I had been with this games(and this forum) for quite some time.
We have seen multiple angry, unsatisfied, etc posts from players.
We have seen ideas and suggestions from players.
We have also seen dev made “promises” and “statements”.
We have seen dev made improvements (add Tavern Brawl Mode, increase quest gold, implement no repeated legendary, etc)
But, as the topic questions,
Are players too demanding or are developers under performing?
Those two are not mutually exclusive.
I feel like players are too demanding.
There’s no such thing as “too demanding” since they can go ahead and ignore any demands they want. And if ignoring a demand costs them business, then I guess it wasn’t “too demanding” at all.
Ways the people who run this game are under performing:
I’m sure I could think of a lot more, but why bother?
I mean, this isn’t like a kid expecting steak and lobster every night for dinner.
This is a product that people are spending real money on. Depending on the part of the world you hail from, that money you spend on this game is pretty considerable compared with the rest the rest of the world, considering that unlike steam, actiblizz actually adjusts UP to pass on the cost to the players. Is it too much to ask that what people get actually reflects the investment?
That isn’t to say that there haven’t been improvements (as the op has pointed out), but they softballed on the AMA, and avoided a ton of the longstanding questions people had. Let’s face it, team 5 are ghosts around here, even before brode, woo, and other more vocal and present members left who actually were present at events and you at least knew on some level there was at least some genuine enthusiasm about the game.
Now…as the metrics continue to fall, what exactly does team 5 intend to do to continue to make hearthstone fun and exciting for players, old and new? I heard a lot of the usual “we hear you” PR speak…but not a lot of what they really intend to do on their end to actually show they’re taking steps to improve the game.
That says “underperformance.” Especially when you consider their latest moves aren’t really to improve the game, so much as it is to appease the censorship board in a certain country so they can start mining their pockets.
I have read a few posts that triggered the question.
From a personal view, I see an effort from the dev to improve as we see things such as (current) free solo adventures, tavern brawl, brawliseum, no repeat legs, gold/dust festivals, etc.
However, from one of the posts I read, there is no significant upgrade in terms of game development since Tavern brawl was introduced as the game approaches it’s 5th year? We can see new stuffs, some add on but feels like a repackaging of something we seen before.
HS trying to maintain its current F2P model is not easy, as we can see the game exploring avenues to generate both player-ship and revenue. HS with its huge initial success and following, naturally generates a lot of expectations. Dev may also have big ambitions with much “promises” and statements.
In the mist of all the confusing demands, expectations, deadlines, expenditure/revenue, etc, I felt that one thing is lost.
The connection between the game(and dev) with its players.
Players does not feel that they are being heard.
Developers (may) feel that they are not being appreciated.
The more vocal players becomes more “demanding”, the less vocal tends to shy away from commenting. As the pressure mounts, the dev (may) get more defensive and shy away from engagement. Meanwhile, they may also be bounded by company rules on how much they can say.
Dev can keep releasing new gamemodes, new adventures, new expansions, new stuffs, but it answers only the immediate needs/wants.
As the connection starts to diminish, both parties starts not to understand/ appreciate each other, the end product may not matter anymore.
As I read through the AMA, I can feel the dev trying, but maybe not in the correct direction. I am hopeful that they can succeed and deliver their words, but presently suspicious and unconvinced.
Players will always be players. They come with all shape and sizes, some aggressively demanding and some warmly supporting. But in general, I see a players base comprising of passionate and reasonable people, that can appreciate an honest and genuine interaction with a game they clearly love.
Easily one of the least ambitious/ visionary teams that ever had the privilege to work at Blizzard.
No wonder Brode quit
Let’s take those one at a time:
free solo adventures:
They still need work. The time commitment vs the return is still something that still feels off. Sure, you don’t have to play it…but what’s the point then? Purely optional content with a low “wow” reward is not something with great replay value. Sure one could easily argue that the old system wasn’t great for replay once you cleared heroic…but at least it had legs until you got there. Plus, you could purchase with gold or real money, which gave people options. Something sorely lacking in the current model…where you bang your head against the RNG wall until you finally win your card back.
/deadpan “yay”
Tavern brawl is at least getting more interesting at times…but at others I feel like there isn’t the variety that there used to be. I get it, there’s only so much they can do…but this is also one of the top developers out there (at least they bill themselves as such). If a multibillion dollar company can’t keep it fresh, then we shouldn’t be making excuses for them.
Brawliseum. Well, it was interesting the first time around…but honestly it just means that unless I want to dump gold or real money in it, I’m not playing a whole lot of it that week. The option for it to be a separate thing with a different brawl (which has been asked for repeatedly) doesn’t leave people who don’t want to shell out for multiple runs (or people who finished up) an option for the rest of the week who enjoy the variety of the weekly brawl.
No repeat legs. Well, this was a mixed bag…on one hand, it’s nice not to have multiples of millhouse, on the other it also cut down on the biggest sources of dust that people had outside the rare quests the pop up every once in a great while. Sure, the whole dust to craft ratio is way off but that’s another issue…but that is packaged and sold as a boon to the playerbase, when in fact it was just another way of making sure people had to take even longer to get the cards they wanted…AKA “BUY MORE PACKS!”
Gold/dust festivals, etc. Touched on this already, but here we go: it is nice to see an uptick on these, especially in light of the multiple legendary nerf…but it doesn’t seem like they happen enough to offset it.
That is completely on the business, no matter the industry. Customers can and do show up here every day…it is clear, especially in light of the recent layoffs and especially in light of the bonus (quite large in fact) to someone who has zero contact with customers where the company’s priorities lie. When the game devs go out of their way to avoid answering long standing questions, it shows they aren’t interested in getting to the issues that matter most to the community and have been an issue for a long time. And no, “they’re complex issues that don’t have easy answers” isn’t going to work. Some of these have been going on for years, and they could have addressed easily…if they had made those issues a priority. It’s the procrastinator’s excuse.
I’m not trying to sound uncaring here…but if they are looking for their sense of validation not from the work they are doing, but from their customers, then their priorities are not in the right order. The fact that we are buying their product year in and out and contributing to their bottom line and stock prices IN SPITE OF repeatedly not being listened to should given them some sense of that “appreciation” they’re looking for…but it isn’t enough. We’re supposed to just put up with not being listened to and just keep giving them money in spite of everything and just do it all with a smile…sorry, that’s not how business works. You keep your customers happy, or they stop buying your product. You want something to give you money without any feedback, go to your nearest ATM.
Exactly. There will always be outliers, and actiblizz and their supporters seem to like to use those to paint most of their customers with that broad brush, and it seems that it is no different in this neck of the woods. This is another sign of underperforming team, when these kinds of excuses have to be made to cover for them. A team that is successful can own its mistakes (without the vague nonsense) and not dance around its shortcomings. Take the Final Fantasy online team for example: they new that they had delivered a poor product (“realm reborn” or its predecessor) and when it fell flat, they took their lumps from the playerbase, owned their shortcomings, took their lumps from the playerbase and redoubled their efforts and delivered a better product.
That’s a sharp contrast from the actiblizz approach, which acts more like a government agency in damage control mode at nearly every turn.
Felt the same. Too much of that “forward looking statement” nonsense, not enough real commitment to actually making real and lasting change to make the game better in the long run. Last sentence sums up thoughts on it pretty nicely.
Like the old saying goes: “trust, but verify.”
I think the basics here are you have varying differing kinds of players so some will enjoy OP cards and the such and claim the developers are doing a good job others will say that they hate playing against X cards and find it OP.
There is always a fine line balance between under performing and too demanding players, However I do think that a lot of this goes hand in hand as Blizzard tend to ignore a lot of the player base’s demands across their board of games that I play which is WoW, HotS and HS.
I do think that sometimes that their is a underperforming developers due to the fact that they are releasing 130+ cards for each expansion yet only a very small amount of these cards get into the “meta” each time. This is either a design flaw in Blizzard or they know exactly what they are doing in which case having 80-90 “useless” cards per expansion will mean that people opening packs will have more chances to open “useless” cards instead of the new “meta” ones.
I think the current state of the meta contradicts a lot of what Blizzard claimed they did not want in HS ie… large amounts of damage from the hand yet Mind Blast priest and Shirvallah Paladin still exist.
The community have screamed for the return of Dirty Rat or some form of hand disruption mechanic to prevent combo decks from being able to stall whilst assenbling all their pieces to 1 shot their opponents a great example of this is Druid who can generate obscene amounts of armor whilst stalling the game out with heals and taunts.
So its a bit of both because HS is a hard game to balance because of the RNG effects of cards can outright win a game for a person who may be in a losing position at the time of the card was played, Then the person who was against this card will feel “robbed” of their victory.
To answer your question…yes!
Developers aren’t underperforming, if most of them just got sacked.
devlopers are masively under performing and its easy to prove. i just checked how hs is doing on twitch and right now at 9:23 est hs is # 46! That is a collosal loss of interest! beyond belief actually. an absolute and total failure of the developers and a total loss of confidence buy the players. if hs was a stock and you didnt sell it off a year ago or short it. you would be bankrupt.
just because some finishing buying doesnt mean most did or that they shouldnt give those deals
If you have some evidence that most people wait until well after a set has been released before buying the bulk of their packs, I’d be interested in seeing it. As it is, all I have to go on is my own experience. And that is that every time they give a “deal”, it’s for packs where I bought about half of what I wanted on release day, then did arenas for the other half of what I wanted. At that point (around 70-90 packs), I hit diminishing returns, where most of the cards I get are duplicates, so I prefer to save my gold for the next set instead.
Then, they offer some random deal for half price packs and it’s worthless, since it’s probably only going to yield dust.
If you have a different experience, great. Happy to hear about it. But I bet my experience is closer to what most people do (buy most of their packs on opening day or shortly thereafter).
Or maybe you’re just disagreeing to start a debate because you’re bored…
you do realize there are people who couldnt get many packs on release day
those deals are for them !i wouldnt call it random
and if you keep track of your pitty times those deals could give you more than one legendary
Most of the people who got sacked were customer service and other staff positions (and let’s not forget the massive bonus to the person who has zero contact with the customers!). Not devs. That tells you something about the company’s priorities. Low emphasis on customer service, keeping other staff that aren’t exactly doing a stellar job…and indirectly telling them they have job safety.
Simply put, the game is too expensive for what it offers. Players are asking for ways to make the game cheaper while the devs are finding ways to milk more money from us. It’s all about money here.
When old players are understanding this, they are leaving. New players are being punished hard for lacking the basic cards to craft competitive decks so they don’t stick around for too long.
What do we have then ? A very expensive game that we play against bots, with a calculated win rate for a regular player of about 55% - just enough to keep you hooked, because if you win too much you get bored and quit, if you lose too much you get frustrated and you quit.
What was the biggest mistake ? Deleting our real money that we invested in this game, by creating the Wild dumpster to throw our hardworking earned cards in it.
The logical course of action would of been to create only a few cards every year, balancing the existing ones in a way we don’t feel cheated and robbed when the cards are rotating out. No Wild garbage.
When I look at my paid account and see most of my favorite cards blocked in standard, I don’t feel like playing anymore. What do they do ? They create similar cards to the removed ones, just to milk our money.
All that I can say is NO. I will not buy anything from you again Activision. I will keep playing until I finish my 50.000 dust and that’s it (2 expansions at most).
Thanks! There was something I was trying to get at in my post and you summed it up nicely. At first, the idea of three releases a year sounded good…until I compared it with what we were getting before with the adventures and expansions. Like the no duplicate lengendaries thing, they spun it to sound good…until you realize how much you were missing out with their “better” approach. A lot of those cards from those adventures were good cards that you got without RNG headache of buying a ton of packs and hoping you’d get those cards you needed for your decks.
Now, it’s all about cranking those releases out at such a pace, people barely recover from one set’s worth of purchases (especially on some parts of the world) before the cycle starts again. As you said, it’s by design: to maximize the money spent on the part of the customers and people are being priced out of the game.
…but don’t call it pay to win!
|>.>
<.<
it would been terrible idea to fire the devs of games they profit from the most
Players are too demanding, too ungrateful and full of self-hatred.
“But but but, the developers are not communicating on forums”. Why should they? What will the majority of players do if the developers say “we are happy with the game”? They will start raging harder.
“But players want all 9 classes to have 3-4 different competitive decks. Is it too much to ask?” And if Blizzard makes it happen, then how long until players start asking for a new class? One day, maybe less.
So yeah, Blizzard is doing well by not listening to players.