In just about 1 week with the release of Patch 29.2 on April 16th, the Duels Game mode will be shut down. Your old runs will all retire and any unused Tickets to play the Heroic Duels mode will after that only be usable in the Arena game mode.
So if you want to give the Duels game mode one last go, and go out with one last flex-plosion, now is the time. Be aware though that the Whizbang cards have not been added to the game mode so you will play in the Meta as it existed last expansion.
this was honestly one of my favorite modes, lots of custom options and awesome mad matches! sad to see it go to be honest
Blizzard if you don't want people to farm gold from Duels just keep the casual mode plz.
I wish they left it open. I don't totally buy the reasoning of why they close the mode. it could stay frozen without updates, like all adventure modes. And honestly I don't think that take much more than one guy working on it.
I didn't played as much as I should, but it was my go to for the weekly mission of win 5 [alternative modes] games.
It's not really possible to keep Duels frozen like they do with Mercenaries for example. Duels cards use live Hearthstone cards and card pools. At any given point a new card, a nerf, or a new interaction could break the mode. And I don't mean the colloquial use of 'break' as in 'unbalance' I mean literally cause it to bug out and make it unplayable.
They can keep them separated from the pool. And we know they can, cause they were running Classic for a while that has an unique pool of cards exclusibly for that mode, and they removed the game mode.
And I mean, even less than that, if there is any hipotetical card that brokes the mode, just ban it, how much could that cost? Like you rather being unable to play a couple cards, that being unable to play the whole mode.
The idea of Duels was too ambitious from beginning. I see three main reasons why this mode died:
1) The amount of info required to play it seriously was too overwhelming for most of the players, so people quickly gave up.
2) It requires a lot of effort to balance and Blizzard isn't that good at balancing.
3) It was incorrectly promoted. It was never an Arena killer, it was another constructed mode, but they thought for some reason that Arena players instead of building new deck every time without opening packs will start to buy packs to play 20-cards super-constructed decks at 0-0. That didn't happen, and rightfully so, even Battlegrounds is more similar mode to Arena in its spirit than Duels. If they want to kill Arena they need to introduce another limited mode instead, like Cube or something, not constructed one.
It was attractive mostly for specific part of Ranked players, but turns out the part is too specific. So I feel sad for players who enjoyed the mode, but not for Blizzard. It's their big failure to put a lot of resources into a mode that was doomed from day 1. They could have easily predicted it would happen.
I suspect the reason the new expansion wasn’t enabled in duels was to generate “hard data” that supports the claim that duels playership is on the decline, and that the people who do play duels the most purchased the new expansion less then the average player.
Im sure we’ll see a tweet along the lines of “duels saw a 600% decrease in players after this expansion launched, demonstrating that the gamemode isn’t worth keeping around. In addition, the people playing duels spent on average $60 less for this expansion then other paying customers”
Generating this sort of data is necessary for justifying the deletion of the game mode, as well as setting a precedent to prevent more modes like this from being made in the future, however biased the circumstances surrounding the data are.
So you think there is a plot against Duels and it was secretly not extremely unpopular to the point they decided to close it? They definitely had enough data about Duels for a long time. The only reason why they didn't add new cards is obviously to do less work since it's gonna be removed anyway.
I don’t think there was a “plot” to remove duels. It was a game mode with a small user base that required a time investment from the B team, who found that battlegrounds was a far more important gamemode to invest in. I think there was a deliberate plan to create data to help justify its deletion, and ensure that the team doesn’t make other game modes that don’t directly increase revenue.
I think the mode has been wildly mismanaged. Originally, buckets were themed (deathrattle, spell damage, relics, etc) and were individually created by the Dev team. Whenever an expansion launched, they made a number of buckets based around the expansions themes. Do this for 9 classes, and you have a lot of work. Players liked this, but due to the time investment, the Dev’s swapped it for an expansion-based bucket system which could be easily automated, despite the duels community disliking the system.
I don’t know why themed buckets were every hand-crafted. This seems like something that should have been automated/randomly generated based on card tags from the very start. But hearthstone has a track record of artificially increasing workload when things should be automated (DK Rexxar originally had every zombeast hard coded, and there was no intention of allowing new beasts from being put into the pool. After public backlash, they decided to automate DK Rexxar’s Zombeast generation).
Based on tweets, it doesn’t seem like any of the hearthstone devs have cared about Duels for quite a while, which I think is the main reason the mode has declined. Constant nerfs to treasures and buckets in an attempt to make balancing easier and attract more players has seemed to alienate their current player base without attracting new players.
There isn’t a plot to derail the entire mode. It’s simply being managed by people who don’t seem to care about the mode, and don’t want to spend any time figuring out how to make it better.
The new expansion not being enabled makes me think that either
- the system of adding a new expansion is not automated, and the team simply forgot about it. They’ve already decided to remove duels, so they aren’t bothered to maintain the product they are providing. (Mismanagement, and I think unlikely)
- the new expansion was intentionally not added the rotation. This is either done out of spite for the playerbase, or to further justify the removal of the gamemode by creating data that shows a steep decline in the mode being played, and the players of the mode buying packs. If an investor asks “why are you removing content from your game” the devs want to have a data sheet they can show that demonstrates that people who play duels don’t buy card packs. Deincentivizing duels players from buying packs seems like a good business decision, and makes it clear to the team that new game modes need to clearly generate profits.
I like how the picture for this article is Reno being super happy for no reason whatsoever, kind of like "oh yeah, let's go!". Kind of funny contrast to what actually this article is referring to xd
The fact that they cannot make it an evergreen mode with a fixed collection of cards is baffling. But that doesn't fit their monetisation mode, because people would not buy packs anymore, and play Duels for free forever.
For me it was just another mode to get a pack each time it updates.
It was less frequent than I expected.
Duels is the most fun I’ve ever had in HS. It is literally all I play. It’s been a fun ride. Hate to see it go. I just hope that blizzard has something in the works for the future that is in the spirit of duels.
I've been a player since day 1, spent hundreds on this game, a really dedicated fan. when they announced killing Duels I left the game, the only way I was ever going to come back is if they gave duels a death Roe reprieve, and it seems they are going through with it, I will always miss hearthstone, but the team is not standing up for the game, they are letting corporate dictate their work too much, making bad decision after bad decision. 10th anniversary was supposed to be a joyous time for me, but you ruined it, thanks Blizz.
I believe I have played it only a few times if ever, still, there's people that like it... why remove it? Really because of money?
Duels players never ever spend money some other way in the game? I doubt this.
money and not enough players
Shutting down duels just because you can't monetize it it's an awful bad decision, instead of shutting down Mercenaries which is already dead and also making Duels "paid" with resources or real money and giving good rewards, honestly what a shame.
They cannot remove mercenaries, since in this mode there are unique cards available only in this mode
I'm straight up bummed about Duels ending. I thought it was a fun break away from constructed or Arena that didn't impact your standings in the ladder.
glad to hear that