I'm so glad the taste aspect isn't absolutely required. Though it would make Overcooked more interesting when your friend burns the food.
I really hope the Gamescent ends up being good. Even if you don't use it all the time, it would still be nice to break it out occasionally when you want that extra bit of reality. I'm really hoping that the burning tyre smells are good because we're going to have an incredible time in VR with my racing wheel playing F1 and Assetto Corsa.
Alright so it's only fair that I also give my predictions for the year's expansions.
First, the cupcake is confusing. Cogs, a toy plane, a shield-looking-thing, those are all easily indications of Gnomes and Mechs which would be an amazing theme. If they want to use this year as a celebration of Hearthstone, it would make sense to do a huge throwback to Goblins vs Gnomes right off the bat. The cupcake could just be the fact they are celebrating things. My prediction: Bring on the Gnomes and Mechs. Maybe goblins and murlocs too, a "short stuff" expansion. The wood backdrop could indicate the expansion is going to have a tavern theme.
Second, what are we doing in a desert with an oasis. League of Explorers are one of Hearthstone's most beloved set of characters, so they are almost certainly going to be involved. Location? We've got The Stagnant Oasis in The Barrens, but we've already been there recently and it isn't a sandy desert. We've also got Uldum's Oasis of Vir'sar and Vir'naal Oasis. Saviors of Uldum is old enough at this point they could maybe drop in again. The expansion was well received and again, if we're celebrating the good in Hearthstone Uldum would make a damn good choice.
Though, World of Warcraft is doing something with Pirates soon, and it would be very cool for Blizzard to also do something with pirates in Hearthstone. Leeroy back in the core set, gimme a new patches! Screw it, let's yolo this and guess that we're going to see a Pirate expansion.
Third, we've got the cosmos. I immediately start to think of Algalon, the Titans, Ulduar. Uldum, if that is what we were getting in expansion 2, would play into that very well and if Blizzard wants to do thematics in the mini-set for the new Uldum set, it would be a perfect time to tell a story to jump into Expansion 3.
The third expansion it feels silly to be talking about Ulduar with TITANS and the Fall of Ulduar mini-set recently coming out. Or maybe there's more to tell there.
Or.. maybe night elves? Tyrande's card back matches pretty well...
I don't have a really good prediction for number 3. The Celestial Steed mount was released in World of Warcraft during the end year of Wrath of the Lich King, and the steed is really a pegasus... The mount also just returned to the game as an item in the Trading Post. I don't know, Blizzard is probably trying to throw people off with the last image so they don't repeat the obvious Alterac Valley.
Seo sure but not ChatGPT. Gonna hate for building content that aims to get organic traffic so new people join onto the website more to help it grow? That’s a bad take.
I spent a lot of time putting this together so to diminish that work… kinda a dick move but I get it. There are a lot of spam sites with pure ChatGPT content - this ain’t one of them. I’ve certainly experimented with it because you’d be crazy not to but ChatGPT is bad at creating content surrounding video games.
Unfortunate change but probably good for balance. Ultra Spheres definitely made catching some pals quite a bit easier in the mid-game so moving it solidly into the mid-late game area makes sense.
That about sums up what I'd like to play this month. I've got a few titles in the backlog I need to find some time to write some reviews for but for the pure enjoyment factor, Palworld is likely going to be it. Valentines in World of Warcraft also means I'll catch some time there, but I just want to focus on beating my favourite Pokeclones right now.
That is a crazy nerf to Thaddius but it looks quite warranted when you look at the card's winrate stats on HSReplay.
Diamond through Legend tells us the card had a bit of a rise in January but ultimately wasn't that big of a deal and it's fizzled out.
But when we look at Bronze through Gold, it tells a different story. Players are having a rough time with the card and even though both the top and bottom of the ladder see Thaddius at a popularity score of 1.38% and 2% respectively, so a small number of decks, the card is clearly a winrate outlier in lower-end play so if not many are playing it, nerfing it sounds like it will only improve those weird one-off games where he's just such a powerhouse and can't be dealt with.
Honestly that's just kinda a thing for all consoles and didn't feel like it needed to be pointed out but you very well might be right about it being worth mentioning. I'll have to figure out how I want to approach it. Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah it's doing incredibly well. 855,706 on steam is the current peak and they just stated there are now 3 million copies sold in 40 hours. So nutty but I love it!
Destiny 2 [...] there is important lore in the removed content that is now completely inaccessible to new players.
Yup, and they removed ways to get items that are still useful in the game. Luckily, there is an alternative way to obtain exotics from the past, but it requires a potentially larger time sink than had the content remained in the game. It's possible they've adjusted it since 2021 though when I was last looking into obtaining stuff I was missing, so maybe it isn't as bad.
Note that for apps on Apple's mobile store, it is forbidden to download executable code, probably as a measure to avoid code bypassing review.
Yup, that's the exact reason! And it's a reason why some bugs can't be fixed via small hearthstone-provided updates. Blizzard has done a good job over the years though improving what they can and can't hotfix into the client, so that's a plus.
the market for live service games as a whole becomes worse, because players have no time left to play multiple games.
Yeah =(
The problem is that investors expect not just profits, but growing profits, which is not sustainable. This is a wider problem and I think it will take a lot of time and probably a few collapses before people will learn to be satisfied with just steady profits instead of expecting exponential growth in every market.
We're in for an incredibly rude awakening when this becomes a universal truth. Steady profits are so healthy, as is single digit growth, but of course, greed takes over on the side of everyone and is the reason we can't have nice things. If you aren't making returns that are beating the market, you're effectively losing money. Magic fairy money at that.
Classic could also make a decent Twist for a month. I'm surprised they haven't done that yet.
This would have been such an easy thing for them to do for the "off season" that is happening right now for January before they bring in some new goodies for February. They could have done Classic + Naxx and it would have been a great way to kick off the year.
My guess is that they already have a plan to drop Mercenaries from the client and are just waiting a while to announce it
Removing paid content like that from players, especially in a card game, would be a huge slap in the face. If they offered refunds to BattleNet balance or just an equivalent in other Hearthstone stuff, I could see them being able to do it with less friction, but they have to take a loss in order to do it. I can't see this being anything but a monetary-driven decision. They might claim that it's difficult to support balance in the mode when they are always creating so many new cards, and they have on Twitter, that can't be the only driving force behind why it was okay to remove.
Destiny 2 infamously removed content from the game because of "hard drive space" with no optional way to get it back. If Blizzard wanted to take the smarter approach here, and make some new tech, maybe they could make Mercenaries an optional download (it's a lot of data, images, code) which would slim down the mobile install of the game.
One reason I don't see them doing that though is the people who will ask the same for Battlegrounds, but Battlegrounds being an active mode needs to be baseline for the ease of access, and because there's that 1% chance someone who doesn't care about it goes and plays it once because it was easy to do so and they end up spending money on it.
In a way though, I'd like to be wrong about that. Mercenaries has so much stuff in the client, it would certainly make all our datamining processes quicker without it there. But I'd rather it stay because I know people that still like to play it and I think that's awesome.
Live service games in general are having a hard time: a combination of the market being saturated, player preferences changing and rising costs.
Oh yeah, I feel bad for the new model of games. It used to be that you'd launch a game, provide some support for it, and then it was done and you were either a great game or a bad game. But now everything from AAA needs multiplayer, needs a battle pass, needs microtransctions (even in single player games), and it just all feels so predatory. It forces everyone to stick to regular content releases which in some cases can lead to lower quality updates in games (honestly a lot of early PUBG felt lower quality and updating for the sake of updating).
Then you add in how players change overtime? Oof.
It reminds me of the time when every few months another "WoW killer" was announced and few lived beyond the initial hype.
I am so thrilled to have never sunk time into another MMO during the early "WoW killer" days. Played all the betas, always went back to the real crack dealer and it looks like I wasn't wrong for doing so. It's not even that all those games were bad, some of them had great stuff in them, but they all ended up lacking content at the end of the day.
There is only so much space for games that require a lot of time investment;
And that's my problem with battle passes. I know I'm not the target audience for a lot of games, I don't have the time like I used to, but damn do I hate how battle passes feel so essential to the experience. I like having some cool stuff and games and it seems like the coolest always comes from the passes and they just take such a massive time commitment to finish. If I had a dollar for every battle pass I haven't finished, I'd be able to buy a few more battle passes.
What I think happened is that they fired a number of developers last year to cut costs and now they have to make cuts in the stuff they can deliver because they're short-staffed.
Isn't it insane how you can fire a dozen people, screw over the game hard enough to require cuts, but when you look at the overall picture if they cost the company 1.5 million a year and the game profits 50 million (totally making up numbers here) that higher ups see that as a positive savings? Everything always comes down to penny pinching in AAA because of the investors. Investment in game studios was one of the worst things to happen to the industry. Investment as a whole has ruined a lot of businesses and the quality of service they deliver to customers, I remember when you could get someone who actually spoke English on the physical phone with Amazon, but that's a topic for another time.
Oh yeah, I could definitively say and almost be willing to commit to shoe eating if it does happen, that solo adventures are gone for good.
Blizzard always talked about how much work they took and how they have no replay value. Dungeon Run was a solution to that, and Duels was a way to improve upon Dungeon Run. RIP
Which is a damn shame. World of Warcraft has had a similar problem where every expansion the old expansion's stuff is all completely irrelevant which leads to the time in development being too high for the use of it all. With Dragonflight they changed that mantra and instead are creating systems that will be used for years to come which has put so much good into the game.
I think Hearthstone should revisit what a solo adventure is. Why do we need them to be completely voice acted? Why do we need special effects for key moments with a lore character? I can say without a doubt that players would be happy, maybe not all, and probably not Zeddy (<3), with just getting some new AI to play against that featured other characters. Then if you do want to put in the effort of voicelines and animations, sell the damn heroes as playable heroes! Hero Skins must still sell well for there to be so many options, so double up and use solo adventures as a way to showcase cool new hero skins (alongside fun ai to fight). We don't need an adventure to progress some unique Hearthstone story. Go take World of Warcraft's Zul'Aman and create a deck for each of the bosses - you probably already have rights to use the existing art for them. Done.
This is an awesome way to end the epic games holiday giveaway. I never got an opportunity to play Guardians of the Galaxy but I know a lot of folks really enjoyed it so it's now been added to the backlog!
I'm so glad the taste aspect isn't absolutely required. Though it would make Overcooked more interesting when your friend burns the food.
I really hope the Gamescent ends up being good. Even if you don't use it all the time, it would still be nice to break it out occasionally when you want that extra bit of reality. I'm really hoping that the burning tyre smells are good because we're going to have an incredible time in VR with my racing wheel playing F1 and Assetto Corsa.
Alright so it's only fair that I also give my predictions for the year's expansions.
First, the cupcake is confusing. Cogs, a toy plane, a shield-looking-thing, those are all easily indications of Gnomes and Mechs which would be an amazing theme. If they want to use this year as a celebration of Hearthstone, it would make sense to do a huge throwback to Goblins vs Gnomes right off the bat. The cupcake could just be the fact they are celebrating things. My prediction: Bring on the Gnomes and Mechs. Maybe goblins and murlocs too, a "short stuff" expansion. The wood backdrop could indicate the expansion is going to have a tavern theme.
Second, what are we doing in a desert with an oasis. League of Explorers are one of Hearthstone's most beloved set of characters, so they are almost certainly going to be involved. Location? We've got The Stagnant Oasis in The Barrens, but we've already been there recently and it isn't a sandy desert. We've also got Uldum's Oasis of Vir'sar and Vir'naal Oasis. Saviors of Uldum is old enough at this point they could maybe drop in again. The expansion was well received and again, if we're celebrating the good in Hearthstone Uldum would make a damn good choice.
Though, World of Warcraft is doing something with Pirates soon, and it would be very cool for Blizzard to also do something with pirates in Hearthstone. Leeroy back in the core set, gimme a new patches! Screw it, let's yolo this and guess that we're going to see a Pirate expansion.
Third, we've got the cosmos. I immediately start to think of Algalon, the Titans, Ulduar. Uldum, if that is what we were getting in expansion 2, would play into that very well and if Blizzard wants to do thematics in the mini-set for the new Uldum set, it would be a perfect time to tell a story to jump into Expansion 3.
The third expansion it feels silly to be talking about Ulduar with TITANS and the Fall of Ulduar mini-set recently coming out. Or maybe there's more to tell there.
Or.. maybe night elves? Tyrande's card back matches pretty well...
I don't have a really good prediction for number 3. The Celestial Steed mount was released in World of Warcraft during the end year of Wrath of the Lich King, and the steed is really a pegasus... The mount also just returned to the game as an item in the Trading Post. I don't know, Blizzard is probably trying to throw people off with the last image so they don't repeat the obvious Alterac Valley.
Seo sure but not ChatGPT. Gonna hate for building content that aims to get organic traffic so new people join onto the website more to help it grow? That’s a bad take.
I spent a lot of time putting this together so to diminish that work… kinda a dick move but I get it. There are a lot of spam sites with pure ChatGPT content - this ain’t one of them. I’ve certainly experimented with it because you’d be crazy not to but ChatGPT is bad at creating content surrounding video games.
Unfortunate change but probably good for balance. Ultra Spheres definitely made catching some pals quite a bit easier in the mid-game so moving it solidly into the mid-late game area makes sense.
Palworld.
That about sums up what I'd like to play this month. I've got a few titles in the backlog I need to find some time to write some reviews for but for the pure enjoyment factor, Palworld is likely going to be it. Valentines in World of Warcraft also means I'll catch some time there, but I just want to focus on beating my favourite Pokeclones right now.
That is a crazy nerf to Thaddius but it looks quite warranted when you look at the card's winrate stats on HSReplay.
Diamond through Legend tells us the card had a bit of a rise in January but ultimately wasn't that big of a deal and it's fizzled out.
But when we look at Bronze through Gold, it tells a different story. Players are having a rough time with the card and even though both the top and bottom of the ladder see Thaddius at a popularity score of 1.38% and 2% respectively, so a small number of decks, the card is clearly a winrate outlier in lower-end play so if not many are playing it, nerfing it sounds like it will only improve those weird one-off games where he's just such a powerhouse and can't be dealt with.
Neat!
Honestly that's just kinda a thing for all consoles and didn't feel like it needed to be pointed out but you very well might be right about it being worth mentioning. I'll have to figure out how I want to approach it. Thanks for the feedback!
If you run into any issues, you can mention them here. Feedback is also appreciated.
Still slots open!
Yeah it's doing incredibly well. 855,706 on steam is the current peak and they just stated there are now 3 million copies sold in 40 hours. So nutty but I love it!
https://twitter.com/Palworld_EN/status/1748871267439247623
Every. Single. Time.
FWIW Kotick left Activision Blizzard.
That doesn't invalidate anything you've said, just wanted to clear that up for anyone that missed the message.
My favourite comment :D
Yup, and they removed ways to get items that are still useful in the game. Luckily, there is an alternative way to obtain exotics from the past, but it requires a potentially larger time sink than had the content remained in the game. It's possible they've adjusted it since 2021 though when I was last looking into obtaining stuff I was missing, so maybe it isn't as bad.
Yup, that's the exact reason! And it's a reason why some bugs can't be fixed via small hearthstone-provided updates. Blizzard has done a good job over the years though improving what they can and can't hotfix into the client, so that's a plus.
Yeah =(
We're in for an incredibly rude awakening when this becomes a universal truth. Steady profits are so healthy, as is single digit growth, but of course, greed takes over on the side of everyone and is the reason we can't have nice things. If you aren't making returns that are beating the market, you're effectively losing money. Magic fairy money at that.
Yeah I'm replying
Yeah!
Just a test
I love it, lots of quotes! Let's dive in.
This would have been such an easy thing for them to do for the "off season" that is happening right now for January before they bring in some new goodies for February. They could have done Classic + Naxx and it would have been a great way to kick off the year.
Removing paid content like that from players, especially in a card game, would be a huge slap in the face. If they offered refunds to BattleNet balance or just an equivalent in other Hearthstone stuff, I could see them being able to do it with less friction, but they have to take a loss in order to do it. I can't see this being anything but a monetary-driven decision. They might claim that it's difficult to support balance in the mode when they are always creating so many new cards, and they have on Twitter, that can't be the only driving force behind why it was okay to remove.
Destiny 2 infamously removed content from the game because of "hard drive space" with no optional way to get it back. If Blizzard wanted to take the smarter approach here, and make some new tech, maybe they could make Mercenaries an optional download (it's a lot of data, images, code) which would slim down the mobile install of the game.
One reason I don't see them doing that though is the people who will ask the same for Battlegrounds, but Battlegrounds being an active mode needs to be baseline for the ease of access, and because there's that 1% chance someone who doesn't care about it goes and plays it once because it was easy to do so and they end up spending money on it.
In a way though, I'd like to be wrong about that. Mercenaries has so much stuff in the client, it would certainly make all our datamining processes quicker without it there. But I'd rather it stay because I know people that still like to play it and I think that's awesome.
Oh yeah, I feel bad for the new model of games. It used to be that you'd launch a game, provide some support for it, and then it was done and you were either a great game or a bad game. But now everything from AAA needs multiplayer, needs a battle pass, needs microtransctions (even in single player games), and it just all feels so predatory. It forces everyone to stick to regular content releases which in some cases can lead to lower quality updates in games (honestly a lot of early PUBG felt lower quality and updating for the sake of updating).
Then you add in how players change overtime? Oof.
I am so thrilled to have never sunk time into another MMO during the early "WoW killer" days. Played all the betas, always went back to the real crack dealer and it looks like I wasn't wrong for doing so. It's not even that all those games were bad, some of them had great stuff in them, but they all ended up lacking content at the end of the day.
And that's my problem with battle passes. I know I'm not the target audience for a lot of games, I don't have the time like I used to, but damn do I hate how battle passes feel so essential to the experience. I like having some cool stuff and games and it seems like the coolest always comes from the passes and they just take such a massive time commitment to finish. If I had a dollar for every battle pass I haven't finished, I'd be able to buy a few more battle passes.
Isn't it insane how you can fire a dozen people, screw over the game hard enough to require cuts, but when you look at the overall picture if they cost the company 1.5 million a year and the game profits 50 million (totally making up numbers here) that higher ups see that as a positive savings? Everything always comes down to penny pinching in AAA because of the investors. Investment in game studios was one of the worst things to happen to the industry. Investment as a whole has ruined a lot of businesses and the quality of service they deliver to customers, I remember when you could get someone who actually spoke English on the physical phone with Amazon, but that's a topic for another time.
Thanks for the reply!
Oh yeah, I could definitively say and almost be willing to commit to shoe eating if it does happen, that solo adventures are gone for good.
Blizzard always talked about how much work they took and how they have no replay value. Dungeon Run was a solution to that, and Duels was a way to improve upon Dungeon Run. RIP
Which is a damn shame. World of Warcraft has had a similar problem where every expansion the old expansion's stuff is all completely irrelevant which leads to the time in development being too high for the use of it all. With Dragonflight they changed that mantra and instead are creating systems that will be used for years to come which has put so much good into the game.
I think Hearthstone should revisit what a solo adventure is. Why do we need them to be completely voice acted? Why do we need special effects for key moments with a lore character? I can say without a doubt that players would be happy, maybe not all, and probably not Zeddy (<3), with just getting some new AI to play against that featured other characters. Then if you do want to put in the effort of voicelines and animations, sell the damn heroes as playable heroes! Hero Skins must still sell well for there to be so many options, so double up and use solo adventures as a way to showcase cool new hero skins (alongside fun ai to fight). We don't need an adventure to progress some unique Hearthstone story. Go take World of Warcraft's Zul'Aman and create a deck for each of the bosses - you probably already have rights to use the existing art for them. Done.
That's awesome! Have you had any unfortunate deaths yet?
This is an awesome way to end the epic games holiday giveaway. I never got an opportunity to play Guardians of the Galaxy but I know a lot of folks really enjoyed it so it's now been added to the backlog!