Firstly I do appreciate the developers seemingly doing more since the rise of shadows; the free legendary was nice, we got a few card pack bundles all good.
What I think this shows though is what alot of use suspected Hearthstone is obviously not doing very well. The revenue dropped by half last year which is still £300 million more than 2 years previous but the game is significantly more expensive now. The stream numbers also indicate this as alot of the big streamers have jumped ship and the reveal streams in particular getting what I would consider poor viewership.
My main problems with the game at the moment are
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Uninspired designs lately. Some people may disagree but I thought the mechanics introduced within the last 3 expansions are obvious boring and haven’t really added much to the game. You see alot more interesting stuff in the user generated content.
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Lazy developers. I did note they have made more of an effort but it seems too little to late. When Dean sent the email asking what would get players back he received the same answers that they got the last 2 times and email like that was sent . We haven’t got any new modes or play styles, the game has not been refreshed in any way except for the star thing on ladder which was ok. I know they created the free single player stuff which was ok the first time; far too much reliant on rng and luck but decent for free. Then we got 2 more versions of it and now a third one which we have to pay for which brings us onto my next point
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Too expensive. they increased the price but you don’t get a better experience. In the uk the individual darlaron (sp) wings here £8 each which is just not worth it. With packs being ridiculously priced as well. The new cards even annoyed me a but. If they are going in classic at this point just give them to people; they didn’t purely to get you to buy the classic packs again.
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Nerfs. They always seem to ignore obviously broken cards for far too long and in a lot of cases they never fix them, looking at you DK’s. How has dr boom not been nerfed yet. I don’t care about win percentages it is boring to play over and over again, same with death rattle hunter.
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Ladder. Boring after 2 days now of an expansion coming out. Usually you would get experimentation for 2 weeks but after 2 days you just play the same decks over and over and over and over again and its boring. People may thing ladder is diverse because you have different classes being used but most have exactly the same play style and the paper rock scissors nature of ladder is tiresome. Not saying every deck should be able to easily beat very other but at least have a chance. Maybe chnage the sets for a week, maybe change the ladder format, do something !!!
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Wild. Its just a mess at the moment and there refusal to balance it means they might as well scrap this mode.
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The game engine is clearly very buggy. It clearly caches alot and gets stuck (I know someone will say where the data is to back this up) but there is far too many instances where stuff like this happens every time I play. It needs some work.
Ok done. I just want to clarify I do not think hearthstone is a terrible game or anything but I used to get really excited when a new expansion comes out and would play way after doing my daily’s but now most of the time I can’t even be bothered to do that. In going after they casual market they have created a game where there is barely a skill gap anymore and too much of the game is decided by quite frankly bullship rng. Minion combat has because less and less important and the game has become more solitaire based. I don’t have all the answers to fix it but they need to do something as I don’t think Hearthstone will die but I think it will do a wow plateau at much lower numbers of players and stay there.
Note: The class identity stuff was a joke. Half the classes basically have the same identity. Maybe actually put a tiny bit of effort in and really think what is the difference between them and what play styles you really want to push rather than 5 classes can have swarm mechanics, I know the play styles can be different but zoo is zoo and it basically plays the same.
and final note: please delete cold light oracle from the game or at least make it untargetable by spells as the mill rouge is the worst deck in the game imo. You should never have a deck that certain playstyles can just never beat unless they get stupidly lucky. Its also an obnoxious card that requires 0 thought to play most of the time. this is a moan, screw this card
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why not create adventure set with extras. For example : bring your buddy and fight against some creatures or whatever…its so single based… sometimes you want to have an co-op mode where you and your friends play together not against each other…
I predict this game is toast unless they go back to what made it good to begin with. Clear class identities and straight forward cards without all of the wanky RNG
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Right! RNG kinda ruins the fun!
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I think there is nothing wrong with rng cards in itself. It’s a card game and there is always gonna be rng of the draw anyway. Law of large numbers should apply.
The problem is very polarized rng. Like it’s no fun that everything prior that has happened in the game gets erased by Yogg-saron rng. And it is no fun losing the game turn 2 because the opponents Rogue has Keleseth+Shadowstep.
To me there are a lot of problems with HS currently, which is why I dont play much anymore.
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Like you mentioned, class identities. Everyone mostly just play tempo decks right now. It’s the almost the only deck-type on ladder, it just comes in different flavors.
In standard we used to have cool stuff like Hand-lock playing with its life total to cheat out huge minions. Freeze mage stall+burn deck. Zoo Swarm deck. Miracle Rogue a deck that draws like crazy to get to its minion based combo. Druid who ramps into mana advantage, control warrior who looks to out ressource the opponent and win in fatique etc.
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Blizzard is pushing HARD to control what deck types are created with tribes and stuff. Killing all creativity. Deck building is just not fun anymore. And like you said, the meta is figured out after 2 days.
Instead of pack fillers, give us interesting cards that makes us think, and are powerful enough to want to build a deck around.
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Too much value generation. Todays decks just keeps going. It used to be the case that aggro decks would run out of gas and start topdecking back in the day. Now they just continue into like turn 20. And control vs control isn’t about ressource management anymore. Now it’s a game of constantly throwing cards away because your hand is at 10 cards.
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No deck weaknesses. Another fun direction in deck building is coming up with ways to counter specific decks. Right now it just seems impossible. How do you counter bom hunter? It’s aggressive, have answers to big minions and have a lot of value generation.
In standard you could counter Freeze mage by having tons of heal. Counter control warrior by being even greedier, counter zoolock with tons of aoe, counter handlock with burn dmg, Sorta counter Miracle rogue with taunts.
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Like “always Huffer except when you need him” Animal Companion (basic)?
Like “no, not THAT card” Soulfire (basic)?
Like “three to the face” Mad Bomber (classic)?
Like “they always take my best one” Mind Control Tech (classic)?
Like “kill in the hope of a Doomsayer” Piloted Shredder (GvG)?
Do I need to go on?
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BigHugger is correct. Hearthstone was never a good game.
The Main Problem is:
Blizzard is a greedy, capitalistic Company.
Thats fine. We all are somewhat.
But what this means is:
They want to have as much customer as possible.
This means: Kids. 8-12 Year old Kids wanna play and win. And Blizzard have to make this working as a money-hungry company that is giving actually a sh*** on deep gameplay.
I just wanna sell my account and jump to any other card game that is offering gameplay instead of beeing a child friendly card-game
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Good or not good depends on what you want out of a game?
Do you want pure random? Go throw some dice.
Do you want pure strategy and no random at all? Try chess.
Do you want a mix of strategy and random? Hearthstone might be to your liking. I do like it. Others don’t.
It’s a good thing that there are thousands of games on the market to choose from. Nobody needs to play a game they don’t like.
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Could you provide a link to the source of this numbers?
Well said, and again correct. This is why Hearthstone’s player count has been cut in half in just a couple of years.
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You mentioned boring.
I logged in for the Tavern Brawl. Googled week of X tavern brawl. Saw reddit says make a broken token druid deck. I don’t have that so I made other.
My opponent? Broken token druid deck. They had the coin went second. Yep it was GG after turn 2.
How exciting.
Please provide a link to the source of this claim.
Or are you just making stuff up as you go?
Doing a play 20 druid cards Quest against a Pogo Rogue.
Early board controls start the play once again: Backstab, Eviscerate, Sap if buffed. Pogo hits the board and is shadowstepped. Lab Recruiter is played after Stealth Shark is dropped to load up the deck with hoppers. Then Vanish hits the board.
Now back to Stealth Shark and Super bunny making. Now back to repeating the process they just did. Look at my 25/25 bunnies! Good think I have rush lackeys to take out any taunt of any health size health minion in my way. Or sap. Or Quadruple battlecry x2 dmg lackeys.
Betting one of the 4 cards in the hand is Zilliax waiting to be played if it gets scary.
Good thing its all random and no game plays exactly the same as the last match vs the same kind of deck.
Oh wait! It does.
I would but this stupid forum wont let me.
It wouldn’t let me post any links. Just search hearthstone revenue down. Super data have an article on it and you can find quite a few others detailing revenue plummeting
If your trust level is too low to directly post links, you can always use the Preformatted text tags to do so (the </> button in the formatting bar). It would look like this:
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Morgl_the_Oracle
I think it’s probably toast/milk mode/maintenance mode right now, even. Notice how no one really cares or talks about hearthtone anymore, that’s because it’s what, 5 years old at this point? Either you sunk a bunch of money into the game and you’re still obligated to play it (sunk cost fallacy), or you aren’t playing because you’ve moved on to better or more interesting games. Not a great place to be in.
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