The reasons this game will die
(Me) puts on “young hearts” (from The Karate Kid), cranks it to 11, and here we go.
Competition from texting, smartphones, everything but hearthstone is real. if this game was so good, it would beat everything out for your attention ( remember 2014, 2015, 2016?) i do, and it was the best we ever had right? Every time too it was so good and warm.
So 2 percent goes to iphones being so OP that nothing has a chance to hold your attention like it used to, so ppl game less, bc everytime you game your phone is all over your mind. So less play time means slightly less money for the company regardless of game quality vs other games. ie the smart part of phones are blizzard’s biggest enemy and well humanities tbh. we used to all day zelda mario 1, mario 3 (2 was weird, but not as weird as adventures of link that sh was horrifying as a kid, what is this side scrolling game w no continues and 40 year old women coming out of houses that is glitchable if you frame perfect it?).
we all day’d the games bc we didnt have an iphone 14 drooling for our attention at arms reach. we had somethin bigger! (OR smaller in my case LOL).
The game thrives on interactivity and having a creative space to express yo self. Thrives on being simple to understand, rewarding to play, and aesthetically ‘cool’.
- Interactivity breaks down into cards interacting, and emotes.
When the game gets less about the board and the community naturally finds the hand to face damage decks, that reduces interactivity if there aren’t cards or enough cards to disrupt ones hand. mana cost, card shuffle, “objection” what an op card if i ever saw one, “counterspell” less OP bc coin but super OP after coin. or big armor decks to counter face damage for the druids mages (IB) and warriors.
We don’t like playing games where our cards couldnt trade. the game will fail if the difficulty of hand to face decks is real low, and if there’s little counterplay. something like 10 years ago freeze mage wasnt easy, so it was cool. you can throw all your spells face and then lose because you didnt clear, and could of drawn into lethal later had you of held your horses. now a days somethin like plague or idk the warlock deck w lifesteal, i dont think either deck times it just play it out and that’s the key difference between then and now.
On the emote side, having a cool emote like “im sorry” that brightened the mood. no one gets offended when someone says sorry. its not like wow, well played, greetings, and so forth bc its about yourself, you are sorry, not pointing a finger at your opponent like the ‘wow’ emote that took ‘sorry’s’ place like in 2015. minnow in the pond, still a factor.
- Creative space
deckbuilding. that window shrunk like 5 years ago when they gave streamers exclusive access to cards. and when google bought youtube and turned it into facebook. if you have a 2 week window to come up with anything not known, thats like the bare min for the deckbuilders out there. these games were made under the original premise that you’d buy cards come up with an idea and try it. in 2023 thats completely impossible to also win, given the web of streamers pros chats youtube videos twittter iphones droids 5g etc.
There isnt much blizz can do except take away the streamer exclusive access which should of happened yesterday it would help not solve the prob. there is no solving it but please dont pour gas on the fire blizz.
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rewarding to climb
the whole ladder restructure is so bad its play anything half asleep hit rank 5 then grind that portion to legend. pennies to what it used to be. lint and buttons. literally undermining the original goal of the game to hit legend. they think this favors new players yet anytime you have money involved, a good player can buy a supreme deck or 5 and bully new players at rank 50. it happens, all the time, when that rank was around if it still is. solution is to not allow real money for the ‘beginner’ ranks to keep competition pure.
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aesthetics
does it even have to be mentioned?
most the skins are underwhelming, its so unlike old blizzard, but this is new blizzard and that hole in their shoe was self inflicted. they took a lot of cool lookin card art years ago and reworked them into probably the ugliest stuff one can drum up but because its “subjective” they fall back on that as if that makes it ok lol.
bonus
‘confusion’
having 20 bad deals in the shop at all times is not simple to understand.
having 5 6 ways to play the game instead of 2 or 3 like before.
divides the community and division isnt as great as appealing to different tastes.
the UI is totally underwhelming its like a game to navigate and way to cumbersome. it used to be simple and blizz did not keep it simple. where the h is this mode?.
bonus 2
gold cards.
undermined when they went core set and gave everyone like a ton of free gold cards, now gold isnt noteworthy because nobody knows what cards were given gold by blizz and which ones you paid for. they bounced the cool factor of being a gold card collector a big no no.
bonus 3
the ui on the card library its so badly done. have a separate tab for "cards given to us for free by blizz that everyone has’ and “cards you actually paid gold/money/time for” ie the ones you probably want to add in your decklist to take your deck in your own direction.
bonus 4
the green border on the cards. “play me 90 percent the time maybe trade and click pass” we don’t shouldnt have UI ques to things we/us old days folk had to calculate or remember ourselves. why dont they have a green border on your opponents face when you have lethal at this point? Probably will happen at some pt and at that point the game will be o-zone. “hey! You new player! You have lethal dummy!” this sounds more realistic than EV at this pt.
giant bonus 5
the competitive scene flopped worse than one can imagine. have it consistently at the same place, don’t show decklists prior so the pros can’t practice forever w their streamer buddies leading up to the tourney. let it be organic like it used to way back. have it at blizzcon, actually have a blizzcon, dont royally po your other game’s fanbases like diablo, and have a simple way to qualifty. nobody cares about ‘pros’ playing against decks they have 100 percent certainty on, card by card, and have like TAS’d out 1000 times to see the best way to win vs their upcoming opponents. its lame. its not interesting, so nobody watches.
the big asterisk is at the end of the month the whole counterqueing on ladder that you strategize on when to click play to increase the chances on hitting a rematch w a diff deck to blow your idk number 2 opponent out the water and maintain 1. there really isnt a solution to this but don’t be fooled when you see a top 100 player or so, lots of times theres a lot more going on to sway the odds in ones favor up there. nobody likes it either. Why play the game if nobody wants to get in on the competitive scene bc its reworked 5 times and is not what it appears to be? why full time the game and go for it if its not…cool?
there i hope this is somethin for lunch. i havent posted in like 2 years, death in family, its therapeutic in moderation.
