Wild is honestly not in that bad of a place compared to metas past. It’s just the increased balancing of the game has given wild players unreal expectations
Honestly, HS needs a third constructed gamemode. An in-between standard and wild - with a lot more sets to play with, but many giga OP/Unfun cards(or strategies) banned to keep the powerlevel reasonable.
I am from Brazil, and since 2020 Blizzard has set the prices of the packs at astronomical values in our country. Believe it or not, a pre-sale costs 30% of a salary in my country. That's why I only use gold in the game and have never spent any money on the game again.
Digo o mesmo... Gostaria muito de comprar mais coisas no jogo, mas os preços são ridículos! Não sei quem foi o "gênio" por trás das mudanças de preços. A Blizzard já não estava nos seus melhores momentos de vendas com o Hearthstone e pra "ajudar", a Blizzard decide aumentar os preços ainda mais...
You can come a long way by just doing the quest's and paying gold for card packs. It'il only take you a bit longer...Hey still better then throwing your money at a shit Company.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say so. There will never come a day where I will even consider preordering a set until there is massive changes to it. The fact that I can spend well over $100 on the preorders yet still end up with barely a fraction of the Legendaries and Epics in the set is pathetic. If I’m dropping enough money to buy not only 1, but potentially even 2 brand new AAA games, I should be guaranteed every card in the set. Period. And even then, the price is outrageous.
I buy only the mega preorder and the Tavern pass every expansion (and buy the miniset with gold), and I currently have almost every card in standard, only missing maybe half a dozen (mostly unplayable) legendaries.
I just stopped caring, because Hearthstone just feels so soulless as of late. The obvious fixes aren't being made, the monetisation has gotten worse, and I just don't care anymore.
It's more free to play than ever What "obvious fixes"? If you visit any hearthstone community they want everything that has an above 50% win rate nerfed. Are you one of those people?
The only way hearthstone feels more soulless now is due to the lack of single player content. The cards literally have wilder designs than ever before and the balance patches are far more frequent. And as someone that never spent a single penny, the dup protection alone makes things infinitely more managable. Like i somehow had the resources to own LITERALLY every DK card that existed and a whole lot more. Although, i’ll admit with signatures and hero skins, the true completionist might be completely broke. How long did balance patches take in the Ben Brode era anyways?… Arguably way too long. I think this is just super vague nostalgia talk if anything. I’m open to dunking on legitimate problems on this game, but this is just silly.
I think people are underestimating how much damage the Sillyfication of the theme of the expansions is doing. In the last 2 years we only had one Serious expansion, and by Serious I mean directly related to World of Warcraft lore, and the rest are just parodies of WoW. If we list the last expansions by Serious/Lore related (✅) and Silly/Fortnite fiesta (🤪) we have: 2024 - Perills in Paradise: 🤪 - Whisbang: 🤪 2023 - Badlands: 🤪 - Titans: ✅ - Festival of Legends: 🤪 That means 4 Silly themed expansions from the last 5 (80%). In contrast, look at previous years, we have 1.5 Silly expansions from a pool of 9 (15%): 2022 - Marc of the Lick King: ✅ - Castle Nathria: ✅ - Sunken temple: ✅ 2021: - Fractured: ✅ - United in Stormwind: ✅ - Forged in the Barrens: ✅ 2020: - Darkmoon: ✅🤪 - Scholomance: 🤪 - Ashes of Outland: ✅ Thats really really bad. People don't want to play a Disney/Fortnite version of WoW TCG, we have plenty of alternatives for that. What made Hearthstone special was how much related to the actual WoW world and lore was.
For me, personally, there is two major problems: 1 - Localized price hike: The price for the basic pack pre-order is R$224,99 and the big pack is R$:359,99. Before the price hike you could buy both pre-order packs for R$:240,00. For comparison the minimum wage here is R$:1412,00, so yeah, pretty expensive. 2 - The unfun meta: I played Hearthstone since the goblins vs gnomes days, and I always loved being able to play what I want and still be somewhat competitive, no matter how fast my deck is. Nowadays in standard you either play a deck that ends the game by turn 6 or you lose, there is no space for a fun, slower game, where you have to be meticulous as to what is your next move. In wild you can play slower decks but you are pretty much condemned to play disruption decks if you want to play it slow and disruption is never fun to play against.
If perils in paradise was a proper beach episode expansion, i guarantee a lot of men would go in debt to buy the borderline pornographic skins for 30$ each or whatever they cost now.
@@THMCTerracraft2 Deciding to do something because it makes a lot of people horny and turned on is worse than choosing to always take the action that increases the bottom line. The consequences of letting those decide your actions ends badly for most people.
One more factor: The e-sport/streaming scene used to be really fun, with memorable individuals that built decks according to their playstyle. These days the e-sport is bland and boring.
From my personal experience, I stopped buying pre-orders around 2020 but remain heavily invested in the game. I manage to get ~ 9000 gold each expansion cycle and hoard all my Tavern Brawl standard packs. Come expansion launch, I'm able to get ~75% of the collection which I'm happy with. I will occasionally buy the Tavern pass if the cosmetics look cool.
for sure OP opens more than 90 pack 😅 and I share the same sentiment. Haven't bought any bundle since 2020 and we're doing just fine with the collection. There's just no need and appeal to purchase them. I've only purchased tavern pass and played just like usual (i managed like 250 level per expansion in average). And surprisingly my collection number on average is more than 80% for the last few expansions While the gold is only enough for limited pack but there's also other resources from the tavern pass and free packs etc. So on average we're looking for like extra 20-30 pack per season from various means.
In my opinion, power creep has gone too far and it makes the game too fast. Power creep has also lead to too many swing turns and I never feel like I have a game completely locked down.
Also, I remember the community felt really deflated with the 10th anniversary celebration. A couple of crappy undustable golden rares? Seriously? It was pathetic. Mood seems to have soured a lot after that.
I think there are some main problems: -themes of expansions - too goofy, not as Warcraft-ish as it used to be. -prices of bundles in the shop - (for example I had a method to buy everything at 50% of price (it's not possible anymore) and I spend much more money on the game in that period when this method worked) and to add to that prices in different countries aren't adapted to financial situation in each of these countries (e.g prices being the same in EUR and USD but EUR is stronger than USD and they equalled those prices when EUR and USD had the same price but it was few years ago) -power level of cards - let's just compare when HS was at its peak of popularity and what was the power level back then and compare it to what we have now. Board doesn't matter as much, there is too much damage from hand, too much draw etc. -different design approach than in the past - they create packages of cards that make creating deck much easier, than doing cards that fit the there of expansion and having players figure out good decks instead of taking few most powerful packages and adding most powerful cards to that (I know it isn't that simple, but I really dislike those packages like e.g. Relics that were in DH etc.) synergies shouldn't be that obvious. I think better way is what Spell Damage cards druid have, but still not perfect.
Hearthstone died for me because of three main reasons. 1. The price is absolutely outrageous for the value you get. Another commenter here put it best: if you are paying the price of two triple-A games and still not completing the set, that’s absurd. 2. I was primarily a Wild player and the lack of expression feels really awful. You build a deck that might not be the most competitive list, but you enjoy it and it has a clear theme around it and isn’t bulletproof (i.e. it has weaknesses). You will constantly get steamrolled by net-decking players who build the strongest competitive decks that have every answer and can do anything: draw cards, gain life/armor, have infinite value, board clears, single target removal, hand disruption, OTK’s… it’s crazy how far the power creep has gone. 3. Botting is a huge problem for me. The amount of bots in Hearthstone today has gotten very out of hand and it’s a lose-lose even when you win. It feels hollow to win against a bot (and you just fed them a ton of tavern experience if the game went long) and losing feels awful because you wanted to play some silly little deck like Treant Druid and Pirate Rogue bots endlessly make your games feel frustrating and pointless.
The absurd excess of bots in the game is the biggest reason I want to give up playing. It's frustrating to play against a bot, even if you win. Whether standard or wild, you will play against countless bots. Sometimes I want to play in casual mode to train some decks or even to have fun with non-competitive decks, and I find 99% of bots in both the American and European regions. I don't know what this dirty team thinks they are doing by allowing this absurd amount of bots.
@@MrkraZzz I can prove to you that I played against a bot using a basic starting deck at diamond rank through prints. In fact, in the diamond and legend ranks you will find bots also using competitive decks. But as they are competitive decks, many players don't realize. How to identify them? It's simple! Every bot has its own name along with an adjective or noun, with capital letters in its initials. There are also bots with mixed letters in their nicknames. Ignoring this fact, thinking that only in the low ranks there are bots, is playing the game blindfolded. If you search, there are some famous players who have already complained about this, including Zeddy.
They just didn't even try to sell you on the theme this time. The trailers have been incredibly important and absolute bangers. This was a budget cut that Blizzard should never, ever have made.
-bad theme -boring mechanics, running out of mechanics -expensive compared to other games -broken/dead game modes -lack of cinematics -expensive new cosmetics (diamond cards/portraits) -bots everywhere
For me, personally, the reason is the horrible theme. I have 0 interest in these childish, cartoony, goofy, disney-like expansions (with their skins and all). If they go back to Warcraft-themed expansions/more serious in tone expansions, then I'll support it. Till then, big no from me. And it seems most players share the same sentiment, which is good.
If they ever actually included the tavern pass in the pre purchase bundle then I would consider getting it. Insane how spending like $100 on a pre purchase bundle doesn’t even get you that and you’d still have to spend more afterwards.
I used to spend about 120 euro a year on HS. Then the BlitzChung thing happened - along with other news about terrible things happening at Blizzard - and I was like "fuck this company". I would have been willing to give them another chance if there was ever a proper apology and signs that they were actually working on making themselves a more ethical company. That never happened, and additionally, the HS design team keeps moving the game in a direction that I don't appreciate. So why would I ever come back now?
No but they have hid the Heroic Brawl purchase button behind the "next" button with no confirmation popup, refuse to refund and no one talks about this.
Everything in the shop wether it's money or gold you are being asked "are you sure you want to make this transaction" Arena/duel runs had this heck even free items have this but not Heroic Brawl ticket that costs 1000 gold.
I used to always buy the battle pass and such, but when Blizzard axed Duels, I couldn't be motivated to pay anymore. They keep introducing very fun modes and taking them away because Standard isn't doing well, despite Standard BEING the problem; not the other modes.
I think the underlying problem is that Blizzard is using the whole year for their 10-year anniversary when we were fine with just the 1 nostalgia expansion, and they're stretching it
Sorry to ruin the statistics but ladder is filled with bots. And these bots are like 70% of matches above diamond rank. I'm sure lots of bots reach legend too. The most reliable way of checking the size of the playerbase I'd say is by: 1. Purchases 2. Views/Likes on Hearthstone related content on social media. 3. The amount of discussions on reddit/hearthstonetopdecks and such forums. I follow such channels on socials, and am part of groups, but I heard and saw NOTHING about the new expansion. TH-cam didn't even recommend me any official trailers. Might be just me but i see no advertisement (or indirect ads) on the new expansion from blizzard (or the community). Maybe the cards are boring?
Interesting idea. I've recently been looking into Activision's EOMM systems and if Activision used bots, it would solve a lot of the issues of using said EOMM systems, such as drastically cutting down que times for ultra specific opponent selection parameters. Based on their recordings of your gaming engagement patterns, win or lose scenarios are selected and given to the player to extend the player's time in game. Ironically, Activision's systems for player engagement are causing their players to disengage.
@@slowedvsbattle hard to say, if there were more or less bots before. And what ratio of bots are made/used by players vs. employed by blizzard. Imaginably hearthstone's player base has been declining for years, which would result in less bots being used by the now smaller pool of players, and also fewer players would require fewer ai bot opponents from blizzard. As far as I know, bot and player numbers are meant to be kept secret. and information that affects financial earnings is incentivized to be misrepresented.
I quitted 9 month ago. I played since Beta over 10 years ago. I was a completionist at heart and thus a cash cow, too. I bought every single expansion bundle twice (the $80 and the $50) and also almost every addional "Save Money Bundle". So Blizzard received roughly an average of $750 to a maximum of $1000 each year out of my pocket and I am not a rich guy by any means. I have a regular 9 to 5 job and a family to provide for. But Hearthstone was my hobby at heart and I loved it from the very beginning due to my history with blizzard going back from their silicon and synapse times even 'til today. Hearthstone reached a point to were spending money wasn't tolerable anymore. At the same time the overall randomness reached a critical point to where it wasn't tolerable anymore as well. Randomness became a huge problem over the course of all those years, but I somewhat managed to at least have some amount of fun, whether by having succcess in the game or by simply playing and looking at my "shiny" collection while losing to endless amounts of crapy randomness. Once that point reached, I had to cut the ropes which I did. It was a very painful decision, but looking back it has been the right one. In the end I had way more frustration than fun and that drove me to turn my back to all my accomplishments and all the invested money. Sometimes it's still hard to this day, but as a relinquished guy I can safely say that I won't return by any means at all. I play regular AAA Games for not even close the amounts of money Hearthstone costed today and I am having tons of fun again instead of the frustration Hearthstone provided in the end. Greetings from Germany. Hopefully the war ends one day and everything will get back to normal for you guys over there !
@@JorisVDC I have been a AAA Gamer form the very beginning. Started with an Amiga 500, went up to a Intel 90mhz and went all the way 'til today. So I played mainly RTS (Dune II, C&C, Warcraft), RPGs (like HOM&M), Building Games (like The Settlers, Anno) Shooters (all kinds of with a great story), but also Adventure and a little bit of Racing (mostly NFS) and of course card games (I was a dedicated RL Magic The Gathering Player, started shortly before release of the 4th Editionin 1994/1995. After getting older I also found Simulatons quiet enjoyable. I was never into sport games except a few Basketball games. Hearthstone was combining my all favorite Warcraft Lore with the aspect of a card game, so it came natural to me to play it. To answer your question: Nowadays I play Farming Simulator 22 (atm I'm pretty hyped about FS 25.), played crapload out of Cities Skylines, absolutely loved Subnautica and Subnautica Below Zero and had a time of my life with Death-Stranding (no joke -> absouletly amazing story experience). Naturally I also play Diablo IV. Played the first three seasons, but grinding isn't all mine, so I stopped with season four, currently waiting for Vessel of Hatred for story reasons. I love story gameplay and don't like pure grinding. I am also eager to play Jagged Alliance III from Haemimont Games (I am a huge JA II fan) but I am currently lacking the time due to FS 22.
I primarily play Wild. I used to pre-order to support the game and try out the new cards. Now unless you're playing one of the 5 top decks, your cards are unplayable. So you just craft the 1 or 2 new cards that see play.
The player base turning into casuals is really good point. I used to pre order every expansion so I had enough cards to play all the decks I wanted. Now I simply don't care. I have enough resources to craft a couple, and I'll buy the rewards track for an extra bump. That's all I can justify spending. I'll also say this - it doesn't help they've really cheapened out on the pre order hero skin. Skins used to be rare so that incentive you to get the bundle. Now they constantly fart them out, and most the pre order ones are just golden portraits, they should be at least diamond to tempt me.
Removal of all the fun odd modes, constant cash grab, Blizzard mistreating employees, cringe promo video, too many mechanics that aren't self-explanatory and too efficient cards. The game used to be about choices, these days every card simultaneously draws new cards, summons something adds something to your hand, has a random effect and heals you at the same time for no mana cost. I moved to Magic. Magic may have some cards that do a lot, but at least the colours have identity, All the classes in hearthstone feels the same these days.
I only buy the battle pass and because of the numerous nefs to cards I am able to get enough dust to craft what I am missing. To me the biggest problem lies in the power creep, cards become more ridiculous and my preferred style of play: midrange is become unplayable. Aggro has so much draw that they dominate, only the heavy control decks stand a chance if they draw their cheap AoE. I was hoping that they would implement the rune system for all the classes, so that they could still make OP cards but have a deck building restriction. Based on the spell schools. So you can't have all the powerful cards in one deck and this will allow for more creative deck-building. Edit: PS: I did decide after the Blitzchung debacle not to buy anything again from Blizzard, but I caved in on the Battle Pass, as it allows for more rewards for playing. Sadly I am very closed to dumping HS as a total, as I see my joy decreasing as a whole. During the early years I really liked to play Arena. Yet with all the botting problems and the balance issues, I feel the mode is no longer rewarding for me to play.
its a beach expansion, players want games to fulfill some form of a power fantasy and a day at the beach isn't what I envisioned a hearthstone expansion would become.
I don't know how other players see it, but I'll tell you my view on Hearthstone. - It used to be that HS was marketed as a World of Warcraft adventure. Now, if you ask me, it has become just a pretext for a kids card game. The staple legendary lore figures have become so unimportant next to epics or even rares of today, like 10/10 "who-the-hell-is-this" crabs, or "music term" cards. So, lore promise - squandered. - It also used to be that HS was more a game of skill and brains than one of dumb luck. Or maybe I'm remembering it wrong and nostalgia kicks in. But it seems to me that nowadays a lucky Theotar, Mutanus, Tickatus, Tho'grun or others like that can just ruin your whole game plan for you. - Oh, and do you remember the times of Ben Brode, Samwise Didier, Chris Metzen & co.? Or those epic tournaments that kept us non-breathing until the last card was played and sometimes huge twists happened (Pavel, I'm looking at you)? Occasion to make HS great again? Wasted. But let's talk money. - Spending real money is irrelevant, since we can get most of the important stuff for free or for gold. Minus vanity stuff. Gold purchase chance? I'll take it! - Back when prices were reasonable for a game expansion, I used to pay just to support the developers. Even knowing that Blizz had become a greed monster since being bought by Activision. But now they ask for way too much. Again, with the money for an expansion (the most of which, again, I can get for free) I can buy a whole new game. Temperance opportunity? Missed. - Currency schemes (as seen in other Blizzard games), such as "X money for Y currency", but Y currency is more than enough to buy something, while the left over beckons you to purchase more currency in order to buy something else. You just cant have leftover currency just sitting there, can you? So, taken for a fool? Nah, thanks. So, these days, I don't even care about the "themes" of expansions, I already know they're crap. I don't even strive to remember names of cards. I just play to exercise my neurons, the little the game offers. So, pay for new expansions? Nahhh.
I stopped playing around the time when they went from alternative between a 20 dollar adventure and then a 50-60 dollar pre-order expansion to an all expansion pattern, then they raised that to 80$, it was just too expensive for me and if i didn’t pay around a 100 dollar each expansion i’d have to play the game for around 2-4 hours daily just so i can keep up, it started feeling like a chore to me, thats when i quit.
HS in general doesn't feel like HS anymore, certain cards/archetypes seem too strong, too much power creep, no boardbased games anymore and the death of midrange, too much random/discover and especially draw so value doesn't matter, and too many powerful combos and synergies leading to games that often times feel the same, unfair or too short. This is coming from an arena player tho, I don't play standard, I did like 10 years ago but never bought a preorder or bundle because it seemed to expensive for not even close to a full collection of a set. This is only from what I can tell watching a little bit of ranked youtube/twitch now and then or worlds. Don't know if it's really like this but that's my impression at least. Tho I always bought the battle pass since it came out since it's a good amount of more gold and some nice skins/golden card, which I like. Also, as a daily arena player, I have enough of dust and gold for everything in the game even if I want to play standard, which I did like 3 times in the last 10 years when there is a set I am interested in (for instance old Quest Mage or Highlander Hunter). Reaching legend and heading back to arena again.
I have pre-ordered a lot in the past, but I haven't done so a lot recently. There are several reasons for it, but below I'll name a few. Firstly, I personally really wanted a "Power Reset" with Whizbang, since the rotation was the perfect opportunity for it. To give an example, having "Outvaluing your opponent" being an actual win condition again, and slowing the games down a significant amount, giving room for more fun cards and allowing notable success to even unpolished homebrew decks. That is DEFINITELY not what happened, and the game feels as streamlined and super-powered as ever, if not more. This has led to me slowly losing more and more interest over time, with the voice saying "Don't worry, maybe they'll bring the power-level down next time" becoming ever quieter for each new expansion. Now every deck can do everything, and even the slowest of the slow supposed control decks has to have a combo win-con to not get completely blown out of the water. Iirc, this has even been a design goal of Blizzard, so my hope of them doing something about is has completely dwindled. Secondly, having THREE possible different things to buy is just absurd. Normal Bundle, Mega Bundle, and then Battle Pass ON TOP of that? Throw the Battle Pass into the Mega Bundle and we probably have a deal. Otherwise? I feel like if I buy the Mega Bundle without the Battle Pass, I'm actively shooting myself in the foot by missing out on the Bonus +% exp and guaranteed cards, which in turn makes me feel forced to buy both, which in turn makes me feel scammed, which finally makes me wanna buy neither out of pure annoyance. The pricing on their new cosmetic items and cards doesn't help their case in the slightest. 40€ for Baku and Genn signature bundle?! Things like these makes me actively not wanna give any money to Blizzard. And that leads me into the Third reason. With how bloody expensive everything is nowadays, even if I can, I don't WANT to spend those exorbitant amounts on a video game that, for a while now, I've disliked more and more for every new expansion. For 80€, I could buy two whole amazing and full games. The Mega Bundle doesn't even guarantee that I get more than 5 legendaries (6 if the golden packs have their own pity-timer), and they release 3 Expansions/Mega Bundles per year! On top of that, since Blizzard doesn't do regional pricing, the actual cost is 15~20% higher for me than what it's actually supposed to be. 15~20% more isn't a lot compared to how much non-regional pricing affects some other countries (which doesn't help Blizzards case at all, tbh...), but it still feels REALLY bad to have that extra fee on top of an already overpriced purchase. I'm sure there're more reasons for me, but these three are what I got off the top of my head at least.
I was ready to spent money on hearthstone again, I used to purchased the expensive bundle ($70issh) I started watching videos and trying to get the hype (I stopped playing like 2 years ago), but what a shocker when I realize the card designs were almost like playing Lorcana!. I decided to wait till next expansion, hoping they won't come out with something like "Haunted Dalaran's Bakery" or "Back to Orgrimmar pre-school" or some stp&d sh¡t like that!
There are multiple resons in my opinion. 1. No expansion triler before expansion relese ( not the first time but i hated it every time, and triler qulity is horible, whizbang ant titan trilers are in top 3 worst trilers), 2. Last two expansion had broken and unfun meta ( and when you look at this expansion it looks to be broken again ), 3. Change to arena ( 1 legendary per run for all ) that means that I changed my focus on arena where are dont need preorder, 4. I dont like expansio theme, 5. Deliting modes and blizard activly triing to make them worse than standart ( twist would be a home run if it gave you a way to play older meta and if they gave you some kind of discounts or monthly fee for old kards, but no they relese unbalanced new expansion, refuse to balance it and make the mode disepear for moths at a time. These are some of my resons to not buy this preorder.
I don't know if the current period is the worst in history, but I feel like it's in a very bad spot AND on an incline. Their design philosophy for cards and balance is extremely poor, and they show no way of fixing it - quite the opposite. The board feels more and more like a side tool, the game feels more and more like single player, decisions matter less and RNG is much more prevalent. Most meta decks rely on 1 or 2 extremely powerful cards, which makes different packages and archetypes feel less unique. You can't just play good cards, your deck has to be actively focused on killing your opponent, usually without letting them interact with you. Toxic effects and play patterns are the norm in standard currently, and any deck that doesn't have a hyper efficient "unfair" element can't succeed at all.
I agree with you. I normally don't complain about the goofy or funny themes because I like to laugh and smile with the game. BUT, "Perils in Paradise" is... just... come on, LAME... DULL, EMPTY... Uncle Blizzard please, enough! It's like this expansion was spawned by an Artificial Intelligence, there's not love anymore... Bot M, Holomancer, Dora: just take a look at the golden cards animations nowadays!! they're barely animated, so poorly worked..., and compare them with the old golden ones from the old good days. Jesus, they're not even making an effort on them. To my mind: It's too expensive to get a bundle now, and not worthy. I used to purchase the bundles just to collect the card backs, but there's a lack of creativity on them too now!... they're just kind of crappy... :( It feels like they just wanted a quick cash grab and that's it. And even the character skins... they're so horrible and low quality now!
I'm glad I was able to reach Legend a year ago, before the crazy cards sent everything out of whack. I've reached the conclusion that everything felt so volatile and out of place I was playing matches for the chance of winning and not having fun. Having felt that I uninstalled the game and muted everything save for two medias: Syndicate's weekly analysis, and your mathematic videos. I will continue to follow you both until the game's bitter end.
Blizzard is charging premium amount of money for premium quality. The problem is Hearthstone does not feel premium anymore: - no cinematic; - no new board; - taking away extra legendary for set completion; - DOZENS of new cosmetics making the game looks cheap.
I quit after the quest fiasco. After 10 years I'm finally sick of feeling like it's a fight between players and the higher ups to not just get what we want, but to keep what we have.
Even the normal bundle costs to much, in my opinion, for how much engagement it provides: for 50€ I would only get 60 packs and 2 random legendaries... which not only is a fraction of the collection of that expansion, but it is ALL RANDOM, meaning I'll likely waste a lot of what I bought to actually craft what I wanted to try. And this is every 4 months, theoretically. For less money I can buy games that will provide me engagement for at least the same amount of time, if not more. Then you can add all the issues with balance and lack of content like adventures, all of which dilute the value of your cards in general, but that's not my main point.
This. I totally agree. Also my biggest concern with the game is that even buying pre-orders (which cost *a lot* for a videogame) it is difficult to obtain the decks you're interested in. There are always cards that are missing due to rng.
I rarely ever made purchases in before, but my biggest concerns are: To laid back / cartoonish themes/optics They gave no f2p option for 10. Anniversary to get the golden harth stonebrew Extremely overprized seeming signature/diamond bundles Nearly no adventure content Removed duels Controversy with weekly quest down and ups Nearly no new ideas for mechanics in Hearthstone ...
I like the theme of Perils, but a combination of us getting 3 "silly" expansions in a row now, them sneakily trying to make the game more expensive while also erasing modes & giving nothing in exchange etc. just makes it less engaging. Hearthstone's loss in revenue, yet not popularity, is a death of a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts.
I used to play a lot of hearthstone back in 2016 to 2020. It used to be my favorite pass time game back then. It really hurts to see how a game can be butchered..
I stopped playing after castle expansion. Fed up of paying a triple A price 3 times a year and not getting all the cards. I think when you buy the preorder bundle you should get every card. Just pure greed and I refuse to pay them any more.
(1) Spells "Draw 4 cards" and "Draw 2 cards" lead to a disaster in wild. Want to play slow? Sorry, 5 Demon seeds in 10 games and 5 Rogues) Want to play fast? Sorry, but Rogue kills you faster and Warlock doesn't care) Want to play combo? If not Demon Seed, good luck with that) It's dissapointing to not be able to play fun decks, because powercrept cards are being powercrept now. What a shitshow...
10 years of collection and we only see 3-5 identical decks in the wild. These decks consist of broken cards that should have been nerfed or banned a long time ago. But this dirty team neglects the wild without explanation. They ban useless cards, but allow cards like "seeds" to exist to this day. In diamond 5, you only find this. It's frustrating for someone who just wants to have fun with cool decks from a 10-year-old collection.
I can't understand how a rogue can still draw 4 cards with just 1 mana. And in this purchase, buy more cards. An empty hand, with just 1 mana, becomes full in the blink of an eye. The weakness of aggro has always been card draw, but for the rogue that has never been the problem. It's unfair.
Honestly I wanted to quit early 2024 when whizbang was released, never could so instead I didn't buy pre-expansions. As to now, I'm not really impressed with the cards for me to buy. It's just dual class with extra steps and triplespell drinks. Also 2 expansions hearthstone plays dirty to druid, I'm not even a druid main and those cards kinda suck(the legendary )in wild Edit: I thought druid release is over, saw the new ramp cards, are interesting
@@frogzx yeah the mill, tog and Reno. I respect the Reno and mill but tog is toxic. Best way to fix it is to change the description of ransom to "return the decks" this will kill tog though
I just want more discounts on card bundles for old sets, and less stupid overpriced signature bundles. I would spend more if collecting cards for wild wasn't more expensive than standard
Everyone bashing the theme, but ofc it's lighthearted since it's the 10th year of Hearthstone, we're here to celebrate with fun toys and vacations! I love the theme honestly and bought both prerelease bundles. Regarding the playerbase, I don't think Hearthstone is about to die. People been saying this for years and nothing really happened, it's a great game after all.
Want to add to what someone else here said directly; Standard IS the problem. They axed duels because of Standard. They have “trouble” balancing Wild, because of Standard. They split the playerbase (their most loyal, who had been playing since open or closed Beta) when standard was released, because they could no longer use the cards they’d already acquired or purchased. Off to the banished land of ‘Wild’ with you! The obvious thing here about this is that a “Standard” format in all TCG’s is only there for 2 primary reasons; 1. Force players to buy new cards 2. Make it so that players DON’T feel they have to accumulate OLD cards to be competitive if all cards are available These reasons are ‘okay’, but number 1 is simply more important to Blizz than number 2. They made Wild catchup packs as a way of answering this objection, but the drop rate system is still hilariously bad, and they’ve consistently split the focus between Wild and Standard since that split was first made, creating a tax on their Devs that did not need to be there in the first place. There were both better and more generous ways to handle those issues in a digital TCG environment that traditional TCG’s don’t have access to. Lastly; Hearthstone has NOT actually made a fun game mode since Battlegrounds & Duels. No ‘actual’ custom or duel class build game mode. No replacement for duels. Arena is the same boring crap it’s been since release, albeit with a boost in power from a single okay-ish patch. Standard sucks. I want to play with all the cards I have, and Wild isn’t *much* better.
I still plan to buy a pre-order, however I am very disappointed that Alliestraza, who I have been following on Twitch for years, has stopped streaming Hearthstone in favor of the new NFT TCG Parallel FeelsBadMan
Yes, I really miss the theme song and this was really hyped up my kids. Who grew up with me playing Hearthstone, even they have lost interest two years ago.
They should have introduced 20/30 dollars pre-order a long time ago. More people will stomach spending that than 50 every 3 months which is the very entry level price.
I stopped when after buying Yogg mini set they didn't even waited a month to nerf it, yeah they gave refunds but for the card not the whole deck built around it. It's already awful having digital goods that expire but in top of that having goods that lower their usefulness not even a month after its launch? I'm still playing but only free to play
For over 2 weeks the shop in HS client has been closed on both my IPad and my PC client. Blizz said that it is a bug and they are aware and investigating it. No news about it since, so even if i wanted to buy anything with gold or $ - i am completely unable to do so.
I've been playing hs for a long time and i also bought some preorders in the past even if i'm mainly a f2p player, after all the terrible decisions blizzard made i decided i would not spend any more money on the game because i felt manipulated, so i still play but unless there are significant changes i won't ever spend any more money on the game
Unsurprisingly, once you put two battle passes and a pre order and over-priced skins / diamond cards in my face constantly, it frustrates me. What's the point in paying so much if I still can't get everything I want? So I dropped out of the pre orders like two years ago. The decks in Standard weren't fun and I have a stockpile of cards and gold that I can disenchant whenever I want. The experience isn't worth the money anymore.
MAYBE BECAUSE THERE'S COMPLETE TRASH IN THE GAME LIKE RENO, and fkin oh let's see, BRANN that gives the saviors of uldum SHAMAN QUEST REWARD as a fkin double battle cry on an 8 drop! the fact that zilliax is a god damn mandatory 1600- in any high deck not to mention everybody and their fucking mom IS PLAYING HIGHLANDER in ranked like what the hell are they thinking?!
I play Hearthstone since public beta. I stopped paying when they introduced the season pass. Having another thing to spend money on when a new expansion releases made me not want to spend any money at all any more. And in addition to that, I think current Hearthstone development has a huge problem on focussing too much on the flashiness of individual cards rather than the overall gameplay experience.
i stopped mainly because a lot of sets are now like very "childish funny stuff" its great to have some degree of sarcastic theme here or there or whatever its called but i miss a more serious set
Honestly, one of the main reasons why I would buy expansions/packs was because of the story lines they had that crossed through the expansion year. I was invested in the story and character development. It made things interesting and fun and grew to love the characters so I would buy the expansion. It is soulless now.
Is it possible that the increase in weekly awards has created a situation where regular players are less likely to buy the big bundles? I have not significantly changed my amount of game time, but I have over 8,000 gold available. I would have more if I had not used some to buy a custom skin. This, along with the 20+ free packs I have saved, makes it so that a big pre-purchase will be unnecessary.
I recently took a four month break after realizing that I had spent over $500 on the game in under a year. Now I’m back and mainly playing Battlegrounds bc that mode is completely free.
Personally loved the first 1-2 years of HS but while the game needs new cards every 3-4 months that quickly makes it impossible to keep up with with the cost. Also battlegrounds is 100 times more fun and better yet it is free (if you care tho it is more like 15 every 4-5 months which seems completely fair).
After the weekly quest mess I haven't reinstalled Hearthstone. It took over a month to fix and there was no compensation for players ubable to finish quests. I felt insulted as a player since Beta. Easily spent £1000 from a decade of Hearthstone, purchasing most preorders. Maybe in six months if 'returning player' bonuses kick in I'll check out the game again, but the funny thing is, after the first 2 weeks, the itch to play in the hour or two I normally gave Hearthstone passed. Not with any other particular game, as Hearthstone was my 'during dinner' game with one hand free, but my time now feels more productive post-hearthstone, I'd need a darn good reason to return to the daily hamster wheel of dailies and weeklies with current meta decks I haven't genuinely enjoyed since 2018. Appreciate the reporting as ever, you are the only HS channel I've stayed subbed to post-quitting.
agree, i play hearthstone from time to time, and litterly this quest takes 4 hours to complete and i useuslly only play control, so it feelt like they hate me and want me to play aggro every damn game, and litterly braindead aggro meta in wild right now, and they removed duels...... like bro, thye removed duels for this? hahahahhahahah im amazed
If l'm spending 80 bucks on a game every 4 months, I want everything, or at least everything I care about Hearthstone has slowly been breaking pieces off from that pre-order and reselling them to us. The rewards track, then taking away battleground perks, and most recently and egregiously, removing the diamond cards for a complete collection. If I'm going to be treated as a second-class citizen anyway, I can do that for free.
Well, in the Blizzard case and lot other companies... A lot of pre-order games have been bad and refunds, So maybe now people is waiting for final release and reviews
Is it just me? I always found their bussines model of selling peorders horible. Why would I preorder an expansion that might be bad or I might end up not liking the meta? I just skip whole expansions if the meta is bad. Just sell me a bundell of packs after the expansion comes out. I might buy that.
I got really tired by getting paired up with opponents who are very clearly blizzard's own bots. Came back after they removed their bots to find that there are just non Blizzard bots using the Auto generated Blizzard names (colour+Creature).
I feel bad cause, I love you guys, but I have slowly come to dislike Hearthstone, because it costs too much to play now. You guys have always been a channel i enjoy watching. I hope Hearthstone doesnt drag you down.🙇
I don't pay for pre-sales and battle passes because in Brazil they chose to triple the price without any improvement, Samsung A20 smartphone and it crashes all the time, it's sad, a good game that I spent on pre-sales and the skin becomes the game expensive and which is not dedicated to carrying out maintenance to improve performance, such as a card game consuming more than 6 gigabytes of space and consuming so much memory to the point that the application simply closes in the middle of the game.
Power creep killed the fun for me. I liked the strategic element of hearthstone. Now there's less space for creativity in deck building and in plays. As a returning player, I felt like I either had to resort to net-decking or be totally steam-rolled. When I encountered new Reno the first time, I was so confused as to why this thing A THING. By my modest estimates, it should cost around 25 mana. (4 for mass enemy silence, 3 for limiting the space to 1 slot, 1 mana for 5 armor, 15 for a total board wipe that does not affect your side, 2 for improving the hero power). The effect of clearing the board of the opponent without affecting yours is already worth more 10 mana. My reference is the 8-mana warlock clear that also destroys your board. My other reference is the 7 mana deal 4 damage to all enemy minions. If you cast it twice, it kinda has the same effect most of the time. I wouldn't be so mad at the design at least if I could interact with it. I don't have a tech card against that dirt. Even if I shuffle repeated stuff in the opponents deck, they still can use Reno.
It's weird that some people are arguing it costs too much to fill their collection while there's also people saying they don't buy packs anymore. It's obvious people have different motivations when playing this game.
I'm a very old player, started on HS vanilla. I stopped playing at Witchwood and got into the game again recently. Honestly, I wouldn't even think about buying packs, I stay solely on arena now since its funnier, more diverse and virtually free. I used to preorder cards tho back then, I did it for 2 sets I think, but after preordering Grand Tournament... I just said never again, and I still feel like the reasons why it wasn't actually satisfactory to open boosters back then are still here but got even worse.
I used to spend a lot, even buying golden minisets. Since the price hike i stopped buying altogether, prices are ridiculous. I dont really understand why they prefer to sell 0 packs instead of selling two preoders, golden minisets and tavern passes at a lower price.
This is how monetization works. They will actually make more money if 2 percent of players will buy an item for $80 than 30% of players will buy an item for $5. In terms of efficiency, Blizzard chooses optimal pricing. For this reason, I have never criticized them for high prices in the store. Once, using surveys, I tried to find a lower price that would allow them to earn more money, but I failed. The percentage of players ready to make a purchase does not increase significantly.
As a russian player, I am "unable" to buy pre-orders, but I bought every single one since Kobolds, when I returned to the game. The problem is, of course, cost. Because of the "international costs" I can provide statistics on how much I have spent on preorders every year. To make this short, let's just take 2 examples and use today's approximate currency rate. Scholomance academy preorder - 2000 rubles (20$) mega - 4000 rubles (40$) Perils an paradise preorder - 8000 rubles (80$) mega - 16000 rubles (160$) As you can see, it's orbital, so I am unsure if I want to pay so much for a preorder. Also you don't take into consideration that the frikin shop was closed for a damn lot of time so people just couldn't buy even if they wished to. My personal feeling about this is Perils, after seeing all cards from the set, are just not exciting. You know, I analysed the game in 2019 a lot and found out some cycling here and there: paladin murlocs => shaman murlocs every year, pirate/mech rotation, etc. When they announced tourists, I wished they would use cards that are good in both classes. However, by "painprist" bullshit it seems they just put some cards of a class in another class and that's it. Boring as hell. Also I really hate the drinks idea as it makes cards really boring (wow 3 damage to card and 2 to my face, exciting, or 1 to all enemies. If they upgraded with every use by 1 they could be remotely playable and interesting, now ALL drinks need at least -1 cost) and tourists are just a way to make classes, surprise, do what they ALREADY DO. Like Lynessa, for example. Haven't we seen a spell-slinging paladin before? There is a point to be made that at that stage you can't create something too new. But oh boy how you can. I bet that Runeterra and Gwent (rip my loves), being bad at profits, got a lot of really different cards and deck ideas in stock, gwent being played as a very different game idea of growing your own board. As a conclusion, I think I'll not buy this preorder. I believe blizzard should put more in their design team and less in their marketing, which paradoxically can up their profits. With all those dull cards they decided to show us in the trailer and a LACK OF A CINEMATIC LOL, their way is only down. All we can do is to watch them crumble or rise from the ashes. Cheers, Dora.
I quit spending and playing last expansion. I loved the early days of HS where it was a lot more simpler. Nowadays, every class has tons of board clears, card draws and, more or less, a lazer focused game plan. It is basically whoever can draw the best faster than the other guy. Excavate warrior has 6 board clears alone.
It would have to be a crazy new mech set for me to want to ever spend money on this game again tbh. I still just prefer wild over standard too, so I don't even care about new cards that much.
I went F2P when the weekly quests were destroyed a few weeks back. They improved the quests slightly but many are still a huge time sink. I am on the fence about about buying the preorder, since I am interested in some of the new cards but there are a couple of decks that need to be nerfed into extinction. If they hadn't addressed the recent annoying druid deck I would already be gone but I am worried it will be worse after the new set releases. I will probably decide the day before release whether or not to buy.
It’s a vicious circle imo. Popular streamers and TH-camrs step down -> lower engagement on YT -> daily HS shuts down -> lower reach for streamers -> lower engagement on twitch -> …. I remember a time where I had at least 2 videos a day I wanted to watch. Now it’s one a week and they rarely keep my attention. All this fueled with unimaginative game design and a very childish theme. I can’t get excited about a cheese drake and a cooking dwarf. They abandoned „epic“ stuff!
-Too expensive -Expansions released too frequently -Devs encourage simplistic idiot gameplay while teasing interesting ideas that are rendered obsolete when matched up against the former
I just started playing this year. I cannot believe this is the "worst" it's been. Now I wish I had been playing longer. I do enjoy it most of the time. The new pre-order is too expensive. I pay my sub and get the tavern pass though. I just don't have the $40-$70 to throw down on virtual cards.
There is no objective data that confirms that this is the worst period for the game. I assume the game is growing. But this is definitely the worst period for monetization.
Got too expensive when they switch the reward to experience Too much to do that I don't want to do The single player don't get reward anymore The Blizzard fall from grace whit the repeat scandals Found other interests
the only way i can be swayed into buying a preorder is if i like a portrait. I also buy all the taven passes so that is enough to get me every single card the moment a new exp is launched.
I was on shaky ground when they abandoned mercenaries and removed duels, but I made the decision to leave and uninstall after the weekly quest changes. I used to buy both of the big preorder sets every expansion, but I cannot justify spending money on a game that doesn't support (or abandons) my favorite modes, and then makes it harder to get rewards when I'm already upset with the current game trajectory.
I stopped because long time ago I bought the knights of the frozen throne pre order bundle, later blizzard decided to take all my frozen throne cards away when they did it for everyone else. I opened a ticket about it to be told it’s not in their system, even though I showed them my purchase history. I got told to just craft all the cards again and the ticket was closed on me. Nice $50 dollars gone just like that.
- To expensive (from 40 to 70 is a huge up on price.)
- Themes (Disney like cartoonish)
- Less time to play
- Wild is now a mess
Yep, you said it all. Wild is awfull
Wild is honestly not in that bad of a place compared to metas past. It’s just the increased balancing of the game has given wild players unreal expectations
Honestly, HS needs a third constructed gamemode. An in-between standard and wild - with a lot more sets to play with, but many giga OP/Unfun cards(or strategies) banned to keep the powerlevel reasonable.
@@TheSorrowfulAngel Wild is called Wild for a reason.
@@TheSorrowfulAngel they literally did that with twist. Limited sets for new meta’s. No one played
I am from Brazil, and since 2020 Blizzard has set the prices of the packs at astronomical values in our country. Believe it or not, a pre-sale costs 30% of a salary in my country. That's why I only use gold in the game and have never spent any money on the game again.
Digo o mesmo... Gostaria muito de comprar mais coisas no jogo, mas os preços são ridículos! Não sei quem foi o "gênio" por trás das mudanças de preços. A Blizzard já não estava nos seus melhores momentos de vendas com o Hearthstone e pra "ajudar", a Blizzard decide aumentar os preços ainda mais...
blizzard it's scam, hearthstone it's scam! Destroy blizzard earnings and use Hearthranger!
I cant believe Blizzard doesnt have localized prices. Huge mistake by them.
You can come a long way by just doing the quest's and paying gold for card packs. It'il only take you a bit longer...Hey still better then throwing your money at a shit Company.
@calebhartz, they get rid of them due exploiters who buy stuff for cheaper
I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say so. There will never come a day where I will even consider preordering a set until there is massive changes to it.
The fact that I can spend well over $100 on the preorders yet still end up with barely a fraction of the Legendaries and Epics in the set is pathetic.
If I’m dropping enough money to buy not only 1, but potentially even 2 brand new AAA games, I should be guaranteed every card in the set. Period. And even then, the price is outrageous.
Yep exactly, and to those that say, "get a job etc". I have a well paying job and I still refuse to spend that much money on this.
@@Mattock5656 no doubt. Being smart with our money doesnt automatically indicate that the person doesn’t have a job lmao.
I buy only the mega preorder and the Tavern pass every expansion (and buy the miniset with gold), and I currently have almost every card in standard, only missing maybe half a dozen (mostly unplayable) legendaries.
Amen. And that is just one of the many problems the game has 😂😂
@@Mattock5656 yep bro, 3-4 hours of my job is not worth what im getting for a prebundle
I just stopped caring, because Hearthstone just feels so soulless as of late. The obvious fixes aren't being made, the monetisation has gotten worse, and I just don't care anymore.
What game are you playing? The game is more free to play than ever and balancing has been consistent
It's more free to play than ever
What "obvious fixes"? If you visit any hearthstone community they want everything that has an above 50% win rate nerfed. Are you one of those people?
@@youtubehandle102 I see you commenting on every thread, so what is blizzard paying you for licking their ass?
@@mastegoh7139 are you one of those people who disregards the actual gameplay experience as long as the numbers are balanced, ignorance is bliss.
The only way hearthstone feels more soulless now is due to the lack of single player content. The cards literally have wilder designs than ever before and the balance patches are far more frequent. And as someone that never spent a single penny, the dup protection alone makes things infinitely more managable. Like i somehow had the resources to own LITERALLY every DK card that existed and a whole lot more. Although, i’ll admit with signatures and hero skins, the true completionist might be completely broke.
How long did balance patches take in the Ben Brode era anyways?… Arguably way too long. I think this is just super vague nostalgia talk if anything. I’m open to dunking on legitimate problems on this game, but this is just silly.
I think people are underestimating how much damage the Sillyfication of the theme of the expansions is doing.
In the last 2 years we only had one Serious expansion, and by Serious I mean directly related to World of Warcraft lore, and the rest are just parodies of WoW.
If we list the last expansions by Serious/Lore related (✅) and Silly/Fortnite fiesta (🤪) we have:
2024
- Perills in Paradise: 🤪
- Whisbang: 🤪
2023
- Badlands: 🤪
- Titans: ✅
- Festival of Legends: 🤪
That means 4 Silly themed expansions from the last 5 (80%). In contrast, look at previous years, we have 1.5 Silly expansions from a pool of 9 (15%):
2022
- Marc of the Lick King: ✅
- Castle Nathria: ✅
- Sunken temple: ✅
2021:
- Fractured: ✅
- United in Stormwind: ✅
- Forged in the Barrens: ✅
2020:
- Darkmoon: ✅🤪
- Scholomance: 🤪
- Ashes of Outland: ✅
Thats really really bad. People don't want to play a Disney/Fortnite version of WoW TCG, we have plenty of alternatives for that. What made Hearthstone special was how much related to the actual WoW world and lore was.
I came back to hearthstone to play titans and the next 2 "expansions" are for autistic fortnite kids. I quit hearfhstone and WoW as well. Bye lizzard.
That’s what I think too
For me, personally, there is two major problems:
1 - Localized price hike: The price for the basic pack pre-order is R$224,99 and the big pack is R$:359,99. Before the price hike you could buy both pre-order packs for R$:240,00. For comparison the minimum wage here is R$:1412,00, so yeah, pretty expensive.
2 - The unfun meta: I played Hearthstone since the goblins vs gnomes days, and I always loved being able to play what I want and still be somewhat competitive, no matter how fast my deck is. Nowadays in standard you either play a deck that ends the game by turn 6 or you lose, there is no space for a fun, slower game, where you have to be meticulous as to what is your next move.
In wild you can play slower decks but you are pretty much condemned to play disruption decks if you want to play it slow and disruption is never fun to play against.
"In wild You can play slower decks"
Man, by turn 4 most of games are over in wild. (and the longer ones by turn 7 or 8)
Bad theming and boring cards will do that
Not to mention the prices... Their localization when it comes to pricing stuff is abysmal
If perils in paradise was a proper beach episode expansion, i guarantee a lot of men would go in debt to buy the borderline pornographic skins for 30$ each or whatever they cost now.
@@THMCTerracraft2Ah yes the horny evil men 😐
Yeah agree, where are the fun mechanics where are the gritty cards. This should be based on WoW.
@@THMCTerracraft2 Deciding to do something because it makes a lot of people horny and turned on is worse than choosing to always take the action that increases the bottom line. The consequences of letting those decide your actions ends badly for most people.
One more factor: The e-sport/streaming scene used to be really fun, with memorable individuals that built decks according to their playstyle. These days the e-sport is bland and boring.
From my personal experience, I stopped buying pre-orders around 2020 but remain heavily invested in the game. I manage to get ~ 9000 gold each expansion cycle and hoard all my Tavern Brawl standard packs. Come expansion launch, I'm able to get ~75% of the collection which I'm happy with. I will occasionally buy the Tavern pass if the cosmetics look cool.
Tavern Pass is too attractive + a large number of free resources allow players to feel free in the game.
En mi caso comprando los pases de temporada tengo suficiente oro, no necesito pre order
90 packs isn't getting you 75% of an expansion
@@gankfrombush they never said that they open 90 packs
for sure OP opens more than 90 pack 😅 and I share the same sentiment. Haven't bought any bundle since 2020 and we're doing just fine with the collection. There's just no need and appeal to purchase them.
I've only purchased tavern pass and played just like usual (i managed like 250 level per expansion in average). And surprisingly my collection number on average is more than 80% for the last few expansions
While the gold is only enough for limited pack but there's also other resources from the tavern pass and free packs etc. So on average we're looking for like extra 20-30 pack per season from various means.
In my opinion, power creep has gone too far and it makes the game too fast. Power creep has also lead to too many swing turns and I never feel like I have a game completely locked down.
Also, I remember the community felt really deflated with the 10th anniversary celebration. A couple of crappy undustable golden rares? Seriously? It was pathetic. Mood seems to have soured a lot after that.
I think there are some main problems:
-themes of expansions - too goofy, not as Warcraft-ish as it used to be.
-prices of bundles in the shop - (for example I had a method to buy everything at 50% of price (it's not possible anymore) and I spend much more money on the game in that period when this method worked) and to add to that prices in different countries aren't adapted to financial situation in each of these countries (e.g prices being the same in EUR and USD but EUR is stronger than USD and they equalled those prices when EUR and USD had the same price but it was few years ago)
-power level of cards - let's just compare when HS was at its peak of popularity and what was the power level back then and compare it to what we have now. Board doesn't matter as much, there is too much damage from hand, too much draw etc.
-different design approach than in the past - they create packages of cards that make creating deck much easier, than doing cards that fit the there of expansion and having players figure out good decks instead of taking few most powerful packages and adding most powerful cards to that (I know it isn't that simple, but I really dislike those packages like e.g. Relics that were in DH etc.) synergies shouldn't be that obvious. I think better way is what Spell Damage cards druid have, but still not perfect.
Hearthstone died for me because of three main reasons.
1. The price is absolutely outrageous for the value you get. Another commenter here put it best: if you are paying the price of two triple-A games and still not completing the set, that’s absurd.
2. I was primarily a Wild player and the lack of expression feels really awful. You build a deck that might not be the most competitive list, but you enjoy it and it has a clear theme around it and isn’t bulletproof (i.e. it has weaknesses). You will constantly get steamrolled by net-decking players who build the strongest competitive decks that have every answer and can do anything: draw cards, gain life/armor, have infinite value, board clears, single target removal, hand disruption, OTK’s… it’s crazy how far the power creep has gone.
3. Botting is a huge problem for me. The amount of bots in Hearthstone today has gotten very out of hand and it’s a lose-lose even when you win. It feels hollow to win against a bot (and you just fed them a ton of tavern experience if the game went long) and losing feels awful because you wanted to play some silly little deck like Treant Druid and Pirate Rogue bots endlessly make your games feel frustrating and pointless.
The absurd excess of bots in the game is the biggest reason I want to give up playing. It's frustrating to play against a bot, even if you win. Whether standard or wild, you will play against countless bots. Sometimes I want to play in casual mode to train some decks or even to have fun with non-competitive decks, and I find 99% of bots in both the American and European regions. I don't know what this dirty team thinks they are doing by allowing this absurd amount of bots.
Lol I don’t think wild is for you….
@@bwatsup12534 And what makes you say that?
@@FabricioLopes92 Get out of silver and you won't see bots.
@@MrkraZzz I can prove to you that I played against a bot using a basic starting deck at diamond rank through prints. In fact, in the diamond and legend ranks you will find bots also using competitive decks. But as they are competitive decks, many players don't realize. How to identify them? It's simple! Every bot has its own name along with an adjective or noun, with capital letters in its initials. There are also bots with mixed letters in their nicknames. Ignoring this fact, thinking that only in the low ranks there are bots, is playing the game blindfolded. If you search, there are some famous players who have already complained about this, including Zeddy.
They just didn't even try to sell you on the theme this time. The trailers have been incredibly important and absolute bangers. This was a budget cut that Blizzard should never, ever have made.
wait, I'm still waiting for cinematic. Did they cancel it?
@@HearthstoneMathematics Apparently yes.
If they don't care, then why should we
@@HearthstoneMathematics There might also not be a new game board.
-bad theme
-boring mechanics, running out of mechanics
-expensive compared to other games
-broken/dead game modes
-lack of cinematics
-expensive new cosmetics (diamond cards/portraits)
-bots everywhere
For me, personally, the reason is the horrible theme. I have 0 interest in these childish, cartoony, goofy, disney-like expansions (with their skins and all). If they go back to Warcraft-themed expansions/more serious in tone expansions, then I'll support it. Till then, big no from me. And it seems most players share the same sentiment, which is good.
Yeah WC1 WC2 or Starcraft theme ! Jim Raynor kicking ass or Queen of Blades Rouging it !
Amen Brother
Wasn’t Barrens a serious Warcraft themed expansion?
If they ever actually included the tavern pass in the pre purchase bundle then I would consider getting it. Insane how spending like $100 on a pre purchase bundle doesn’t even get you that and you’d still have to spend more afterwards.
It has been 6 years for me and i stopped paying 2 years ago. I get the free gold, if it is enough i buy mini sets and thats it
I used to spend about 120 euro a year on HS. Then the BlitzChung thing happened - along with other news about terrible things happening at Blizzard - and I was like "fuck this company".
I would have been willing to give them another chance if there was ever a proper apology and signs that they were actually working on making themselves a more ethical company.
That never happened, and additionally, the HS design team keeps moving the game in a direction that I don't appreciate.
So why would I ever come back now?
It's nice to see people sticking to noble principles rather than being ignorant whales, props to you, man.
The fact they hid the duel class system behind legendaries is just predatory
No but they have hid the Heroic Brawl purchase button behind the "next" button with no confirmation popup, refuse to refund and no one talks about this.
Everything in the shop wether it's money or gold you are being asked "are you sure you want to make this transaction" Arena/duel runs had this heck even free items have this but not Heroic Brawl ticket that costs 1000 gold.
Fuck standard
I used to always buy the battle pass and such, but when Blizzard axed Duels, I couldn't be motivated to pay anymore. They keep introducing very fun modes and taking them away because Standard isn't doing well, despite Standard BEING the problem; not the other modes.
I think the underlying problem is that Blizzard is using the whole year for their 10-year anniversary when we were fine with just the 1 nostalgia expansion, and they're stretching it
Sorry to ruin the statistics but ladder is filled with bots. And these bots are like 70% of matches above diamond rank. I'm sure lots of bots reach legend too.
The most reliable way of checking the size of the playerbase I'd say is by:
1. Purchases
2. Views/Likes on Hearthstone related content on social media.
3. The amount of discussions on reddit/hearthstonetopdecks and such forums.
I follow such channels on socials, and am part of groups, but I heard and saw NOTHING about the new expansion. TH-cam didn't even recommend me any official trailers.
Might be just me but i see no advertisement (or indirect ads) on the new expansion from blizzard (or the community). Maybe the cards are boring?
Interesting idea. I've recently been looking into Activision's EOMM systems and if Activision used bots, it would solve a lot of the issues of using said EOMM systems, such as drastically cutting down que times for ultra specific opponent selection parameters.
Based on their recordings of your gaming engagement patterns, win or lose scenarios are selected and given to the player to extend the player's time in game.
Ironically, Activision's systems for player engagement are causing their players to disengage.
i might be wrong, but wasn't bots much more prevelant in the past year than now?
@@slowedvsbattle hard to say, if there were more or less bots before.
And what ratio of bots are made/used by players vs. employed by blizzard.
Imaginably hearthstone's player base has been declining for years, which would result in less bots being used by the now smaller pool of players, and also fewer players would require fewer ai bot opponents from blizzard.
As far as I know, bot and player numbers are meant to be kept secret. and information that affects financial earnings is incentivized to be misrepresented.
I quitted 9 month ago. I played since Beta over 10 years ago. I was a completionist at heart and thus a cash cow, too. I bought every single expansion bundle twice (the $80 and the $50) and also almost every addional "Save Money Bundle". So Blizzard received roughly an average of $750 to a maximum of $1000 each year out of my pocket and I am not a rich guy by any means. I have a regular 9 to 5 job and a family to provide for. But Hearthstone was my hobby at heart and I loved it from the very beginning due to my history with blizzard going back from their silicon and synapse times even 'til today.
Hearthstone reached a point to were spending money wasn't tolerable anymore. At the same time the overall randomness reached a critical point to where it wasn't tolerable anymore as well. Randomness became a huge problem over the course of all those years, but I somewhat managed to at least have some amount of fun, whether by having succcess in the game or by simply playing and looking at my "shiny" collection while losing to endless amounts of crapy randomness.
Once that point reached, I had to cut the ropes which I did. It was a very painful decision, but looking back it has been the right one. In the end I had way more frustration than fun and that drove me to turn my back to all my accomplishments and all the invested money. Sometimes it's still hard to this day, but as a relinquished guy I can safely say that I won't return by any means at all. I play regular AAA Games for not even close the amounts of money Hearthstone costed today and I am having tons of fun again instead of the frustration Hearthstone provided in the end.
Greetings from Germany. Hopefully the war ends one day and everything will get back to normal for you guys over there !
What games do you play nowadays, may I ask?
I played from release up until now.
@@JorisVDC I have been a AAA Gamer form the very beginning. Started with an Amiga 500, went up to a Intel 90mhz and went all the way 'til today.
So I played mainly RTS (Dune II, C&C, Warcraft), RPGs (like HOM&M), Building Games (like The Settlers, Anno) Shooters (all kinds of with a great story), but also Adventure and a little bit of Racing (mostly NFS) and of course card games (I was a dedicated RL Magic The Gathering Player, started shortly before release of the 4th Editionin 1994/1995. After getting older I also found Simulatons quiet enjoyable. I was never into sport games except a few Basketball games.
Hearthstone was combining my all favorite Warcraft Lore with the aspect of a card game, so it came natural to me to play it.
To answer your question: Nowadays I play Farming Simulator 22 (atm I'm pretty hyped about FS 25.), played crapload out of Cities Skylines, absolutely loved Subnautica and Subnautica Below Zero and had a time of my life with Death-Stranding (no joke -> absouletly amazing story experience). Naturally I also play Diablo IV. Played the first three seasons, but grinding isn't all mine, so I stopped with season four, currently waiting for Vessel of Hatred for story reasons. I love story gameplay and don't like pure grinding.
I am also eager to play Jagged Alliance III from Haemimont Games (I am a huge JA II fan) but I am currently lacking the time due to FS 22.
You could sell your account for nearly 1000$
I stopped with HS since they reworked the weekly quest systm.
@trensh5812 Tbf they fixed it so it's way better than it was in the first place. But I still don't want to play ladder right now, the meta is awful.
I primarily play Wild. I used to pre-order to support the game and try out the new cards. Now unless you're playing one of the 5 top decks, your cards are unplayable. So you just craft the 1 or 2 new cards that see play.
definitively stopped for the weekly quest rework: it was the water drop with the Wild less interesting at every patch. No more, no less
The player base turning into casuals is really good point. I used to pre order every expansion so I had enough cards to play all the decks I wanted. Now I simply don't care. I have enough resources to craft a couple, and I'll buy the rewards track for an extra bump. That's all I can justify spending.
I'll also say this - it doesn't help they've really cheapened out on the pre order hero skin. Skins used to be rare so that incentive you to get the bundle. Now they constantly fart them out, and most the pre order ones are just golden portraits, they should be at least diamond to tempt me.
you get cheated equally no matter which deck you play. *loses to RNG and dabs*
Removal of all the fun odd modes, constant cash grab, Blizzard mistreating employees, cringe promo video, too many mechanics that aren't self-explanatory and too efficient cards. The game used to be about choices, these days every card simultaneously draws new cards, summons something adds something to your hand, has a random effect and heals you at the same time for no mana cost. I moved to Magic. Magic may have some cards that do a lot, but at least the colours have identity, All the classes in hearthstone feels the same these days.
I only buy the battle pass and because of the numerous nefs to cards I am able to get enough dust to craft what I am missing.
To me the biggest problem lies in the power creep, cards become more ridiculous and my preferred style of play: midrange is become unplayable.
Aggro has so much draw that they dominate, only the heavy control decks stand a chance if they draw their cheap AoE.
I was hoping that they would implement the rune system for all the classes, so that they could still make OP cards but have a deck building restriction.
Based on the spell schools. So you can't have all the powerful cards in one deck and this will allow for more creative deck-building.
Edit:
PS: I did decide after the Blitzchung debacle not to buy anything again from Blizzard, but I caved in on the Battle Pass, as it allows for more rewards for playing.
Sadly I am very closed to dumping HS as a total, as I see my joy decreasing as a whole.
During the early years I really liked to play Arena. Yet with all the botting problems and the balance issues, I feel the mode is no longer rewarding for me to play.
its a beach expansion, players want games to fulfill some form of a power fantasy and a day at the beach isn't what I envisioned a hearthstone expansion would become.
I don't know how other players see it, but I'll tell you my view on Hearthstone.
- It used to be that HS was marketed as a World of Warcraft adventure. Now, if you ask me, it has become just a pretext for a kids card game. The staple legendary lore figures have become so unimportant next to epics or even rares of today, like 10/10 "who-the-hell-is-this" crabs, or "music term" cards. So, lore promise - squandered.
- It also used to be that HS was more a game of skill and brains than one of dumb luck. Or maybe I'm remembering it wrong and nostalgia kicks in. But it seems to me that nowadays a lucky Theotar, Mutanus, Tickatus, Tho'grun or others like that can just ruin your whole game plan for you.
- Oh, and do you remember the times of Ben Brode, Samwise Didier, Chris Metzen & co.? Or those epic tournaments that kept us non-breathing until the last card was played and sometimes huge twists happened (Pavel, I'm looking at you)? Occasion to make HS great again? Wasted.
But let's talk money.
- Spending real money is irrelevant, since we can get most of the important stuff for free or for gold. Minus vanity stuff. Gold purchase chance? I'll take it!
- Back when prices were reasonable for a game expansion, I used to pay just to support the developers. Even knowing that Blizz had become a greed monster since being bought by Activision. But now they ask for way too much. Again, with the money for an expansion (the most of which, again, I can get for free) I can buy a whole new game. Temperance opportunity? Missed.
- Currency schemes (as seen in other Blizzard games), such as "X money for Y currency", but Y currency is more than enough to buy something, while the left over beckons you to purchase more currency in order to buy something else. You just cant have leftover currency just sitting there, can you? So, taken for a fool? Nah, thanks.
So, these days, I don't even care about the "themes" of expansions, I already know they're crap. I don't even strive to remember names of cards. I just play to exercise my neurons, the little the game offers. So, pay for new expansions? Nahhh.
Of course, beach themed expansion and no swimsuit Jaina, what were they thinking 😂
I think it's time for Microsoft to start a partnership with Algorand Foundation and mint all the cards as NFTs.
I stopped playing around the time when they went from alternative between a 20 dollar adventure and then a 50-60 dollar pre-order expansion to an all expansion pattern, then they raised that to 80$, it was just too expensive for me and if i didn’t pay around a 100 dollar each expansion i’d have to play the game for around 2-4 hours daily just so i can keep up, it started feeling like a chore to me, thats when i quit.
Spending money in Hearthstone just feels bad these days…
HS in general doesn't feel like HS anymore, certain cards/archetypes seem too strong, too much power creep, no boardbased games anymore and the death of midrange, too much random/discover and especially draw so value doesn't matter, and too many powerful combos and synergies leading to games that often times feel the same, unfair or too short.
This is coming from an arena player tho, I don't play standard, I did like 10 years ago but never bought a preorder or bundle because it seemed to expensive for not even close to a full collection of a set.
This is only from what I can tell watching a little bit of ranked youtube/twitch now and then or worlds. Don't know if it's really like this but that's my impression at least.
Tho I always bought the battle pass since it came out since it's a good amount of more gold and some nice skins/golden card, which I like.
Also, as a daily arena player, I have enough of dust and gold for everything in the game even if I want to play standard, which I did like 3 times in the last 10 years when there is a set I am interested in (for instance old Quest Mage or Highlander Hunter). Reaching legend and heading back to arena again.
I have pre-ordered a lot in the past, but I haven't done so a lot recently. There are several reasons for it, but below I'll name a few.
Firstly, I personally really wanted a "Power Reset" with Whizbang, since the rotation was the perfect opportunity for it. To give an example, having "Outvaluing your opponent" being an actual win condition again, and slowing the games down a significant amount, giving room for more fun cards and allowing notable success to even unpolished homebrew decks. That is DEFINITELY not what happened, and the game feels as streamlined and super-powered as ever, if not more.
This has led to me slowly losing more and more interest over time, with the voice saying "Don't worry, maybe they'll bring the power-level down next time" becoming ever quieter for each new expansion. Now every deck can do everything, and even the slowest of the slow supposed control decks has to have a combo win-con to not get completely blown out of the water.
Iirc, this has even been a design goal of Blizzard, so my hope of them doing something about is has completely dwindled.
Secondly, having THREE possible different things to buy is just absurd. Normal Bundle, Mega Bundle, and then Battle Pass ON TOP of that? Throw the Battle Pass into the Mega Bundle and we probably have a deal. Otherwise? I feel like if I buy the Mega Bundle without the Battle Pass, I'm actively shooting myself in the foot by missing out on the Bonus +% exp and guaranteed cards, which in turn makes me feel forced to buy both, which in turn makes me feel scammed, which finally makes me wanna buy neither out of pure annoyance. The pricing on their new cosmetic items and cards doesn't help their case in the slightest. 40€ for Baku and Genn signature bundle?! Things like these makes me actively not wanna give any money to Blizzard.
And that leads me into the Third reason. With how bloody expensive everything is nowadays, even if I can, I don't WANT to spend those exorbitant amounts on a video game that, for a while now, I've disliked more and more for every new expansion. For 80€, I could buy two whole amazing and full games. The Mega Bundle doesn't even guarantee that I get more than 5 legendaries (6 if the golden packs have their own pity-timer), and they release 3 Expansions/Mega Bundles per year! On top of that, since Blizzard doesn't do regional pricing, the actual cost is 15~20% higher for me than what it's actually supposed to be. 15~20% more isn't a lot compared to how much non-regional pricing affects some other countries (which doesn't help Blizzards case at all, tbh...), but it still feels REALLY bad to have that extra fee on top of an already overpriced purchase.
I'm sure there're more reasons for me, but these three are what I got off the top of my head at least.
I was ready to spent money on hearthstone again, I used to purchased the expensive bundle ($70issh) I started watching videos and trying to get the hype (I stopped playing like 2 years ago), but what a shocker when I realize the card designs were almost like playing Lorcana!. I decided to wait till next expansion, hoping they won't come out with something like "Haunted Dalaran's Bakery" or "Back to Orgrimmar pre-school" or some stp&d sh¡t like that!
There are multiple resons in my opinion. 1. No expansion triler before expansion relese ( not the first time but i hated it every time, and triler qulity is horible, whizbang ant titan trilers are in top 3 worst trilers), 2. Last two expansion had broken and unfun meta ( and when you look at this expansion it looks to be broken again ), 3. Change to arena ( 1 legendary per run for all ) that means that I changed my focus on arena where are dont need preorder, 4. I dont like expansio theme, 5. Deliting modes and blizard activly triing to make them worse than standart ( twist would be a home run if it gave you a way to play older meta and if they gave you some kind of discounts or monthly fee for old kards, but no they relese unbalanced new expansion, refuse to balance it and make the mode disepear for moths at a time. These are some of my resons to not buy this preorder.
I don't know if the current period is the worst in history, but I feel like it's in a very bad spot AND on an incline. Their design philosophy for cards and balance is extremely poor, and they show no way of fixing it - quite the opposite. The board feels more and more like a side tool, the game feels more and more like single player, decisions matter less and RNG is much more prevalent. Most meta decks rely on 1 or 2 extremely powerful cards, which makes different packages and archetypes feel less unique. You can't just play good cards, your deck has to be actively focused on killing your opponent, usually without letting them interact with you. Toxic effects and play patterns are the norm in standard currently, and any deck that doesn't have a hyper efficient "unfair" element can't succeed at all.
I agree with you. I normally don't complain about the goofy or funny themes because I like to laugh and smile with the game. BUT, "Perils in Paradise" is... just... come on, LAME... DULL, EMPTY... Uncle Blizzard please, enough! It's like this expansion was spawned by an Artificial Intelligence, there's not love anymore... Bot M, Holomancer, Dora: just take a look at the golden cards animations nowadays!! they're barely animated, so poorly worked..., and compare them with the old golden ones from the old good days. Jesus, they're not even making an effort on them.
To my mind: It's too expensive to get a bundle now, and not worthy. I used to purchase the bundles just to collect the card backs, but there's a lack of creativity on them too now!... they're just kind of crappy... :( It feels like they just wanted a quick cash grab and that's it. And even the character skins... they're so horrible and low quality now!
I'm glad I was able to reach Legend a year ago, before the crazy cards sent everything out of whack. I've reached the conclusion that everything felt so volatile and out of place I was playing matches for the chance of winning and not having fun.
Having felt that I uninstalled the game and muted everything save for two medias: Syndicate's weekly analysis, and your mathematic videos. I will continue to follow you both until the game's bitter end.
Blizzard is charging premium amount of money for premium quality.
The problem is Hearthstone does not feel premium anymore:
- no cinematic;
- no new board;
- taking away extra legendary for set completion;
- DOZENS of new cosmetics making the game looks cheap.
I quit after the quest fiasco. After 10 years I'm finally sick of feeling like it's a fight between players and the higher ups to not just get what we want, but to keep what we have.
Even the normal bundle costs to much, in my opinion, for how much engagement it provides: for 50€ I would only get 60 packs and 2 random legendaries... which not only is a fraction of the collection of that expansion, but it is ALL RANDOM, meaning I'll likely waste a lot of what I bought to actually craft what I wanted to try.
And this is every 4 months, theoretically. For less money I can buy games that will provide me engagement for at least the same amount of time, if not more.
Then you can add all the issues with balance and lack of content like adventures, all of which dilute the value of your cards in general, but that's not my main point.
This. I totally agree. Also my biggest concern with the game is that even buying pre-orders (which cost *a lot* for a videogame) it is difficult to obtain the decks you're interested in. There are always cards that are missing due to rng.
I rarely ever made purchases in before, but my biggest concerns are:
To laid back / cartoonish themes/optics
They gave no f2p option for 10. Anniversary to get the golden harth stonebrew
Extremely overprized seeming signature/diamond bundles
Nearly no adventure content
Removed duels
Controversy with weekly quest down and ups
Nearly no new ideas for mechanics in Hearthstone
...
good list
I like the theme of Perils, but a combination of us getting 3 "silly" expansions in a row now, them sneakily trying to make the game more expensive while also erasing modes & giving nothing in exchange etc. just makes it less engaging.
Hearthstone's loss in revenue, yet not popularity, is a death of a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts.
I used to play a lot of hearthstone back in 2016 to 2020. It used to be my favorite pass time game back then. It really hurts to see how a game can be butchered..
I played hearthstone for nine years but stopped dead when the triple quest length happened. Even when they reduced it to double I didn’t come back.
I stopped playing after castle expansion. Fed up of paying a triple A price 3 times a year and not getting all the cards. I think when you buy the preorder bundle you should get every card. Just pure greed and I refuse to pay them any more.
(1) Spells "Draw 4 cards" and "Draw 2 cards" lead to a disaster in wild.
Want to play slow? Sorry, 5 Demon seeds in 10 games and 5 Rogues)
Want to play fast? Sorry, but Rogue kills you faster and Warlock doesn't care)
Want to play combo? If not Demon Seed, good luck with that)
It's dissapointing to not be able to play fun decks, because powercrept cards are being powercrept now. What a shitshow...
10 years of collection and we only see 3-5 identical decks in the wild. These decks consist of broken cards that should have been nerfed or banned a long time ago. But this dirty team neglects the wild without explanation. They ban useless cards, but allow cards like "seeds" to exist to this day. In diamond 5, you only find this. It's frustrating for someone who just wants to have fun with cool decks from a 10-year-old collection.
I can't understand how a rogue can still draw 4 cards with just 1 mana. And in this purchase, buy more cards. An empty hand, with just 1 mana, becomes full in the blink of an eye. The weakness of aggro has always been card draw, but for the rogue that has never been the problem. It's unfair.
ya all I played against was demon seed.. so stupid deck and braindead.
Honestly I wanted to quit early 2024 when whizbang was released, never could so instead I didn't buy pre-expansions. As to now, I'm not really impressed with the cards for me to buy. It's just dual class with extra steps and triplespell drinks. Also 2 expansions hearthstone plays dirty to druid, I'm not even a druid main and those cards kinda suck(the legendary )in wild
Edit: I thought druid release is over, saw the new ramp cards, are interesting
Druids been doing okay in wild though? And in standard it's been insane.
@@frogzx yeah the mill, tog and Reno. I respect the Reno and mill but tog is toxic. Best way to fix it is to change the description of ransom to "return the decks" this will kill tog though
I just want more discounts on card bundles for old sets, and less stupid overpriced signature bundles. I would spend more if collecting cards for wild wasn't more expensive than standard
Everyone bashing the theme, but ofc it's lighthearted since it's the 10th year of Hearthstone, we're here to celebrate with fun toys and vacations! I love the theme honestly and bought both prerelease bundles. Regarding the playerbase, I don't think Hearthstone is about to die. People been saying this for years and nothing really happened, it's a great game after all.
It’s just this channel attracts defectors to the game and skews its content towards engagement with disgruntled players
its dif now, hs owned by microsoft now. no investment to keeping hs open, and the balanced HAS been severely neglected lately...
Want to add to what someone else here said directly; Standard IS the problem. They axed duels because of Standard. They have “trouble” balancing Wild, because of Standard. They split the playerbase (their most loyal, who had been playing since open or closed Beta) when standard was released, because they could no longer use the cards they’d already acquired or purchased. Off to the banished land of ‘Wild’ with you!
The obvious thing here about this is that a “Standard” format in all TCG’s is only there for 2 primary reasons;
1. Force players to buy new cards
2. Make it so that players DON’T feel they have to accumulate OLD cards to be competitive if all cards are available
These reasons are ‘okay’, but number 1 is simply more important to Blizz than number 2. They made Wild catchup packs as a way of answering this objection, but the drop rate system is still hilariously bad, and they’ve consistently split the focus between Wild and Standard since that split was first made, creating a tax on their Devs that did not need to be there in the first place. There were both better and more generous ways to handle those issues in a digital TCG environment that traditional TCG’s don’t have access to.
Lastly; Hearthstone has NOT actually made a fun game mode since Battlegrounds & Duels.
No ‘actual’ custom or duel class build game mode.
No replacement for duels. Arena is the same boring crap it’s been since release, albeit with a boost in power from a single okay-ish patch.
Standard sucks. I want to play with all the cards I have, and Wild isn’t *much* better.
Because no king rules forever.
I still plan to buy a pre-order, however I am very disappointed that Alliestraza, who I have been following on Twitch for years, has stopped streaming Hearthstone in favor of the new NFT TCG Parallel FeelsBadMan
I don't believe I have spent any $$ on HS since they announced they were cancelling Duels.
This is not a coincidence.
I bought the preorder but I hate that they don't do cinematics anymore it was one of the best things about hearthstone
Yes, I really miss the theme song and this was really hyped up my kids.
Who grew up with me playing Hearthstone, even they have lost interest two years ago.
They should have introduced 20/30 dollars pre-order a long time ago. More people will stomach spending that than 50 every 3 months which is the very entry level price.
I stopped when after buying Yogg mini set they didn't even waited a month to nerf it, yeah they gave refunds but for the card not the whole deck built around it. It's already awful having digital goods that expire but in top of that having goods that lower their usefulness not even a month after its launch? I'm still playing but only free to play
For over 2 weeks the shop in HS client has been closed on both my IPad and my PC client. Blizz said that it is a bug and they are aware and investigating it. No news about it since, so even if i wanted to buy anything with gold or $ - i am completely unable to do so.
I've been playing hs for a long time and i also bought some preorders in the past even if i'm mainly a f2p player, after all the terrible decisions blizzard made i decided i would not spend any more money on the game because i felt manipulated, so i still play but unless there are significant changes i won't ever spend any more money on the game
Unsurprisingly, once you put two battle passes and a pre order and over-priced skins / diamond cards in my face constantly, it frustrates me. What's the point in paying so much if I still can't get everything I want? So I dropped out of the pre orders like two years ago. The decks in Standard weren't fun and I have a stockpile of cards and gold that I can disenchant whenever I want. The experience isn't worth the money anymore.
MAYBE BECAUSE THERE'S COMPLETE TRASH IN THE GAME LIKE RENO, and fkin oh let's see, BRANN that gives the saviors of uldum SHAMAN QUEST REWARD as a fkin double battle cry on an 8 drop!
the fact that zilliax is a god damn mandatory 1600- in any high deck
not to mention everybody and their fucking mom IS PLAYING HIGHLANDER in ranked
like what the hell are they thinking?!
I play Hearthstone since public beta. I stopped paying when they introduced the season pass. Having another thing to spend money on when a new expansion releases made me not want to spend any money at all any more.
And in addition to that, I think current Hearthstone development has a huge problem on focussing too much on the flashiness of individual cards rather than the overall gameplay experience.
i stopped mainly because a lot of sets are now like very "childish funny stuff" its great to have some degree of sarcastic theme here or there or whatever its called but i miss a more serious set
Honestly, one of the main reasons why I would buy expansions/packs was because of the story lines they had that crossed through the expansion year. I was invested in the story and character development. It made things interesting and fun and grew to love the characters so I would buy the expansion. It is soulless now.
Is it possible that the increase in weekly awards has created a situation where regular players are less likely to buy the big bundles? I have not significantly changed my amount of game time, but I have over 8,000 gold available. I would have more if I had not used some to buy a custom skin. This, along with the 20+ free packs I have saved, makes it so that a big pre-purchase will be unnecessary.
I recently took a four month break after realizing that I had spent over $500 on the game in under a year.
Now I’m back and mainly playing Battlegrounds bc that mode is completely free.
Personally loved the first 1-2 years of HS but while the game needs new cards every 3-4 months that quickly makes it impossible to keep up with with the cost.
Also battlegrounds is 100 times more fun and better yet it is free (if you care tho it is more like 15 every 4-5 months which seems completely fair).
After the weekly quest mess I haven't reinstalled Hearthstone. It took over a month to fix and there was no compensation for players ubable to finish quests. I felt insulted as a player since Beta. Easily spent £1000 from a decade of Hearthstone, purchasing most preorders.
Maybe in six months if 'returning player' bonuses kick in I'll check out the game again, but the funny thing is, after the first 2 weeks, the itch to play in the hour or two I normally gave Hearthstone passed. Not with any other particular game, as Hearthstone was my 'during dinner' game with one hand free, but my time now feels more productive post-hearthstone, I'd need a darn good reason to return to the daily hamster wheel of dailies and weeklies with current meta decks I haven't genuinely enjoyed since 2018.
Appreciate the reporting as ever, you are the only HS channel I've stayed subbed to post-quitting.
agree, i play hearthstone from time to time, and litterly this quest takes 4 hours to complete and i useuslly only play control, so it feelt like they hate me and want me to play aggro every damn game, and litterly braindead aggro meta in wild right now, and they removed duels......
like bro, thye removed duels for this? hahahahhahahah im amazed
If l'm spending 80 bucks on a game every 4 months, I want everything, or at least everything I care about Hearthstone has slowly been breaking pieces off from that pre-order and reselling them to us. The rewards track, then taking away battleground perks, and most recently and egregiously, removing the diamond cards for a complete collection. If I'm going to be treated as a second-class citizen anyway, I can do that for free.
Well, in the Blizzard case and lot other companies... A lot of pre-order games have been bad and refunds, So maybe now people is waiting for final release and reviews
The player count doesn't correlate with revenue when most of those players are playing Battlegrounds, that much is obvious
The meta is absolutely unbearable. I think that is by far the biggest reason. Blizzard needs to completely overhaul the game at this point....
Is it just me? I always found their bussines model of selling peorders horible. Why would I preorder an expansion that might be bad or I might end up not liking the meta? I just skip whole expansions if the meta is bad.
Just sell me a bundell of packs after the expansion comes out. I might buy that.
-spend 6400 dust getting legendaries for a deck
-nerf a rare whelp without previous announcement
-dust refund 100
-why no preordering?
I got really tired by getting paired up with opponents who are very clearly blizzard's own bots. Came back after they removed their bots to find that there are just non Blizzard bots using the Auto generated Blizzard names (colour+Creature).
I feel bad cause, I love you guys, but I have slowly come to dislike Hearthstone, because it costs too much to play now.
You guys have always been a channel i enjoy watching. I hope Hearthstone doesnt drag you down.🙇
I don't pay for pre-sales and battle passes because in Brazil they chose to triple the price without any improvement, Samsung A20 smartphone and it crashes all the time, it's sad, a good game that I spent on pre-sales and the skin becomes the game expensive and which is not dedicated to carrying out maintenance to improve performance, such as a card game consuming more than 6 gigabytes of space and consuming so much memory to the point that the application simply closes in the middle of the game.
Power creep killed the fun for me. I liked the strategic element of hearthstone.
Now there's less space for creativity in deck building and in plays.
As a returning player, I felt like I either had to resort to net-decking or be totally steam-rolled.
When I encountered new Reno the first time, I was so confused as to why this thing A THING. By my modest estimates, it should cost around 25 mana. (4 for mass enemy silence, 3 for limiting the space to 1 slot, 1 mana for 5 armor, 15 for a total board wipe that does not affect your side, 2 for improving the hero power).
The effect of clearing the board of the opponent without affecting yours is already worth more 10 mana.
My reference is the 8-mana warlock clear that also destroys your board.
My other reference is the 7 mana deal 4 damage to all enemy minions. If you cast it twice, it kinda has the same effect most of the time.
I wouldn't be so mad at the design at least if I could interact with it. I don't have a tech card against that dirt. Even if I shuffle repeated stuff in the opponents deck, they still can use Reno.
I used to buy both preorders but after watching more of your videos on how to be more efficient with my collection I am only doing the big preorder.
It's weird that some people are arguing it costs too much to fill their collection while there's also people saying they don't buy packs anymore.
It's obvious people have different motivations when playing this game.
I'm a very old player, started on HS vanilla. I stopped playing at Witchwood and got into the game again recently.
Honestly, I wouldn't even think about buying packs, I stay solely on arena now since its funnier, more diverse and virtually free.
I used to preorder cards tho back then, I did it for 2 sets I think, but after preordering Grand Tournament... I just said never again, and I still feel like the reasons why it wasn't actually satisfactory to open boosters back then are still here but got even worse.
I used to spend a lot, even buying golden minisets. Since the price hike i stopped buying altogether, prices are ridiculous. I dont really understand why they prefer to sell 0 packs instead of selling two preoders, golden minisets and tavern passes at a lower price.
This is how monetization works. They will actually make more money if 2 percent of players will buy an item for $80 than 30% of players will buy an item for $5. In terms of efficiency, Blizzard chooses optimal pricing. For this reason, I have never criticized them for high prices in the store. Once, using surveys, I tried to find a lower price that would allow them to earn more money, but I failed. The percentage of players ready to make a purchase does not increase significantly.
As a russian player, I am "unable" to buy pre-orders, but I bought every single one since Kobolds, when I returned to the game. The problem is, of course, cost. Because of the "international costs" I can provide statistics on how much I have spent on preorders every year. To make this short, let's just take 2 examples and use today's approximate currency rate.
Scholomance academy
preorder - 2000 rubles (20$)
mega - 4000 rubles (40$)
Perils an paradise
preorder - 8000 rubles (80$)
mega - 16000 rubles (160$)
As you can see, it's orbital, so I am unsure if I want to pay so much for a preorder.
Also you don't take into consideration that the frikin shop was closed for a damn lot of time so people just couldn't buy even if they wished to.
My personal feeling about this is Perils, after seeing all cards from the set, are just not exciting. You know, I analysed the game in 2019 a lot and found out some cycling here and there: paladin murlocs => shaman murlocs every year, pirate/mech rotation, etc. When they announced tourists, I wished they would use cards that are good in both classes. However, by "painprist" bullshit it seems they just put some cards of a class in another class and that's it. Boring as hell. Also I really hate the drinks idea as it makes cards really boring (wow 3 damage to card and 2 to my face, exciting, or 1 to all enemies. If they upgraded with every use by 1 they could be remotely playable and interesting, now ALL drinks need at least -1 cost) and tourists are just a way to make classes, surprise, do what they ALREADY DO. Like Lynessa, for example. Haven't we seen a spell-slinging paladin before? There is a point to be made that at that stage you can't create something too new. But oh boy how you can. I bet that Runeterra and Gwent (rip my loves), being bad at profits, got a lot of really different cards and deck ideas in stock, gwent being played as a very different game idea of growing your own board.
As a conclusion, I think I'll not buy this preorder. I believe blizzard should put more in their design team and less in their marketing, which paradoxically can up their profits. With all those dull cards they decided to show us in the trailer and a LACK OF A CINEMATIC LOL, their way is only down. All we can do is to watch them crumble or rise from the ashes. Cheers, Dora.
I quit spending and playing last expansion. I loved the early days of HS where it was a lot more simpler. Nowadays, every class has tons of board clears, card draws and, more or less, a lazer focused game plan. It is basically whoever can draw the best faster than the other guy. Excavate warrior has 6 board clears alone.
It would have to be a crazy new mech set for me to want to ever spend money on this game again tbh. I still just prefer wild over standard too, so I don't even care about new cards that much.
I went F2P when the weekly quests were destroyed a few weeks back. They improved the quests slightly but many are still a huge time sink. I am on the fence about about buying the preorder, since I am interested in some of the new cards but there are a couple of decks that need to be nerfed into extinction. If they hadn't addressed the recent annoying druid deck I would already be gone but I am worried it will be worse after the new set releases. I will probably decide the day before release whether or not to buy.
It’s a vicious circle imo.
Popular streamers and TH-camrs step down -> lower engagement on YT -> daily HS shuts down -> lower reach for streamers -> lower engagement on twitch -> ….
I remember a time where I had at least 2 videos a day I wanted to watch. Now it’s one a week and they rarely keep my attention.
All this fueled with unimaginative game design and a very childish theme. I can’t get excited about a cheese drake and a cooking dwarf. They abandoned „epic“ stuff!
I personally stopped spending when the third currency was introduced.
-Too expensive
-Expansions released too frequently
-Devs encourage simplistic idiot gameplay while teasing interesting ideas that are rendered obsolete when matched up against the former
I just started playing this year. I cannot believe this is the "worst" it's been. Now I wish I had been playing longer. I do enjoy it most of the time. The new pre-order is too expensive. I pay my sub and get the tavern pass though. I just don't have the $40-$70 to throw down on virtual cards.
There is no objective data that confirms that this is the worst period for the game. I assume the game is growing. But this is definitely the worst period for monetization.
Got too expensive when they switch the reward to experience
Too much to do that I don't want to do
The single player don't get reward anymore
The Blizzard fall from grace whit the repeat scandals
Found other interests
The thing I hated most is most decks are build around one card which can turn around the outcome of the match
the only way i can be swayed into buying a preorder is if i like a portrait. I also buy all the taven passes so that is enough to get me every single card the moment a new exp is launched.
I was on shaky ground when they abandoned mercenaries and removed duels, but I made the decision to leave and uninstall after the weekly quest changes. I used to buy both of the big preorder sets every expansion, but I cannot justify spending money on a game that doesn't support (or abandons) my favorite modes, and then makes it harder to get rewards when I'm already upset with the current game trajectory.
I stopped because long time ago I bought the knights of the frozen throne pre order bundle, later blizzard decided to take all my frozen throne cards away when they did it for everyone else. I opened a ticket about it to be told it’s not in their system, even though I showed them my purchase history. I got told to just craft all the cards again and the ticket was closed on me. Nice $50 dollars gone just like that.