I was browsing on my phone and found this:
Apparently, the player base is declining in great numbers (my mobile platform?). I have the evidence to prove this, At least on my mobile platform. Samsung devices have a gaming app called “galaxy Launcher” it tracks how many active users there are for a particular game in the US within a given period. I don’t know how accurate this app is but it gives a glimpse into Hearthstone’s active player base in the Samsung US platform.
here are the numbers:
32 weeks ago: 201k
24 Weeks ago: 216K
16 Weeks ago: 174k
8 weeks ago: 122k
This week: 82k
what are your thoughts?
I checked other games too if they show a similar pattern and they do not.
IDK, I was still playing 32 weeks ago, 24 weeks ago, quit about 16 weeks ago.
The number of complaints seem to be going up but maybe that’s only because of me seeing the things from an outsider perspective for the first time in a long time.
According to google trends and google searches this last expansion was the most popular expansion in the span of a year by alot. However, the graph also shows the dip of enjoyment after expansion to be much steeper than before. But those numbers could be just because people came back to the expansion due to the recent pandemic and people finding out the game blows complete doodoo and uninstalling right away.
(Also I noticed that there is always a spike in the population of HS whenever it’s a first expansion of the year. ) Last time HS was this popular was also the apirl expansion of 2019
Were there any recent changes on how Samsung measures number of active players? That could explain also explain the dip. I just ask because 200k active players just on one platform seems very high to me.
I think there’s a validity to many of the complaints though.
As a player base we can love the game and still be annoyed that it isn’t as good as it could be, suggesting what can be done about it. That’s how a game improves. We do need to be more constructive in our complaints though.
The current state of Hearthstone isn’t the best, but I personally wouldn’t quit as it is still by far the best card game out there when you look at the sum of it’s parts.
I’ve been playing since 2015. I made the comment this week for the first time that HS has peaked and will/is seeing an irreversible decline. This is why Blizzard added the first new class since its release. This is no coincidence. WoW went through the same thing. They had to merge battle groups and servers from a gradual loss of millions of subs, and the trend continues.
No idea about any changes. However, the smartphone share for the Samsung in the US is about 23%. and the US has about 270 Million smartphone users. so that puts 62 million on Samsung platform. quite possible for these numbers. At the peak of these given numbers, about 0.34% of Samsung owners played HS in its 216k peak. not including the tablets.
Is it possible the app is just being used less? The best argument for Hearthstone’s health that I’ve seen lately is the Twitch tracker for Hearthstone:
Can’t link, you’ll have to google it.
This shows numbers recovering since the Dragons expansion last fall. But it looks like they are dropping off kind of steeply again in recent weeks.
Well when the game doesn’t involve players adding anything to it, why play it?
Players are not contributing to their wins and losses. Everything is laid for them on Auto mode.
For Example; I faced a Highlander Libram Paladin. You might say oh here he goes again with the RNG manipulation. Yes I am and why? Because it IS repetition!
A deck that only has 1 in 30 of every card in it should not flow like Highlander decks do.
1 in 30 cards in the top 10 of the deck. Sir Finley n turn 2. What a shocker. Zephyrs for a board Clear on turn 8 - what a shocker.
Libram of Justice on turn 5 for a board clear by reducing all my minions health to 1. What a shocker. The Aldor Attendant, yep.
The Bronze Explorer. Always there in the beginning.
And as always, DragonQueen Alexstrasza turn 9.
Maybe peoples to playing HS because its so linear and predictable. And people discover its not them playing the game. Its the game playing against itself.
The game is trash right now, its bound to lose players. Those who stay enjoy their Brand of braindead netdecks and the whole “who vomits their broken mana cheats First”.
Allow me to add the perspective of an older player who left for a substantial amount of time and then returned.
I started playing at release when there were no expansions. I leveled a number of classes to 60 and have multiple classes at gold, mage sitting at almost 4000 wins (and I quit back in 2017). I decided to give HS another go as my usual go-to card game has abandoned development. I purchased the Tavern Pass and the latest expansion story. After unlocking DH and playing through the story, I used one of the premade HS decks and ventured out first to Standard, hitting silver something or other? Not sure what that equates to as this ranking system is new to me. However I did notice that they no longer show your opponent’s rank, which almost surely means you’re being matched against much higher opponents AND that correlates to fewer people playing the game.
That, however, didn’t bother me as either your deck is good or it isn’t, and you’ll lose to even fringe players with poorly built decks. No, what ultimately made me realize that HS wasn’t going to be my new CCG hobby was the sheer amount of power creep that has occurred since my last attempt. Almost every card has to do something: plus 1 attack, copy this, summon that, shuffle 2 of this, convert hero power into that, I mean it’s ridiculous. Priest is STILL a problem, and it was four years ago. Wild Mode is an absolute mess. It’s everything that’s wrong with poorly tuned CCGs. And there’s no silver lining: at some point the layers of power creep are so deep that it would require a restructuring of the game no veteran player would endure. I have a lot of good memories of HS from back in the day but this game doesn’t resemble that game, at all.
Having to re-buy the game (basicly full retail price of a new game) every 4 months or so is not a valid strategy, specially if you want new players that need to spend 4 times that if they want to stand a chance at all. THe powercreep in this game is so insane that you can not compete with decks that was viable just a few months ago. Sure you can go F2P route but you will always be behind and you need to play every day for a lot of time to keep up.
The game is killing it self with the powercreep so people buy new packs of the new expansion.
I like the game, i hate the powercreep and i hate the OTK decks.
They are built to functiona nd have a flow even with 1 card of each only. You dont build a deck to be terrible unless you draw the exact card at the exact time. You need cards that can fill in for others.
