My biggest gripe with HS...

Why are the emotes so passive-aggressive? I can't well play with half the heroes I have because they all sound so patronizing. What is worse is that sometimes you can't tell what kind of emote is being used by the opponent (or vice versa) because none of them sound like the original emotes (Ex: Nightslayer Valeera's well played is 'What is sharper- your wits or your blades?")

Yeah I agree, some of the new skins have really weird emotes. 

I'm more bothered by how many players use them. Not everyone, but in general:

 'Wow/well played' seems to mean: I'm salty because of your lucky topdecks/RNG

'Thanks' seems only to be used at the end of the game in a 'thanks, for the free win noob' 

'Greetings' seems to mean: I drew the nuts and will crush you

Strangely enough, 'threaten' seems the funniest, mostly used by players who are about to lose as a way to say "I'll get you next time!'' 

If only we had an auto-squelch option.

I would take what @Modalko said a step further, and argue that most of the time the player's timing is a bigger contributing factor to passive-aggression than the emotes themselves. While there are definitely some heroes that couldn't sound genuine if they tried, and the intonation of the 'wow' emote is often purposely filled with sarcasm, there are also many that sound fine on their own and are only interpreted as passive-aggressive by association with years of players using them at the 'wrong' time.

I will always argue that the worst part of any card game is the players: just as Spikes produce a meta on ladder that grossly over-represents a tiny fraction of what Hearthstone can be, passive-aggressive uses of emotes make us forget honest uses exist. The cards themselves don't force metas to arise; it is the way players (and Spikes in particular) choose to use them. Nevertheless, we act like Hearthstone is the meta, and we likewise respond to emotes based on their most common uses, even if they aren't inherently like that.

Regarding complex emotes like Nightslayer Valeera's "What is sharper- your wits or your blades?", I agree with you there. It is something that has become frustrating as they have added more and more skins, all trying to have unique ways of saying things. The 'greetings' and 'well played' emotes have been most affected by it (the 'threaten' emote is complex by it's very nature so I am ignoring any trend there), and often you have to stop and interpret what they have said just to draw the link.

I guess the intent behind "What is sharper- your wits or your blades?" is that Valeera is used to very sharp weapons, so comparing the opponent's wits to that is a compliment. I.e. she's saying they have a sharp mind. That works fine against a rogue, warrior or DH, but falls down a bit against classes that aren't known for using sharp blades. It could be an outright insult to paladins who mostly use laughably blunt hammers.

The one that annoys me most though is Illidan's greetings (especially as it is on a basic hero portrait): "Evil draws close." That is not a greetings. A greetings is something said specifically to someone else. I don't mind if it is friendly or patronising, but muttering "Evil draws close" under your breath is not a substitute for saying hello. It doesn't even make sense against the large number of heroes who are not evil, even from Illidan's perspective. Grumpy and misguided(?) as he is, he was never actually of the belief that the usual 'good guys' of Azeroth are evil. To him they are just unwilling to make necessary sacrifices.

It really doesn't say a lot for your self confidence if you get offended by a set remark by a cartoon character being sent by a total stranger.

Come on guys it's just a game. BMing is part of the fun. 

The problem for me isn't that I am getting BM'd, but rather when I want to do the opposite and my opponent thinks I am BM'ing. It just sucks knowing someone thinks I was being a jerk.

My thought is, why Hearthstone decided to use emotes at all, if it's gonna be like what @Modalko said? Why not stick with casual chat? The platform obviously can support it. If it turns out that the opponent is toxic, then mute them, (or better, report them)

Sticking with emote is not a friendly way to say hi, or say thanks to someone without being taken as sarcastic. (And it happened often enough)

Quote From h0lysatan

My thought is, why Hearthstone decided to use emotes at all, if it's gonna be like what @Modalko said? Why not stick with casual chat? The platform obviously can support it. If it turns out that the opponent is toxic, then mute them, (or better, report them)

Sticking with emote is not a friendly way to say hi, or say thanks to someone without being taken as sarcastic. (And it happened often enough)

Emotes aren't without problems, but there's also quite a lot to be said for them. Even when they are used to frustrate the opponent, their ability to cause offense is practically nil. By limiting players to a handful of relevant emotes, they save Blizzard's customer support from needing to deal with a flood of reports of petulant children swearing at each other. 

Plus the emotes are a huge part of what the hero cards and portraits are. Jaraxxus wouldn't have nearly the following he has if it wasn't for his emotes. Other gimmicky heroes (Morgl, Sir Annoy-o, N'Zoth, Hazelbark etc) would lose the most, but even the more tame heroes have a lot of personality bundled up in their emotes that makes Hearthstone a richer experience. Even during friendly matches where I am talking to my opponent through chat, I still use the emotes because they are often just a better way to express some things than a bit of silent text will be.

Finally, I know I wouldn't communicate with my (unknown) opponent at all if it wasn't for the emotes. I'm happy to click 'greetings', 'wow' and 'well played' at appropriate times during a game, but I'd feel much less inclined to say anything if I have to express it in my own words. So the anonymity that encourages some players to be annoying is also what makes it easier for shy players to be friendly. That friendliness might fall on deaf ears most of the time, but not everyone is so jaded that they automatically assume the worst.

Whatever each players' negative/neutral/positive intention of (ab)using the available emotes is, as Tumbleweedovski stated earlier, an (opt-in) auto-squelch option should at least help out HS players who do not want to interact at all with their opponents whatsoever aside from playing the actual game itself. To this day, I cannot comprehend the reluctant stance/opinion of Team5 on this matter.

Quote From NebuchadnezzarHS

Whatever each players' negative/neutral/positive intention of (ab)using the available emotes is, as Tumbleweedovski stated earlier, an (opt-in) auto-squelch option should at least help out HS players who do not want to interact at all with their opponents whatsoever aside from playing the actual game itself. To this day, I cannot comprehend the reluctant stance/opinion of Team5 on this matter.

Unfortunately it's the same reason why we have stupidly long animations and can't disable or make them very fast:  someone worked on them, got paid for it and now we are forced to see/use them in the way they wanted, and not in a useful manner for us

Your example has some similarities to the emotes issue, but IMO they do not entirely fall in the same category. I do agree with that some long animations are annoying and should be sped up. Shudderwock was the worst offender.

A more similar example would be to have to sit through the NPC telling their story/conversations in the solo adventures. At least with those most HS players probably will not revisit them after getting the reward. Why does Team5 not look at it from the point of view such as that we do not want nor have to login by filling in our password whenever we launch Hearthstone? They have implemented a keep me logged in (or remember my credentials) checkbox for that. Just implement the very same kind of checkbox for (opt-in) auto-squelching emotes in the settings as it is a frequently asked/desired for Quality of Life improvement and be done with it once and for all.

Quote From Team5

Auto-squelch is something that's been discussed by the Hearthstone team before, but it's not something we're comfortable with. What would likely happen were auto-squelch implemented is that players would enable it after a single incident, and that would be it. They would never reactivate emotes, and as more players did it over time, emotes would largely be devalued.

Squelch exists as it does now as a means to ignore someone being particularly vocal. If someone is just spamming 'thanks' over and over, you have a means to deal with it, and bypass perceived rude behavior. You absolutely have the option to squelch every single opponent you play, and we're comfortable with that. We simply don't want to give players the option to forever disable emotes with the click of a single button.

There's a lot of feedback on this particular issue, and it's something we're constantly evaluating, but that's where we are as a team, presently.

Considering the opinion of Team5 (quoted above) and speaking for us manual-squelchers out there, we can even live with such a setting which could reset itself after installing every patch as a meet eachother in the middle solution.

Having this setting does not hurt anyone that wants to emote; the emoters can still emote until eternity into the void without them ever knowing they were squelched already and it only improves the experience for us squelchers (who never want to get emoted). Thus a net positive, let us see this being implemented and read back in one of the future patch notes please (one can only hope).

Sorry for hijacking this topic to ask for (or at least share my thoughts about) an auto-squelch setting within the game client/app itself 😋 so please continue the discussion about the intentions of emotes.

Maybe it's a better long term solution to embrace the emotes than to try and abolish them? It really makes me sad when I witness people who are offended sometimes for days in a row by the smallest slight that comes from other people.

I grew up in a very safe and positive environment. It was rare that someone was ever rude to me. After high school however I worked a lot of hard blue collar jobs and also got mixed into harder drugs. Suddenly people weren't as polite. Did I get my feelings hurt? Of course I did.

From reading a lot of hearthstone forums over the years it's obvious to me most people have had it a little softer than I have and therefore are a bit more sensitive. I just want to throw it out that it is pretty laughable to me to get offended even the smallest by... An emote of all things  

Maybe it's good that people hear them so they can work on not being so offended by other people being people?

Perhaps I was not clear enough, so I will share my perspective of why I turn emotes off. Aside from playing a turn-based game of digital cards, I do not care for ANY other interaction with my opponent whatsoever. I do not play HS to make friends or enemies. I like HS because it reminds me of Magic: The Gathering; it has a collectible aspect, cool animations, tons of flavor, most of the time it is really fun and it even runs on a mobile device. When playing a match (Win or Lose) the outcome will be decided by who played the best sequence of cards. If I get bored during a match, I will fiddle with the board or direct my attention somewhere else. If the AI was smart enough, I would not even mind playing against it, but since it also rewards less XP I will not do this. Whenever I want to discuss about HS, I just go online and visit a great HS community like Out of Cards instead of spamming emotes with some random stranger opponent.

People are different, which makes them unique. People play games like HS in their own way and get their personal satisfaction/enjoyment out of it. The fact Blizzard assumes an auto-squelch setting would be used only because people got offended prior is already flawed and false.

Bottomline is this; there already exists a manual squelch option in the game. So, they clearly are not opposed to players getting squelched. Some of us just want an extra auto-squelch setting which save us some time. The saved time is at most 2 seconds each game. Considering I already played 15000+ games (and counting) it adds up significantly (8 hours! rounded down). It is just plain ignorant that a Quality of Life request so simple and harmless is not granted to HS players by Team5.

By the way, not trying to convince you of anything unless by any chance you are working for Blizzard who randomly saw my somewhat harsh (rant) comment 😇

Quote From Tumbleweedovski

If only we had an auto-squelch option.

If you use Hearthstone Deck Tracker, there is an Auto-Squelch add on you can install

Quote From Thonson

Quote From Tumbleweedovski

If only we had an auto-squelch option.

If you use Hearthstone Deck Tracker, there is an Auto-Squelch add on you can install

I was aware of that, but thanks. I'm not using that one as it always misclicked last time I tried, but it's worth it to give it another try. Maybe an update has fixed the issue by now.

you could see any expression however you want to see it, depends on your view of things, really

i barely use emotes ever, but i can't help it when my opponent makes some absolutely ridiculous misplay or terrible play in general i just say "well played"

but that's pretty much about it

Quote From Akasha

you could see any expression however you want to see it, depends on your view of things, really

i barely use emotes ever, but i can't help it when my opponent makes some absolutely ridiculous misplay or terrible play in general i just say "well played"

but that's pretty much about it

While different people have different emotional responses to things, that doesn't mean the expression itself doesn't carry most of the blame when taken negatively.

In your case of using "well played" when the opponent makes a mistake, you are being sarcastic, which is always going to be viewed as antagonistic because sarcasm is always a form of mockery. You could instead use the "oops" emote, which may still annoy the opponent, but it might also be taken as a friendly way of pointing out the mistake.

Both emotes are pointing out an error, but they can be perceived very differently. So if the aim is to annoy the opponent, then go ahead and take the sarcastic option, but if you are just eager to point out the error, then try out the "oops" emote instead.

In Battlegrounds the murloc waving has become a sign of "you're gonna lose, cya". However, I like to use it like it an idiot waving hello repeatedly

Quote From AngryShuckie

Quote From Akasha

you could see any expression however you want to see it, depends on your view of things, really

i barely use emotes ever, but i can't help it when my opponent makes some absolutely ridiculous misplay or terrible play in general i just say "well played"

but that's pretty much about it

While different people have different emotional responses to things, that doesn't mean the expression itself doesn't carry most of the blame when taken negatively.

In your case of using "well played" when the opponent makes a mistake, you are being sarcastic, which is always going to be viewed as antagonistic because sarcasm is always a form of mockery. You could instead use the "oops" emote, which may still annoy the opponent, but it might also be taken as a friendly way of pointing out the mistake.

Both emotes are pointing out an error, but they can be perceived very differently. So if the aim is to annoy the opponent, then go ahead and take the sarcastic option, but if you are just eager to point out the error, then try out the "oops" emote instead.

I like to emote well played when my opponent ropes and makes a very obvious pla