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?
The farming speed is fine, but the reward you get from paying is ridiculous.
For the price of a fully released A-game, I don't even get 25% of the cards in a freaking expansion
Step 1: Stop viewing the people playing this game as morons who will get confused if there are too many deck slots...
Step 2: Stop printing one-button-win cards...
Step 3: Take a few risks to encourage new strategies... for example: Cards you can play on your opponent's turn if enough mana is still available, or an actual graveyard with cards that access and interact with cards in the graveyard. How about a game mode where deck sizes are larger than 30 cards?
Lastly, the games I play the most, are the ones where the developers respect my time the most.... 10 gold for 3 wins is an insult. You can still cap the daily gold limit at 100 gold, but make it easier for me to reach that cap. I don't have time to win 30 games every day.
1) change the three expansion per year formula. It take far too long between the release of the next expansion. I read a lot of good ideas in this regard.
2) new modes (tournament, sealed, a mode where you are allowed to draft decks with only certain expansions - that would be simple, fresh and fun to me)
3) statistics - they be optional, if you want them you flag something in the option menu and you have access to them.
4) new tribes - at least one per year. They create a lot of flavor.
5) keywords - do not limit keywords to only one expansion. It really makes no sense to me to have just few cards with that keyword.
6) if you pay a approx 50 - 80 euros per expansion you should be able have almost all the cards.
The expansion release schedule takes WAY too long compared to how fast the meta settles down and becomes stale, starting a two month drought period where nothing new happens and people just quit to play other games until a new expansion is announced, only this time people are getting tired of this cycle and are not coming back.
They've tried to fix that by nerfing OP cards more consistently, but unless they just outright kill all tier 1 decks the game just won't feel fresh enough. The best example is Odd Paladin, a deck that was nerfed many times but remains tier 1, such a thing should never be allowed to happen! Constant nerfing isn't the right approach, but even if it was, it's clear they don't even know how to do it properly!
It'd help a lot if they started buffing weak cards instead of just nerfing OP ones, there are so many fun cards with great design in Heartstone that were never played just cuz they never got the little push they needed to become competitive, tons of wasted potential. Making a Reverse WIld Rotation (bringing back a few wild cards for a set period of time) would also help make the game fresh and give a second chance to interesting cards that never made it into constructed
The best meta in HS history was Un'goro by a large margin, simply cuz there were no tier 1 decks in that meta! With the exception of Warlock, every class had 2 or 3 strategies that worked well w/o opressing others too much, it was like a dream come true. Tier 1 decks are a plague and should be removed whenever they start shaping the meta, cuz THAT is when the game gets boring!
Achievements, more game modes, stop printing infinite value cards and easy OTK/combo tools.
Hearthstone was potentially my favorite game. I don't play it all anymore.
Allow free to play players to use the pre constructed decks for free. They don't keep the cards and can't tweak the decks, but this would be nice for completing quests with classes you don't have any cards for.
Hearthstone costs $200 - $300 per expansion to keep up with if you want to fully unlock the game. It would be nice to have an option to unlock 2 of every common, rare, and epic and give just enough dust to craft a legendary for $79. And to make legendary cards less core to all decks. I know this will never happen. And I know I will never come back.
Missions / Achievements
Example:
Legendary mission : Win a Rank 15 or higher" game after you played Millhouse Manastorm; 400 Dust;
Epic Mission: Win 18 Casual or Ranked games with Wizbang the Wonderful; Special Cardback;
Rare Mission: Win a Casual or Ranked game using only Common" cards; Free Arena;
Common mission: Play 25 Cards in one Ranked game; 2 Common - Rare Cards;
These mission can either rotate monthly or they can make like 100+ missions & add more later;
Again, this was just an example, so don't take it too seriously about the missions & rewards for them i suggested. :)
Make weekly community quests(server based): for example: Play 2 million Deathwish units. and if community successfully finish it, everyone gets some reward.
Keep a separate nerf list for wild and standard
There are so many decks that require minimal skill level in the game and can beat you regardless of your gameplay. Some decks are built to one shot you and there isn't anything you can do to stop it except burn them down as fast as possible or force them into overdraw. This makes certain classes more difficult to play and pushes cards that players enjoy outside the realm of being useful. Balance is the key. I have had numerous people quit because they were like nope, not another odd warrior. Not again. I have quit myself once I realize ok, obviously this is Mecha'thun and I have a control deck...so screw it. Could I get lucky in the end and have them play it incorrectly? Yes. Or I could waste 5 mins knowing that eventually he will draw all the right cards and one shot me. Why? Because I unluckily chose the wrong deck against a randomized enemy...
Rollback all the nerfs since beta.
Do expansions without "nerf-need" politic.
Make players eager to login and play every day! How?
The above is inspired by an android card game that forced me to never miss a day to login and play for the last 390 days so far and counting.
I'd like to know what is the game you were inspired by
Captain Tsubasa: Dream Team
There's a lot of great ideas in this thread. I hope Blizzard is listening!
They are not. They never do.
@Dean Ayala: I will keep it simple.
1. Instead of nerfing, start buffing some of the cards.
2. Move away from the rock-paper-scissors approach.
3. Make this game as good as it can be instead of giving us bits and pieces every once in a while. Having one (large) feature expansion every year, that doesn't have to do with new cards and such, can actually be done.
4. Move away from "let's see what changes to make so we get more money for as little work as possible" and go back to your old selves, when there was a balance between income and quality/design/etc.
5. Move away from designing overpowered cards when each expansion hits, just so you have what to nerf later. This goes hand in hand with all of the previous points.
6. Lower the time investment needed to have fun in this game. I know you want to cater to two crowds and it is hard, but you can always start rewarding playing the game,not just winning. Right now I'd rather spend my time playing something else, because it's too frustrating to lose and takes too much of my time to do anything meaningful for me. This again goes together with the point regarding the design of the game.
7. Design your own random number generator and use it. Or stop doing so if you already do that.
7? Whats wrong with their RNG implementation?
To never print cards like Genn/Baku ever again