What's on Your Hearthstone Wishlist for 2018?
Last year, Iksar tweeted asking everyone what they wanted to see for 2017 and we posted about it to see what you wanted to see in 2017. so let's do it again!
HearthPwnians, what stuff do you want to see from the game next year?
Flux's Wishes for Hearthstone 2018
Having a two-line news post felt like a terrible way to get the discussion going, so here's what I want to see.
A New Druid Hero
It feels so wrong that we only saw three new heroes during 2017. After Prince Arthas came out with Knights of the Frozen Throne, and although the flavor was great for the expansion, we still were left with 2 classes that were still missing an alternate hero. Fast forward to October, just over two months later, Warlocks finally received a new hero in the form of the adorable gnome, Nemsy Necrofizzle.
Druid is now the odd one out and we've got no idea when we're going to see an additional face for the class. Hopefully, the method of acquiring the new Druid hero won't leave us kicked to the curb like Nemsy did with broken Fireside Gatherings and requiring us to be social / grab a GPS spoofer.
I'm not even going to bring up the topic of each class not having an easily accessible alternative hero, that's for another day.
More Cosmetics
Let players show off more! It would be great to see a mix of obtainable in-game cosmetic items and those that could come from a shop.
- There's definitely more room for new card backs coming out of various criteria.
- Let us obtain flair for our names. This could be displayed beside/under our name.
- Flair could provide a slot to showcase a statistic (like lifetime brawl wins, lifetime 12 arena win runs, highest legend rank).
- Flair could also just be a fancy badge that showcases something you achieved or purchased.
- More fancy board elements for heroes. Why stop at 500 wins, the counter doesn't!
Some ideas for cool things they could add:
- A card back to the shop that costs 10,000 gold. The entire point of it is to showcase your wealth. Level it up by spending another 10k gold.
- Something unique for getting all nine heroes to 500 wins. You're already tracking this, make up a card back!
- Reward players with a card back who have obtained Legend multiple times. The Golden Legend Cardback!
- Golden hero borders that could evolve to be hit with more sparkle. Adorn them with class-specific flair like a frost effect for Mages which gets better the more wins with the class you have.
- Name flair for all the basic stats available - total wins, total arena wins, and others that are certainly available internally.
- Name flair from the shop that could let you better represent your favourite <x>. A flashy Hunter trap, a cute little Murky face.
- Think of it as if they were a traditional avatar - they could even show up on your friends list!
- Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft II, and StarCraft Remastered all have avatars. Even Diablo III does if you consider Avatar Borders. EVEN DIABLO THREE!
- Interactables that could be on your side of the gameboard - extra stuff to play with! Buy 'em in the shop and have some rewarded for completing cool
achievementsquests.
This is just a small piece of the overall cosmetic puzzle; The important thing here is to help bring more uniqueness to the game. There are certainly better ideas out there that I am certain we'll see in the comments below.
Additional Unique Tavern Brawls
Back in September, I touched upon Tavern Brawls being too repetitive. I personally feel that over half the brawls being repeats is not a great way to truly figure out the mode and ultimately leads to more negative vocal reactions here and elsewhere in the community. That negativity has without a doubt resulted in more players becoming jaded when it comes to the game as a whole which without a doubt cannot be good.
By having more new brawls added to the game, we can consistently enjoy new experiences with Hearthstone and will hopefully see less negative discussion about the Hearthstone team being "lazy". That negative public perception that is picked up across the web and in the faces of potential new players certainly isn't a good thing and is hopefully taken into consideration when they decide what to toss up next.
While we're at it, seeing more stats on brawls overall would be wonderful. The last time we saw brawl play-rates was back at BlizzCon 2015.
A Friendlier Community
There's a lot of negativity within all the hot places for Hearthstone discussion and although a lot of is without a doubt justified, we should all try and be more constructive with our comments.
- Personal attacks against game developers, pros, and even your fellow players are not getting us anywhere and is the area with the largest room for improvement.
- Saying a card, deck, or play is terrible/shit/cancer doesn't actually help anyone. Explain your process to encourage discussion and teach others.
- Quit the political and regional attacks. Stuff can't always come out at the same time everywhere and discussion of subtropical fruit doesn't contribute to gaming discussions.
These things not only apply to Hearthstone but to other games you play and communities you are a part of.
Unique effects for cards is a really interesting one. It could be super cool to have a frosty effect equipped when you were playing your Freeze Mage deck to add that little bit of extra flavor to your plays. Definitely good potential for unlocks there.
I wonder why. Also, it has always been a sign of dying game, Dota 2 is a good example, because, apparently, Valve is doing everything posiible to kill Dota 2.
I hope Blizzard/team 5 doesn't do something outrageous this year in terms of pricing/broken cards but it won't happen that's what they always do ahem Psychic Scream Corridor Creeper ahem oh and "localizing prices to be with a friendlier coin" which rose the price of the game all around..
The resignation of Ben Brode (jk), but the dev team should react a lot faster about balancing issues
Wut, the game director is not involved in balancing the game?
Of course not. He is in charge of assigning co-workers with tasks that can help point the game in the ‘right’ direction. He is not in charge of balancing the game. He works on a much, much broarder scale such as themes for expansions but not actual cards for expansions.
Also: Did you downvote me for asking you a question? What is wrong with you?
Well, unless this info is wrong idk what to tell you "Ben Brode is involved in all aspects of the design, including core gameplay design, card powers, balance, artwork selection, programming, and writing." of course he has a team behind but he is the man in charge of them and i'd be very surprised if he isn't involved in those kind of decisions.
Pd: Did you get offended over a simple downvote?
I did not get offended. I just couldn’t believe anyone would think so little of themself that they would downvote someone for asking them one question. That’s some serious insecurity issues.
You mean he works on a much BRODER scale, am I right? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I like how you insult me over a downvote and then talk about insecurities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Btw you ignored the rest of my reply, it's wrong info or not?
For the last time: I didn’t care about getting downvoted. I just couldn’t believe such people existed! It must be really tough.
You might be right about Brode but I always understood Game Directors as someone with the ‘Broder’ responsibilities and not a person who is hands-on with any changes. I could be wrong. And this is why I asked in the first place.
Instead of badges, I'd really like to have some sort of "milestone cardbacks", like it was mentioned in the topic. It would be really cool to have those milestones and I don't even want gold/dust/card packs for achieving them.
Also, more rewards for ranking. Card pack for rank 5, two for Legend. It's not much, but would feel less like a slap to the face ;)
And less toxicity, overall.
Dwight Schrute as a card
I like the card back idea. I'm currently trying to get all golden heroes but what after that? I need more reasons to keep playing. Grinding for gold to get some stuff is great idea.
Better Daily Quests. Like making the minimum gold given 50 (so you can guarantee getting a pack every other day), or making it more likely to get the better Quests.
A potential change in the crafting system to make it a bit cheaper would be awesome. It doesn't have to be anything super crazy, but something small at the least would be fantastic
- Frequent balance changes
- Replay mode + deck tracker + tournament mode
- Better legend rank reward
- In game stats
- Autosquelch
- Cardback for 12 wins in arena with all classes
- Extra quest slot for event quests
- Wild packs for gold
2v2 mode