I played hearthstone(HS) since when it came out and stopped playing hearthstone since last year (january 2019). Here is a summary of what i think is the cause for the decline of the HS audience and blizzard as a whole:
- #1: lack of social interaction for HS. This is the most important one. No chat and no game lobby. The lack of making friends and thus no community is the #1 decline. After playing for a long time I was feeling a void because of no social activities. - #2 COSTS: Even if you spend 200 euros each set and play regularly you can’t get even get the majority of the meta decks. Resulting in less variety for players and pay to win. Also the set rotations were way to quick (its better now). -#3: Boring game modes. For some reason blizzard is focusing in every game they make mostly on solo content. It baffles me that there are no fun gamemodes in HS especially multiplayer like: 2v2, two headed dragon, free for all and so on. This would make the game in my opinion so much more fun, diverse and interesting. (If this is not possible on phones, make it computer only). I find every single adventure quests boring. Lastly a personal preference, HS is not in line with the World of warcraft story and always seemed strange me, but this is subjective. - #4: BLIZZARD: Blizzard made really good games in the past: Warcraft 2 & 3, World of Warcraft, Diablo series and even overwatch was fun in the beginning and getting a massive audience. But lack of interaction with the community really started showing since the peak of world of warcraft cataclysm. Blizzard communicates to little with their audience in general and for this reason buffs or nerfs are to slowly implemented or not even happening at all (HS is doing a better job now, compared to 2 years ago). Blizzard wants to include and cater as many people as they can to make revenue, but this comes with a cost. They neglect their core audience, Blizzard games are becoming a: to childish b: to simple and most important c: to SOLITAIRY. All above with the “you think you do, but you don’t”, “don’t you have mobile phones?” and cherry on the pie Hong Kong is the cause of the audience leaving Blizzard and their games since people can only endure stuff to a certain extent. Blizzard still has a massive older player audience, who loved blizzard games last decennia. See for example the resurge of wow classic. People really hope Blizzard will listen and become succesfull again, but Blizzard’s greediness for money and short focus on money makes it very hard for people to keep continue loving this once beloved company.
I am curious. Anyone has data or sources saying HS audience is declining? Somehow WoW still is profitable enough that new stuff comes out like clockwork for some 15+ years. And ppl had beeen saying WoW’s was on the verge of death, time after time.
There really isn’t any reliable data on number of accounts/players available to the public. One proxy metric commonly used is number of viewers on Twitch, since it can generally correlate with the size of the playerbase (since there is presumably a linear relationship between number of people playing the game and number of people watching streamers play the game). By that metric, Hearthstone’s popularity has been declining, although the data I’ve seen isn’t clear whether the decline is steady, or merely a correction from an abnormally large spike in popularity during the Year of the Mammoth.
If this is true, then you are only counting the devoted fans. As far as we know, the devoted never match up with the casuals. I count myself as a casual. I check in from time to time, and then go back to OW or other Blizz games. When that bored me, I reentered HS. Casuals don’t watch streams, don’t obsessed. We would pop up to ask questions, sounded like noobs, then be gone.
So then, we are all speculating. Why then speculators sounded so damn sure that their hunches are 100% correct even though they only had flimsiest evidence?
I fully agree with you on the sorely lacking interaction in the game. You’ll eventually find the game as engaging as solitaire, bridge or chess. Sure every match of hearthstone is far more different than them, but it is just as player-interactive as these games are. One-dimensional play (arena/BG/casual/ranked/solo, all non-player interactive).
I had suggested ways to spice things up such as guild wars etc, only to be met with vehement rejection by 2 or 3 neophobia players who bothered to speak up. As with many things in life such as politics, the silent majority ruined things by keeping their silence.
On the expensive entry cost for new players - i think that is sufficiently obvious to everyone.
exactly, it feels like solitaire, but even worse, it also feels like censorship. Only happy thoughts, no room for flame. I understand this is blizzard’s attempt to fight toxicity, but it doesn’t feel humane in the end. If people go overboard with toxic behaviour or racism i.e. , why not be able to report them and those people get suspended or banned.
No it is not many many people do not want ANY social interaction period. Heck there is a large segment of the population that wants AUTO-SQUELCH and Squelches every single game. If I want social interaction I will call my real life friends or go play my MMO.
Rest I somewhat agree with but you can’t prove #1 so stop trying to impose your desires on others.
Disagree with you on this one Korona1. I would love for an in-game chat window. Honestly I think there’s room for both…give players an Auto-squelch and an in-game chat with and Auto-ignore for anyone that’s not on your friends list option. Seriously though…I would love to be able to tell people how bad it is to lean on a crutch card like Zephyrs every time he’s played… I’d probably have to macro a reply it happens so frequently.
Your not wanting chat to be social your wanting chat you troll people who do things you don’t agree with (and that is prolly one of the reasons they don’t allow in game chat)
Also in game chat (if implemented) should ONLY be allowed on non standard/wild ladder because people could use it to throw games. This is not an MMO or Action RPG this is a card game and if you want to talk to people use the friend list it already has.
I took a very long break from HS probably just before Rise came out. I had zero cards but I did have previous block of cards to build a deck. Now such block cycled out once Outcast hit so I literally couldn’t make any decent deck.
Additionally my 11 year old son got into the game. Point here is ridiculously expensive to obtain enough cards to stand a chance. In game rewards seems light compared to other games.
Lastly in game chat would unfortunately promote trolling and possibly bad language to the younger audience. It also slows down game play and we want people queuing faster.
I really wish they would do something like lobbies, guilds, etc. I mean they just have to make it completely optional so there isn’t much concern for trolling, bad language, etc.
For example what if I wanted to play some friendly games now? Going through my friends list aksing “hey, do you want to play?”, “hey, do you want to play?”, “hey, do you want to play?” until I find someone? I certainly won’t do that anymore. I use the Reddit Discord because that’s way better for finding people that actually want to play some friendly games instead of like Ranked or whatever.
And what if someone is completely new to the game? Right now it’s like “everyone for themselves”. I mean wouldn’t it be nice if there would be some social element there just in case people don’t want to go this “lone wolf” way? Although I guess pretty much is netdecking anyways. But just for those who actually care for their duel partners and such. Wouldn’t that be much better?
But I guess very many are just “tryhards”, climbing ladder, getting salty whenever they lose, feeling great and awesome when they win and when they are in higher ranks, etc., etc. Is this really what it’s all about? Without any social stuff it certainly would seem so from the outside I imagine. But you know, P2W, they spending more money, etc. Would it even hurt profits when they implement something like that? So annoying… I can only hope they will eventually do it. I would even pay for it.
It’s not censorship like Nemdraz stated. I don’t need to talk to my opponent. I could add him afterward as I often would with close games. Or I would talk to my buddies observing my matches or when I observe them. Those interactions are good enough for me and possibly for many like me. Matches often ended with wild RNG and I would often be sooo mad because Raganros would rather go for my face than my 2 minions. So mad that I would have nothing nice to say about my lucky opponent. So this lack of interaction saved us both from further grief.
As for in-game guild thing, the UI team often stressed how simplified they wanted the interface to be. This was their goal ever since Day 1. It took me aback when the shop screen actually expanded to full screen rather than that tiny window. So maybe they have changed their minds. Maybe in the future they might think about going for a more complex UI, but so far, they made good on their goals of keeping things as minimal as possible.
If you want to refer to me wanting to voice my thoughts on certain cards as trolling then I suppose that is your right Korona1, However instead of just spewing forth vitriolic nonsense that will never convince anyone of my point I try to keep my objections more constructive than critical. Making fun of people won’t convince them a card is bad, making a sound logical point is more my style.
Korona made fair points. in chess tourneys or matches, any talking would consider be taunting, throwing people off their game. This is no different. Should not be available.
@eureyleia and @Korona1
I understand your concerns in game chat, both of you have valid points. Would you both also be against a game lobby? Like what they have in warcraft 3?
About both your conerns, just the option for a ingame chat won’t hurt the players who don’t want it. Maybe have different options for chats in game:
People who want to be able in chat can check mark a box to do so.
Same goes for people who don’t want chat in game have a option to mute all in chat (before game in settings or ingame only if they prefer)
I would also like to have a option where you can mute in game and when the game is finished chat opens up if you want to so people can suggest eachothers mistake for example, if people flame you can report them.
@Korona1 Stating many many people don’t want to have any social interaction in game, on what is that based? Do you have the figures? Just because you personally don’t want it is not an argument itself. In fact it’s a fallacy ;)(Argumentum ad ignorantiam)
Totally agree with Nemdraz there. The options could be laid out there and the community could decide for itself whether we wanted to subject ourselves to each other’s random opinions!! What a grown-up concept! How mature we could all be!!