…but we got battlegrounds. Seriously.
Now, in game tournament mode got shelved permanently because “it just didn’t look right” or some such nonsense. But we get battlegrounds, that looks like…well, battlegrounds.
It’s time to show us what the nearly finished in game tournament mode would have looked like, since you’re going to drop battlegrounds on us and it looks like it’s current form.
What can they say? They needed to hop on the “me too!” Bandwagon to salvage the game and hopefully rake in a few more players and dollars. Tons of veterans are quitting left and right, and they got the idea in their head: “you know what we should do instead of making our game actually fun and Balanced? Introduce a new, rushed game mode that’s boring and stupid, random and skill-less!”
That’s what makes no sense. Compared to in game tournament mode, what people have been asking for…this is something that unless it was really big somewhere else on the forums, social media, or somewhere else for hearthstone, the playerbase wasn’t going “we want this!” And yet, something we have been asking for, almost since the start, they have abandoned.
Because reasons.
When you run a company, two things are both very important: retaining existing customers, and attracting new customers.
No matter how hard you work and how good you are at retaining customers, you will always bleed some so unless you constantly get new users, you’re doomed.
No matter how hard you work and how good you are at attracting new customers, if you offer insufficient value they won’t stay after that first initial period of excitement. Unless you manage to keep them interested, you’re doomed.
Look at how popular Auto Chess was on Twitch. And then Riot released its clone of it, Teamfight Tactics, and now that has taken over as the next big thing on Twitch. People watch Twitch, get interested in the game, then want to play it too. So they install Dota / League of Legends. And then a percentage of them will discover the actual game behind the hype-game. Some of them will try it. Some of them will like it and continue to play it.
Hearthstone is getting more and more known to be unfriendly to newbies. The initial investment (in either time or money) to build a competitive collection is enormous, and grows with each expansion. So Blizzard needs to be creative to attract new players willing to climb this hurdle.
This feature was never intended for the existing playerbase. It is intended to target the non-players who might one day become players.
Now I am not defending Blizzard. I personally think they made a mistake. I think the hype of Auto Chess / Teamfight Tactics will soon pass. I think the games are not really deep and interesting enough for long time appeal, so once the initial hype of over, they will disappear. And I also think that the Hearthstone format doesn’t really lend itself to be used this way.
But I will also admit that, apart from watching Kripp play it for about an hour or so, I have no idea yet how it will actually work. I might be wrong.
I’m just saying that the argument “the playerbase didn’t ask for this” is completely irrelevant when judging this feature as a way to attract new players.
And I’ll also add that “bandwagon” is a bad argument. In PR and advertising, bandwagons are the right thing to jump.
If you want to criticize Blizzard for Battlegrounds, criticize them for poor execution (but only after it is released and you have actually tried it), or for poor judgement on choosing which bandwagon to jump (as I do above, where I state that I think the hype will pass soon now, before Blizzard gets enough ROI on this), or for incorrectly balancing their resources between investing on customer retention versus investing on attracting new customers.
I personally think that adding a tournament mode will make many existing customers happy. But those are not the customers who are about to stop playing, so it does little to affect retention. (Note that I say little, not nothing).
However, tournament mode will also be interesting to streamers, and I personally think that a tournament mode, if, and only if, well executed!!, can attract more new players through Twitch then Battlegrounds will.
But a poorly executed Tournament mode will do nothing, or might even chase players away.
Perhaps some loss is inevitable, but it’s a basic business principle that it takes 2-3 times the investment of resources to attract new customers than it does to keep existing ones. A move like this one is a lot of investment in the attract new without the requisite investment in keeping existing. Which is what they should have been doing in their current game mode, rather than throwing so much resources into something that looks like they’re jumping onto what everyone else is doing.
Which is entirely a problem of their own making, and something they could easily remedy with fixes and innovations to their existing structure. Not creating something that will create the exact same problem down the road.
If that’s the case, I hate to throw around words like “slap in the face” and so on…but really, if it’s not there for the people who have been supporting the game from the beginning, then it is taking away development resources (a finite number, since there are only so many projects they can take on in a given year) that could have gone towards something that would have benefitted current and new players.
It’s such limited thinking that got team 5 into this situation to begin with: that they had to start copy/pasting from other games to try and be competitive, rather than try and do something creative that would have set them apart. If the best you can do is a copy of what everyone else is doing, what’s that say about the future of the game?
I didn’t get this vibe from reading your post. I had some specific points I wanted to address, but having come across the team 5/actiblizz diehards over the years, I spot them from a long way off.
Fad chasing is a terrible way to do business. It’s why bubbles are a thing, and why we don’t have pogs, beanies babies, etc anymore. They crash and burn, and aren’t worth the time and investment companies spend chasing them.
…or I can do all of the above, plus the previous criticisms.
There’s a lot to unpack there. First, it would do a lot of good for new and existing customers.
Why? First, by releasing a feature that the customers have been asking for since pretty much the beginning of the game, it shows they actually listen to their customers. This shows existing and potential customers that they actually value their customers’ feedback and input rather than just throwing out whatever and hoping people take it (::gives battlegrounds a strong, concentrated, withering look::). Second, it give players an opportunity to connect online in larger numbers. Since they aren’t going to overhaul firesides any time soon, people are stuck with limited options for connecting with people other than sharing btags with randos online. Having online tounraments would greatly expand the potential ways in which players from all over could meet and play against each other. This allows for greater excitement for the game, and people who make friends who into the game are less likely to drop out of it, especially if the game is their point of connection. Third, by making the entry point more accessible (low to no entry fees) everyone gets an opportunity to play for decent prizes. While they may not be anywhere near the stuff we see at the big events, it could still be anything, from free packs, gold/dust (in real quantities), to old dungeons, to free themed decks. Stuff that they can give away that costs them nothing, since this is a digital medium.
Even if a basic format was launched (with the aforementioned reward system), and it was adapted and improved along the way, it would be better than nothing. Which is what people currently have. But they gave up before they even let the playerbase decide, and dumped battlegrounds on us instead.
One of the biggest problems on this forum is that anyone who writes anything that even reeks of “defending Bli$$”, they are labeled a “fanboy” or similar. As if that makes their arguments (if any) any less relevant.
And similarly, that those who write anything critical are too easy and too often painted as a “hater”, again in an apparent attempt to nullify their arguments without actually addressing their arguments.
My previous post was mainly intended to address the argument “it’s not what their customers asked for”, which I think is irrelevant in this case.
That doesn’t mean Battlegrounds is a good idea. I have some serious reservations, some of which I already shared and some of which I’ll put on hold until actually playing it.
If you criticise Battlegrounds, criticise it for the right reasons.
In the rest of your post, you make a lot of good points. I agree with a lot, disagree with some. And there are a few things I want to follow up on.
Perhaps, if you say so.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in attracting new customers. If you ONLY retain, then you slow down the bleeding. You still bleed.
Not sure I agree.
The business model of HS requires periodic release of new cards. So the card pool will always grow.
The business model of HS also requires that these cards must be good enough to want to spend money on. So they can’t just be copies of existing cards. They must offer ways to build strong and competitive decks.
I don’t see any way to make HS easy on newbies without requiring them to either spend lots of cash on packs, or spend a long time grinding lower ranks before they finally get competitive.
(I personally don’t think being competitive is even relevant in HS, I just want to have fun with fun decks, but reading the forums proves that I’m a minority).
Correct. That was the basic point I was trying to make in my first response. A company needs to balance investments on customer retention versus investments on reaching new customers. They cannot invest in retention only, hence they cannot only build what their existing customers ask for.
We do at this time now know(*) whether development of tournament mode is halted to prioritize battleground, or whether another team is still working on it but prefers to stay silent until they have something solid to show instead of another disappointment. Announcing too early is very dangerous in this market.
(*) I personally hope the latter. But I fear it’s actually the former.
If the fad is the only thing you have to offer, then yes.
But if the fad is what gets more people to see the product you have and that product is good enough on its own, then it’s a magnificent tool.
So the real questions are: will battleground attract enough new people to look at the game, will it attract the right people (i.e. the people who would be interested in the actual HS game), and is the game currently good enough that you want them to see it in its current state.
I agree with all your praise of the potential of a tournament system (which I didn’t quote). And I already allured to that, in a shorter form, before.
But I do not agree with the above quote.
If the basic format is good enough, then yes.
But if it sucks … and I mean, like REALLY sucks big time, then no sane company should ever release it.
If you release something, even if you warn the audience that it’s still rough and needs future work, then it has to be at least “good enough” - or you will get so much negative press that nothing you do in future versions can save it anymore.
(And in case you think otherwise, just look at Fallout 76, Resident Evil 6, or Assassin’s Creed Unity for a few examples of games that never should have been released in the form they were).
The bright side of the battlegrounds mode in relation to having a tournament mode is that they are replacing the arena button with a “modes” button to support it, which implies that they are planning on supporting more modes in the future which could easily include a tournament mode
The problem, and it has been apparent for some time, is that the echo chamber mentality that has been allowed to develop in the company and these forums. They claim repeatedly to take feedback to heart (not just talking about team 5, but the devs of other games as well), but in reality most of what we see if the lone positive comment in a field of people saying “this isn’t good, it needs to change” being singled out for a response, or a “welp, everything’s good here!” Or, the selective enforcement of coc where people who violate it when acting on the pro side of the company are allowed to run rampant, and are allowed to post pretty much whatever they want. But posts that don’t violate coc are mysteriously memory holed if they contain facts that are inconvenient to the narrative. Case in point, there was in interesting discussion about “the art of hearthstone” book thread that contained some outright falsehoods about how publication and print books worked, and information that explained how book distribution worked, from publishing to distribution to the store shelves mysteriously vanished.
When the posts match, word for word, what the devs, blues, etc are posting, or aren’t even a good rewrite and its a poor justification for something…it looks pretty suspicious. And the source should be questioned.
You are kidding, right? It’s a basic marketing principle, Customer Acquisition Vs. Retention Costs. It’s something you learn if you’ve spent any time in the business world, or taken a entry level business course. You want to see a prime example of actiblizz failing to take this principle into consideration, look no further than what they’ve done with world of warcraft. They keep chasing away their existing customer base, with (maybe?) the idea that they’ll somehow be replaced by new customers. Never happened, and all’s they keep doing with their “vision” for the game is drive away customers who were up to that point loyal customers who played and subscribed to their product for years.
Before continuing, a major correction is needed to a major flaw in your response: I never advocated for retention at the expense of attracting new customers. I pointed out that their strategy (focusing exclusively on new customers with nothing for current ones) was not sound based on what most people with any real business experience, or anyone who took even a basic level business course know of the business world.
In fact, if you had actually read my response, you would see how having a well developed tournament mode appeals to BOTH new and current players.
It is relevant. If you consistently ignore what your customers ask for, especially to chase a fad game mode, you run the risk of alienating your customer base. Anyone with even a hint of business experience will tell you that chasing off even a quarter of your existing customer base is a bad idea, because you won’t see those numbers replaced by a sudden influx of new customers.
Just because you don’t see a solution doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Having a game mode that creates a new version of this problem doesn’t fix the issue either. New players still need these cards for it, it doesn’t change anything. The problem is the devs aren’t trying to find these solutions, and dumped a considerable amount of resources into chasing a fad game mode, and will do the same thing somewhere down the road…like an addict chasing a fix.
It’s a bad business model, and it’s going to hurt the game and the customers.
See previous comment on the first part of the faulty assumptions here. Second, if they actually took the customers’ feedback into consideration, rather than chasing this fad, they might have actually developed something that would have been worthwhile and been attractive to new and existing customers, rather than some flash in the pan that will be a tiresome and boring as that tavern brawl that comes up that people hate playing.
That’s not that I said. Re-read the post. They aren’t working on it period, and according to them, have zero intention of doing so. Additionally, there aren’t a ton of teams doing stuff, they have a finite number of development resources to work on projects. Which means, they can only do a set number of expansions, projects like battlegrounds or dungeons, etc and that’s it. Which means something else lost out to battlegrounds and because of it, we won’t be getting something else in 2020 most likely because of it.
I get the impression you don’t have a lot of experience in business. Having a game mode that is nothing like your core product does not attract people to your product, anymore than offering gym memberships would encourage people to buy a mcdonald’s big mac. They are separate product offerings, and you pair it with something appropriate, like a drink or fries.
Then you basically offer people nothing, which is where we were before battlegrounds. What you follow up with is a lot of assumptions, which is the problem with the current “reason” for dropping it “what if.” It’s nice they dropped it without even showing us what was so horrible about it that they arbitrarily decided to can it without showing us what was soooo bad, they couldn’t give us a real reason why they’ll never come back to it. But it just doesn’t wash. It’s just more excuses, which with this team we need less of when it comes to not following through.
One can only hope. But at this point, they have just abandoned it completely, and haven’t even given us any indication they’re coming back to it.