Hearthstone Tavern Talk: Class Rewards, New Players, Alternate Card Art, Card Reprints
Blizzard has started a new series of posts for communicating with the community called Tavern Talk. Here's the recap followed by the three questions they answered.
- No plans for more rewards for class wins. New Features or Rewards should be obtained by 10% or more of players.
- They want to add additional ranks to ladder for newer players so they can't fight "more invested players".
- Alternate card art hurts good gameplay. You should be able to immediately recognize what a card is by a single piece of art.
- No plans for reprinting old cards, it would only happen after careful consideration.
Quote from Jesse HillEver wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of the tavern? Ava and the crew’s antics aside, the Hearthstone development team works hard on a myriad of tasks to bring you the game you know and love so well. More than that, we also make the time to read about the different issues and questions the community brings to light each day.
Welcome to Hearthstone Tavern Talk, where we’ll share with you answers to some of the questions we see in our community!
Are there any additional rewards for players who have achieved a Golden Hero in every class?
Usually when we add new features or rewards we like to make something that can be obtained by 10% or more of our players. Only very few of our players have the 9 Golden Heroes, and we feel that’s already pretty awesome by itself.
Do you have any changes planned for the new player experience?
We have some small ladder changes that we would like to do at some point, specifically targeted at new players when they first enter the game. The change will add some additional ranks above rank 25 that new players can play through before having to play more invested players. There will only be forward advancement through those ranks, so even if they lose, no one will be able to drop back down.
What are your thoughts on alternate card art or reprints of cards from earlier sets?
Alternate card art is something we have avoided because players almost always use art to recognize a card and instantly know what it does. Good gameplay is very important to us so we have avoided adding multiple pieces of art for a single card.
Reprints are something that we have discussed in the past, but we would want to do so only after careful consideration. We don’t have any specific plans for this in the near future.
See you at the next edition of Hearthstone Tavern Talk!
Well, reprints are a pretty controversial question.They already make a ton of cards that have similar effects.
Would you consider Snap Freeze a reprint of Shatter? Sure, it's not a copy but it's pretty close to a reprint.
It's just strictly better, not a reprint. Not only because Snap Freeze adds an extra usefull usage to the card, the main point IMHO is that it allows the card to be played without overbooking your hand.
I believe that is just power creep. Not really a reprint.
"They want to add additional ranks to ladder for newer players so they can't fight "more invested players".
That's good idea. But I would suggest something like "newbie barrier". There should be a moment, which you can pass in some moment, but should never get back. And 25-21 rank in not quite that. If I try wild in 2-3 month, I will be 25 rank and I will play against newer players. as it was few months ago. Its not pleasure neither for me nor for them. It just wrong.
IMO, once player achieved 20 rank, he should never ever get lower then 20 rank. Especially considering wild exists. Also like 5-10 additional low ranks would be good. It would be like two separated hearthstones. Two different leagues. And achieving 20 rank would feel like entering into something totally new, next league. That would be great feeling.
OK so let me get this straight. These two cards would confuse people:
They have the same name, same mana cost, same text and would have the same animation effect... and this would confuse people because the picture is different?
They would probably just make a new card with a new effect for a new art.
After all, they need to pump out 400 cards a year, there is not much commercial sence in also making a copy of an old card with a different art, when they can just use that art for a 3 mana '(Lesser) Fireball' that deals 4 damage, for example.
Well i look at pictures a lot from my hand, so i don't have to mouseover them. Not that weird I'd say?
Definitely less of an issue with spells, but their main concern is the board being readable. Heroes end up being okay because the hero powers all use the same art so that's a point of distinction.
I've been an alternate card art advocate since the game was announced, but I respect their decision to keep things clean. Really though, if they weren't so afraid of adding interface options to the game, they could easily have a boolean that asks if you want to enable alternative art. Keep it off by default so new players aren't very likely to have it on.
Ya dude, left one looks like a minion I would immediately point to my side of the board with it and accidentally kill my own minion. /s
lol nice
They wanna keep their moto "simply" i guess
new player experience is garbage, adding more ranks won't solve anything, giving new players better access to the game via better joining reward... will
1.) no
2.) no
3.) no
Thanks, see you again!
I only have 1000+ on warrior so it would be kind of cool to see a reward there.
I am struggling to push rogue (300 wins) and hunter (around 70 wins) to 500 wins since I dont like playing those classes as much (rogue is ok but I really hate hunter).
It's the same here, with only Warrior and Hunter left. both on 250ish for me. It's still a hell of a grind to get there though.
right lolz
I wish they leave the daily gold +dust system. It really helps a lot when grinding towards building your collection, and blizzard should fully consider implementing this to the game
Something which I think that exist even now is that on new account with few games chance to encounter experience player is smaller. Actually I even think that this should be enough if there is “verified” account or “experienced” (only for purpose matchmaking to easily destinguish players) and you earn the title after 100-200 games or reaching rank 10. And of course to prioritize experienced players together if possible. But I though that they already had something like that.
Make it so you don't have tp flaunt it if you don't desire. Toggle your 'stupid colors' off all the way down to mono!
I get the reason why they feel they don't need to add more rewards for getting a hero golden as they stated only 10% of players have all 9 classes golden.
But I do feel they need to know that not everybody enjoys playing every single class to the point that getting it golden seems reachable and rewarding itself. I absolutely hate playing Warrior and Warlock, playing Hunter and Mage just makes me feel scummy. They really don't need to add much, maybe a really animated card back for each class at 750 wins and maybe a special draw animation at 1000 something stupid like that.
Adding a Platinum or Diamond effect to the hero just seems stupid at this point.