Who is Hearthstone target audience?

Community Discussion
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I have been thinking about this for a while, and I am really questionning: who is this game for?

I mean, generally, for game developpers & publishers, money is generally the “metric” to consider. Not that it is a good idea, but I guess that’s how you make profit.

So,in the end, who is Blizzard aiming for? Addicts? Compulsive players? Ego driven warmongers?

I am really asking myself if they are making any efforts to make this game fun.

I used to play standard and the core game. I stopped. After a while, it just felt like what I like about the game wasn’t the focus of the game. I like building a deck, testing it, playing, improving and trying to make a deck with my own twist. But I soon realised that most people play the same 2 or 3 meta decks that have the highest win rate ratio. Nobody seems interested in crafting a deck, working on it, and trying to figure it out themselves. So, I thought, well… it seems I am not the target audience. I will play Battlegrounds then.

Had fun at Battlegrounds for a while, but every new version and season seems again to move away from what I find fun: learning, adapting, trying to make the best of a situation. Reacting to opponents, chosing the right combos that are available AND, especially, trying to figure out dynamics, combos and what works well together.

But, again, they manage to evolve the game in a fast pace, RNG, unbalanced mayhem. Most games last 10 to 11 rounds. Champions are completly unbalanced. Companions even more so. You don’t have time to adapt, and even if you look at what your opponents play, it doesn’t matter… it seems that the chance to have minions of a certain type doesn’t have to do with what others play.

It feels again like if you want to have a chance, you must first buy the 4 champions upgrade option (instead of 2)_, and then follow an online guide… hoping to get the right cards.

In the end, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am an old timer who likes to feel that I have to make my brains work out to feel gratification, maybe I like to work too much? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Anywho, if I could ask ONE thing about battlegrounds: Make all minion do 1 damage. Level 1 to 6 minions should do 1 damage. This will slow the game down a bit and will stop giving advantage to Champs who can get high level minions fast. I mean, if you get to level 6 shop, you already do 6 damage. If you have 2 level 6 minons left on top, its 18 damage… jesus, give me a chance.

If you would change it to 1 damage per minion, the same situation would do 8 damage. Reasonnable.

Anywho, again, I might be completly off. Maybe I am the only one feeling that they are not going in the right direction. So, if you all happy about the way thing are going, just tell me! I will change to another game. :wink:

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Yeah I think the problem with heartstone is its owned by BLIZZARD. lol.
Likely answer is people that can feed blizzard.

So sadly when the company changed to new owners during the d2 and d3 transmission all that fair fun gameplay went out the window… so if u wanna have fun just dont care about winning.

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Garbage criticism. Optimization of that sort is impossible to be avoided; the only way to avoid it would be to completely randomize the abilities all the time; and that would suck.

I recently heard something wise about gaming and sports generally; they require rules; if they don’t have rules it’s called chaos and war and fun and games minimize then.

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PS also your criticism reaches the wrong conclusion. When you think “1 or 2 class metas” you should get the actual problem in this game is in the “1 or 2” not on the “metas”. They should balance the classes; optimization is impossible to be avoided as I said; but they could also avoid having rogue spamming leggos out its butt from round 5.

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simple, they are fools who spend money on a virtual game where each match is carefully chosen to make them want to spend more money, like hamsters practically

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I know this is a troll post, but i’ll bite.

I think the game is aimed mostly at young adult, in the 20-35 range. The pacing of the game, the appeal to strategize, the game being reminiscent of magic the gathering, and let’s face it, the cost of maintaining a collection, i don’t think blizzard is aiming the game at kids or teenager. This is definitely not for the Fortnite crowd.

I also think the game has a decent appeal for 35-55 looking for a game quick to get into, short 10-20 minutes match-ups, and with enough disposable income to overcome the barrier of entry.

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players who like CCGs!

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Or players who like pay to win??

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It’s adults willing to spend money on pixels.

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Your comment “Garbage Criticism” is garbage critiscism…

There are way to avoid this, a few examples:
1-Publish cards more often. Instead of a collection every four months, publish a number of cards of that collection every week. Thus, players have to constantly revise their decks and cannot wait for reference on the web.
2-Make powerfull cards common. That way, they are more accessible, and it’s less pay to win. Make rare cards original and cool, with special art. So price of rare cards is based on cosmetics, originality and not power.
3-Create cards that give more choices. Cards that offer choices when you play actually make you think, and put you in control.
4-Do less ultra combo cards, that favor just stacking obvious cards. Like basically just saying to players: “Take all the Dragon cards, put them together, and then, don’t even think of what you play, it will be powerfull whatsoever, and all you have to do is play every single card you can every turn, without even thinking”.

Are these enough examples?

There is no such thing in game desing as “impossible”. Any one saying that it is impossible is either lazy or hiding another agenda…

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Considering the direction the game has gone and is going, I would say they are aiming for the following:

1). Whales who feel that buying early access to the most broken cards gives them the edge that they need to smurf a large portion of the player base.

2). Yu-Gi-Oh players.
3). Pokémon players
4). Gambling addicts—especially slot machine players.

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oh so anyone who plays videogames

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Hearthstone is a trading card game. Not unlike Magic the Gathering.

One would be expectd to gather cards in order to build a deck. Play it. Tweak it. Play it. Then again.

What actually happens though, is netdecking. People ripping someone elses deck and play it.

There’s a few premade decks. Which are nice to get a feel of the class. Deckbuilding can be frustrating if someone is not very good at it. This could get looked into.

If you can manage to make a functionnal deck on your own, it’s really rewarding.

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If Hearthstone’s target audience is me, I think it tries most to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. For some, it’s a memory of playing WoW, for others, an earlier expansion, and still others, a feeling of childhood wonderment at all the flashy effects and animations.

They try to appeal to as large of an audience as possible, and I think they do a pretty good job

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oh hey thats me, i love yugioh

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