Hearthstone Needs More Game Modes - What New Modes Could They Create?
Game modes are always an interesting topic in the Hearthstone community. Originally, the game on release had regular play through Ranked and an Arena mode originally called The Forge. Over time we received Tavern Brawls and Adventures which made for some other great content to play through, though that doesn't run all the time.
Without a doubt, the Hearthstone team is still interested in adding more modes to the game though, proven with Dungeon Run being added in the Kobolds & Catacombs expansion, though PVE content isn't for everyone.
Clearly, Hearthstone needs more game modes!
We've been thinking about it recently and had a couple of ideas we thought were worth bringing up to encourage community discussion to see what ideas other people have. We're interested in different ways of drafting cards much like the Arena, so we're going to talk about that!
The modes described below both share a unique attribute Hearthstone doesn't currently have in that it would be something played upon entry and not something you can play over time like Arena. You'd also be paired up with an opponent (maybe even multiple people - tournaments?) and we think playing a few matches against them, best of 3, would be a better test of skill and make the processes more worthwhile.
Idea #1 - Pack Draft
Hearthstone's Arena is modelled after a traditional card game drafting tournament but downscaled for one player. What would normally happen is a pack of cards is opened and each player participating in the draft event take turns picking cards from the packs until they're all gone, which ends up being a very lengthy process.
Blizzard themselves has stated having a true draft would take too long, so why not draft packs of cards instead of single cards, taking turns between players?
- You end up in a lobby with your opponent(s) where pack selection can take place.
- In order, each player takes one pack from the pool of packs until all packs are exhausted. Pack contents are visible.
- You build a deck using the cards opened from your packs in a limited amount of time and then fight!
Idea #2 - Mirrored Sealed
Similar to the first idea, you're going to receive a brand new set of cards to build your tournament deck with, but there's no drafting phase at all!
- Each player receives the exact same collection of cards from randomly opened packs.
- You're given a set amount of time to build your deck using the cards opened from those packs.
One neat take away from this idea is that it can add some serious depth and mind games to the deckbuilding process. You have the exact same cards, who can build and play the stack they're dealt better?
What do You Think?
Polls are awesome and we'd like to know what you think. Which of our ideas do you think is better and even more importantly, what ideas do you have for new game modes?
Heroic Brawl with Arena costs and rewards. Or said otherwise, Arena with constructed decks.
Maybe with daily or weekly limitation to avoid abuse.
Minimal reward system for Dungeon Runs, again with daily or weekly limitations: that alone would basically "generate" a new, fully replayable game mode.
When creating game modes it's always essential to consider things like:
- Replayability: Is the mode repeatable and random enough to be fun after a lot of tries? (Ladder is therefore not so good, arena is good, tavern brawl is something between ok and awesome, dungeon run is awesome)
- Multiplayer: Are players needed for starting the mode or to play against each other?
- Investment: How costly is the mode for anyone? How is the "new player experience"? (Ladder is really expensive, dungeon run has no costs, arena has an entry fee, tavern brawl is low on costs)
With that in mind I would really like something like
Pack Arena - Like the current arena but with a drafting. On your first pick you open a pack and take one card. The remaining cards go to another player who is at his second pick. He takes one of the four cards and the remaining three go to the third pick of yet another player etc. You can't choose the 5th card, because it is the last card of a pack from another player. On the 6th card you open another pack, pick one, give your pack away and get 4 new ones to choose from. The drop-chances of each rarity can (and maybe should) be different from normal packs.
Replayability: High. Like arena you won't know what you get in you packs.
Multiplayer: High. You need other players for your deckbuilding but they don't have to be online. You play against players with your deck.
Investment: Medium. Could be like standard arena. Could also be more costly if you can pick some cards from your deck to keep after your run is over.
Non-MetaLadder - Like normal ladder but you can't use cards, which were in the top ladder decks. I think Blizzard has some internal statistics that can be used to calculate the win chance of every single card. Those top number of cards can't be used in deckbuilding.
Replayability: Medium. Just like ladder there will be a meta. But you could easily switch to standard or wild ladder for fun. And when the standard-meta changes, this changes too.
Multiplayer: Medium. Deck building is your thing, playing is against other players.
Investment: High. There will be a meta and you need those cards to compete. If the best decks don't rely on legendaries or epics, it's going to be cheaper than standard or wild ladder.
- Add 2 vs 2 cooperative mode (would be aweeeeesome).
- Add Wild Arena mode.
-Tournament mode (maybe, even with facebook integration showing opponent’s photos and next opponents)?
What about a ranked mode like tournaments branch ??
I dislike the random stuff in general, so I don't really like a tournament mode based on random packs as well. I would like to see the following modes added to the game:
-Best of 3 Constructed Arena: Prepare 3 decks and play a best of 3 against multiple opponents. Buy-in and reward structure is the same as in arena (12 wins max. and after 3 losses you are out). The difficulty with this mode lies probably in making it accessable for players without a full collection, thus the matchmaking would need to be pretty refined.
-Tavern brawl legacy: Play classic tavern brawls whenever you like.
-Best of 3 ranked mode: I would like the ladder experience to be a little more diverse and planning out your line-up of decks would open up some possiblities for experimentation in my opinion. The problem here of course is that players need to have multiple competitive decks and thus the cards which are required. On the other hand I think that there are enough players who have a large enough collection to support multiple decks by now and even if not all of them are tier 1 decks this might encourage people to build cool decks around the cards that they have and increase game diversity that way.
New sub-category. Fusion!
Play > Classic, Fusion > Standard, Wild
Fusion have Mixed hero classes:
Good ideas tho.
I would like to see a mode where we can play decks from the HS recipes: I enjoyed the tavern brawls with recipes for UnGoro and KFT so much I played more than 100 games. Such a mode would allow us to play test some of the cards we don't have to try and convince us of crafting them (even if they are not competitive: I would like to try Hunter DK because I didnt play him enough with him).
It has the downside that players would play with the recipe decks sometimes more often than with the own collection, but that can be solvable by rotating the decks over time.
classless ladder; a ladder mode where you can build a deck using cards from every class; i don't even need it to have any rewards, I'd play it for the sheer inanity of it.
I would like a some type of tournament style game mode. Single deck best of 3 and a sideboard like a 5-7 cards, a lot more different decks and classes would see a lot more play. And that reward is like more gold or packs or dust or stars in ranked
I vote for Two Headed Giant
THIS - P L E A SE
Imho both ideas are cute tries to mirror Magic the Gathering Limited but they both fall short for the same reason: due to the nature of HS as a quick, easy, whenever whereever game, you need to be able to complete your games at any point and basically against everyone.
But both ideas put the player within a limited pool of players, where it would only make sense to play against players from that pool. Which is way more limited than "someone currently in matchmaking with a similar record". Also drafting now and playing in a week wouldn't work as everyone from that pool would have already played. Also in the first mode, noone could leave until draft is done.
A sealed approach would be possible but without the pool idea, each player receives X packs and from the content of those packs you have to build your deck, with unlimited time. The deck could either be locked when you play your first match or you could even be allowed to change it between rounds. The main problem here is, that you need a lot of packs(15+) to get a sizable pool of cards, as 8/9th of class cards will be useless. So deck building would be kinda overwhelming and time intensive. Not that great either.
Might be some cute ideas for Fireside Gatherings but not really practical for the main game.
Pack Draft : Too difficult to make a clear and readable UI displaying all the information.
Both : This should be part of a "tournament mode" or limiting the player pool (3 or 4 max). This would make the reward scale akward (balancing with the fact that a bad run should reward less than what it costs and that a good run should be rewarding enough to encourage people to play this mode).
- Having many instance at the same time is (arguably) confusing (and blizzard wants thnigs to be as simple as possible)
- If the players are connected at the same time (so they can do a game or two after the picking/building you never know how much days (weeks ?) it will take you to be connected simultaneously with the remaining opponents you have to face.
How about none?
Neither of those would really work for Hearthstone.
Arcade mode.
-150g per run. Guaranteed pack. Small additional rewards for doing well.
-You get to play X number of games Win or Lose.
-Everyone plays with the pre-built recipe decks (don't need to own the cards).
Single player arena, like eternal's forge. With keeping the drafted cards, of course.
Eternal's draft would be a huge improvement to the arena system too. Blizzard would never let you keep the cards though. Keep dreaming! ;)
At first, it was intended that people could keep the cards they drafted in the 'forge' as it was called very long ago, but this would lead to people often picking the card they don't own instead of the actual better card, especially with legendary cards. I wouldn't want this.
Also arena would have to be much more expensive.
Maybe a mode that player gets to draft a deck for the opponent ? it's going to be fun !! We often see players play hearthstone with the best cards they have then how 'bout playing with the not-so-good cards. Maybe we'll get to see new synergies and some unplayable cards in play.
Yeaah this is a great ideaa i am with you