There are the new 24.0 patch notes already available for various game modes, and there is plenty to uncover when it comes to the upcoming new Rewards Track for the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion, but... never mind all that, really. Apparently none of it even matters. At least if we were to judge by the initial community reactions, as players across social media have been rather busy collectively losing their minds over the makings of one little upcoming feature that received a whole single line of description in the official Blizzard blog post.
Whatever could be so important? Apparently anything that might assist people with opening their Hearthstone packs en masse, free from the shackles of such grueling requirement at long last.
Quote From Blizzard Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
- You can now hold down the Spacebar to continuously open packs.
If you count yourself among this happy crowd, you may not need any other new content with the best kind of news already delivered here. But you're definitely going to need a lot of packs to make best use of this rather curious feature. And ideally something to hold down your spacebar key, should the fingers give way. Eventually.
Faster Pack Opening - Developer Insights
Following the publication of the most recent set of patch notes, Hearthstone Features Lead Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig has been very active, leaving comments and answering various community inquiries with regard to this latest addition.
Quote From Celestalon You can now hold down the Spacebar to continuously open packs. (We're still tuning the speed on this one. Want it to be fast, but never accidentally hit.)
Quote From Celestalon Quick note on this one:- When the patch goes live, the speed on this is going to be quite slow.
- We already have a hotfix on the way for just before expansion launch to speed it up significantly (2x).
- We can continue tweaking from there! Let us know how it feels!
Quote From Celestalon Update: Apologies, we ran into a problem with that hotfix, so it'll be a little while later. Realize that that makes this not particularly helpful for Nathria launch, which is unfortunate, unless you make several sandwiches. Sorry!
Ow. Well. We sincerely hope you like your sandwiches. The expansion launch on August 2 could turn out to be a very long day and/or night, with lots of energy required to push down that spacebar key. And occasionally click things with the mouse.
Fear not, for the pack opening future (should be) bright.
Quote From Celestalon Is there any kind of summary feature at the end to show a list of what was opened? if not i think that'd be great to add in the future.A more elaborate "mass pack opening" feature, with that sort of summary of what you opened, is something we'd like to do at some point in the future. Hold-to-open was a small thing that we could get in quickly.
As another user promptly pointed out, the Collection Manager does mark any cards you might've pulled/received but haven't yet combed over as "New".
Moving on... what about us mobile players?
Quote From Celestalon Anyone know if there is a way you can utilize this on mobile as well?use your phone to hold down the space bar on your desktop keyboard
lol… (But to answer your question, no. Mobile has had swipe to open a whole pack which was faster, but this was a short term thing we could do to help Desktop.)
Bonus points to Ridiculous Hat for coming up with such a creative way to put one's phone to good use.
Pick Your Side
Of course, there must always be balance in The Force. For that reason, we've already seen the rise of another player faction, one that savors the sublime experience of a slow, elaborate pack opening process. And respects their spacebar keys, clearly.
As a counterpoint, we have the testimony of such learned individuals as Tian Ding, whom you might recognize as a former Hearthstone Data Scientist, now working for Second Dinner on the neighboring card game Marvel SNAP.
Quote From Tian Ding I used to run a script to spam space bar for me to open packs in each expansion launch day, so I could AFK for 45 minutes
And so the pack opening saga continues. We'll be eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.
Where do you find yourselves, is this something you expect to be utilizing a lot? Too protective of your spacebar? We are happy to hear all sentiments!
Comments
I've been waiting a long time for this feature, and it looks like I'll continue waiting. This drippy half-measure is not even close to adequate. I want UI elements where I can enter how many to open, and I absolutely want the post-opening summary. Without those, I'm better off with the old one-at-a-time method.
"Mobile has had swipe to open"
It does? How does that work?
As in, one swipe saves 5 taps, but each pack is treated as an individual entity, or something else altogether?
Yep, precisely. Swiping to one side just tends to be quicker than clicking 5 times separately (you can't choose what to uncover first on mobile, it always goes from left to right; you only get to adjust the swiping speed).
But you still have to drag separate packs to the right location before you can attempt to open them, same as on desktop.
I know there's been requests for auto-opening features, but is this seriously something people want? For me the best part of day 1 is opening my packs and savoring in delight (before ultimately get handed a ticket back to reality and your four legendaries for your 4 months of savings)
Unfortunately I will never truly understand or experience what it feels like to actually possess so many packs that automation becomes a necessity.
You've pretty much answered your own question. Opening more than a hundred packs at one time is extremely tedious. There's no excitement or anticipation because you know you'll end up with all the cards anyway. The only question is how much dust you'll have to spend to grab the last few legendaries.
When you've saved up like 9000 gold since the last expansion plus have some unopened packs from pre- and post-launch events, you can easily have over a hundred packs to open every set. Each pack has 5 cards. That's 600 spacebar presses to open your packs and reveal the cards. And that's the experience for me now when I'm mostly free-to-play. In the period when I used to buy packs in addition to what I earned, I could often have double or triple that amount to open. I've been playing card games since mid-2000s. The kid in the kidstore charm is gone, I've opened way too many packs in my life to give a damn about each individual pack.
What ends up happening on launch is I just sit there, pressing spacebar 600+ times while I'm having a video playing in the background. Only after I'm done do I actually go over what I've opened. The whole thing would be infinitely more pleasant if I could just have all the cards from the packs added to my collection, then I can go have a look what I got. I don't need to spend 30+ minutes hammering the spacebar and watching pack popping animations and cards slowly turning over. It's just a needless waste of time that's preventing me from actually having fun playing the game.
Could not agree more. I'm opening 2-300 packs every expansion launch, which easily takes an hour or more and is just delaying actual gameplay. I ended up using a macro recorder to press the spacebar for me while I'm taking care of other business.
Is amazing in the first packs, if you are opening like 100 or more is quite boring
I've always savored the pack opening experience. I will always hover over each card to see if it has that golden glow then freak out like a fan girl from the excitement. Have had some entertaining fireside gatherings where everyone has to take a shot of alcohol if anyone opens a legendary. Quite fun to say the least but this does increase pack opening time to about 2 hours.
Will continue doing the same for Murder at Castle Nathria launch. Hoping to open Topior the Shrubbagazzor and feel like I've won the jackpot 🤩
Indeed, the three most exciting times of the year are the new expansion launch days. Once there is finally a table free at the tavern, you can really start relishing each and every pack opening even though it usually lasts for well over an hour for me.
"Woah, Golden Legendary!!!" 🍻
I enjoy opening the first 60-80 packs slowly, but once you're down to only needing to open Legendaries and the last few Epics, it starts to get a bit arduous opening them one at a time. I've been saving all the packs from the various skin bundles and have got both pre-orders, so that's over 200 packs. It definitely starts to take a toll towards the end.
Would prefer "open all packs at once, skip the endless animation" button.
Combine that with a record of each pack's contents so you can enter them in a tracker to get an idea of what you should buy in the future and the result is perfect.
The problem is that the devs don't want to eliminate the animation entirely because it engenders addiction, but if you make them sufficiently fast, I can be okay enough with them. My emphasis would still be on that report.
Opening packs is basically like sitting in front of a slot machine, but for kids.
I appreciate everything they did about polishing the quality of game. But let me be nitpicky.
What we asked: Some way to open a bunch of card packs at once.
What we get: This, plus bug.
Thanks, Obama..