We’re also getting Pandaria themed BG board soon which is real suspicious. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re diving into Pandaria even without the Monk class
Microsoft has been doing good in the past 5-7 years with their acquisitions. I see this as being a huge positive and once Kotick gets the boot (rumored he is leaving after ATVI is acquired) that should really pave the way for a strong path forward.
He'll almost certainly stay on for a transitional period and then be let go, or leave to "hang with the family". I don't think they'd keep him around after another bad news cycle. Can't hurt that Game Pass brand!
There’s been all the cool new BG cosmetics recently (and more coming), that we wanted to make it clear this wasn’t that. And just also generally remind people that BGs is a fun, free game mode.
This isn't the first time they have advertised updates as being free in Battlegrounds. It's a core part of the marketing at this point IMO.
It is quite unfortunate that a crappy brand of peanut butter (why is it so damn sweet) shares the same name sound as the glorious web animations image format.
Every patch is going to bring in new bundles and skins, Hearthstone finally got into the proper rate of releasing cosmetics so everyone can find something they like. The bundles are also just super easy to do and good value over buying regular packs so I certainly can't fault them.
I hope they figure something out for wild. Keeping wild, wild, and then adding a new expanded card pool format that they are willing to apply some balance to would be the best way to go imo. Then they can make wild the place for cards with no changes and whatever the new mode the place for people to go that actually care about playing with thousands of cards, but with a tad less bs.
I think we'll see something in the next couple of weeks since 22.4 is likely the mini-set. (DMF + Barrens had *.4 as their mini-set, SW was *.6 because *.4 was Mercs).
I don't think the primary goal will ever be to win over a large population of the player base into Mercenaries, it simply isn't a game for everyone. It's to keep the players they have and maybe catch some others to join in the fun occasionally when they're feeling bored of Constructed or Battlegrounds (or Arena) and a new event is going on.
Keep in mind, this is a dev comment on the unofficial Mercenaries Discord server. It's like if a dev were to make an announcement of an announcement. I'd never expect huge insights here, that's what the official communications through patch notes are for.
Quote From Alper
The training ground is the most stupid thing, even casual players level up their mercaneries very fast. It takes not even an hour to max out a mercanery
That's a very broad statement and likely doesn't take into account what a casual player really is. Casual at its core is someone who pops in, plays a round or two in a day and moves on to something else. Maybe its on the train to work or when you're in the bathroom. Casual players are not maxing out their characters in an hour play session, I can almost guarantee that.
I believe what you mean is the more "hardcore casual" type of player, and yes, that person who goes into the game mode with an understanding of how they can do stuff efficiently but they don't play the mode all that much are also not the primary target of this passive XP machine.
Casual players aren't even likely to be looking up what the best decks are, or in the case of Mercs, parties. They aren't super committed to the game(s) they are playing. These folks would greatly benefit from passive XP. It gives them progression so things can feel new when they login the next time. Logging in and having slightly more power than last time means they might clear their next objective or it might make them feel much stronger so that they play a little more.
Not everything in a game is designed for the hardcore. Perfect example of this is the reluctance to add additional deck slots to Hearthstone. They didn't want to overcomplicate things.
Hearthstone Audio Clips in database is an odd metric to showcase.
Last month as a sort of ninja-update, our database now has audio files for Hearthstone cards and this information is a part of our patch import pipeline so it'll stay up to date. Nothing about it was a planned update, if just sort of happened by accident when making adjustments to some of our datamining tools - a happy little accident as Bob Ross would say.
There are a few cards that are missing audio still, but for the most part, you'll be able to find sounds for new cards when new patches drop! Once we've got most of those figured out, we'll open up a forum thread to collect feedback on sounds that are missing so we can go and weed out the remaining conditions.
I'm excited to have that on the site because it adds more value to our database pages. Once we get Mercenary audio mapped properly, we'll be sure to carry that on over to the Mercenary-specific pages too.
Also, I'd like to skin an audio player instead of relying on the browser-specific ones. Browser ones don't match the site very and they're a bit on the large side :P
Probably a form of categorization that starts early on so it is obvious what kind of voicelines need to be recorded. The reason why a card or hero name may not be used though is due to those likely not being finalized until later in the process, so sticking to generics + the card's internal ID = GG.
Almost everything that is new in the client ends up on our homepage shortly after patches go up so for the most part, that's already true. Sometimes we do hold back on some information though to better time it with something else.
I also don't want to get too in-depth with some stuff because the fewer people that understand how stuff works, the more beneficial it is for us from a traffic POV. Damn balancing acts.
No patch this week =)
We’re also getting Pandaria themed BG board soon which is real suspicious. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re diving into Pandaria even without the Monk class
Datamined!
Hearthstone has been declining in popularity since 2016, yet, it's still a massive game.
Yu-Gi-Oh has been out since 1999.
Correct, it wouldn't make sense to do so.
Microsoft has been doing good in the past 5-7 years with their acquisitions. I see this as being a huge positive and once Kotick gets the boot (rumored he is leaving after ATVI is acquired) that should really pave the way for a strong path forward.
He'll almost certainly stay on for a transitional period and then be let go, or leave to "hang with the family". I don't think they'd keep him around after another bad news cycle. Can't hurt that Game Pass brand!
That's neat!
Decktech expanded on this.
This isn't the first time they have advertised updates as being free in Battlegrounds. It's a core part of the marketing at this point IMO.
Gym, Gel, Giraffe, General, Gin.
It is quite unfortunate that a crappy brand of peanut butter (why is it so damn sweet) shares the same name sound as the glorious web animations image format.
Every patch is going to bring in new bundles and skins, Hearthstone finally got into the proper rate of releasing cosmetics so everyone can find something they like. The bundles are also just super easy to do and good value over buying regular packs so I certainly can't fault them.
I hope they figure something out for wild. Keeping wild, wild, and then adding a new expanded card pool format that they are willing to apply some balance to would be the best way to go imo. Then they can make wild the place for cards with no changes and whatever the new mode the place for people to go that actually care about playing with thousands of cards, but with a tad less bs.
I think we'll see something in the next couple of weeks since 22.4 is likely the mini-set. (DMF + Barrens had *.4 as their mini-set, SW was *.6 because *.4 was Mercs).
I don't think the primary goal will ever be to win over a large population of the player base into Mercenaries, it simply isn't a game for everyone. It's to keep the players they have and maybe catch some others to join in the fun occasionally when they're feeling bored of Constructed or Battlegrounds (or Arena) and a new event is going on.
Keep in mind, this is a dev comment on the unofficial Mercenaries Discord server. It's like if a dev were to make an announcement of an announcement. I'd never expect huge insights here, that's what the official communications through patch notes are for.
That's a very broad statement and likely doesn't take into account what a casual player really is. Casual at its core is someone who pops in, plays a round or two in a day and moves on to something else. Maybe its on the train to work or when you're in the bathroom. Casual players are not maxing out their characters in an hour play session, I can almost guarantee that.
I believe what you mean is the more "hardcore casual" type of player, and yes, that person who goes into the game mode with an understanding of how they can do stuff efficiently but they don't play the mode all that much are also not the primary target of this passive XP machine.
Casual players aren't even likely to be looking up what the best decks are, or in the case of Mercs, parties. They aren't super committed to the game(s) they are playing. These folks would greatly benefit from passive XP. It gives them progression so things can feel new when they login the next time. Logging in and having slightly more power than last time means they might clear their next objective or it might make them feel much stronger so that they play a little more.
Not everything in a game is designed for the hardcore. Perfect example of this is the reluctance to add additional deck slots to Hearthstone. They didn't want to overcomplicate things.
Stein*
We don't have collection-based achievements on the site for two reasons:
It looks like you just naturally accumulated quite a few achievements from browsing around last year.
Hearthstone Audio Clips in database is an odd metric to showcase.
Last month as a sort of ninja-update, our database now has audio files for Hearthstone cards and this information is a part of our patch import pipeline so it'll stay up to date. Nothing about it was a planned update, if just sort of happened by accident when making adjustments to some of our datamining tools - a happy little accident as Bob Ross would say.
There are a few cards that are missing audio still, but for the most part, you'll be able to find sounds for new cards when new patches drop! Once we've got most of those figured out, we'll open up a forum thread to collect feedback on sounds that are missing so we can go and weed out the remaining conditions.
I'm excited to have that on the site because it adds more value to our database pages. Once we get Mercenary audio mapped properly, we'll be sure to carry that on over to the Mercenary-specific pages too.
Also, I'd like to skin an audio player instead of relying on the browser-specific ones. Browser ones don't match the site very and they're a bit on the large side :P
Probably a form of categorization that starts early on so it is obvious what kind of voicelines need to be recorded. The reason why a card or hero name may not be used though is due to those likely not being finalized until later in the process, so sticking to generics + the card's internal ID = GG.
Almost everything that is new in the client ends up on our homepage shortly after patches go up so for the most part, that's already true. Sometimes we do hold back on some information though to better time it with something else.
I also don't want to get too in-depth with some stuff because the fewer people that understand how stuff works, the more beneficial it is for us from a traffic POV. Damn balancing acts.