Saving Duels, here's how. @devs please read <3

Community Discussion
1

Hello Hearthstone community and Dev team,

Duels is a fun mode that allows you to easily grab your favorite expansions mix them together and go in for a quick run or an afternoon of competitive gameplay. Specially to tenured and more senior players, but new players alike.
Spice up your run with crazy treasures and aim for glory. Don’t like Gadgetzan? use Fractured in Alterac and Festival of legends cards only. Revive Koboldas and Catacombs with Titans and Badlands Dragons, etc. Duels is really fun for mechanic testing indeed.

What are the main reasons the mode has a low player percentage and low income?
We got used to the new bucket system which enables crazy stuff, and the new things you have done (dragon druid for example and their treasures ARE AMAZING!) However, we also understand the other side of the things. The monetization system is not any good. Also, you have the players divided in 2 buckets Casual and Heroic, instead of a big competitive play.

What do I suggest that could work?

  • First, instead of keeping the Heroic mode you can buy with gold, add all players to the same pool and just add a Duels-Pass you buy with money. This pass allows you to choose any hero/class you want, or at least from a bigger pool. (Similar to what you do in Battlegrounds.)
    For this you may also want to Remove/change the rewards system, and just give a random reward at wins 4, and 8, (to keep player base engaged) and some special rewards at wins 10,11 and 12. (golden packs or rare cosmetics) This will keep people interested and trying new mechanics, combos and interactions to climb the ladder.

  • Second, COSMETICS, Hearthstone has such a massive amount of cool Hero Skins and animations (now we have epic and legendary skins too) so why not allowing people to buy skins using runestones, and throw some skins in the the rewards after certain wins for people to display.
    People love displaying their cosmetics, so enable finisher attacks, hero skins, and so on to Duels and add them in the store. People play longer when using their favorite hero/portrait and skins. So allow people to use skins and cosmetics with their favorite wild expansions together in the crazy game style they choose.

I believe these changes will make player base and the interest for Wild cards grow, and also Twist, Wild-Ranked and Duels modes will benefit from this.

I’m not a big Wild-ranked player, but I have crafted so many cards just for Duels because the mode is fun, and so do a lot of other players. Duels makes players go and investigate old expansions and bring them back to life, their mechanics, combos, legendaries, and mix them with newer cards for absolutely crazy combos.

I’m sure you want something like this for Twist. Duels is another good way of keeping Wild cards alive and fun, selective-expansion mixing play and combos, deck-growing runs, MMR competitive play, and so much more. This mode allows you and players to test some game-breaking stuff too! Which again, ITS FUN and keeps players in.

@devs please think about it, give it a try, or at least, leave the mode static for us.

Thank you for your attention,

@Everyone, what do you think?

10 Likes
2

I’ll continue to update the codebase for Blizzard for free.

4 Likes
3

No dev will ever read anything posted here. Duels is going away and nothing you do will stop it.

Other than that, um… my condolences?

1 Like
4

Kinda Sad, after years of playing this game all i can say that constructed its sh**t, theres no more fun while playing ranked or climbing to leyend anymore.

For me and many other players the only thing that makes me buying the season pass its to get new cards for duels. Its the only mode that i actually enjoy.

Maybe removing the heroic duels can be an option so people dont abuse of it, but removing duels from the game its for me, and many other ppl, the last call for us to leave this game.

After duels its removed i have no reason to ever buy a pass or even a card pack ever again.

4 Likes
5

I’ve been playing hearthstone since it was in beta but i stopped playing the normal game about 5 years ago, just entering every now and then like 1 or 2 matches a week or played the adventures and i remember always telling my friends imagine how cool this would be if it was pvp… and they did it. When duels appeared i was over the moon, yeah as any game it wasn’t perfect had it’s bugs and all that but since duels first release I only played duels outside the weekly win 5 ranked games quests. If any dev sees this please don’t remove duels it’s the best thing Hearthstone ever had

3 Likes
6

stop buying the damned season pass. If you and everyone else keeps giving them money, they have no reason to change anything.

1 Like
7

I totally agree on the fact, that Duels is the best thing to come up in this game. Well I got bored of rankeds and other gamemodes and there is no fun there. I came back after 3-4 years of not playing Hearthstone and I believe I will have to leave it again. No point of staying if there is nothing to play for (I mean no fun). Rankeds/Battlegrounds is ok, but not that fun. Even tho I did make a thread about Duels passive imbalance, but I still played it after just because it is fun.

They could remove Arena than Duels, why do they keep Arena or is there a lot of people playing it? Can someone comment who is playing Arena casually?

1 Like
8

Thanks for not completely destroying duels by adding some of its treasures to arena :pray:

9

I’m guessing no-one is playing Arena casually. Unlike Duels there is no ‘casual’ mode. Pretty sure Arena has been the most competitive, hardcore mode in the game for ages. It isn’t going anywhere.

10

Begging for Duels to stay is Futile… it’s time to look to the future and leave the dead behind.

1 Like
11

I LIKED DUELS, i dont care what the sweats say about it, i a hundred times rather play duels than ranked, battlegrounds(which is fun but very repetitive) and Bloody ARENA(worst and most rigged gamemode), tryhards rather play the same crap over and over, duels was refreshing to play but they cant sweat(as much as the other modes) i guess, so they want it gone, this is rigged, the people who say they want it gone are together with the devs, for sure, no way the devs would be like “yeah u know what, they say they dont want duels, lets get rid of it” suuuure, nuh uh, the people saying to get rid of it already knew it was gonna go and are just reforcing it so we think “maybe the community did want this”, only explanation since duels had a lot of traction.

2 Likes
12

Please devs, this is the main way I consume Hearthstone now and I love it. I even bought the battle pass FOR it.

Not sure if it’s about money but I’ll keep paying, please don’t shut this down.

13

Who’s gonna tell him
?

14

That could work, just as it does in BG. However, any prizes could be very problematic.

Buying the BG pass buys a player prizes from the BG rewards track, and that idea works fine. Just like in the main game, you can “F2P” and claim one set of rewards, or you can “P2W” and also claim a second set. But none of these rewards are based on winning or losing games, just on XP gained. More to the point, the rewards track strictly limits the amount of rewards a player can earn, both for free players and those who pay.

If you have a system where each duels run would award prizes based on the results of that run alone, obviously P2W/paying players would have an advantage, but if there is no entry fee for each run, both F2P and P2W players could simply retire and re-roll any heroes they aren’t happy with. This would involve a lot more re-rolls for F2P players, but either type of player could do it.

This would also spoil the game experience for players who DON’T want to constantly re-roll drafts until they get a hero they like. They would have their mediocre hero, with a deck they don’t really know how to play, and go against “meta” players who use the same hero and deck for every run, and beat the snot of of casual players every time. That is very un-fun. Sure, you can do that in casual duels right now, but because its casual, I assume that most players simply can’t be bothered to re-roll every hero they are not happy with, and having a choice of 6 heroes should mean you always get something playable.

However, there is another problem. Both F2P and P2W players could farm the mode by playing it a lot, collecting prizes all the time. While prizes from reward tracks are strictly limited, per-game prizes would not be, and this could easily break the “game economy”, as players farm duels for rewards instead of spending money on packs. Of course, this could be avoided to some extent by simply having smaller prizes, or even none at all.

The only reason Arena and Heroic duels don’t “break the game economy” is that they charge an admission fee for each run, and that pays for the prizes. If you retire and “re-roll” a draft, you have to pay the admission again.

Basically having any “per run” rewards would not be compatible with the F2P or battlepass game model.

However, I enjoy playing duels, I play it casually, so no prizes isn’t a problem for me. I would be very happy if it can be saved, so any ideas are welcome :slight_smile:

15

Sadly, I’m afraid he’s correct. I started coming here in the hopes that devs might read player comments, but was disappointed. They don’t reply to player’s threads, and even when they start their own thread, they tend to avoid answering difficult questions.

If you’re looking for a way to contact the devs, I’m afraid this is not it :frowning:

1 Like
16

Well new expansion came on, but if duels are off so there is no reason to buy tavern pass, gonna wait until announcement that Duels are closed and the game will be deleted with it, sad story, but let’s hope people will not forget this mode, gl guys!

17

I play duels exclusively once ranked gets stale, which is pretty quick. I’ll probably quit once they bring it down. Incredible how they can’t maintain this mode when it takes almost zero dev time.

1 Like
18

I would love to see a dev acknowledge the fact that so many players enjoyed this mode. It’s upsetting to see them jump to deleting it instead of looking for an alternative solution. :confused:

19

Important is we have duos now! its better GOLD MINE for UnActiveBlizz
They gain nothing from DUELS :crazy_face:

20

I would pay 20$ a month for a duels pass.
I bet there’s more players like me