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!
It takes use for people to learn things. But you don’t want to increase that with no real benefit to the game. Which is the case with alternative artwork.
Man, would it kill them to allow us to get Card Backs from ages ago?
Do you also buy t-shirts from concerts you didn't go to?
Most hearthstone players will play a few hours per month. They aren’t going to want to spend that time learning alternative card art and will get really annoyed if their games get screwed up because they didn’t recognize a card
The design decisions aren’t aimed at people that spend their free time on sites like Hearthpwn, ithey are aimed at the wider swathe of players. And, yes, people on sites like this probably spend more on average than the wider population, but that wider population is far, far, far larger and everyone’s experience would be significantly damaged if they left.
With that logic imagine being what you call a "casual player" after the release of a new expansion. That must feel terrible... I almost pity that poor person.
There is 18 millions player wordwide playing Shadowverse
unlike Hearthstone there is one server so all players can play against any player from any part of the world.
There is a alot of alternative art design, expeailly with the legendary , with most of them changing how the follower (shadowverse)/minion ) looks dress or poses,
No one has ever complained about that.
Going by that sense , Is hearthstone saying , their players are much more stupider then shadowverse players, wouldn't this be an insult to players who hoping from different art?
Also an insult to human capaitalites ?
Imagine how much capacity it would take the human brain to attach two different pieces of art to the same card.= Shadowverse has acchived it~!!!
Shadowverse players : nah, it no big deal~
As someone who does software development for a living, nothing is "free". Time you spend on a bug or feature is time you aren't spending on another bug or feature. Implementing alternative art (a bad idea in the first place, IMO) means you are sucking up time in the art department, the interface department (you need to have something in the UI to toggle the images), the systems (how is it toggled, stored, unlocked internally), and a huge amount of QA work.
Basically, it's a big change to implement. Which is fine, if the change is really important. But alternative art is not. I'm sure 75% of the HS community could care less, and is mainly desired by the hardcore group of which most of this site is. And if they go ahead and implement, that means other things aren't implemented, like tournament mode, more brawls, or whatnot.
As for the additional rewards for things like 1000 wins, it reminds me of a mistake Blizzard made way back in vanilla WoW. They spent months developing a new dungeon for top guilds (Naxaramus), and in the end, only 2% of the entire WoW population ever saw the dungeon. That's partially why they re-opened it for Icecrown. Regardless, when you have finite resources and time, you want to maximize it for projects that have the most benefit to the most people. Hence the 10% number they threw out.
Unfortunately, while this site brings together a lot of hardcode Hearthstone players, it's not a accurate reflection of the Hearthstone community as a whole. Most players are casuals. Most don't have 500 wins on a character, let alone 100. And unfortunately, Blizzard needs to focus on the community as a whole, casuals to hardcore players.
I'm all for supporting new players but I don't understand the mindset of "screw the hardcore players"
Why? They put a lot of time in effort into the game. "If it's only going to benefit the 'hardcore' players, it's a terrible idea and a waste of time". Ok..
"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."
Imagine how much capacity it would take the human brain to attach two different pieces of art to the same card.
Maybe one day when we implant ourselves with computer AI will we be able to have alternative art in Hearthstone that are brains are fully capable of digesting.
It's not like it's impossible to do, but it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the game which can be a source of human error.
We are also able to, say, not pressing an hypothetical Concede button next to the End Turn button, but it would cause stupid mistakes. Therefore it's hidden in the settings menu, even though you have to make a bit more of effort in order to use it.
What does anything you just said have to do with alternative card art?
lol, but if you play shadowverse and you lack that caplities they would smash your hands til they break. too many different art work for same cards
Their reasoning for alternate card art sounds like a lame excuse, to be honest.
it is a lame excuse. so +1 for you
Shouldn't he rather be downvoted for stating that it sounds like what it actually is?
I personally upvoted him because I don't think it's a lame excuse.
The reason why they don't make alternate art for cards in Hearthstone is because it takes time and resources to create something that all ready exits. Another reason is because of a famous example of this failing miserable being Dryad Arbor from Magic The Gathering. An alternate art of this card caused one of the best players in the world to mistake it for a land card which cost him the game and over thousands of dollars. And that player has shown up in top 8 of tournaments over a dozen times and has one a worlds. So that is sadly why they don't do alternate art cards yet. There is hope of alternate art cards showing up in maybe a reprint set but doubtful. I hope this help answered your question as to why Blizzard doesn't create alternate art for cards. :)
why would he get downvoted for saying something obvious
I don't know what you hearthstone players are eating . drinking or smoking but stop hating on me,
I get -2 votes for agreing with a guy . wow. shitty really shitty community .
I mean downvote me for taking shit about your shitty games and beliefs and how simple is best, like now , don't down me for agreeing a guy who's comment deserver more attention
i hate to say this but that's a lame ass excuse, Yuu gi oh card game still exist and has many alternative arts ,
Well Blizzard and magic is both american and both think that simple is the way to go.
While
shadowverse and Yugioh both by japanese don't think so,
Well more reason to say with the japanese games.
In my mind this is where you give players with Golden heroes benchmarks to reach alternative art for cards. What better way to show off how much you've mastered a class than when you play cards with alternate art on them for basic / classic class cards. I look at the art used in the card creation competitions on this site and some of the art is just amazing. I think people would be thrilled to get different art for Kill Command or maybe Hunter's Mark, just 2 cards I always think the art could improve on.
That's a stupid idea.