It’s great to see this level of detail! Also, I’ve been enjoying the meta over the past few weeks and agree that it’s doing well on it’s own. There is plenty of variety, nothing is horribly dominant, and new surprises turn up regularly.
I have a slightly different take on it. Hearthstone’s normal quests give you at least half a pack (usually a little more) in return for playing 2 or 3 games. Because you can complete multiple quests at once (plus your weekly Tavern Brawl), someone who really wanted to maximize their time could play a few games every other day, and earn more than a pack each time.
That’s a pretty good reward in return for playing 2-3 games. The reason Runeterra is more generous is that it still gives you something worthwhile on your 4th and 5th game of the day. I’d love to see Hearthstone add a new reward system to match that.
Even if they meet their goal to make every card “viable”, that isn’t going to leave people satisfied:
If someone recently spent money to craft a really good card and then it’s nerfed, they will feel like they wasted that money.
If the card was previously viable in decks A, B, and C, and after the nerf it’s only worthwhile in deck A, someone who had the cards specifically for decks B or C will feel like it’s no longer useful to them. (This is a bigger risk in Runeterra than Hearthstone since it’s supposed to take time to complete your Runeterra collection.)
In short, a game like this needs to be fair AND feel fair. A set of rules that work out logically but still leave people FEELING cheated will not work.
You’re right. A goal like “20 Arena wins” would be trivial for a good player but a huge task for an average player. Maybe they could follow Runeterra’s lead and give a bonus for your first Arena run or two every week. Or give an extra reward for your best run each week.
Whatever the answer is, I hope Blizzard figures it out! (Along with a tournament mode and monthly subscription, of course...)
There are lots of things I’d like to change in Arena, but probably the most urgent is the reward structure. In most games (*cough* Runeterra *cough*), you’ll feel like you got something out of a run even if you only did ok. In Hearthstone, if you complete an “average” 3-win run, you’ll get rewards worth approximately the cost of your ticket. But the randomly-chosen pack probably isn’t the one you would have bought yourself, so it feels like it wasn’t quite worth the cost. That’s not how a game should leave you feeling after paying an entry fee AND an hour or two of time.
My humble suggestions:
Make the current Arena reward structure slightly better. Nothing too crazy, but at least make sure a 3-win run feels good.
Give out Arena tickets more often: Bundled into special offers, found in the occasional daily quest, maybe even in your ranked chest at the end of the month. And people who buy tickets with money should have a bulk discount option.
The big one: Add monthly rewards for Arena performance. Track total wins across all your Arena runs, with rewards for your 5th, 10th, etc. win. Also maybe a bonus for whatever your best run of the month was.
There are a lot of ways to play Hearthstone, and I’m not going to tell anyone that the way they choose for themselves is right or wrong. But if you enjoyed ranked play enough to rack up 9500 wins, are you going to miss it? (Remember that Arena wins are counted in that total, too.)
If you decide you’d rather direct your OCD to something like “collect every monthly cardback”, you’ll need to make that decision today
The article is right. Most of the rewards Hearthstone gives you can come from ranked or unranked play, but the “ranked chest” you earn at the end of a month comes from ranked play only. It gives you the card back plus rewards based on the highest rank you reached, but only if you’ve won five ranked games.
Your Quest page will show you whether you’ve achieved that yet this month.
I got a normal quest this morning plus a New Year quest when that event went live. Maybe it’s intended to be one quest per day, but the event and the normal day started at different times.
I don’t know if this behavior will repeat tomorrow, but just to be sure I’ll log in in both the morning and afternoon.
Update: Nope. I got my New Years quest this morning.
I don’t have a real problem with the Brawl reward. If they changed it to something like 50 dust, that would seem more than fair for the effort it takes. Even if you have every Classic card, the average pack is worth more than that.
I totally agree that Hearthstone needs to improve their reward system overall. Your first 2-3 hours of time per week have a great return on investment: That keeps up with the week’s Brawl and Quests, earning you several packs. But beyond that, you’ll need to put in 6 or 8 more hours to earn ONE more pack!
I expect the rewards to slow down as you play more, but not nearly that fast. I hope Hearthstone steals some ideas from Runeterra. (Or just about any other F2P game.)
I enjoyed watching the meta change in response to last week’s new cards. The impact wasn’t as big as we see after nerfs, etc., but it was real. Who knew that Embiggen Druid had just needed one OP card all along?
I hope this gradual evolution continues over the next few weeks.
The game has no packs of random cards, but you do get a bunch of random cards from the Vault every week. Does it really feel different, or is it marketing spin?
Wow. The thing that amazes me isn't just the weak nerfs, but the lack of communication that came with them. It would go a long way if the blog post just spared a few more sentences to say "we hear your frustration, and this is why we think these changes are best."
I recently started playing Clash Royale, and they just had an issue where some card changes upset their player base. The company responded with a detailed, respectful blog post that was multiple pages long. It covered the development team's philosophy and reasons for the change, discussed the ways they think the change succeeded and failed, enumerated the complaints that they were hearing from the players, and then explained how they thought their new changes would address this. The post ended, of course, with a deep apology and a hope that they could win back their players' trust. And it was posted in the app, so even casual players like me would learn all about their mistake. I'm used to reading Blizzard's communications instead, and that post was eye-opening to me.
Whether it's true or not, today's response from Blizzard gives us the impression that they don't hear the frustration of their playerbase or understand the root issues. Do they realize that this is three metas in a row with progressively more broken Shaman decks? That people felt betrayed even before DoD was released last week? That this is a game of subtle interactions, and raising the cost of cards isn't a universal fix? Do they really think that Sludge Slurper is a bigger issue than Dragon's Pack, or do they just prefer a broken game to giving people dust for Epic and Legendary cards? How carefully have they considered their decision to raise the cost of a card that gives value because of its cost?
Blizzard has a lot of skilled people, and access to a lot of data that we don't see. Maybe they have good answers to all of those questions. But if they won't share those answers with us, a lot of people are going to assume the worst. They are running out of chances to restore our trust.
It’s great to see this level of detail! Also, I’ve been enjoying the meta over the past few weeks and agree that it’s doing well on it’s own. There is plenty of variety, nothing is horribly dominant, and new surprises turn up regularly.
I have a slightly different take on it. Hearthstone’s normal quests give you at least half a pack (usually a little more) in return for playing 2 or 3 games. Because you can complete multiple quests at once (plus your weekly Tavern Brawl), someone who really wanted to maximize their time could play a few games every other day, and earn more than a pack each time.
That’s a pretty good reward in return for playing 2-3 games. The reason Runeterra is more generous is that it still gives you something worthwhile on your 4th and 5th game of the day. I’d love to see Hearthstone add a new reward system to match that.
Even if they meet their goal to make every card “viable”, that isn’t going to leave people satisfied:
In short, a game like this needs to be fair AND feel fair. A set of rules that work out logically but still leave people FEELING cheated will not work.
You’re right. A goal like “20 Arena wins” would be trivial for a good player but a huge task for an average player. Maybe they could follow Runeterra’s lead and give a bonus for your first Arena run or two every week. Or give an extra reward for your best run each week.
Whatever the answer is, I hope Blizzard figures it out! (Along with a tournament mode and monthly subscription, of course...)
There are lots of things I’d like to change in Arena, but probably the most urgent is the reward structure. In most games (*cough* Runeterra *cough*), you’ll feel like you got something out of a run even if you only did ok. In Hearthstone, if you complete an “average” 3-win run, you’ll get rewards worth approximately the cost of your ticket. But the randomly-chosen pack probably isn’t the one you would have bought yourself, so it feels like it wasn’t quite worth the cost. That’s not how a game should leave you feeling after paying an entry fee AND an hour or two of time.
My humble suggestions:
Wow.
There are a lot of ways to play Hearthstone, and I’m not going to tell anyone that the way they choose for themselves is right or wrong. But if you enjoyed ranked play enough to rack up 9500 wins, are you going to miss it? (Remember that Arena wins are counted in that total, too.)
If you decide you’d rather direct your OCD to something like “collect every monthly cardback”, you’ll need to make that decision today
The article is right. Most of the rewards Hearthstone gives you can come from ranked or unranked play, but the “ranked chest” you earn at the end of a month comes from ranked play only. It gives you the card back plus rewards based on the highest rank you reached, but only if you’ve won five ranked games.
Your Quest page will show you whether you’ve achieved that yet this month.
I got a normal quest this morning plus a New Year quest when that event went live. Maybe it’s intended to be one quest per day, but the event and the normal day started at different times.
I don’t know if this behavior will repeat tomorrow, but just to be sure I’ll log in in both the morning and afternoon.
Update: Nope. I got my New Years quest this morning.
I don’t have a real problem with the Brawl reward. If they changed it to something like 50 dust, that would seem more than fair for the effort it takes. Even if you have every Classic card, the average pack is worth more than that.
I totally agree that Hearthstone needs to improve their reward system overall. Your first 2-3 hours of time per week have a great return on investment: That keeps up with the week’s Brawl and Quests, earning you several packs. But beyond that, you’ll need to put in 6 or 8 more hours to earn ONE more pack!
I expect the rewards to slow down as you play more, but not nearly that fast. I hope Hearthstone steals some ideas from Runeterra. (Or just about any other F2P game.)
I enjoyed watching the meta change in response to last week’s new cards. The impact wasn’t as big as we see after nerfs, etc., but it was real. Who knew that Embiggen Druid had just needed one OP card all along?
I hope this gradual evolution continues over the next few weeks.
Thanks! I’m looking forward to trying this out
The game has no packs of random cards, but you do get a bunch of random cards from the Vault every week. Does it really feel different, or is it marketing spin?
Wow. The thing that amazes me isn't just the weak nerfs, but the lack of communication that came with them. It would go a long way if the blog post just spared a few more sentences to say "we hear your frustration, and this is why we think these changes are best."
I recently started playing Clash Royale, and they just had an issue where some card changes upset their player base. The company responded with a detailed, respectful blog post that was multiple pages long. It covered the development team's philosophy and reasons for the change, discussed the ways they think the change succeeded and failed, enumerated the complaints that they were hearing from the players, and then explained how they thought their new changes would address this. The post ended, of course, with a deep apology and a hope that they could win back their players' trust. And it was posted in the app, so even casual players like me would learn all about their mistake. I'm used to reading Blizzard's communications instead, and that post was eye-opening to me.
Whether it's true or not, today's response from Blizzard gives us the impression that they don't hear the frustration of their playerbase or understand the root issues. Do they realize that this is three metas in a row with progressively more broken Shaman decks? That people felt betrayed even before DoD was released last week? That this is a game of subtle interactions, and raising the cost of cards isn't a universal fix? Do they really think that Sludge Slurper is a bigger issue than Dragon's Pack, or do they just prefer a broken game to giving people dust for Epic and Legendary cards? How carefully have they considered their decision to raise the cost of a card that gives value because of its cost?
Blizzard has a lot of skilled people, and access to a lot of data that we don't see. Maybe they have good answers to all of those questions. But if they won't share those answers with us, a lot of people are going to assume the worst. They are running out of chances to restore our trust.