A thought occurred to me. Perhaps part of the rewards system revamp/battlepass system is a first step in a direction that disincentives against aggro deck farming.
There were (and still are) people who think the only way to play is to play aggro decks because the old system encouraged fast games with aggro decks to farm wins (3x wins=10 gold). This of course promoted aggro play by people who wanted to farm the maximum per-day gold.
The new system with experience being generated on a variable game-length basis doesn't incentivize any particular deck. (if you spend 4 minutes in 1 game, 16 in the next, you're still getting 20 minutes of experience regardless of the deck you are playing).
This system of "growth" coupled with the ranked floor changes from the beginning of the year allows people to play decks they want to play, as opposed to playing strictly meta decks or strictly aggro decks. From my perspective this is a positive outcome. Perhaps not exactly the view people were looking for... "Blizz bad, me get pitchfork" but still I try to look at things to see what other reasons the system was changed.
I've come to terms that Blizzard hates nerfing hunter directly (for some reason), and that they would rather print overpowered cards for Demon Hunter, then scale them back, then print underwhelming cards.
All in all. I want them to start taking a more active approach in released cards, buff cards that aren't seeing play, nerf cards that are seeing too much play. Make ALL the cards fun and enjoyable (at least try to). I hate to jump on the "LoR is better than HS bandwagon" but while there are things I don't like about LoR, they aren't afraid to buff/nerf cards so that there's a wider variety of choices in meta decks. Hearthstone just seems to like to beat a dead horse with forced archetypes. I'd rather see a wider variety of tools released, and allow players to pick and choose creative decks. I'm honestly tired of expansion forced archetypes. Just make FUN, thematic, cards that players can use in interesting ways.
The only solution to this “corrupted” business plan is to give them 1 star in store. It’s the only way that our voices can be heard.
oh wait. It’s happening. the score is now 3.9 on Playstore when I reply this. Internet magic. Do your things.
And you do realize brigading is actually against the EULA in all of the app market places right? You want to leave a 1 star review that's fine. Encouraging others to leave 1 star reviews just to satisfy your own agenda is not.
I don't deny that the rewards track rewards are underwhelming, but my life has many other higher priorities than getting riled up and vitrolic and acting like an entitled brat on reddit over a digital card game.
Because you're a sane human being who has reasonable expectations and not part of the reddit hivemind that is trying to brigade against a gaming software company?
There are many things in life to get upset over. Your gaming hobby that has a poor rewards system is not one of those things.
Just because you don't like the response or level of remediation given, doesn't mean they didn't respond. Hyperbolic statements and meme-spewing/brigading against Blizzard doesn't help the "reddit revolution". In fact, the over-reaction by people and constant meming about blizzard actually detract from the overall message that people are trying to send.
In short it makes the people who are unhappy look like a bunch of whiny entitled babies, instead of people who just want good value for their time and/or money.
Interesting statistics and a great article by the way.
On a personal note, the least used legendary cards seems like a bit of a problem of deck archetypes being pushed.
Silas Darkmoon, being the expansion pre-release legendary falls into most other pre-release legendary cards. Nichely useful and fun to entertain people until the rest of the expansion arrives. A great card in arena and duels, but hard to leverage properly in ranked where the meta is defined by how broken of a combo you can make, and a 7 mana pseudo mind control just doesn't cut it there. In any other card game, Silas would be an auto include. I think this shows just how much Hearthstone has moved away from reactionary play to combo oriented play.
Grand Empress Shek'zara seems like a card that would be great for a togwaggle scheme combo with a low cost value card, but unfortunately that scenario just doesn't seem to exist (yet).
Maxima Blastenheimer seems like a great card (to me). It's unfortunate that that path of least resistance is to continue to use the old meta face hunter deck. A fun card at that, that couples well with deathrattle synergies.
Zai, the Incredible is simply put. A square peg for a class that only looks for round holes. DH since the early nerfs to Priestess of Fury and Imprisoned Anteon, has been pigeon holed into the aggro department. Which is sad, because I do look forward to the day that a big Demon Hunter deck can be viable. It's an incredible card (pun intended) for any value oriented demon hunter deck....which simply does not exist at the moment. I could see this being used in a highlander demon hunter deck to duplicate high impact cards that happen to be on the left or right (like zephyrs or DQA).
Greybough simply put is a fair card in a non-fair meta. And in a deck that has a win condition of playing a 9 drop that fills the board with 8/8+ minions, a 5 mana 4/6 that requires another target to gain value (and die twice to see that value) just doesn't cut it.
Deck of Chaos is most likely being slept on. It seems like many people are too afraid of building a deck around it, draw the card and play it, to have any consistency.
IMO, too many players think they need to be spikes in order to reach legend. So it results in people who aren't creative, can't fathom playing an unrefined deck, and believe the only way they'll reach legend is by playing aggro decks. Every season that I've made legend I did so with something other than an aggro deck....barring one season that I succumbed to playing face hunter.
Yea, that's kinda what I thought as well. It's just one of those plays that I tend to question cause it feels good, but I'm never quite sure if it's the right play.
Something I can't ever decide if it's worth it or not. When running a primarily spell mage deck, is it right to coin+Incanter's flow on turn 1? Or should you save the coin and wait until turn 2? The idea being that by coining on turn 1, you are giving a "coin" for all future spells. Assuming you never float mana, in theory the idea holds merit. But if you ever find yourself short of one mana, then holding the coin may be better.
I mean, I think the Old Gods are pretty safe to craft though. Playing Darkmoon Faire without them is the equivalent of scraping all the cheese off your pizza and just eating the saucy bread... which is inhuman... like the Old Gods... wait, I lost my train of thought...
is it weird I used to do this as a kid? I'd eat all the cheese/toppings first. Then I'd eat the saucy bread.
All treasures are broken, but not necessarily with the surrounding deck. Lunar Band is a good example: it is OP enough to be removed, but also weak if you have few deathrattles. While that doesn't stop some treasures being baseline stronger than others, it does highlight that if you want all Duels runs to have comparable power you'd need to offer treasures to suit the decks, rather than randomly. There are good arguments for that, but I would hate it because then the whole thing becomes too predictable and undermines the rogue-like nature of the game mode.
Rogue-like games are always about starting off weak and trying (and sometimes failing) to become as broken as possible as you go along. Sometimes you are given the nuts, other times you have to muddle through with treasures which aren't best suited to your deck.
That's actually a good way to look at Duels. Never considered that it's supposed to be a rogue-like version of Hearthstone. Still, I'm glad that Wax Rager, Band of Bees, and Lunar Band are being nerfed in various ways.
Assuming positive intent in this frame of reference just assumes that the company inherently wants to keep you as a customer. Expansions don't draw in new customers. Expansions keep current customers engaged, and re-engage previous customers. A brand spanking new customer coming into an expansion is like a unicorn: Rare, and most likely non-existent.
The developers DO have our best interests at heart. Many of them play the game like us. They want to enjoy the same experience we will have. And at the end of the day, Blizzard may not be the company it once was because Activision executives may be forcing them to have quota percentage incomes per expansion, but the developers are trying to make the game fun for the playerbase and themselves.
$60. It's like a new game every expansion, and new games cost $60. Unless I'm too old and "in my day candy cost a nickle, and we went to school 8 days a week, until they got rid of Redsday because of the war. The important thing to remember is I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time."
I mean we kind of are. Seriously google "Why do video games still cost 60 dollars?" You'll find tons of articles explaining that despite inflation from the 90's.
What does this mean? It means that a 60 dollar game from 1994 would actually cost $105 in today's dollars.
Are micro-transactions and some practices by some companies (not just Blizzard) unscrupulous? For sure. I've played my share of money sink games (Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes I'm looking at you!).
But...gamers are partly to blame. The gaming community, frankly speaking, is an entitled petulant bunch (as a group). I'm sure individually people are respectful, but on reddit, in forums, etc. My interactions I observe don't show that. Gamers have pushed this 60 dollar price tag for so long that I actually believe that companies, instead of just increasing the base cost by 20 dollars, now just want to nickel and dime us to make up the difference. I mean, to be fair, the statistics and research and purchasing patterns have proven that the model works.
There's a lot more going on. Inflation, wage income gap, job payment systems. These all indirectly feed into these models that we see today. Where a 60 dollar game has never increased in price in the last 20+ years, but we still expect the same AAA quality. So the companies instead use microtransactions and the such to make up the difference. C'est la vie.
Devil's Devil's Advocate (yes double Devil's advocate): Datamining causes more emotional issues than the statistically stability from the information it provides.
It's just amusing to me as someone who has worked in the software industry for almost a decade, you don't have clients generally who datamine our software. When we release a new version or a patch, we just...do. People then provide feedback, let us know about bugs, etc. And the cycle continues.
But datamining is like sneaking a peak at your christmas presents, finding out your parents DIDN'T get you a Nintendo 64, and then throwing dog poop on the christmas tree. They still gave you presents, maybe not what you wanted, but it was still *something*.
Yes, we do get customers who get upset or angry at a feature being added/removed or not working properly. But in a business environment *most* of the time, it's pretty professional in the way they communicate this.
Yet gaming in general, combined with datamining somehow ends up with a vitriolic, caustic community that will do everything from drop F-Bombs, curse the company in charge, threaten people, and attack anyone with opposing viewpoints.
Posts like these remind me of the vitriolic mindset of most gamers.
A Blizzard rep responded. They said that they will be adjusting rewards down the track.
They then further said that they will continue to evaluate things as time progresses.
That the community, despite it's datamining and "investigative math" wasn't aware of bonus exp through special events and the such. That they were taking that into account.
Yet you respond with the "worst intentions possible" instead of the best.
Quote From Succeed On Purpose Website
from https://www.succeedonpurpose.com/post/positive-intent
My coach said plainly, “Assume positive intent.”
“What?”
“Assume positive intent. When you enter any interaction assuming positive intent from the other party, your relationships will improve.”
I was struck by her words, without fully understanding how to apply them.
“Yeah, but people are basically focused only on their own interests, right? And they can’t yet see the economic crash that’s coming so they won’t know this is in their best interest.”
“It doesn’t matter. If we assume positive intent, the mind will begin to expect only positive outcomes in relationships. If someone still gets upset, hurts you, or takes advantage of you, it usually has nothing to do with your actions.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “People do hurtful things all the time.”
“True, they do,” she explained, “but they don’t mean to. No one really sets out to purposefully hurt us. People are just wrestling with their own issues. So, if you assume positive intent, you’ll find that most people rise to the expectation, and when they don’t, know they are doing the best they can and their reaction has little to do with you. More importantly, when you assume positive intent, you will trust yourself.”
I think that they really should have gone farther with these changes. They didn’t nerf cards like MF, Jagged Butcher, or any of the Bilgewater Burn cards.I also wish they had buffed the Demacia Dragons (make the Broodmother a 6/7 and Kadregrin a 9/8) because Shyvana is pretty much the only good Demacia Dragon.
I'm fine with the nerfs so far, I'm so tired of Riptide Rex so any nerfs to that damn card are much welcomed. I think the change to Vlad isn't going to do anything. In fact they kind of made it harder to level him. Prior to this change you could level him by playing followers to the left, and having him go last, meaning that he could level up mid combat, which in some instances would help save him.
Now with his "power" requirement being that followers and others have to be to the right, he has to attack "first" (or sooner) in the attack lineup. This means he has less chance of leveling up in combat prior to taking a hit which can make the difference. Overall, I think they changed him and didn't really help him at all and he'll probably still not see any play. Making his leveling condition easier was never the real issue.
It's interesting to me that they increased Shyvana's attack and not her health. The biggest problem I find playing her is that her L1 form is so easy to kill off -- it's risky to block with her due to tricks like Pale Cascade / Sharpsight / Riposte, and since she doesn't have Fury yet on the attack it's usually pretty easy for your opponent to chump block for 2-3 damage and then challenge / Mystic Shot / etc for the rest.
An interesting viewpoint, and possibly not wrong. I'm guessing they have access to metrics we can't see so for now I'm going to reserve judgement in that they know what they are doing. I don't think it's wrong to buff her attack, the reasoning behind it according to the notes was that she couldn't kill things "cleanly" (i.e. being a 4 mana 3/4 champion that self buffs to 4/5 wasn't that great for a level 1 ability). Now she is a 4 mana 4/4 chamption that self buffs to 5/5.
Far too often I felt like I'd play her, only for my opponent to play Fused Firebrand completely shutting her out. It's kind of funny that a "common" dragon ends up being more effective than a champion and can usually be played the turn after. And the worst side is, she can't even use any removal or combat based attacks to remove a Fused Firebrand.
Overall this at least let's her threaten 5/5's. It's not like her role is aggro, but rather mid-range.
A thought occurred to me. Perhaps part of the rewards system revamp/battlepass system is a first step in a direction that disincentives against aggro deck farming.
There were (and still are) people who think the only way to play is to play aggro decks because the old system encouraged fast games with aggro decks to farm wins (3x wins=10 gold). This of course promoted aggro play by people who wanted to farm the maximum per-day gold.
The new system with experience being generated on a variable game-length basis doesn't incentivize any particular deck. (if you spend 4 minutes in 1 game, 16 in the next, you're still getting 20 minutes of experience regardless of the deck you are playing).
This system of "growth" coupled with the ranked floor changes from the beginning of the year allows people to play decks they want to play, as opposed to playing strictly meta decks or strictly aggro decks. From my perspective this is a positive outcome. Perhaps not exactly the view people were looking for... "Blizz bad, me get pitchfork" but still I try to look at things to see what other reasons the system was changed.
I've come to terms that Blizzard hates nerfing hunter directly (for some reason), and that they would rather print overpowered cards for Demon Hunter, then scale them back, then print underwhelming cards.
All in all. I want them to start taking a more active approach in released cards, buff cards that aren't seeing play, nerf cards that are seeing too much play. Make ALL the cards fun and enjoyable (at least try to). I hate to jump on the "LoR is better than HS bandwagon" but while there are things I don't like about LoR, they aren't afraid to buff/nerf cards so that there's a wider variety of choices in meta decks. Hearthstone just seems to like to beat a dead horse with forced archetypes. I'd rather see a wider variety of tools released, and allow players to pick and choose creative decks. I'm honestly tired of expansion forced archetypes. Just make FUN, thematic, cards that players can use in interesting ways.
And you do realize brigading is actually against the EULA in all of the app market places right? You want to leave a 1 star review that's fine. Encouraging others to leave 1 star reviews just to satisfy your own agenda is not.
I don't deny that the rewards track rewards are underwhelming, but my life has many other higher priorities than getting riled up and vitrolic and acting like an entitled brat on reddit over a digital card game.
Because you're a sane human being who has reasonable expectations and not part of the reddit hivemind that is trying to brigade against a gaming software company?
There are many things in life to get upset over. Your gaming hobby that has a poor rewards system is not one of those things.
I understand people are frustrated but they did respond:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/rewards-track-update/45441
Just because you don't like the response or level of remediation given, doesn't mean they didn't respond. Hyperbolic statements and meme-spewing/brigading against Blizzard doesn't help the "reddit revolution". In fact, the over-reaction by people and constant meming about blizzard actually detract from the overall message that people are trying to send.
In short it makes the people who are unhappy look like a bunch of whiny entitled babies, instead of people who just want good value for their time and/or money.
Interesting statistics and a great article by the way.
On a personal note, the least used legendary cards seems like a bit of a problem of deck archetypes being pushed.
Silas Darkmoon, being the expansion pre-release legendary falls into most other pre-release legendary cards. Nichely useful and fun to entertain people until the rest of the expansion arrives. A great card in arena and duels, but hard to leverage properly in ranked where the meta is defined by how broken of a combo you can make, and a 7 mana pseudo mind control just doesn't cut it there. In any other card game, Silas would be an auto include. I think this shows just how much Hearthstone has moved away from reactionary play to combo oriented play.
Grand Empress Shek'zara seems like a card that would be great for a togwaggle scheme combo with a low cost value card, but unfortunately that scenario just doesn't seem to exist (yet).
Maxima Blastenheimer seems like a great card (to me). It's unfortunate that that path of least resistance is to continue to use the old meta face hunter deck. A fun card at that, that couples well with deathrattle synergies.
Zai, the Incredible is simply put. A square peg for a class that only looks for round holes. DH since the early nerfs to Priestess of Fury and Imprisoned Anteon, has been pigeon holed into the aggro department. Which is sad, because I do look forward to the day that a big Demon Hunter deck can be viable. It's an incredible card (pun intended) for any value oriented demon hunter deck....which simply does not exist at the moment. I could see this being used in a highlander demon hunter deck to duplicate high impact cards that happen to be on the left or right (like zephyrs or DQA).
Greybough simply put is a fair card in a non-fair meta. And in a deck that has a win condition of playing a 9 drop that fills the board with 8/8+ minions, a 5 mana 4/6 that requires another target to gain value (and die twice to see that value) just doesn't cut it.
Deck of Chaos is most likely being slept on. It seems like many people are too afraid of building a deck around it, draw the card and play it, to have any consistency.
IMO, too many players think they need to be spikes in order to reach legend. So it results in people who aren't creative, can't fathom playing an unrefined deck, and believe the only way they'll reach legend is by playing aggro decks. Every season that I've made legend I did so with something other than an aggro deck....barring one season that I succumbed to playing face hunter.
And I honestly felt dirty after.
What 2 mana outcast treasure? There's the minion that doubles your outcast cards, but he's unique.
Yea, that's kinda what I thought as well. It's just one of those plays that I tend to question cause it feels good, but I'm never quite sure if it's the right play.
Something I can't ever decide if it's worth it or not. When running a primarily spell mage deck, is it right to coin+Incanter's flow on turn 1? Or should you save the coin and wait until turn 2? The idea being that by coining on turn 1, you are giving a "coin" for all future spells. Assuming you never float mana, in theory the idea holds merit. But if you ever find yourself short of one mana, then holding the coin may be better.
Thoughts?
https://imgur.com/VLA0S5s
is it weird I used to do this as a kid? I'd eat all the cheese/toppings first. Then I'd eat the saucy bread.
That's actually a good way to look at Duels. Never considered that it's supposed to be a rogue-like version of Hearthstone. Still, I'm glad that Wax Rager, Band of Bees, and Lunar Band are being nerfed in various ways.
No minion mage duels deck without any of the powerhouse no-minion cards? :/
Assuming positive intent in this frame of reference just assumes that the company inherently wants to keep you as a customer. Expansions don't draw in new customers. Expansions keep current customers engaged, and re-engage previous customers. A brand spanking new customer coming into an expansion is like a unicorn: Rare, and most likely non-existent.
The developers DO have our best interests at heart. Many of them play the game like us. They want to enjoy the same experience we will have. And at the end of the day, Blizzard may not be the company it once was because Activision executives may be forcing them to have quota percentage incomes per expansion, but the developers are trying to make the game fun for the playerbase and themselves.
I mean we kind of are. Seriously google "Why do video games still cost 60 dollars?" You'll find tons of articles explaining that despite inflation from the 90's.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1994?amount=1
What does this mean? It means that a 60 dollar game from 1994 would actually cost $105 in today's dollars.
Are micro-transactions and some practices by some companies (not just Blizzard) unscrupulous? For sure. I've played my share of money sink games (Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes I'm looking at you!).
But...gamers are partly to blame. The gaming community, frankly speaking, is an entitled petulant bunch (as a group). I'm sure individually people are respectful, but on reddit, in forums, etc. My interactions I observe don't show that. Gamers have pushed this 60 dollar price tag for so long that I actually believe that companies, instead of just increasing the base cost by 20 dollars, now just want to nickel and dime us to make up the difference. I mean, to be fair, the statistics and research and purchasing patterns have proven that the model works.
There's a lot more going on. Inflation, wage income gap, job payment systems. These all indirectly feed into these models that we see today. Where a 60 dollar game has never increased in price in the last 20+ years, but we still expect the same AAA quality. So the companies instead use microtransactions and the such to make up the difference. C'est la vie.
Devil's Devil's Advocate (yes double Devil's advocate): Datamining causes more emotional issues than the statistically stability from the information it provides.
It's just amusing to me as someone who has worked in the software industry for almost a decade, you don't have clients generally who datamine our software. When we release a new version or a patch, we just...do. People then provide feedback, let us know about bugs, etc. And the cycle continues.
But datamining is like sneaking a peak at your christmas presents, finding out your parents DIDN'T get you a Nintendo 64, and then throwing dog poop on the christmas tree. They still gave you presents, maybe not what you wanted, but it was still *something*.
Yes, we do get customers who get upset or angry at a feature being added/removed or not working properly. But in a business environment *most* of the time, it's pretty professional in the way they communicate this.
Yet gaming in general, combined with datamining somehow ends up with a vitriolic, caustic community that will do everything from drop F-Bombs, curse the company in charge, threaten people, and attack anyone with opposing viewpoints.
Posts like these remind me of the vitriolic mindset of most gamers.
A Blizzard rep responded. They said that they will be adjusting rewards down the track.
They then further said that they will continue to evaluate things as time progresses.
That the community, despite it's datamining and "investigative math" wasn't aware of bonus exp through special events and the such. That they were taking that into account.
Yet you respond with the "worst intentions possible" instead of the best.
I'm fine with the nerfs so far, I'm so tired of Riptide Rex so any nerfs to that damn card are much welcomed. I think the change to Vlad isn't going to do anything. In fact they kind of made it harder to level him. Prior to this change you could level him by playing followers to the left, and having him go last, meaning that he could level up mid combat, which in some instances would help save him.
Now with his "power" requirement being that followers and others have to be to the right, he has to attack "first" (or sooner) in the attack lineup. This means he has less chance of leveling up in combat prior to taking a hit which can make the difference. Overall, I think they changed him and didn't really help him at all and he'll probably still not see any play. Making his leveling condition easier was never the real issue.
An interesting viewpoint, and possibly not wrong. I'm guessing they have access to metrics we can't see so for now I'm going to reserve judgement in that they know what they are doing. I don't think it's wrong to buff her attack, the reasoning behind it according to the notes was that she couldn't kill things "cleanly" (i.e. being a 4 mana 3/4 champion that self buffs to 4/5 wasn't that great for a level 1 ability). Now she is a 4 mana 4/4 chamption that self buffs to 5/5.
Far too often I felt like I'd play her, only for my opponent to play Fused Firebrand completely shutting her out. It's kind of funny that a "common" dragon ends up being more effective than a champion and can usually be played the turn after. And the worst side is, she can't even use any removal or combat based attacks to remove a Fused Firebrand.
Overall this at least let's her threaten 5/5's. It's not like her role is aggro, but rather mid-range.