They simply will not develop other game modes unless it earns them more money, but they cannot see that player happiness = more money + more players.
Firstly, Battlegrounds is free. No packs or collection are needed to play.
Secondly, more players + more money ≠ player happiness. More modes + more communication + more events + more ways to play = player happiness = more players = more money potential for Blizzard.l
You didn’t even quote me correctly, so I know you didn’t read my post lol
I did, and I re-read it to make sure I had it right, and I still stand by it.
I agree with your point but your little equation was too short sighted that I had to add to it.
Also edited the main post again for the last time and I'm sure we'll agree on what I have to say there as well.
I was actually excited about Battlegrounds, but having played it for a day I must agree with other players. Here is a quote I made in another thread in response to it:
So, having played early access battlegrounds, I wanted to share my thoughts. While overall a fun mode, there isn't enough dimensions to keep most players entrained past initial week in my opinion. Already in 1 day of playing I started seeing the same end-game patterns over and over. The main end-game strategies are very repetitive (I really hope the complexity of this mode increases to keep it enjoyable long-term):
1. Go all in on beasts: Get Mama Bear and beasts that spawn more beasts (i.e. Rat Pack) and a cleaver or 2 (Cave Hydra)
2: Go all in on mechs: Get Junkbot and mechs that spawn more mechs (magnetize them) and a cleaver or 2 (Foe Reaper 4000), sound familiar?
3: Go all in on demons: Get Wrathweaver and rotate a bunch of demons between rounds to buff him, eventually get Annihilan Battlemaster with ~200 health (optionally get Malganis temporarily so Wrathweaver stops hurting you)
4: Go all in on murlocs: Try to discover poison + divine shield from Gentle Megasaur for every minion on board, or give it manually to your murlocs through other battlecries.
Oh, and of course, regardless of which of the only 4 endgame strategies you pick, buff/max out your Nightmare Amalgam, giving it a ton of health, poison, divine shield, etc. and magnetizing anything you come in contact with.
In my opinion, the Co-Op mode (2 players fighting a rogue minion, similar to some Brawls - but more variety and ability to use the entire card sample space) would have been a more interesting addition. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the mode, but I doubt I still will a week from now.
There is definitely a concern of the longevity of the mode. I'm sure they'll swap out minions within those tribes (mechs for mechs) and eventually tribes for tribes (murlocs for dragons). This does *potentially* give opportunities to introduce new tribes (such as treants) with different interactions, but we'll see.
They simply will not develop other game modes unless it earns them more money, but they cannot see that player happiness = more money + more players.
Firstly, Battlegrounds is free. No packs or collection are needed to play.
Secondly, more players + more money ≠ player happiness. More modes + more communication + more events + more ways to play = player happiness = more players = more money potential for Blizzard.
I'm having mix feeling on HS Battleground: On one hand, they are finally implementing a new mode - which is nice, even if it doesn't seem this exciting to me - on the other, tournament mode has yet to even surface and been on their ''to do'' list for quite some time now. I do hope it will be better than what I'm expecting it to be, that's my only wish.
They canned Tournament mode for reasons they’ll never really disclose (they gave a lazy excuse). Battlegrounds only took them 6 months to develop and to be honest, we should expect more modes in the next few (1-2) year. Not right away but not fucking five years later.
I'm happy that Hearthstone FINALLY got a new game mode. Even though it's not for me I'm happy that they've made something new to keep the community interested.
I wanted to ask the OOC community how you all felt about this game mode. Like is this what you wanted? Or would you have preferred something else.
Edit 05Nov: I’m glad I’m not the only one who isn’t satisfied with the game mode. I see some of you drawing the direct comparison to Heroes of the Storm in terms of being late to the game and it’s a very realistic critique. We all saw what happened to HotS, not saying it will happen to HS, but the Battlegrounds may go in that direction unless it gets continuous support (I don’t know if they’ve mentioned it anywhere).
I know they wanted to dive into the Autochess world, but they shouldn’t have. They should have innovated on something not seen in the digital CCG world. Hearthstone Mathematician just did an amazing video on a Two-Headed Giant mode that outlines most of the design questions for Team 5. This is a mode that would be more than welcomed in HS.
Edit 07Nov: After playing several matches of Battlegrounds and sitting on the thought of the game mode itself.... it's not a new game mode, it's just a different game that utilizes Hearthstone assets. Let me elaborate on that.
Watching the Hearthstone panel for Blizzcon one of the designers explained how they came about the idea of Battlegrounds. They stated that when Autochess and the other Auto-battlers released that the team had a lot of fun playing those games and that they wanted to create one for HS. Six months later Battlegrounds was born and shown to the world.
If you notice in the previous paragraph the Dev said that THE TEAM wanted to create one. So I want everyone to think about that. I'm sure some of you all have browsed the Sub-reddit and read some of the post asking for new game modes and other posts that offer ideas for now ways to play the game (here's mine that I posted on OoC and the Sub-reddit: https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/1488-six-formats-hearthstone-could-easily-have). I just don't get it. Like we're here, telling the Devs what we want/would like to have/what needs improvement, and they give us something that literally nobody asked for.
Either way, Battlegrounds feels samey after a while. It's high RNG (Yogg be praised) and once you fall behind, that's it. There are key cards that if you don't find after re-rolling over and over again, you simply lose. The game "mode" is not for me. Still wanting and waiting on modes like the ones I've linked above. See y'all on ladder.
I’m not one of those who complain about lack of communication because I understand that if there is nothing that needs to be said then nothing should be said.
Anything we hear about now a days comes in the form of a hype engine meant to sell products, which I’m not complaining about particularly because if we don’t want HS to go the way of HotS we need Team 5 to perform well financially.
Adding old cards into Standard TEMPORARILY does not affect HS as a whole, it merely stifles some of the staleness of a solved meta which is appreciated, but ultimately ineffective in the long run if Team 5 follows the same formula.
If this is the start of something we’ll begin to see every expansion, then awesome, more Wild cards coming back into the fray. Only time will tell us that though.
Players are content with what they have until they’re tired of it (yes it sounds dumb because it can be applied to literally everything) but my philosophy is give players an abundance of content that doesn’t get dry too quickly (Expansions become dry depending on how well they change the meta/when the balance changes come along)(I don’t know about everyone else, but once I’ve heated the single player content I never go back to it) and a simple way to do that is simply reallocating whatever resources they’re using to make “bundles” and place then somewhere that is healthy for the game
Kind of bummed that this wasn’t an actual announcement but more of a “Hey were doing the annual event this year”.
Kind of sick of these “announcements”.
I mean hell at least tell us timelines of stuff in the pipes that aren’t temporary events/bundles/what ever thing that doesn’t have an impact on HS as a whole.
edit: y’all downvoting me must be content with the standard 3 expansions a year, repetitive dungeon run re-skins, and no actual new game modes/formats
Hey all, I saw the update we're getting soon(ish) regarding new portraits and the Wild Card event coming up. This post will be focusing on the new portraits and other ideas in regards to progression.
Hooray, big news, we're getting new hero portraits that are pretty much upgrades from the vanilla portraits that we've had since day one on our adventure. After achieving 1000 wins in ranked and/or arena with a specific class we get these awesome new portraits to show people how dedicated we are to one class, or just to show off how experienced we are within Hearthstone.
This is one way I feel that the community can agree on that rewards us for playing the game so much. It gives us something to work towards and it freshens things up a bit. Now, what other ways can Team 5 implement into the game that can "reward" us for playing? I mean, just being good at one class, or playing A LOT doesn't necessarily mean anything. Metas change and some players who are very good/knowledgeable of the game just don't play enough to obtain that amount of wins.
A small idea I've had comes in the form of Desk Toys. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Just an object to the side of the game board. These items should be rewarded for obtaining 100 wins during an expansion. For example; A wand of some kind from Dalaran for winning 100 games during the RoS expansion, a Loa banner from RR that changes color depending on the class you're playing, a wrench or maybe some Gloop from the Boomsday. Something that just sits to the side of the board, maybe you use it to represent your favorite expansion? Or maybe you've already obtained 100 wins by day 5-6 and want to show off. For mobile players this would be useless for obvious reasons, but if an in game shelf were implemented for them to at least look at the Desk Toys I think that would suffice.
The second idea in mind comes in the form of Full Art cards. I think this should only apply to some Legendaries and high profile cards. Along with that, in order to get these cards there should be a mini-quest associated with that card. Ragnaros the Firelord could have a mini-quest that reads "Defeat 100-250 opponents with this minions end of turn effect" in order to get the full art version. Sylvanas Windrunner could read "Steal 1000 minions with this card's Deathrattle". "Kill 1000 minions with Doomsayer to obtain it's full art". Or maybe it could be more challenging like trying to use Moorabi or something of that nature.
The last idea I have is to introduce some individual game board pieces and the actual field the cards are in. Essentially for these to be put into the game, Team 5 would have to introduce a blank board for us to place our pieces into. We design our side in a separate menu that's in the collection book, we go into a game, if the Custom Board is selected as the matches board, our side represents us and out opponent has their things that represent them. I can't think of what the individual game board pieces would be or how to get them, but hey, I'm sure you guys will come up with some ides.
Anyway, thank you for reading, if you have ideas please let me know, you never know who's reading these things.
The question that should be asked I think is if these alternate hero powers would only favor control and midrange playstyles. Yes there was the big fear over aggro getting alternate hero powers due to Genn/Baku, but these new hero powers would only benefit one or two playstyles then I feel that it would warp the 'holy trinity' of aggro/midrange/control too much towards the slower decks.
I believe they should be class specific as well. That way it can be controlled a bit more.
I like the idea of using a different hero power, and I think that most of the people here agree that it's a dangerous thing. That being said, I feel like there needs to be restrictions on what can "enable" that card similar to Genn and Baku.
Examples: Druid: If your spells only summon minions.... Hunter: If your deck contains no spells.... Mage: If all the minions in your deck have spell damage +1-4.... Paladin: If all the minions in your deck cost less than 5.... Priest:If all the spells in your deck only heal.... Rogue: If your deck contains at least 5 weapons... Shaman: If the spells in your deck all have overloads.... Warrior: If the minions in your deck are only dragons.... Warlock: If the minions in your deck cost more than 6.....
I'm just spit balling those, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Whenever you create a card that alters a fundamental aspect of the game, there have to be other balances around that. I know you understand that but not everyone does.
Casual Mode - Netdecks are banned. Gold is not rewarded. Quests cannot be completed. This is purely just for fun mode.
I'd be in favor of this, it definitely allows players to play themed decks just for shits and giggles. "What if I made a deck with only orcs in the art?" kind of stuff.
You forgot one thing. Currently we have Standard Casual, Standard Ranked, Wild Casual, Wild Ranked, Tawern Brawl. So the player base divides into these 5 parts. If you dillute the game with 10 new formats, in bad times (evening, school time etc.) the wait time to find a match in the particular mode can extend to very lengthy ones.
Many of those idea are pretty good and will also probably be entertaining, but considering how Blizzard managed HS since now I'll be happy to just see one of them added properly (the Brawl Block seems the most "fresh" in term of gameplay) or at last a reworked Ladder system that could replace the actual boring grind.
Brawl Block and Pyramid seem the most likely to actually ever see the light of day. It's been 5 years since any new game mode has been introduced and it seems Team 5 are too preoccupied with making any.
I wish they'd take a year or two off of making the current single player content so we could have some variety.
I did, and I re-read it to make sure I had it right, and I still stand by it.
I agree with your point but your little equation was too short sighted that I had to add to it.
Also edited the main post again for the last time and I'm sure we'll agree on what I have to say there as well.
There is definitely a concern of the longevity of the mode. I'm sure they'll swap out minions within those tribes (mechs for mechs) and eventually tribes for tribes (murlocs for dragons). This does *potentially* give opportunities to introduce new tribes (such as treants) with different interactions, but we'll see.
Firstly, Battlegrounds is free. No packs or collection are needed to play.
Secondly, more players + more money ≠ player happiness. More modes + more communication + more events + more ways to play = player happiness = more players = more money potential for Blizzard.
Honestly, if they gave anymore gold than that they would have to include an entrance fee
They canned Tournament mode for reasons they’ll never really disclose (they gave a lazy excuse). Battlegrounds only took them 6 months to develop and to be honest, we should expect more modes in the next few (1-2) year. Not right away but not fucking five years later.
Yes. I don’t know what the patch times will be since they’ve been changing over the last year or so. But it is today
I'm happy that Hearthstone FINALLY got a new game mode. Even though it's not for me I'm happy that they've made something new to keep the community interested.
I wanted to ask the OOC community how you all felt about this game mode. Like is this what you wanted? Or would you have preferred something else.
Edit 05Nov: I’m glad I’m not the only one who isn’t satisfied with the game mode. I see some of you drawing the direct comparison to Heroes of the Storm in terms of being late to the game and it’s a very realistic critique. We all saw what happened to HotS, not saying it will happen to HS, but the Battlegrounds may go in that direction unless it gets continuous support (I don’t know if they’ve mentioned it anywhere).
I know they wanted to dive into the Autochess world, but they shouldn’t have. They should have innovated on something not seen in the digital CCG world. Hearthstone Mathematician just did an amazing video on a Two-Headed Giant mode that outlines most of the design questions for Team 5. This is a mode that would be more than welcomed in HS.
Video: https://youtu.be/U3q4lss8mWE
Edit 07Nov: After playing several matches of Battlegrounds and sitting on the thought of the game mode itself.... it's not a new game mode, it's just a different game that utilizes Hearthstone assets. Let me elaborate on that.
Watching the Hearthstone panel for Blizzcon one of the designers explained how they came about the idea of Battlegrounds. They stated that when Autochess and the other Auto-battlers released that the team had a lot of fun playing those games and that they wanted to create one for HS. Six months later Battlegrounds was born and shown to the world.
If you notice in the previous paragraph the Dev said that THE TEAM wanted to create one. So I want everyone to think about that. I'm sure some of you all have browsed the Sub-reddit and read some of the post asking for new game modes and other posts that offer ideas for now ways to play the game (here's mine that I posted on OoC and the Sub-reddit: https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/1488-six-formats-hearthstone-could-easily-have). I just don't get it. Like we're here, telling the Devs what we want/would like to have/what needs improvement, and they give us something that literally nobody asked for.
Either way, Battlegrounds feels samey after a while. It's high RNG (Yogg be praised) and once you fall behind, that's it. There are key cards that if you don't find after re-rolling over and over again, you simply lose. The game "mode" is not for me. Still wanting and waiting on modes like the ones I've linked above. See y'all on ladder.
Bam! https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/1488-six-formats-hearthstone-could-easily-have
(See Brawl Block Format)
I think every player has had an idea similar to this ever since Standard Rotations became a thing. You're not the only one who wants this.
I’m not one of those who complain about lack of communication because I understand that if there is nothing that needs to be said then nothing should be said.
Anything we hear about now a days comes in the form of a hype engine meant to sell products, which I’m not complaining about particularly because if we don’t want HS to go the way of HotS we need Team 5 to perform well financially.
Adding old cards into Standard TEMPORARILY does not affect HS as a whole, it merely stifles some of the staleness of a solved meta which is appreciated, but ultimately ineffective in the long run if Team 5 follows the same formula.
If this is the start of something we’ll begin to see every expansion, then awesome, more Wild cards coming back into the fray. Only time will tell us that though.
Players are content with what they have until they’re tired of it (yes it sounds dumb because it can be applied to literally everything) but my philosophy is give players an abundance of content that doesn’t get dry too quickly (Expansions become dry depending on how well they change the meta/when the balance changes come along)(I don’t know about everyone else, but once I’ve heated the single player content I never go back to it) and a simple way to do that is simply reallocating whatever resources they’re using to make “bundles” and place then somewhere that is healthy for the game
Kind of bummed that this wasn’t an actual announcement but more of a “Hey were doing the annual event this year”.
Kind of sick of these “announcements”.
I mean hell at least tell us timelines of stuff in the pipes that aren’t temporary events/bundles/what ever thing that doesn’t have an impact on HS as a whole.
edit: y’all downvoting me must be content with the standard 3 expansions a year, repetitive dungeon run re-skins, and no actual new game modes/formats
I don't know if you're familiar with Magic the Gathering, so I'll give you an example.
They are exactly the same card, function in the same way, just bigger art.
Hey all, I saw the update we're getting soon(ish) regarding new portraits and the Wild Card event coming up. This post will be focusing on the new portraits and other ideas in regards to progression.
Hooray, big news, we're getting new hero portraits that are pretty much upgrades from the vanilla portraits that we've had since day one on our adventure. After achieving 1000 wins in ranked and/or arena with a specific class we get these awesome new portraits to show people how dedicated we are to one class, or just to show off how experienced we are within Hearthstone.
This is one way I feel that the community can agree on that rewards us for playing the game so much. It gives us something to work towards and it freshens things up a bit. Now, what other ways can Team 5 implement into the game that can "reward" us for playing? I mean, just being good at one class, or playing A LOT doesn't necessarily mean anything. Metas change and some players who are very good/knowledgeable of the game just don't play enough to obtain that amount of wins.
A small idea I've had comes in the form of Desk Toys. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Just an object to the side of the game board. These items should be rewarded for obtaining 100 wins during an expansion. For example; A wand of some kind from Dalaran for winning 100 games during the RoS expansion, a Loa banner from RR that changes color depending on the class you're playing, a wrench or maybe some Gloop from the Boomsday. Something that just sits to the side of the board, maybe you use it to represent your favorite expansion? Or maybe you've already obtained 100 wins by day 5-6 and want to show off. For mobile players this would be useless for obvious reasons, but if an in game shelf were implemented for them to at least look at the Desk Toys I think that would suffice.
The second idea in mind comes in the form of Full Art cards. I think this should only apply to some Legendaries and high profile cards. Along with that, in order to get these cards there should be a mini-quest associated with that card. Ragnaros the Firelord could have a mini-quest that reads "Defeat 100-250 opponents with this minions end of turn effect" in order to get the full art version. Sylvanas Windrunner could read "Steal 1000 minions with this card's Deathrattle". "Kill 1000 minions with Doomsayer to obtain it's full art". Or maybe it could be more challenging like trying to use Moorabi or something of that nature.
The last idea I have is to introduce some individual game board pieces and the actual field the cards are in. Essentially for these to be put into the game, Team 5 would have to introduce a blank board for us to place our pieces into. We design our side in a separate menu that's in the collection book, we go into a game, if the Custom Board is selected as the matches board, our side represents us and out opponent has their things that represent them. I can't think of what the individual game board pieces would be or how to get them, but hey, I'm sure you guys will come up with some ides.
Anyway, thank you for reading, if you have ideas please let me know, you never know who's reading these things.
They did it! They finally did it! More portraits!
I believe they should be class specific as well. That way it can be controlled a bit more.
I like the idea of using a different hero power, and I think that most of the people here agree that it's a dangerous thing. That being said, I feel like there needs to be restrictions on what can "enable" that card similar to Genn and Baku.
Examples:
Druid: If your spells only summon minions....
Hunter: If your deck contains no spells....
Mage: If all the minions in your deck have spell damage +1-4....
Paladin: If all the minions in your deck cost less than 5....
Priest:If all the spells in your deck only heal....
Rogue: If your deck contains at least 5 weapons...
Shaman: If the spells in your deck all have overloads....
Warrior: If the minions in your deck are only dragons....
Warlock: If the minions in your deck cost more than 6.....
I'm just spit balling those, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Whenever you create a card that alters a fundamental aspect of the game, there have to be other balances around that. I know you understand that but not everyone does.
I'd be in favor of this, it definitely allows players to play themed decks just for shits and giggles. "What if I made a deck with only orcs in the art?" kind of stuff.
.........shit
The queue times could be an issue, that's for sure, but I'd say at peak times it would be unnoticeable how long someone is waiting to play.
If I had actual friends that played this game regularly, I'd be setting up friendly tournaments.
Brawl Block and Pyramid seem the most likely to actually ever see the light of day. It's been 5 years since any new game mode has been introduced and it seems Team 5 are too preoccupied with making any.
I wish they'd take a year or two off of making the current single player content so we could have some variety.
And this is the reason why Team 5 needs to add more formats than Standard, Arena, and Wild.