Dean Ayala Asks: What Would Get You Back Into Hearthstone?
Hearthstone's Dean "Iksar" Ayala had a question for those that used to main Hearthstone as a game but no longer do.
What do they need to do to get you back?
We're actually quite interested in knowing too. With many old Hearthstone players still frequenting our site to see what the game is up to or to chat with old friends, there has to be something the Hearthstone team could do to reel you back in?
Quote from Dean AyalaIf Hearthstone used to be your main game but isn't anymore, what would get you back?
I've been playing since the game's release, though I've been playing a lot less recently. Part of the reason why is that I cannot make it past level 15 in ranked play mode, even after all these years. And more recently, I can't make it past 17. I am no pro, I'm not going to make it to the championship, nor do I want to try. But I'm not a bad player either, I've won thousands of games. But it's just too hard to compete with players who spend every waking moment playing the game because they want to try and make a career of it by making it to the championship, and who have unlimited funds to purchase card packs. I don't have the luxury of spending lots of time or money, so I simply don't play as much anymore. It's just not fun when you cannot progress past a certain level. Sure, I can play casual mode, but what's the point? Where's the reward in that besides gold? I know that nothing can be done about this, it all has to do with my time and money constraints, and of course how good of a player I am. But that is why I don't play much anymore. Perhaps if card packs cost less gold and money, and/or if cards gave more dust when disenchanted, that would at least make it somewhat more balanced, giving players who lack funds and time more opportunities to obtain more cards.
New stuff to grind for.
As a Hearthstone veteran, I have nothing to grind for when I play the game, I've had all golden heroes, all classes to level 60, 12 wins arenas & Legend multiple times for years, there's literally nothing for me to do.
I used to grind the game for 30+ wins a day in 2015.. what's the point for me to do that anymore ? None.. I love playing games that forces me to grind to achieve something… you could give the damn veterans a reason to grind the game, platinum heroes at 1000 wins per classes.. then diamonds at 1500.. etc.
Right now, winning games feels empty and I hate that, give me an incentive to farm wins. Also I would love to have clan systems and in game chat rooms similar to SC2 with player profile etc.. but I think that's too much to ask.
It would be hard but not impossible to get me back.
1st- fix the economy, both pack, gold, and dust. This is probably the hardest one to fix because it goes against the short term interest of Blizzard.
2nd- adventures were both fun and gave great cards. The new semi/mini adventures can be fun but give like almost no rewards and just are way to small in scope.
3rd- you gotta find a way to attract new players. This probably also a really hard one. Maybe give all the classic cards to new players or something.
4th- add to the game! Tournament mode, 2v2, guilds, in app streaming, there is so much more you can do than just pump out some lame new brawl.
To bring back people a really really large announcement will be needed too, some saying they are going to change.
I’ve spent a few hundred on this game and didn’t want to leave but after getting to higher ranks for the month I just didn’t want to play. lol Actually after reading thru my post looking for errors there is like no way any one of the four will happen much less a single one. Well here is hoping.
- some gold for three wins, at least 20 or 50 gold,
- new player mode, tournaments
- reduce package prices
Give me a best of 3 format for standard and wild. Let me register maybe a 5-6 card sideboard, and I can bring in any of those cards that I want. This is the biggest issue with hearthstone, is that targeted hate cards don't solve problematic decks and strategies because they're too narrow. Or they're so good the deck is shut out completely. Otherwise my money is going to Magic Arena.
Still waiting for achievements...
- In your collection make it possible to stack golden and plain cards. Give us some filters to toggle like the keywords in search you can use for deathrattles, legendarys, extra etc.
Well, I still play Hearthstone regularly, but it isn't my "main game" anymore. I oftentimes just shuffle/complete quests in 30 or so minutes and turn it off again. Considering that I used to play for several hours a day when I had the chance to... I think it still counts.
Things I would like to see in the game (many have already been mentioned):
- a reworked Basic Set that is what it should be (basic framework for many different playstyles of each class, baseline for Standard balancing, good cards for beginners and sometimes useful for advanced playstyles, not trash for all); along with the rotation of Classic
- Blacklisting/temporary bans of cards in Ranked that change each season, instead of permanent nerfs
- Different rotation system: either rotate sets a bit faster or shuffle some older sets back in Standard for a season; effectively a system that will make it much less likely for certain decktypes to stay in the meta for 8+ months.
- Better reward system: Achievements, better dust/gold gain, better ranked rewards, rank rewards for Wild mode, incentives to play Single Player content (at least more than nothing), generally the time you invest should be better rewarded than maybe 10-20g per hour. Especially if you make the aforementioned rotation of Classic a thing. Even with Classic: The system might have been good enough when the game came out, but it's almost the same amount of Gold you get while we have at minimum 4 more sets to purchose from...
- ... and 7 sets in Standard should actually not even be the limit: Make Wild sets finally available in the In-Game store, and have Adventures allowed for in-game purchase. No more locking old content behind paywalls for absolutely no reason
- Speaking of old content: Make older Hero Portraits tied to events (Maiev, Tyrande, Kadgar...) available in the store again after maybe a year has passed. What do you even have that button for, if you never add anything to Medivh, Magni and Alleria?!
- Speaking of adventures: While I like the "Build-your-deck" single player content, I really hope we could get a new adventure of old days, maybe expanded to feature ~100 cards with a Heroic mode
- Maybe one Arena Ticket per week, generally few more things to give you a good reason to try out different modes from time to time
- I like the annual events like Lunar Festival, Winterveil, Fire Festival etc. Expand on that a bit, if possible, and feature them in the game a little more. Make them something to get excited about
- Much less repeats in Tavern Brawl. While it's ok to have repeats every now and then, it shouldn't be 7 out of 8 weeks.
- One or two new game modes would be nice after like 4 years since Tavern Brawl was added. Limited (with Dust Cap per deck), Mixed (different sets), 2v2, Co-Op, Tournament...
- More complex card design that tries to work more with up-and downsides, instead of doing all the balancing with mana cost. On that note, despite all the big issues that came with Kobolds and Catacombs, I actually like it when there 60 and more playable cards in a set, instead of 20 like in Rastakhan. Try to find a middle ground; how to make a set interesting, without having 10 nerf canidates in it.
All these (and a few more I'm not gonna mention now) would be nice additions, something that would certainly make the game more interesting for me, and I hope for others as well. But more than anything, if I am supposed to get "back" to the game: This might sound silly, but PLEASE just allow the game to evolve.
I have the feeling that Hearthstone will have the same music, the same menu design, the same game modes, the same emotes, the same flaws in balancing, the same lack of variety, the same load of vanillla cards, the same grind for gold and dust, the same set release dates and rotation dates, the same old debates... all the goods and the bads will remain exactly the same, so I wouldn't even notice if I dropped out and came back in 6 years from now (if the game lasts that long). Some things have improved and I don't mean to ignore them (more deck slots, Arena-balancing, rank floors, better reset, more search keywords, more single player content, no 40g quests, no duplicate legendaries...). And while it is good that the game does not change drastically in some regards (after all, this is what I want to come back to), it is disheartening in others. Specifically, many of the things I addressed above are hinting at problems that already existed for several years. And you know what, there will always be flaws, there will always be things to complain about, it will never be perfect. And that's actually fine. I just hope it won't be the exact same things in 2025 that have already been a cause for annoyance in 2015.
The impression that Hearthstone is only if ever making baby steps in any direction to improve the game at large is, to me, the main reason why frustration and boredom took over. There are many things I think the game could do better, and some of them have been in the game for far too long. And all the microadjustments here and there are nice, but ultimately not enough.
The main benefit of a digital card game is that you can make balance changes on the fly. In real life (games like MtG), whats once printed is set in stone. In my opinion Hearthstone has completely squandered this whole advantage. Cards that are ruining experience (Barnes, Voidcaller etc.) are kept unchecked + remember how long we had to deal with Patches the Pirate? And more importantly, cards are not being buffed ever. The excuse that they dont want to buff cards because it might become too strong or something is total bollocks. If you accidentally overbuff something, then you change it back.... Thats the whole point of digital environment, that you can change stuff...
Also, for a five year old game to have only two play modes - Standard and Wild is kinda lazy. In games like MtG a format can be created from the bottom up. The whole concept of Commander and Pauper was player driven. In Hearthstone however, nothing like this is possible, so it has to be top to bottom. And HS team has really the dropped the ball on that front.
*Craft/Disenchant ratio. It should not be this high.
*Better packs. It is irritating when you get 40 dust packfillers 10 times in a row. Especially when you paid for it with real money.
*Older hero portraits should be obtainable.
*Do not kill Wild play mode with absurd changes. Like Naga Seawitch or juicy melon bullshit.
*More creative tavern brawls. Not this repetitive please.
*And of course: Cheaper packs.
Another new game mode or more special events like MTGA does (they've done multiple pauper events with no entree fee for alternate art card rewards, singleton events, special rules events basically like tavern brawl but with actual rewards), tournament mode (still waiting on that one...), but most importantly, more interesting expansions. I'm just so uninterested in most decks and cards right now. I hope this year is better.
beside all the good points of others here (fix rewards, weekly cards, community cards, modes etc), i wanna add another one:
add a mode where u can build a deck out of ALL cards, of ALL classes - a WILD-WILD mode, i wanna mix priest and warlock, and even add an mage card to it... maybe give ppl like 60hp or something there...
In general balance the game and stop promote stupidity as your main target for the game
I quit because the Hearthstone team wasn't interested in game balance or correcting serious metagame issues in a timely fashion. I play Eternal now, because the development team nerfs problem cards quickly and regularly buffs cool-but-underused cards to keep the metagame healthy. If the designers of the most popular digital card game had the same attitude, I would play it happily. But they don't, so I don't.
Eternal have the same balance problems from my experience...
Does it really? I haven't been playing Eternal since the beginning, but in my experience, there's never been a long period where one deck was too dominant. Either Dire Wolf nerfs cards pretty quickly, or people discover effective counter-strategies in the existing card-pool.
Talir Combo is a good example. It was a combo that was too powerful and too consistent, and took forever to complete. Dire Wolf, thinking forward, left Talir herself untouched but nerfed the rules of the game itself to make similar combos less reliable and much faster. Now Talir Combo still exists, but it isn't oppressive.
But Hearthstone had problem decks all the time, and it would take months for them to get fixed, and often the fix would kill off an entire strategy, which makes the game even harder to balance. I haven't played in a while now, but I have no reason to think they're doing things differently now than they were in the Patron Warrior days.
The thing that'd bring me to the game (or any Blizzard game) would be Blizzard giving the middle finger to activision.
Fuck activision, I'm not giving them my money or time.
Seriously, fuck activision with a cactus.
It would help, if they’d delete this moron card Deathstalker Rexxar.
The game is very expensive I just don't craft new decks cause they will just change so often so I rely on which legendaries I get on pack.
also I can't recommend the game to ANYONE by how expensive it is
make the game more accessible, just lower the greedy dust economy, or better make the "40 dust pack" much less common that thing is so annoying.. oppening packs only for them to be the minimum possible outcome and that being the COMMON CASE is the part that annoys me the most TBH.
I still play the game, but I would greatly appreciate the ability to buy Wild packs with gold. It really bothers me that you pulled them from the store.