say, I think that in-game chat with your opponent is an aggressively bad idea.
First, it opens the door to bluffs and mind games that are not currently part of the game.
Second, given Hearthstone's short-form games, it would no doubt be a toxic cesspool of harassment, abuse, and bigotry.
Yes, that is necessarily true because, third, the Hearthstone team simply does have the resources to provide the moderation necessary to prevent that from being so.
And finally, if the solution to all of this is ony to have to be able to be turned off, or even have it be turned off by default, then it becomes a waste; why would they bother adding this to the game if it's only going to be abused and the people who wouldn't abuse it are just going to turn it off so that they're not abused themselves?
If you're concerned about the social aspect of the game's community, you have nothing to fear. Hearthstone has many fansites and forums that serve that purpose perfectly well. There are already tons of games out there, Pokemon being a prime example that comes to mind, that manage vast and vibrant communities without any in-game interaction whatsoever.
In theory, I would be in favour of it. In practice, having seen the way people carry on here when someone does so much as take a minute to think about their turn, or say "well played" after an easy win, or even just play an aggressive deck.. no. I don't think the Hearthstone community as a whole is anywhere near mature and sensible enough for it to be a good idea.
This is a one on one game in essence. It does not require cooperation with other players in any way to succeed. Therefore chat is strictly an optional feature that could make the game even worse. Even OP agrees, that BMing, flaming is an issue when all we have are six emotes! Opening up chat would make this problem times worse.
Report system? Well, I was playing DotA for a while. Reporting exists there as well. However pressing a button is far less satisfying than flaming back or doing something stupid in game. Also, you are not guaranteed that the person that got reported will penalized. And in the end people will not be encouraged enough to use this system. If you say that this can be solved by looking into reports thoroughly, imagine the amount of workforce this would require! And as we know HS team is rather small, so I doubt they would make such a risky investment into a feature that very well might be a total failure to a game that got so popular so quick.
And one more thing, I think Blizzard solved the whole communication problem in HS in a very elegant way. Want communication? Here, six emotes. Want to be an asshole? Go ahead, say "Thank you" or "Greetings" to piss off your opponents. Bothered by emote flaming? Squelch! Want to chat? Well, IF your opponent wants to communicate with you AND you want to communicate as well - as him as a friend and chat. If you got flamed - it's your own damn fault! One might say, that it's impossible to communicate during the game. Play some friendly matches against your newfound friend and there you go - in-game chat.
This somehow sounds awfully similar to what OP wants to have implemented...
ever played some starcraft 2? you can chat with your opponent and no one BMs or rages, you get a "gl hf" in the beginning and a "gg" in the end
So we replace pathetic greetings emote with gl hf and well played with gg and all is fixed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
This disclaimer Will cleanse any sense of innuendo or sarcasm From the comments that might actually make you think And will also insult your intelligence at the same time. So, if it sounds sarcastic, don't take it seriously. If it sounds dangerous, Do not try this at home or at all. And if it offends you, just don't read it.
People individually need to be more social yes but not in interaction to each other during a game. Like a year ago, it was overall way better when everything truly was calm and peacful (and noone had some kind of perfect curves. Everything was peacful as long as we stood together against this one single deck called undertaker hunter). Nowadays, it is just incredible what is going on in hearthstone. Kinda miss the times without all these expansions when there was just vanilla hearthstone.
On a note to something OP said, "more options is always better", that is not quite true. For the average user, too many options not only might but will lead to confusion and frustration. Especially for a game that expects to be fast paced, something you can play during your lunch break (as many players do), it is important to keep things straight to the point.
I'm not going to argue that this example has direct relation to what we're talking about, but I just want to show a practical example of options being "detrimental" to my playing experience, kind of. I'm addicted to casual. I could play ranked, I could, it's not like I'm going to lose my rank 3 chest anymore... but for some reason, most of the times, I just don't want to feel the pressure of losing a star that will have to be regained later. And it's not the first time I experienced that. I used to play a game called naturo-arena, a PvP turn based strategy game. When I first started, there were only ranked games. In order to unlock new characters, you needed to be at certain ranks and fulfill mission requirements, like winning 3 in a row against a certain character, or using specific characters yourself. The trick was that in order to get the missions done more efficiently you needed to play non-optimal teams, in order to fulfill multiple requirements at the same time, except that if you would lose too many games your rank would drop and the missions would become unavailable. This made me think very hard and really try to scrape all value I could from each game, and all this training led me to a fast development, even earning the top1 position twice.
Eventually they updated the game and added tons of characters and a casual mode, where you wouldn't lose rank but could complete missions. You still needed to rank up in order to unlock missions, but the pressure of actually completing them dropped immensely. At first I didn't really have a problem, as I still had plenty of competitive experience and everyone else was also trying to get those new characters... but in time I noticed my drive and skill were not the same anymore.
TLDR: Casual isn't really necessary, it will make some people *cough me cough* lazy.
I would love an in-game chat with the option to disable it of course. People are over-sensitive though, I don't understand why someone would complain that some random guy was mean to them when they can easily squelch/ignore them.
Now , that being said , i do believe that HearthStone desperately needs some chat rooms in the lobby. Here's why... Chat rooms are ideal for finding small communities of people who share an interest. Be it clans , game modes or whatevers , they are great. Personally , i play herathstone for the fun of it. I dont care about ranks or legend , i just want to play and enjoy myself. However , this is pretty much impossible , since 9.5/10 opponents you face play a run of the mill imba deck that offers absolute zero fun or interactivity , regardless of wether you win or lose. Secrets paladins , face decks , murloc decks , FoN druids , you name it. So , i would be really happy if i could find a community of people who want to be creative and use more than the 20% of their collection in deck building. The only way i can see that happening is through chat rooms , where folks would go to find other likeminded , fun-pursuing people. It would be some short of "homemade" captain's mode :P
Good idea man, it would be a really nice thing to have.
Chatrooms, Lobbies, Clans/Guilds with private chatrooms or even just a little box along the top of the screen where you can type /g or /w someone would be great. Obviously, this would have to be quite limited on mobile (most of my playtime is mobile tbh) but I think it could still be done in some form and it enhances the experience so much that it's worth it.
Even just some kind of public chat with groups like LookingForMatch where I could say something like "looking for Oil Rogue player to practice against" in order to practice a matchup that I'm bad at in order to learn tendencies and such would be amazing.
I'm not sure player-to-player chat mid match against a stranger is a great idea because it could be exploited - obviously it's a longshot but I could see someone at rank 1 repeatedly asking any legend players he sees to concede because he's close to legendary and whether the legend player wins or loses is pretty much irrelevant. Maybe he wouldn't get many people to do it but I'm sure there are other ways of exploiting that system that I'm not thinking of.
To all the people complaining about how being given the option to talk at all would inevitably lead to BM, of course it will. Exactly the same way as the emotes do, except with less ambiguity (which is a good thing, I like to know if someone is being an asshole or just overly emote-happy). If they're so scared of a toxic social scene, then why even have emotes? Limited ability to chat is even worse than just an open chat for fostering bad feelings and BM. Obviously not everybody wants it. So there's an easy solution: have it able to be turned off. If your opponent has it turned off, you can't chat to him. No biggie. And as for moderation being a huge problem, leave reporting only for genuine abuse, the type of stuff that would otherwise be illegal, and otherwise give everyone a block list, where it effectively turns off chat if you're in game with someone.
I can't understand the concept that chat would in any way ruin the game. So long as you could opt-out it would, absolute worst case scenario, make no difference to the game for people who did. And people who enjoy a more social aspect, like being able to say "Wow, I really like your choice there" or "Interesting deck" (as I often do and almost never can because the emote and friend system as it is leads to no one ever wanting to accept friend requests and discuss things), will have an improved system.
There is literally no downside from the player perspective. From the dev perspective, someone has to code it, and that's all. I expect that isn't particularly hard either.
Obviously not everybody wants it. So there's an easy solution: have it able to be turned off.
I don't understand how so many people say this and act like they've just said something new, original, and groundbreaking. No. That's obvious, and everybody has already thought of that. The people against the in-game chat are not stupid and have also already thought of that. They even openly and specifically talk about how that's not a complete solution. It's amazing how so many threads on in-game chat follow this pattern, every page filled with new people who just entered the conversation and present that "solution" like they think it's never been brought up before, even if it's been addressed multiple times in the same thread.
I had read through the whole thread, and nobody has explained WHY it isn't a solution to have chat be optional? The one you offered of "It would be nothing but BM so everyone would turn it off, so why even bother?" is giving up without even trying. There's people posting these comments and threads about how they want a chat system for friendly in-game chat, so it couldn't possibly be 100% bad in chat. There are demonstrably people who would treat it well. With the ability to block BMers, the chat community might get small, but it would be there for the people who want it. If you're saying Blizzard won't do it because of the (what I presume to be minor) cost of implementation, I suppose that's one thing, but to say it simply wouldn't work because HS community universally can't handle it isn't an explanation of why.
No chat means that those of us who want it are being punished by the people who don't. Optional chat means both sides get exactly what they want. Using a personal block-list circumvents a reporting system perfectly well, leaving the reporting system in the same state it is at now, which is all it would need.
I guess what I'm asking at this point, is for someone to explain to me a good reason why it would be so horrible to make chat available for those who want it, alongside a personally built block list (assuming non-prohibitive costs, which I feel is a safe assumption though I'll happily accept data to the contrary from anyone in the industry)? Something beyond "Because people would be mean", which they already are via emotes. Because I honestly can't see a way that this doesn't actually solve all the issues everyone has posted as reasons to not want chat,
I'm sure the other side does have smart people who think about the possibilities too. But they're definitely not the ones acting like they're saying something new when they're just repeating the same thing we've heard (and responded to and refuted) over and over even in the same thread.
I have to say, I think that in-game chat with your opponent is an aggressively bad idea.
First, it opens the door to bluffs and mind games that are not currently part of the game.
Second, given Hearthstone's short-form games, it would no doubt be a toxic cesspool of harassment, abuse, and bigotry.
Yes, that is necessarily true because, third, the Hearthstone team simply does have the resources to provide the moderation necessary to prevent that from being so.
And finally, if the solution to all of this is ony to have to be able to be turned off, or even have it be turned off by default, then it becomes a waste; why would they bother adding this to the game if it's only going to be abused and the people who wouldn't abuse it are just going to turn it off so that they're not abused themselves?
If you're concerned about the social aspect of the game's community, you have nothing to fear. Hearthstone has many fansites and forums that serve that purpose perfectly well. There are already tons of games out there, Pokemon being a prime example that comes to mind, that manage vast and vibrant communities without any in-game interaction whatsoever.
In theory, I would be in favour of it. In practice, having seen the way people carry on here when someone does so much as take a minute to think about their turn, or say "well played" after an easy win, or even just play an aggressive deck.. no. I don't think the Hearthstone community as a whole is anywhere near mature and sensible enough for it to be a good idea.
want a more toxic environment: vote yes
want more BM: vote yes
Am all for more social, but i don't think it's possible in this game or even going to happen.
G*d forbid we don't even have a simple report button, if we have that, then maybe it's an option, though before you can use that.....
I'm not online, it's just your imagination
i totally agree
ever played some starcraft 2? you can chat with your opponent and no one BMs or rages, you get a "gl hf" in the beginning and a "gg" in the end
This is a one on one game in essence. It does not require cooperation with other players in any way to succeed. Therefore chat is strictly an optional feature that could make the game even worse. Even OP agrees, that BMing, flaming is an issue when all we have are six emotes! Opening up chat would make this problem times worse.
Report system? Well, I was playing DotA for a while. Reporting exists there as well. However pressing a button is far less satisfying than flaming back or doing something stupid in game. Also, you are not guaranteed that the person that got reported will penalized. And in the end people will not be encouraged enough to use this system. If you say that this can be solved by looking into reports thoroughly, imagine the amount of workforce this would require! And as we know HS team is rather small, so I doubt they would make such a risky investment into a feature that very well might be a total failure to a game that got so popular so quick.
And one more thing, I think Blizzard solved the whole communication problem in HS in a very elegant way. Want communication? Here, six emotes. Want to be an asshole? Go ahead, say "Thank you" or "Greetings" to piss off your opponents. Bothered by emote flaming? Squelch! Want to chat? Well, IF your opponent wants to communicate with you AND you want to communicate as well - as him as a friend and chat. If you got flamed - it's your own damn fault! One might say, that it's impossible to communicate during the game. Play some friendly matches against your newfound friend and there you go - in-game chat.
This somehow sounds awfully similar to what OP wants to have implemented...
It was not luck, but skill!
This would be a great idea, but it should be optional. So if you have it turned off you cant chat and the other person cant chat to you.
This disclaimer
Will cleanse any sense of innuendo or sarcasm
From the comments that might actually make you think
And will also insult your intelligence at the same time.
So, if it sounds sarcastic, don't take it seriously.
If it sounds dangerous,
Do not try this at home or at all.
And if it offends you, just don't read it.
People individually need to be more social yes but not in interaction to each other during a game. Like a year ago, it was overall way better when everything truly was calm and peacful (and noone had some kind of perfect curves. Everything was peacful as long as we stood together against this one single deck called undertaker hunter). Nowadays, it is just incredible what is going on in hearthstone. Kinda miss the times without all these expansions when there was just vanilla hearthstone.
Just remember the good times!
This forum is a shit storm as it is, what makes you think it'll be better in game?
Maybe you can change casual mode to casual/social mode, and keep ranked the way the game already is.
This thread had a lot of interesting opinions.
On a note to something OP said, "more options is always better", that is not quite true. For the average user, too many options not only might but will lead to confusion and frustration. Especially for a game that expects to be fast paced, something you can play during your lunch break (as many players do), it is important to keep things straight to the point.
I'm not going to argue that this example has direct relation to what we're talking about, but I just want to show a practical example of options being "detrimental" to my playing experience, kind of. I'm addicted to casual. I could play ranked, I could, it's not like I'm going to lose my rank 3 chest anymore... but for some reason, most of the times, I just don't want to feel the pressure of losing a star that will have to be regained later. And it's not the first time I experienced that. I used to play a game called naturo-arena, a PvP turn based strategy game. When I first started, there were only ranked games. In order to unlock new characters, you needed to be at certain ranks and fulfill mission requirements, like winning 3 in a row against a certain character, or using specific characters yourself. The trick was that in order to get the missions done more efficiently you needed to play non-optimal teams, in order to fulfill multiple requirements at the same time, except that if you would lose too many games your rank would drop and the missions would become unavailable. This made me think very hard and really try to scrape all value I could from each game, and all this training led me to a fast development, even earning the top1 position twice.
Eventually they updated the game and added tons of characters and a casual mode, where you wouldn't lose rank but could complete missions. You still needed to rank up in order to unlock missions, but the pressure of actually completing them dropped immensely. At first I didn't really have a problem, as I still had plenty of competitive experience and everyone else was also trying to get those new characters... but in time I noticed my drive and skill were not the same anymore.
TLDR: Casual isn't really necessary, it will make some people *cough me cough* lazy.
I would love an in-game chat with the option to disable it of course. People are over-sensitive though, I don't understand why someone would complain that some random guy was mean to them when they can easily squelch/ignore them.
Chatrooms, Lobbies, Clans/Guilds with private chatrooms or even just a little box along the top of the screen where you can type /g or /w someone would be great. Obviously, this would have to be quite limited on mobile (most of my playtime is mobile tbh) but I think it could still be done in some form and it enhances the experience so much that it's worth it.
Even just some kind of public chat with groups like LookingForMatch where I could say something like "looking for Oil Rogue player to practice against" in order to practice a matchup that I'm bad at in order to learn tendencies and such would be amazing.
I'm not sure player-to-player chat mid match against a stranger is a great idea because it could be exploited - obviously it's a longshot but I could see someone at rank 1 repeatedly asking any legend players he sees to concede because he's close to legendary and whether the legend player wins or loses is pretty much irrelevant. Maybe he wouldn't get many people to do it but I'm sure there are other ways of exploiting that system that I'm not thinking of.
I think HearthPwn and hearthstone irc server are enough for me
To all the people complaining about how being given the option to talk at all would inevitably lead to BM, of course it will. Exactly the same way as the emotes do, except with less ambiguity (which is a good thing, I like to know if someone is being an asshole or just overly emote-happy). If they're so scared of a toxic social scene, then why even have emotes? Limited ability to chat is even worse than just an open chat for fostering bad feelings and BM.
Obviously not everybody wants it. So there's an easy solution: have it able to be turned off. If your opponent has it turned off, you can't chat to him. No biggie. And as for moderation being a huge problem, leave reporting only for genuine abuse, the type of stuff that would otherwise be illegal, and otherwise give everyone a block list, where it effectively turns off chat if you're in game with someone.
I can't understand the concept that chat would in any way ruin the game. So long as you could opt-out it would, absolute worst case scenario, make no difference to the game for people who did. And people who enjoy a more social aspect, like being able to say "Wow, I really like your choice there" or "Interesting deck" (as I often do and almost never can because the emote and friend system as it is leads to no one ever wanting to accept friend requests and discuss things), will have an improved system.
There is literally no downside from the player perspective. From the dev perspective, someone has to code it, and that's all. I expect that isn't particularly hard either.
Trying Real Hard To Keep Hunter Relevant
I had read through the whole thread, and nobody has explained WHY it isn't a solution to have chat be optional? The one you offered of "It would be nothing but BM so everyone would turn it off, so why even bother?" is giving up without even trying. There's people posting these comments and threads about how they want a chat system for friendly in-game chat, so it couldn't possibly be 100% bad in chat. There are demonstrably people who would treat it well. With the ability to block BMers, the chat community might get small, but it would be there for the people who want it. If you're saying Blizzard won't do it because of the (what I presume to be minor) cost of implementation, I suppose that's one thing, but to say it simply wouldn't work because HS community universally can't handle it isn't an explanation of why.
No chat means that those of us who want it are being punished by the people who don't. Optional chat means both sides get exactly what they want. Using a personal block-list circumvents a reporting system perfectly well, leaving the reporting system in the same state it is at now, which is all it would need.
I guess what I'm asking at this point, is for someone to explain to me a good reason why it would be so horrible to make chat available for those who want it, alongside a personally built block list (assuming non-prohibitive costs, which I feel is a safe assumption though I'll happily accept data to the contrary from anyone in the industry)? Something beyond "Because people would be mean", which they already are via emotes. Because I honestly can't see a way that this doesn't actually solve all the issues everyone has posted as reasons to not want chat,
Trying Real Hard To Keep Hunter Relevant
I'm sure the other side does have smart people who think about the possibilities too. But they're definitely not the ones acting like they're saying something new when they're just repeating the same thing we've heard (and responded to and refuted) over and over even in the same thread.