Ok, so, before I start, I want to go over the best argument against more that I can think of. Then I’ll go over the only other argument against it I can think of. Then I’ll get into all the reasons we need it anyway.
Ok so the number one reason not to put in new compelling, exciting, infinitely repayable, diverse solo play options (In my opinion anyway) - It could significantly reduce the number of people playing competitive games.
If the single player was too good, and just as rewarding as competitive, then I’m guessing a lot of people would just play that mode, and it would become pretty difficult to find games. If the numbers drop too low, than the matchmaking will take longer, and that could cause people to opt for the single player content because, hey it’s instant, when it’s taking 2 to 3 minutes to find a worthy opponent in competitive. Another issue would be, the problem I see sometimes when theorycrafting events are on, where it just keeps matching you with the same person. (To prevent that one, blizz could just add an option to not match you with someone you played in the last… let’s say 2, 5 or 10 games again)
My counter to that argument is, that I want different things at different times. Sometimes I want to play wild, and go against insanely powerful decks, sometimes I want to dial it back and play standard, and I’m very eager for Twist to come back so I can dig into the variables that will bring. I would love playing arena if I wasn’t such a cheap skate, well and one other reason I’ll get to now.
The main reason I don’t like arena, is kind of the same reason I don’t want to play against other people, sometimes. - I just don’t feel like losing to, OR BEATING, another person at the moment.
I’m an empathetic person (from time to time anyway) So even if I could play a deck with like, a 75% win rate, that just stomped all over everyone, I would feel bad about it. It’s kind of a microcosm of the win at any cost mentality that is out there in that “real life” thing. There are times that I will take the victory, even if it makes me feel bad, because I “need the win”. Like let’s say I just lost three games in a row. Sometimes that’s fine, but sometimes it’s emotionally pernicious, like if you almost won, but lost because of some random luck, or if you just got hard countered by some especially degenerate decks, that just put you at a severe disadvantage, or took away your chance to even play.
(For example, I was doing wild, and I went up against an evil little deck that I almost beat, because I got lucky. I hate going on another tangent but, anyone that wanted something concise already stopped reading when they saw how long this was, right? Ok so, this was in I was playing a sort of pirate / draw Demon Hunter I cooked up. The build of the deck was centered around the achievement of playing pirates with charge. So I have the quest where you want to draw cards, lots of draw, and the finisher is Tony - King of Piracy, So after you draw through your deck, you can just grab the rest of theirs. So far I’ve never actually gotten to that point because I either win or lose before I get to fatigue. But I like having the option to do something after I’ve burned through my deck. I also have the hero card.
So I was up against, a Togwaggle druid. This gimmick deck plays Togwaggle, which swaps decks and gives the opponent a ransom, and Azalina Soulthief, to give yourself a copy of the opponents hand. So this gives them a ransom too, so if you use your ransom to get your deck back, they can just use theirs to swap again, leaving you stuck with theirs.
Now this wouldn’t be SO bad, if they didn’t fill their deck with useless garbage. It was full of the most useless cards, specifically so I’d have nothing to play.
My one saving grace was that I had a Zilliax on the board. My downfall was that they had one too. The Zilliax I had was the reborn/ rush/ lifesteal mixed with the deathrattle where it returns to the deck.
So I had one card to play, effectively, that the opponent couldn’t get rid of, since I didn’t run any silence or removal in my deck. So, I was down to like, 7 cards, and my Zilliax would die, and I somehow topdecked it over and over again.
The problem is, all the good cards I had in my hand, IE, the only cards from my deck I got to keep, my opponent had too. So, we both had that Zilliax, and we both had Kurtress.
There was a point, where the opponent, who had like, 20 cards still left in the deck, used a shuffle. So they put their ransom back into their deck. So I used mine to get my deck back, but somehow, they got their ransom back in the redraw. so they were able to lock me out, when the extra ransom SHOULD have been in MY deck somewhere…
Eventually they were able to use the charging pirates and hero power to bash me for like, 15 damage a turn. But I still ended up getting them to 5.
So my point in all this is, that sometimes in multiplayer, you can go up against stuff that just feels evil. Like if you’re trying to play a value deck, and go up against a Mill deck, that basically auto wins against anything but aggro and lucky drawing tempo decks.
Sometimes I’m in the mood to roll the dice on competitive multiplayer, and sometimes I’m not.
Sometimes I don’t want to be another human’s little plaything they’re farming cheap wins on. Sometimes I feel like going up against anything.
The other side of the coin, and it being a coin, both sides are the same size, is the deck I’m playing. There are times I want to play just, idiotic stuff. I’ve kind of got this harsh lesson I’ve learned though, the more fun you have building a deck, the less fun you have actually playing it. At least sometimes. Not that net-decked 100% optimized win-farming decks can’t be boring, but losing to decks after decks that basically don’t even let you play, can be discouraging. What if this “Steal your deck and give you garbage” style of play was more popular? You would never actually get to play your deck. Or if mill decks were even more popular than they already are? Well, anything but aggro that can deal with drawing 4 cards a turn loses.
So, finally we get to the singleplayer content. I absolutely love good single player content. The dungeon run style is great. I love playing Dalaran Heist before bed, or if I want to relax.
But, let’s think about the limitless possibilities for future content.
So for starters, we need dungeon run content for Demon Hunter and Death Knight. It’s pretty sad to think that the last time we got good, replayable single player content, there were still only the original 9 classes in the game.
So the new mode should be expandable if they ever add Monk, Evoker, or something else to the game. (Maybe Midnight or Last Titan will add a new class to WoW that will also get added to Hearthstone, who knows?)
We also need deckbuilding single player content, that is more evergreen. My pie in the sky idea would be, random matchmaking, but for single player.
Basically Blizzard would look at what ALL the decks people were playing, and kind of boil those down, and teach the AI how to drive it.
My original idea, and one I would LOVE to see in the game, would be an option in multiplayer, to “snapshot” your opponents deck while playing them, or after the game. This would let you inspect the deck, so you could see all the cards, even the ones they didn’t play. Then you could load this snapshotted deck into Like, a single player “machine” and go up against that exact deck as many times as you want.
The main issue is that the AI wouldn’t always know how to “drive” the deck. It would have to know not to waste combo pieces for example. But that’s a small price to pay for a “create an opponent” mode.
My grand opus idea, the ultimate single player mode, would borrow from Super Mario Maker.
You could make your own single player adventures. You would have access to ALL the heroes. Like, from all the single player content. So, that annoying banker from Dalaran Heist, that swaps a random card with you every turn, to the Skeleton Dinosaur who’s hero power is to create a random card for themself every turn that costs zero.
All the hero powers would be there to build with. And you could kind of modify how often they did stuff. Like, let’s say you’re building an AI that handbuffs cards. Well you’d have to program them to not just play every minion they get right away before it’s buffed right?
So imagine a world where you could create your own “Dalaran Heist” style adventure. You can pick and create the opponents. You can also choose how often the player is offered treasures, or trips to the tavern. You can also modify the tavern itself. Like, what if you only want to give the player the “reduce the cost of a random card in your deck to 0” options 3 times. Or three “broods” and a Round of Drinks. (Brood being a reroll the randomly generated cards, and round of drinks being to add the 4 minions to your deck with +1 +1)
So, the idea would be to allow both dungeon run, and player constructed decks. But, there would also be a third option, you make the deck they play too. So you can randomize things for a dungeon run that’s endlessly replayable, or fully curate the adventure, down to the exact cards the player will have.
Maybe you want to give the player a cool battlecry deck, and let them start with the “Your battlecries trigger twice” and “You start with an extra mana crystal” powers, but, they’re taking the deck against some fearsome opponents.
Like Mario Maker, in order to “publish” your single player content, you would have to beat it yourself first. So, no creating “doomed” runs.
There would also be difficulty indicators, both voted on by the people who played it, and established by the creator as what they intended it to be. (This would be there to make sure some dweeb didn’t make a balls difficult adventure and call it “easy” to troll.)
So, there you have it. It took a while to get there, but I think the idea was worth the effort.
And lastly. I’d be ok with them monetizing this, to an extent. This is a pretty grand idea, so it would be fine to put a price tag on the feature, but I don’t ever want it to be subscription based, or pay as you go.
Hearthstone is a weird game when it comes to money. For some people, Hearthstone is a free game they never put a dollar into, and for idiots like me, it costs a chunk of change.
If you JUST buy the Mega Bundles and Mini-Sets with cash, HS costs $285 a year.
So I could see this single player mode, if they do it right, costing $60 to $80 bucks. And if it was good, a lot of free-to -play people would buy it, because there would be a world of content there for them.
So hey, you just got a lot of money from people who were never going to buy packs or arena runs or battlepasses or hero skins or diamond bundles, by giving them something worth buying.
So yes you would have to build this amusement park before you could charge people to enter, but if you do a good job, a lot of people will want to get in.
Hell, if you wanted to be really evil, you could sell a lot of the “Adventure Creation” stuff for cash. Like, maybe a “Naxxramas bosses” pack for $20 that lets you build with them. I hate thinking like this, but if it means the difference between seeing more single player content, or not, then it’s on the table.
Another idea, would be unlocks you could earn, both as an adventurer, or a creator. You would be rewarded for making cool stuff people actually wanted to engage with, and also for just, playing all the created stuff.
I could also see player vs. player options here. Although I haven’t brainstormed, one idea I had, was you can pick a boss from an adventure, and “drive” it. So, this would no longer be an AI opponent for the adventurer, but, you. So if you wanted to play AS the Dino that will get a random 0-Cost card every turn, then the world is your oyster. Or you could say “I’m up for anything” and be put into the roll of, well, any boss. I’m thinking there would be a lobby here, so you can review your deck list and such, before jumping in. You could also opt not to play it if you decide it doesn’t look fun, and that deck would just continue to be AI driven.
There would be an opt-in or out option for all this for the Adventurer by the way. So if they want purely single player without the option of sometimes going up against a human driven deck, then that’s there. Or you could go all the way with it and say “I only want to play against human driven decks and I’m ok with waiting to do it”. The middle ground would be, mostly AI controlled decks, with some special fanfare when you do go against a person, with bonus rewards for beating them.
So yeah, if you try hard enough, awesome single player content could be the future of multiplayer.
There are a lot of dials and levers to twist and pull here. But, I’m in the mentality that I’m very thirsty, so a milkshake, coffee, soda, or even just water with a squeeze of lemon would all be pretty refreshing at this point. Maybe start with the soda, then add in the milkshake in year 2, and the coffee in year 3. Year 4 could be a slushie. Year 5 a rootbeer float. (And there would always be a lot of water to drink for the free people.)
Ok, I’m done writing now. I hope it was a fun read.