In my years of playing this game I have noticed one constant truth.
Players rarely appreciate what is given and even when they do the feeling doesn’t last long. And I should know; I’m one of those players who has taken whats given only to immediately forget about it.
I have played other free to play games where the sense of supporting the company was the main emotion expressed on their forums.
But this game rarely fosters anything but resentment and anger, and I was wondering why?
What I mean is: Does this company go out of it’s way to annoy it’s player base so that when they DO give out something generous or remarkable the player base just yawns and looks for an ulterior motive?
Again; I say this because i do it all of the time.
I’m just wondering if the company seems a bit tone deaf to it’s core audience and that is the reason for the attitude that everything HS does is strictly for money. Seems like an image problem that could be fixed.
What do you think?
Managing a company may not be as easy as some perceive.
A company can go through various stages of growth or falls.
(duration can varies too)
How many great companies do we see still existing till today? How many great companies today will we see surviving the future?
A company can go through “bad times” and recover, or sink.
At current, they feel like going through that “bad times”.
Most great companies have been bought out by day traders that have no interest in making products, only in buying and selling them at a profit.
That is also true for this company. It was revered as the greatest gaming company ever, until Activison purchased it and immediately stripped it down to increase profits for shareholders.
Have you ever wondered why so many people stick with a game that “rarely fosters anything but resentment and anger”? Because I think a big part of the problem is that a there is a significant portion of Blizzard’s playerbase who keep playing these games even though they claim to hate them. It’s as if people with a tendency to develop toxic codependency with videogames all flocked to Blizzard games. It’s truly mystifying.
@Madmax I’m going to hazard a guess that you mean me.
I don’t “hate” the game. if i did I would not play.
And, it’s still true that no matter what HS gives for free, they don’t get much credit for it if any. So to me that fairly screams : “image problem” i made this post to see if We could figure out what a healthy approach would be since their current strategy doesn’t seem to work.
The forum had some discussion in both thread,
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/are-players-too-demanding-or-are-developers-under-performing/
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/are-players-too-demanding-or-are-developers-under-performing-part2/
In summary, I believe the company is struggling with meeting expectations.
The wider the target audience is, the harder it is to cater to the expectations of the masses.
Thanks for the threads! I didn’t know the topic had been covered and I will be reading these:)
Edit: After reading these I think I agree that HS needs better PR and player base interaction
Hearthstone as a game will always generate a good amount of anger. It’s a competitive game where the outcome is largely determined by random events. Different players also have very different expectations of what a good Hearthstone game consists of.
We started with Warcraft III (one of the greatest real time strategy games ever) where you got hundreds upon thousands of hours of enjoyment for the price tag of like 30 dollars (60 dollars for the Frozen Throne expansion) and the game was updated at no cost to the player. Then we got World of Warcraft that took that RTS experience and transformed it into a MMORPG that at some point had 12 million players at its peak, and with all the patches and updates amounted to an amazing shared experience with players across the world for over a decade. Then finally we got hearthstone. Which is like if someone took the concept of warcraft, and decided to fart out a digital card game experience based on it. Don’t get me wrong, Hearthstone equates to hours upon hours of enjoyment for free against players across the world, but when you compare all three experiences, Warcraft RTS and World of Warcraft were really immersive and polished games. Hearthstone is like getting together to play Uno with friends when you are bored and need a break from real games.
When is Blizzard gonna release a game with as much renown as their previous titles? Warcraft Reforged and WOW Classic releases were just sad.
Probably never. The company of old is done.
Hearthstone engenders anger and resentment because we all miss the games we fell in love with.
I think there is some truth to what you say. That feeling that players once got from WoW is practically gone now. I remember HS’s core audience being a lot less negative in the beginning and praising each expansion.
I don’t know those days will ever return.
I think the anger usualy comes from players that thinks HS is serious competitive game, players that do not accept HS for what it truly is.
Also some players arent ready for CCG monetization - money milking.
I used to be mad because I wanted a game where my “skill” and decision making would make a huge difference and a game where I would get a value for my money.
Then I have realized HS isnt that type of a game I am looking for (skill doesnt impact the performance in significant way, value for cash spent is insignificant) so I am way less mad lately because I have accepted HS for what it trully is - good looking casual game with some insane combos and RNG that can leave you laughing when something crazy happens or when you (or your opponent) makes some crazy turn.
I didn’t.
But you are around these forums enough to see people who do claim to hate it. Constantly. And yet they keep playing. My question is, why?
Sure. It could also be an issue of sampling bias. Most players who are happy with a game don’t go to the company forums (or the game’s Steam community page) to sing it’s praises. But people who are unhappy certainly do. Does Blizzard have an image problem? Certainly! Between their more lackluster recent titles (like Reforged and BfA) and terrible PR (Blitzchung’s thing, the 800 fired employees, killing HGC), they clearly have issues. But I’m arguing that those issues have little to do with the anger you see in the forums. A lot of that anger is (IMO) much more about people who seem unable to stop playing a game they don’t find fun. And because whatever makes the game unfun isn’t going away, Blizzard’s giveaways don’t matter. Which once again raises the question of why they’re playing a game they hate, and they believe will never get better.
I agree with almost everything you said. I myself still enjoy playing, although I really dislike the matching. I wonder if players who seem to truly hate the game are only acting out, to vent their anger and then once that is done they can go back to playing? I know I have been guilty of this in the past.
But I think you make good sense with regards to Blizzard’s image.
A lot of self inflicted wounds and a dev team that rarely interacts with it’s player base makes it easy for others to spin the narrative and probably does foster the attitude that whatever free items are offered are nothing compared to the insane profits that blizz makes off the game.
I feel like people hate losing more than they hate the game (generally); more specifically, they hate how they perceive the losses happening. The game puts the natural desire to be in control of events against the fact that in the game (as in life) events are mostly random… starting from the order the cards are shuffled in to what cards are offered by the designers etc. It’s a stark reality that’s difficult to form illusions around. If you’re not satisfied with what you can control in the game, it’s probably going to suck. Just a guess… but who knows really.
The OP reported me last season multiple multiple times for saying that sooooo many people reached legend status. Blizzard kept reinstating my posts every time. And tens of thousands legend players later here we are.
Blizz is giving away legend status, ingratiating all of those new players. I take every one of this joker’s posts with a grain of salt…
…and you know this how?
i think you have the straight of this. But I also think that Blizzard could do a better job of making players feel that the company cares about their opinions and the state of the game.
What are those games? Smaller companies and especially indie developers generally care more for their audience because that’s a big “advantage” that they can have. Blizzard just doesn’t “need” to do this because they’re already a “big player” and has the resources to do all this awesome and amazing stuff which others could not do. That’s probably the reason I’d say.
I personally can just say I really like the game. But yeah, maybe I’m in the minority. I don’t know.
The best example I can give is Path of Exile. Totally F2P and it’s player base is as loyal as they come, even though the game became boring for me several expansions ago.
They seem to have no problem making a profit with a f2p model that keeps their player base loyal and supportive.
I don’t think it would work in HS because in my opinion HS missed the boat with card backs. They should have made monthly’s and achievement backs free and then offered all else for sale.
I think that way they could have been more generous with card packs etc. and the player base likely would have rewarded them by buying additional cosmetics under the perception that they were directly supporting their favorite game.
The developers Grinding Gear Games don’t even have a german Wikipedia page. So they are clearly much much smaller in scale.
As I said I think Blizzard doesn’t do it because they don’t “need to” and the smaller companies do it because that is one thing they “can take advantage from”.
Yeah, I really like the idea. I also wish they would focus more or even just only on cosmetics.
But the reason is I suspect just because they don’t “need to” as they can get away with doing it this way. You know, “too big to fail”. And they do it how it is currently because it gets them overall more money. I also don’t really like it, but that is what we got.