Remember they’re completely stiffing casual players right now with weekly quest nerfs, exclusive pre-order cards, and game mode removals
Do not give HS team any positive attention until we see a full revert and an apology.
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On the one hand, I agree not to get excited. The changes are just as likely to make the game worse as they are to make it better. Ultimately I think that because they didn’t know what they were doing then, and they won’t know what they’re doing soon, such that the ultimate outcome will be random; it could be better, but if so by luck.
On the other hand, I don’t care about your boycott 
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I’m remaining optimistic, or at the least trying to. The announcement does a fair job at making it sound like they’re getting their heads out of their behinds. But, yes, the ones telling us they’re working on fixing issues with player agency are the same ones that have brought us to this point.
We’ll see. All I can really say. 
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I think players also need to understand how corporations like this work. The department that looks at how to milk your wallet is different than the department that looks at final balance, different than the people that are responsible for game features and game modes, and different than the people that are responsible for card design. The people in one department might be doing something messed up, while people in another department can still make a really nice decision that addresses a big problem successfully. Different departments work with different goals in mind; even though it all aligns with the ultimate goal of stakeholders (making money). So the devs are perfectly capable of delivering on this promise while continue to paywall cards and milk your wallet.
Whether they will actually deliver remains to be seen.
How weird…op clearly stated the boycott was directed at actiblizz.
Unless YOU are actiblizz, or you aren’t participating in that boycott…there’s no reason for you to care. Or that anyone would care about you not caring.
But still answer to the same scummy executives.
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I know Scrotie. That’s fine. If anyone truly cares about longevity and good responsible teams, they’ll boycott too.
Financial team =/= the Balance team. Unfortunately the only way to punish the financial team is to punish the whole game without our payment or time.
Yes and no. On the one hand, it is true that separate departments have separate goals and everything–the only way to communicate issues with the financial team is through non-compliance with hearthstone in general.
Deathly I’m afraid.
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well I can appreciate that the lead came out and acknowledged the problem and took responsibility. how the cards that led to this atrocious meta were printed in the first place is beyond me, but i can appreciate that.
I’m not letting the patch go through. Finally back to triple digits thanks to shaman
I’ll play on this patch till I get dc-ed at 5 am
Having run large games that do live ops for over a decade now, the breakdown typically is like this:
General Manager (GM) or Executive Producer (EP) owns all departments (it’s usually a GM). The departments are typically Product Management (PM), Game Design, Eng, Art, QA, and Community/Marketing.
The GM will set their overall Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the start of the year and before each quarter. In the case of a company like Blizzard, which is owned by a much larger company, the GM’s goals may be handed down to them. Typically for games there is a revenue goal/metric, retention goal/metric, and some sort of player happiness metric. There may also be goals around improving operational efficiency (lowering costs, making less mistakes that get caught in QA, etc). Each department will also set their OKRs and KPIs on a yearly and quarterly basis.
Within the PM team, there is usually a split between Revenue and Growth PMs. The EP or Lead PM will set the PM team’s goals based on what is needed for the overall goals. Revenue PMs are the ones running tests on everything in the Store tab. Growth PMs are working directly with the Design and Eng (and by extension, Art) teams to build new features. There may also be Technical PMs who focus primarily on analytics.
Sometimes the lead of the Design team runs the show and the PMs take their cues from that person; that’s pretty rare though. Ultimately it still nets out at the same thing; everyone is either directly or indirectly concerned with money and every decision is, in the end, weighed against the best return on investment (ROI). All teams are executing against a roadmap that is stack ranked by ROI. Revenue ROI is achieved either through direct sales of things or improving the lifetime value (LTV) of a player.
This setup is true for nearly every game company operating. If you think a game company treats its players really awesome, it’s likely because the data shows them that the LTV of a player is most important. If you think a company is just doing cash grabs, getting dollars now is more important than LTV. This is typical of games that are on a schedule to sunset and you’re just trying to milk as much out of it before then.
There’s a lot more to running a game team but that’s the basics of it. In the end, it all boils down to money and all teams are contributing to that.
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Nothing to object, I just meant the person/people that are behind these changes are not the same people that changed the weekly rewards. They might actually not even like the change either, they’re just dealing with a different aspect of the game. Managing the amount of gold that is given out for free is not their concern. But yeah, the work of all of them boils down to making a profitable product and they all follow management objectives. The thing is many players just mix it all up together and lash out at any dev for decisions they might not be responsible for. And it probably sucks to be in their shoes when that happens.
Do you have any suggestions other than a pure boycott to make the financial team actually pay attention?
Not really. The thing is, boycotting has a very poor record of ever working. People don’t randomly coordinate out of shared principles or outrage, particularly when they don’t have the certainty of their actions being consistent with the actions of everyone else. That’s also why workers don’t go on strike alone and recommend others to follow suit. They first organize themselves in unions to coordinate their action. Consumers have a harder time doing something like this. The only thing you can do is stop playing if you’re unhappy with it, but I wouldn’t have much hope for any coordinated boycott.
What I do point out is, that if the balance team makes a good decision, it is only fair to also give them that positive feedback to show that this is something you are happy with. Despite these other very bad decisions the company has made.
Isn’t it also fair to wait and see if their decision was actually beneficial before We jump on the praise wagon?
I have listened to the same old rhetoric from this team many times over.
And as someone else mentioned, this in no way forgives what they did with the Quest system, which was aimed purely at making F2P more difficult.
Boycot doesn’t have to be organized, it can spontaneously happen with many of the standard players (or whichever mode is problematic) simply playing less of that mode and switch to other modes or different games - it will still show up in their statistics and it will hurt.
I’m 100% certain they’re in touch with that and do their best with this game. This patch seems reasonably good except for 2 things which should have been done differently, so that’s a proof in favor of that argument. They might not know what they’re doing, but they’re doing their best.
Sorry you can’t one-trick Quest Mage in wild anymore and have to play the slightly harder giants variant. My bad G take this 
as a reward to your hard suffering mage identity.
I have never played Quest Mage, lol.
No one despises that deck more than I do.
Clearly; you know very little about me.
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I’m FTP and none of this affected me. If you seriously pre-ordered that bundle to get the corridor sleeper before everyone else you need to make better life choices.
If you are f2p then it absolutely affects you as you now have to invest twice the time as before for practically the same rewards.
How so? I completed the weekly quests within my normal play time period.