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!
i feel you i got 1200 wins with shaman ( all in mid-range control styles) and only 2 others golden heroes and something extra at over 1000 like you sayed could be quite nice.
That's not what they said
I wholeheartedly agree about the alternate art thing.
I don't think adding new ranks solves the new player issues. Instead of 3 days to reach rank 20 they will need a whole week? And then what? Keep playing their basic deck against meta decks that use at least 1-2 legendaries and 4-6 epics?
There are other ways to improve the new player experience:
- give boosters/ special challenges that reward both gold and dust
- create a special arena for new players with no entrance fee that is available only for 1-2 weeks after creating the account
Etc.
An extra effect on a golden hero after, say anther 500 wins would be smart -- retroactively, of course. No need to get all heroes golden. Hell, make 'em silver (Platinum- whatever). This game has been out for quite some time and new grinds are needed.
New grinds!? PAH!
Who needs new grinds when you have the ultimate grind of all?!
THE DUST GRIND!
While I get the good that T5 is trying to do by making it less likely for new players to run into players with powerful decks it still is never going to be perfect.
For example, what is to prevent an invested standard player from trying out wild and laying waste to players with small collections considering that they both start at 25, or vice versa for a wild player going to standard?
Players who take long, or semi-long, breaks from the game and come back into the same mode they were playing may also be at a low rank, even in the sub 20 range. New players or those with small collections will still run into players who come back from long breaks.
This is not a bad idea, to be honest. HS team actually communicating with the players on a platform is a step in the right direction. However, the issues take forever to be resolved that is my main concern would be better if they speed up the process. For example, patches nerf came after almost 2 years.
Hope they get better at this too. Hopefully, one day.
So nothing that we already didn't know
I'd ask for more videos like Ben Brode's WIRED "Answers Questions from Twitter" and Ars Technica "Answers Unsolved HS Mysteries", but now that he's gone I don't know who would fill those shoes. It just wouldn't be the same without his abundance of Charisma :/
I'm going to assume that the additional ranks (26-30, say) are going to be special in the sense that once you play through them, even a season reset won't push you back. After all, there are players who have been playing for long enough to have golden heroes and the like, but who play one mode only sporadically, and therefore at low (high?) ranks. This way, the ranks below (above?) 25 are only new players, so it functions as something of a tutorial extension.
Lol they create new answer format every month
A question that should be used in Tavern Talk:
Is there anything in the works that will allow players to obtain card backs that are currently unobtainable?
Probably just through some micro transaction in the future I bet, such as $5-$10 each.
Hearthstone seems to be quite the different game than WoW when it comes to getting old cosmetics that are reintroduced to the game. At least the vast majority of cosmetics from WoW can be earned in game, instead of the cash shop, if they are reintroduced.
I like this idea from them and I hope they actually keep to posting them on a regular basis. Communication from the Hearthstone team has sucked over the years when compared to other Blizzard titles and this is a good step in the right direction.
They still need to do more Developer Insights though. Those videos were amazing and I hope these blogs aren't a way to stop them.