@@lekkereffesnel I did as well, ha ha. I can't remember what deck I used it in, but I definitely used it as I got from packs and was too stubborn to not.
I will probably cry myself to death if the game dies, after all the money I've spent on it. loosing marvel heroes (the game that essentially marvel diablo, made by the creator of diablo 2) was a big enough hit, and I didn't spend anywhere near as much on that.
Well, but sadly, over time, as the game grew bigger with no great compensation on how to gain new cards for new players, it only attracts more dislikes, let's not forget the RNG nonsense which forces players to buy packs with real money to please the RNG Gods. Runeterra did the opposite instead. It's about the fans, not the investors.
LOR is losing money too though. I hate to be that guy, but as far as profitability is concerned, Hearthstone still does better than all of its competitors. Buying packs is just part of cards games for the most part. I wosh Runeterra was doing better, that game has the perfect monitization, but it just isnt.
Seriously though, thank you for your hardwork researching and presenting this data. I can only imagine how difficult it can be especially when there are attempts to hide it.
I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard, along with many AAA gaming companies it seems, has completely undervalued customer trust of a brand and/or company is. You see this in literally every industry; food, clothing, housing, etc. When a brand or company is something that consumers trust to give quality products/services, they will always be profitable & continue increasing in profits. Consumer trust is so powerful, that even if a competitor who provides a similar product/service that is technicaly cheaper & higher quality, most customers will still go to the brand that they trust regardless, because it is a brand that they know they can rely on. However, with all the scandals, and all the predatory pricing, it seems Blizzard & many AAA gaming companies are very visibly trying to scam as many customers as they can. This kills customer trust, and so slowly loses them both existing customers & potential future customers. At the end of the day, people will buy from you because they trust you will provide them with what they want. If you don’t provide them want they want; if it’s defective, or much lower quality, etc., then they will be less trusting of you. And when they trust you less, they will likely buy from you less. If it’s visible to many that you are providing them with less than what you said you will, many will be reluctant to even begin buying from you at all. In any sort of monetary transaction, trust is more valuable than gold; be it between companies, between individuals, or between a company & an individual. For some reason, Blizzard seems to completely disregard this fundamental & historically proven fact for the sake of short term profit.
It makes me sad that the marketing team is making unprofitable decisions for one of my favourite games. I want to see Hearthstone do really well and I want to see others have a good time with it Whatever happens, I hope they don't mess it up. I really hope they don't :(
I think the recent expansion is a step in the right direction. Before, HS just felt extremely uninteractive with combo decks and otks flying all over the place, but now the game has become e a lot more board centric although Denathrius still kinda keeps that OTK factor which can still be pretty frustrating. However, the game js also a lot more interactive with cards like Theotar (As much as I absolutely hate seeing him just before using Denathrius -_-), so I hope Blizz stays on track with that design philosophy.
@@scotbush4338 Maybe Theotar tilts the scale too far, but a severe lack of interaction is not healthy for the game. Making decks otk fiestas and regular old solitaire decks hurts the game. Every TCG needs some form of interaction.
I joined Hearthstone in 2019 and was a solo only player for a long while, and got a healthy collection from that. When I joined competitive modes, I felt like I understood the game well enough that I didn’t suck and could enjoy it. When my younger sister joined Hearthstone much later, there wasn’t that same supply of solo enjoyment, and she jumped into competitive, and burnt herself out. I think the decline in accessible solo content that teaches you how to play instead of doing a big story or something very different from normal mechanics (sorry cooking minigame) really makes it harder to onboard new players, and that seems to align with that reversal in fortune for Blizzard.
@Hearthstone Mathematics Good to see you again! Apart from Mercenaries, I am trying to do a bit more content on Standard and Battlegrounds I kept playing Hearthstone cuz it was relatively cheaper to get cards than other card games After Standard came along, I lost a lot of initiative to buy packs, knowing the cards will not be usable some day... Standard and Wild split in 2016 actually made me a F2P player, from a "buy 60 pack, or whatever the biggest bundle is every expansion" sort of player...
Tbh making a card only useable for a year makes zero sense to me Usually in other games, those 'card' are become obsolete by time itself. But ppl still able to play it however they want if they want to
I started losing interest in Hearthstone back in Kobolds & Catacombs, with The Witchwood striking the deathblow. It was around this time when the game became really uninteractive and decks felt unfair. Corridor Creepers allowed for 10/10 of stats to be played around turn 3 in every aggro deck, Kingsbane Rogue was invulnerable with a massive lifesteal weapon unless you drew weapon removal, Twig of the World Tree and Ixlid had Malygos Druid OTKing people left and right, and Warlock had two awful decks to play against with Cubelock and Control Warlock with Rin. You ended up in so many situations where you felt helpless. You can't run more weapon removal against Rogue, you can't do anything about 10/10 on turn 3, you can't outvalue Rin no matter how many cards you shuffle into your deck, and you can't respond reactively against an OTK. This was so far from the Hearthstone I fell in love with, the Hearthstone where everything had a counter, advantages were incremental, deck value mattered a lot, and the most damage a deck could do in a single turn from an empty board was about 15. These problems became even worse in Witchwood, so I quit to wait out better times. I came back for Fractured in Alterac Valley to see if the game had improved. It had not. In fact it had gotten much worse. Creating helpless situations for your opponent and winning with OTKs was still the main way decks won, nothing had changed there. Added on top of that was a healthy dose of power creep, especially when it came to card draw. Decks had also become more homogenous with aggro decks now having lategame win-conditions, and control decks having good tempo in the early game. There were no attrition decks, no combo decks that sacrificed all tempo to rush an OTK, and no aggro decks that dumped their whole hand immediately to squeeze out a win before turn 7. Yet I stuck with it and I'm still playing today. Not much has changed, I still think the game is so much worse than it once was, but at least now I have more money than before, so even if I don't enjoy the gameplay as much at least I can buy packs and play a bunch of decks.
So true man. BG isn't even fun to watch. Okay, it's pretty decent if you play a couple games, but watching someone play for like 5 hours doing the exact same builds that end up with divine shields and poisonous... I mean, in Standard you eventually grow tired of playing the same deck and swap it, so it could be about 2-3 different meta decks to watch someone play (and also learn how to play) during the stream. As a fellow Russian, I was sooo disappointed when my favourite streamer and pro player Silvername left Standard т_т
Hi, my personal opinion on how to bring back old players and how to continue Hearthstone is to give this game a new engine after all these years. It is so slow, not that pretty anymore and not as convenient as other card games out there. I would like to see a monk class. New graphics. The video here mentioned that player don't like well balanced cards as much but I think we do, just that we need more innovation in card effects, the engine brings limitations. Besides all these things HS is a super expensive game for a "f2p" game. Collecting cards without spending money just through playing the game isn't as lucrative. The amount of dust you get compared to the amount of cards there are (especially for a wild/casual player like me) sadly is ridiculous.
I played HS ever since Nax and I've paid for every expansion up until Darkmoon Faire. With every expansion, things kept getting more expensive to upkeep this hobby. I would spend $80 on a bundle and still not have enough cards to play competitively. Then they added a battle pass which I only completed once, and it took so many hours of my time just to reach that point for an alternate hero skin. It was then I decided to quit HS entirely. Now two years have passed and I haven't looked back until now. How much has things changed? Has HS improved and become more affordable? Is it worth me getting back into things? Could I spend $60 and be close to a full set of cards to play with and be competitive? Or should I stay clear away from it and continue to forget about it?
It's good to hear from you and I hope you're safe. I stopped playing in 2018 but came back in 2022 with the voyage expansion. I bounced around from various digital tcgs but magic arena economy really made me mad so i came back and really enjoy the game right now.
I think what caused the decline of hearthstone was that it just didn’t keep up with current day business models. You can get the entirety of legends of runeterra being completely free to play in a couple of months. Lots of games became free to play, and those games that did cost money gave you the entire game as a one time purchase. However hearthstone continues to charge you a triple A game 3 times a year just to keep up and players finally realized that other games can just do what hearthstone can but cheaper and better
No, it's that it uses the modern day business model, which is to never give the player everything and continue charging one-time purchase level costs many times a year. Games that don't use this model are rare, less profitable, but almost always fan favorites.
Crafting system was unfair expecially because of the collection aspect. 1 legendary in exchange of 4(!). The worst thing i experienced btw was when i used to buy new packs and crafted new cards and they used to be nerfed to the ground after some days. Yes they refund the single card, but you had to lose the entire deck integrity when it relied on a single card or few of them.
You know what would definitely bring me back? If they implemented some seriously scummy monetization models. Once they told me that Runestones were always going to be sold in exact allotments with products, and then immediately proved themselves liars about, how could I not want to go back?
The problem has been multiplicitve. Telling players that they need to buy new cards as the power creep is off the board. Players that want to have fun deal with either get botted into oblivion , or flat out lose to aggro . They could use a system that says these cards in their own category of wild and punish players that try to cheese the game 3rd the free to play adventures have been lazy at best . The challenges have 0 replay ability. 4th: here is a random legendary. Instead of picking the legendary you want or get the dust for the cards . Better clarity of cards . I had pulled a golden bright wing and try to disenchant the extra one from the core set , or if they add to said caed to core set than a dust refund so that this mistake isn't repeated Mercenaries has been trash Bg has lost it luster
For me, one of the biggest issues is the lack of rewards for Legend ranks, kill my desire to compete. It feels like the game is only designed for new players or card/items/skins collectors.
I left Hearthstone with the ashes outland expansion, I was spending a lot of time trying to hit legend, and when I did it, I started to play less and less. At some point, I only played to do the quests and sometimes play with a friend, and I eventually stopped when I realized that the new quest system required to play quite a lot. So I did not left because I was angry or something, but just because I had enough of It and that's the reason why I continue watching Hearthstone content, Trolden's vids, competitions and also the mathematics behind the game 😊
It's just sad what blizzard did to hearthstone, such a great game dying like this.. I used to play it everyday since 2014 and quitted the game like 2 years ago because it was no fun anymore and seemed more pay to win than ever but always hoped that it would come back to its glory someday, but at this point it seems like blizzard doesn't even care anymore, they're just trying to make the most profit out of it before the game dies completely
One thing that would delay me deleting the game is segmenting the unwanted game modes to save space, Hearthstone essentially has a bunch of bloatware on it if you don't play those modes, one of which is really just pure trash in my opinion.
Hearthstone is killing itself by having such incompetent developers that say crap like 'a card has to pass a vibe check before being released' or how they dont know what cards to put into a core set because they dont know which expansions will be released and when... the last QnA was shocking and ive no idea why so few are talking about it
I also quit yesterday, the new miniset is crazy and made the game go bonkers in my opinion, is no longer fun but frustrating. And I have most legendaries needed in standard and wild.
interesting... rotating classic... a big part was fading of competitive streams, tournaments, masters tour was mismanaged... flashy tournaments with big payouts and hype faded idk, don't understand normal people i guess i liked rastakan rumble, the problem was the power scale of the rest of the game, it needed nerfs to other cards to breathe, or maybe they didn't plan card architype rotation to wild properly when rastakan rumble came out For me i'm hesitant to buy pack bundles or season pass (i've spent over 900$ on hs years ago) hesitant because i don't like the power crept gameplay of the last couple years that and i feel it's overpriced I'd like to invest in the older cards but there's no reason to and buying packs for wild is totally unreasonable value proposition If rotating classic came about and there was a reasonable way to spend a bit of money to fill out those old sets i'd consider spending money again so i'm just waiting for rotating classic
I hate that companies are never satisfied with 10 million dollars, they always need to have 20 million, then 30 million, then 40 million. It's never enough, and constantly trying to squeeze out every last morsel of money from people in the short term in return for money they'll never use - even after obliterating any long-term survivability - and STILL refusing to use any of it on making their game of compay workplace better whatsoever.
I miss the old solo adventure style, curse of naxxramas/blackrock/karazhan were all great and I didn't mind dropping the 20 bucks on them at all at the time. And I really loved it when an expansion completely changed how the game played. Whispers of the old gods was my favorite expansion.
Commenting for you guys for the algorithm, also you guys are the best in the business and I look forward to all of your analytics! If hearthstone goes down the tube I will keep following you if you do this for other games
I've had three kids since I started playing Hearthstone 8 years ago. I feel like I should stop spending so much time and money on it but I'm stuck. If I just stop playing I'll never catch back up and I don't want to feel like it was all for nothing. The amount of money I have to spend is increasing and the amount of fun I'm having is decreasing. I'll probably play for another 8 years though...
Dude, just quit then. You've spent the money, but you've also had your fun. It wasn't for nothing. Life is short. No point in spending your time playing if you're not enjoying it.
I know a lot of people might not believe this, but i have been playing Hearthstone since GvG and i have not spent a single dime on it. Even after all these years, i still enjoy the game because i dont play for long periods of time (like 5-6 hours) but i try to play at least 1 hour every day (or every second day) for the quests. This way i have enough gold every time a new expansion is announced to buy between 50-60 packs and later 2000 for the miniset. Even though i dont even own half of the legendaries, i try to make due with what i get and i always end up reaching diamond 10-diamond 5. I think a lot of people lack this basic mentality, they both want to have every single card in the game and at the same time they complain that the game is very expensive and that you cant play it or have fun as F2P player! No offense, but i've been doing it for years (which means you can do it too) and unless Blizzard decides to unleash a new but worse United in Stormwind meta, i aint see myself quitting anytime soon!
I'm hugely pure free 2 play but when hearthstone came out on mobile I felt I need to be thankful to Blizzard and bough a 20$ package and again a few years later . But I will never again fund that company after the Hong Kong incident
I've been playing since beta. Up until the year of the dragon hearthstone had been a hobby that I would gladly give massive amounts of time and a bit of money to. The main reason for this was my desire to keep my collection decent. On average I would leave an expansion with about 6 legendaries and 10 epics missing. I felt compelled to stay near that average even at times when I wasn't enjoying the game as much. During the year of the dragon, most enjoyment had gone. Lackeys had been released and with them any ability to play around cards in your opponent' deck was gone. Full hands would often consist of all randomly generated cards. With the release of descent of dragons, and the realisation that from now on we would have 3 expansions and 3 adventures to pay for, something broke in me. I didn't play for about two months, and when I returned I was changed. I no longer cared about maintaining a decent collection. I played mostly wild and battlegrounds, crafted whatever looked fun, and simply wouldn't play if I wasn't having fun. The addiction was gone. I still enjoy the game from time to time but it's no longer a hobby. I appreciate this channel because it has always voiced it's concerns about the game when other hearthstone content creators would pretend everything was dandy. It's not, but that's all right. We've had good times with this game and still do, but the obsession is gone. And for people not earning money from hearthstone that's a good thing.
The quest system sucks. When you take a break from the game returning feels bad, unless you waited exactly 6 months. They should make all quests just "Play 3 games in any mode" which you can complete simuntenously. No blizz, I don't want to paly priest, druid or paladin, nor a battlegrounds game. Preorders also suck, you don't even get all the cards. For how expensive they are, they should just give you all the cards of the expansion for that money.
I mean, class related quests were always there. But the amount of frustration that "Complete(!!) 3 UiS questlines" brought to me was tremendous. How am I supposed to complete those, say, in Sunken city, when the only deck that mattered was quest priest (which by the way I had and really enjoyed because I'm a priest main lol), but HOW LONG does it take to complete a priest quest :D Play something legendaries were also a miss. Probably another way to further try and monetize the game, I guess
Honestly if Blizzard released a subscription for HS where you get the $40 pre-expansion pack as the main benefit for the subscription, I’d probably be willing to pay that if it was a little bit more financially efficient for the players than the pre release bundle
Its sad to see the game's decline as it's still very fun to play. Many people tend not to see the big picture that Hearthstone, even if its prime years have always been plagued by being a part of Blizzard and a lot of decisions were made outside of Team 5, by the mother company taking charge of the financial decicions. Other problems also arose from the game suffering poor management internally. Ben Brode, as loveable as he was, wasn't really the greatest director for the game and it cost a lot of players lots of frustation, with the mentioned Patches, Shamanstone and Odd/Even decks. Other controversies in the later years only made the case worse for the popularity of the game and some hit or miss decisions, which needed to be patched and reworked a lot of times.
What a video! Kudos. Recently Hearthstone offered me 150 free packs to return (after a year off) - It was like running into an ex and getting drunk and having a bang, then remembering why you split up and feeling bad day after. I bought the new bundles etc. but I feel stupid and the game makes me cross. They can do one. I'm over it.
I just uninstalled Hearthstone/Battlenet yesterday. The new way to force money out of players while Blizzard keeps up the power creep and the selling of broken cards shows the death of the game.
For me i guess what reduced my interest was the increasing cost of new decks and how little legendaries i got to try. I could count with one finger the amount of legendaries i had during my 4 years of playing the game, let alone which of these were decent and my deckbuilding skills are subpar. Which is a bit funny because i ended up playing gachas instead which aren't known for giving you everything for free precisely. Master Duel somehow gave me the opposite experience. With the new player rewards it was easy to make one or two good decks and i already knew the kind of deck i wanted and getting it was way easier thanks to secret packs and a way less annoying pity system.
for me there is two main reasons that I wont get back into hearthstone 1. too hard to get back in, too expensive, i took a pause and fell behind in my collection and the cost to buy myself back in just increased, my attempts to play it free to play has been a failure as i lose interest faster than i gain cards. 2. everytime I have been ready with my credit card in hand to buy packs, blizzard as a company has had a scandal of some sort, which has saved me a lot of money.
a tournament mode however as I like being competitive and I find ladder quite boring could defintely make me reconsider. and with microsoft buying blizzard maybe I can fool myself that im not supporting the bad ones any longer.
500$ a year is insane! You can not easily stick to one deck or make substitute. I'm free to play on MTGA because I'm good at draft and have many decks in all formats. I mostly spend gold on cosmetics now ;)
I still watch hearthstone content to this day but I haven't been a player in some time, I log in every expansion, receive my free card and bail. Here are the factors that stopped me from playing 1)The only time I put money into a preorder for the game, ungoro, I got 4 copies of sunkeeper tarim 2)shifting to three expansions a year priced me out, I wasn't willing to drop triple the money on something I'd only tentatively done the precious year and got burned on 3)there's actually no real mechanic for a returning player, there's a single quest and it gets you like a classic set pack? Gee thanks really helpful 4)wild, the only gametype I was willing to play, got effectively ruined when a large portion of cards are made impotent by a continuously powercrept metagame 5)people stopped deckbuilding by and large, (this is not just a hearthstone problem) but this has been exacerbated in hearthstone specifically by the devs. Releasing expansions a week early for streamers; a core component of a card game is the deck building experience, the first week to a month of trying out new cards, having fun and seeing what happens. We now fast track that experience 6)this is another deck building gripe (and this has been going on for a long time) but because nobody deckbuilds anymore they now tailor expansions to forcing archetypes, they don't care to create interesting cards or a singular legendary and just let people try and make it work, they have (per expansion) around two decks purposely made for a specific archetype or style of play, this causes them to create cards that go outside the boundaries of what used to be, just to fit a worthwhile package into the archetype
I knew about hearthstone since 2014 but I was reluctant to try it, it was just a card game I said to myself. But in 2016 I saw my roommates playing it and told to myself that should try it. This was love at first sight. Simce then I have spend enormous amount of hours playing and collecting cards. But unfortunately the monetazation problem was growing bigger and bigger. I am from Bulgaria and I don't have a lot of excess money to spend especially not 100$ for a bundle of digital cards so I spend most of my time trying to make it as a free to play player and I managed to have at least 2-3 sometimes more meta deck every time and even reached legend 2-3 times but the problem with gathering the necessary cards just got bigger with each passing year so unfortunately this year I stopped playing Hearthstone for good. I haven't been playing it for 6 months now and I don't plan on returning any time soon I mean how can I it will be even harder for me to gather the necessary legendaries for even one relevant meta deck nevermind 2 or 3. Insted I switched to legends of runthera where the meta is much more diverse and I manage to have 80% of the meta decks and even have leftover resources to craft more. To be honest I miss playing heathstone, I miss the visuals, the whacky style it has and the cool mechanics but I am tired of playing it for years and only being able to craft 30%-40% of the meta decks each year. I hope this changes and blizzard become more generous to us f2p players but I am not holding my breath. Nevertheless thank you Hearthstone Mathematician for your content and honest opinion I am a big fan of this channel and even though I am not playing Hearthstone now I am still interested in how the game progresses and your channel is the only Hearthstone-related channel I still watch. Thank you and Слава Україні.
Game was always inbalanced and RNG based, but the main thing that made me say "ok, this is enough" is the expansions and minisets in short time. And now when I was trying to get into battlegrounds , this new quest system killed the game for me.
I stopped playing Hearthstone in 2018 because there was no way to climb in the ladder with the spare time I had. Also I did not pay for packs. I came back to Hearthstone when the Elemental tribe was added to Battlegrounds. Since then I ignore everything else in Hearthstone. I am still not willing to pay 15€ to choose from 4 heroes. It needs longer to get back to 6500 to 7000 MMR but it feels more rewarding good gameplay. It would be really interesting to see if the changes to Battlegrounds will increase the revenue or not.
My biggest dissapointment wasn't even mentioned here: they prevented the monthly rewards to be golden cards. There's no point now for me to collect these anymore (without help from the rewards) or buy packs, because I only need dailys to reach a gold amount for a few dozen packs every expansion. There was a time when I spent 80€ every expansion, now it's free2play for me, more or less. Clearly a bad sign for HS and Blizz's philosophy. And I don't even care about Blitzchung, scandals and such things... I never will buy Runes btw.
I mean we all know what the problems are: too expensive, not enough new content, company scandals and lack of valid marketing of the product to potential new players. You can see the lack of effort in this last regard by simply looking at the photos and video present in the App Store. It’s 3 years old almost and just doesn’t look slick as it could. Also no real dedication to e-sports… live events would increase the popularity of the game significantly but there has been almost nothing significant, ever. League of legends is great at this and they are able to concentrate a lot of eyes, revenue and success from their esports.
I quit this game for good and I’m never coming back. That card that makes your deck 40 cards and the latest monetization changes absolutely killed the game for me. It’s just not HS anymore.
The money sink just sucks. Complexity also is not good enough to me, I love MTG so... I would love a more complex gameplay. That said I am not the average audience I guess considering I would like hearthstone move towards the way of MTG
I think I quit Hearthstone around the time Madness at the Darkmoon Faire came out, so that's about two years ago. I think the reason why I quit around that time is twofold; part of it was the increasingly random aspect of the game, it felt to me at the time that there are so many cards that could just randomly decide the outcome of the game making it a game of luck not a game of skill. The second reason was that Riot released the Legends of Runeterra (LoR) that same year and I've shifted more and more into LoR and away from Hearthstone. Eventually, I've decided to transition fully into LoR and stop Hearthstone completely. I think it would be very difficult for Hearthstone to become appealing to me again mostly because I'd prefer a very different business model for CCG. In comparison, I've started playing LoR since it's release and now I'm pretty much got 100% completion; I've spend some money from time to time on event passes and tentatively consider getting a few champion skin and board cosmetics. Under the current business model, I don't think I'll be as comfortable spending money in Hearthstone as I do in LoR; in Hearthstone, ever since the separation of Standard and Wild, it always felt like there is constant drive to keep up with the current META which felt a bit expensive to me. I mean it's either that or stay in the chaotic wild. TL;DR: IMO, Hearthstone needs to be less random, give a lot more free cards and shift its selling point to cosmetic options to be attractive to me.
Good evening, I would like you to take as a reference a Chilean card game called "Myths and legends" which knew how to reinvent itself over the years and maintain its target audience with story mechanics such as: a cemetery (of destroyed cards) exile (cards from the cemetery that cannot be reintegrated into the deck) totem (something similar to locations) but in short I would like them to be able to learn from the game that I mention because its success came more than 15 years ago. ❤❤
I have been introduced to HS during Naxx I have been very casual then F2P of course. I had to stop because of deathrattle hunter making my experience bad. Then I got back when mysterious challenger was the main deck. I tried myself in competitively HS too. Then the grind burnt me out. Uninstall of course... Then I stopped playing for a year or more then came back but with the total opposite mindset. Since then I only play to have fun. I have started to preorder to get the rest of the collection but without the grind. I think that was the best decision (to look at the game as a fun factor not a competition) I liked the introduction of the BG but got bored with it soon. Since the new season has started I play much more. I loved the mercenaries at first glance as it reminds me of chess (in the aspect of you know what each minion can do) But the grind/time needed to upgrade them... Was more than I could afford I played a TCG and knew that having more and more cards will be beneficial to the game. Now I look at Rarran and he delivers. HS can be fun in so many ways. Development team just need to adjust to that. My solution would be like cancelling certain cards in my opponents deck. Algorithm would not match me with them. Or just give us two buttons : I wanna see fun opponents or I wanna play with competitive opponents (I know that casual is somewhat this but I always face players who try to get experienced playing with competitive decks and they always kill fun) Thanks for the video!!
When something has "Collectable" as a feature the amount of time/money required to complete that collection has to be reasonable. Hs started out in a bad place and gets worse with every expansion. At some point this goal becomes so far away that it's not worth investing anything any more.
I think that wild should get it's own development team, as most old decks aren't usable anymore yet the audience that loves them are still here for example the original C'thun and most of the inspire cards from the grand tournament
I for one would be interested in playing like, "past standard" formats. Where the only legal cards are whatever sets where legal in say, 2017 standard. I think that'd be cool
Personally I believe they should go back to the older model , 2 adventures and 1 expansion each year , they would loose on the short term but earn more money by bringing a pool of active players that would purchase the reasonable cheaper adventures( plus cosmetic bundles that would still sell well on a larger scale of players)
I couldn't remember why I stopped playing after Rise of Shadows... Life got in the way, and I must not have had much gold after all the solo content. To be fair, I remember it being fun. But after the Blitzchung situation, I just moved on from the game and found other hobbies.
I used to get legend all the time. But u stopped when they ramped up expansions to 3 times a year. I played bg's instead. But when the started making it pay to win, i became f2p. Sitting at 6k mmr and just conceding if i get a bad hero and que again.
The lost of class identity is the main reason I lost interest. As we speak every single agro deck have tons of way to draw card while putting pressure on board ... Including class that use to have a hard time to draw card. This is one exemple amount many other class identity that no longer exist.
I think any downturn in profits was exasperated by the release of Battlegrounds. BGs was a free game that became the most popular mode in HS, overtaking even Standard. I suspect that a migration of players from modes that required investment in packs to a completely free mode and a resulting decrease in pack sales has been the driving force for the aggressive monetization decisions that would come in the following years (i.e. OG Duels requirements, Mercenaries, Minisets, and now the more pay-to-win BG battlepass and Runestones).
Blizzard is ruined for me. I will never support again a company with a culture of violence, disrespect and scam. Harassments for women and employee and deafness for clients are things that cannot be forgotten and forgive. We can also talk about scam, yes. Blizzard released mercenaries with the pre-order (130€ of pre-order), and they did not, after 1 year, what they promised (adjust the excess of coins) and they also realized Diablo Immortal, which costs between 100K to 500K to upgrade one character. The thieves do this. I only want to see this company burning because I believe that they are truly evil. No gaming company has ever pushed the boundaries of the disrespect as Blizzard did. Blizzard is only money money money, disrespect and scam, money money money.
Theres 2 factors that didnt get mentioned.. Players with multiple accounts, to get Morgl or to play on different servers. And another factor would be that the whales and medium spending players finished the classic collection at some point, leading to less profit 4 sure.
Yup. That's why I moved to play wild rift and lor. Because when I spend money on them I get some pretty stuff for any amount of time and it doesn't impact the gameplay. When I pay in hs I pay to win and for a chance to play part of the game for few months. Until next expansion I have to invest few hundred to again gain access to some part of the game
I actually just recently lost interest in hearthstone. The runestone mechanic absolutely killed it for me. Just for the sake of the fact that they thought it was a good idea to implement it after all this time.
Sure maybe prices of packs are fine. But not if you have to pay in foreign currency when just cause of that it costs like 4 times more next to how much you earn. And with the runestones i thought that would be fixed
It’s the money and lack of ethics. I still hop on every now and then, since I’m so rich in the game it’s easy for me to still find fun, but I would never recommend this game to a new player. I’m only lucky I played before things got to where they are and have a collection I can use to have fun still
I just play arena and can regularly get my gold back just by getting 7 wins or more. It gives packs and dust for rewards in addition, so it is pretty easy to be free to play as long as you play well and don’t get unlucky.
After the "tough hearthstone esports moment" my tolerance for Activision/Blizzard boiled over. I was already feeling dissatisfied with the game at that point, but with all these new cards coming out, no new ways to get cards, and how Blizzard treated that tough moment with blitz just sealed the nail in the coffin for me and their franchises. Haven't played an acti/blizz game since and uninstalled all their games which I still hold nostalgia for, but not at the expense of being nickle and dimed for every minute thing, nor the more important part of human rights being ignored.
People always shit on games for being pay to win and having predatory monetization, but most of the time they just keep playing the game. Hearthstone however is one of the few games where its actually so bad that people stop playing. I myself have taken many breaks from Hearthstone, and under every big Hearthstone youtuber’s videos you will find comments like “i dont play anymore, but i still like watching your content”
I hate grinding. I spent 100$ dollars on the game, but that was the most I could give. After that it was an ugly grind of 'play 10 divine shield minions' every time I wanted to do something fun, like play a deck that doesn't have murlocs or divine shield minions. Legends of Runeterra is better. I don't play any card games anymore, but I will say that Runeterra gave me the best value for my time. I have never felt like there was a deck I couldn't make, they give you SO MANY WILD CARDS. You don't have to be a whale or sell your soul to enjoy it. I will make a card game of my own someday, even if its just to play with my friends, and I'm going to fix all the problems with Hearthstone, and even Runeterra too. You shall see....or maybe you won't.
They’re doing the same thing OPEC, they know gasoline is going out with the introduction of electric cars so they have 2 choices. Sell low and prolong gasoline sales or sell high and switch/invest to electricity.
It's too expensive 2 expansion and 1 adventure was perfect. They need to revamp the esports scene, and the better skilled players should be winning not the luckiest (Pavel). Losing Disguised toast and Kripp not playing arena proved very fatal
Excellent video, and what made me truly lose interest in Hearthstone was how they implemented the battleground pass. Before battlegrounds I only played Hearthstone sparingly to do my daily quest, battlegrounds was a breath of fresh air and exactly what I was looking for in an auto battler
According to Sensor Tower, they now make 4-5m$ on mobile on months w/o an upcoming expansion. I think they still make decent money if they produce so much content but Activision has so much eaten into Blizzard's soul that it's now very hard for them to retain p(l)ayers when they're still so stingent on improving the value/money for small-medium spenders and they can't grow. I think it's likely they'll move HS devs onto other (crappy) mobile games like the new Warcraft 'game' once they saw they can make much more money for much less effort with Diablo Immortal which now makes 25-30m$/month.
Hello, i have a question about the rewards track. Would adding infinite backup slots for daily and weekly quests (only during current rewards track seasons) hurt the game? I'm thinking that this kind of decision would result in lessening the burnout that players would feel from losing their quests. Maybe knowing they have backup quests would make them come back in the game
Hello. I like this idea, but your suggestion would make the game too comfortable for the players. Blizzard has other goals. The current approach forces players to log into the game daily, or at least once every three days. This helps increase your daily activity rate. The second reason is profit. Blizzard's main source of income is the sale of resources. The fewer free resources players have, the more incentives to make purchases. This is where the complexity of supporting games as a service lies. If your game is too comfortable and friendly, you will not earn money for further support of the product.
@@HearthstoneMathematics I just wish they could give us some breathing space... I haven't been keeping up with the news for this game but i noticed that in the battlegrounds mode they added a feature similar to idea i mentioned called "banked missions" for its own version of rewards track. Is there a catch that i'm missing? Is it maybe because of the small portion of the rewards they give to f2p players or maybe because gold is superior reward as a currency that lets you buy things other than packs whereas battleground rewards give you rewards that are exlusive for this mode? Umm, what i'm trying to ask is why does that feature exist if they want players to be consistently active in their game?
It is weird to think that one day Hearthstone might shut down and *freaking* Holomancer (a card that never saw play) will be the only survivor
I played Holomancer in a Druid deck I believe it did suck 😂
@@lekkereffesnel I did as well, ha ha. I can't remember what deck I used it in, but I definitely used it as I got from packs and was too stubborn to not.
I will probably cry myself to death if the game dies, after all the money I've spent on it. loosing marvel heroes (the game that essentially marvel diablo, made by the creator of diablo 2) was a big enough hit, and I didn't spend anywhere near as much on that.
Holomancer actually have a combo now. Its otk treachery warlock
@@KutanowyJanusz nice
Well, but sadly, over time, as the game grew bigger with no great compensation on how to gain new cards for new players, it only attracts more dislikes, let's not forget the RNG nonsense which forces players to buy packs with real money to please the RNG Gods. Runeterra did the opposite instead. It's about the fans, not the investors.
Yup I left to play LoR as I didn't enjoy the extortionate cost/time investment required for HS
LOR is boring tho
@@lambchop58 Better than selling my liver so I can play HS
@@cygnus__ if you have to sell your liver to play a game, there's something funny about your life
LOR is losing money too though. I hate to be that guy, but as far as profitability is concerned, Hearthstone still does better than all of its competitors. Buying packs is just part of cards games for the most part. I wosh Runeterra was doing better, that game has the perfect monitization, but it just isnt.
Seriously though, thank you for your hardwork researching and presenting this data. I can only imagine how difficult it can be especially when there are attempts to hide it.
I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard, along with many AAA gaming companies it seems, has completely undervalued customer trust of a brand and/or company is.
You see this in literally every industry; food, clothing, housing, etc. When a brand or company is something that consumers trust to give quality products/services, they will always be profitable & continue increasing in profits. Consumer trust is so powerful, that even if a competitor who provides a similar product/service that is technicaly cheaper & higher quality, most customers will still go to the brand that they trust regardless, because it is a brand that they know they can rely on.
However, with all the scandals, and all the predatory pricing, it seems Blizzard & many AAA gaming companies are very visibly trying to scam as many customers as they can. This kills customer trust, and so slowly loses them both existing customers & potential future customers.
At the end of the day, people will buy from you because they trust you will provide them with what they want. If you don’t provide them want they want; if it’s defective, or much lower quality, etc., then they will be less trusting of you. And when they trust you less, they will likely buy from you less. If it’s visible to many that you are providing them with less than what you said you will, many will be reluctant to even begin buying from you at all.
In any sort of monetary transaction, trust is more valuable than gold; be it between companies, between individuals, or between a company & an individual. For some reason, Blizzard seems to completely disregard this fundamental & historically proven fact for the sake of short term profit.
It makes me sad that the marketing team is making unprofitable decisions for one of my favourite games. I want to see Hearthstone do really well and I want to see others have a good time with it
Whatever happens, I hope they don't mess it up. I really hope they don't :(
They gona kill the game before selling out of spite the babies
I think the recent expansion is a step in the right direction. Before, HS just felt extremely uninteractive with combo decks and otks flying all over the place, but now the game has become e a lot more board centric although Denathrius still kinda keeps that OTK factor which can still be pretty frustrating.
However, the game js also a lot more interactive with cards like Theotar (As much as I absolutely hate seeing him just before using Denathrius -_-), so I hope Blizz stays on track with that design philosophy.
If you like interaction and the ability to stop the opponent from doing broken stuff, play magic the gathering.
@@scotbush4338 Maybe Theotar tilts the scale too far, but a severe lack of interaction is not healthy for the game. Making decks otk fiestas and regular old solitaire decks hurts the game.
Every TCG needs some form of interaction.
@@scotbush4338 but maybe they want to be able to build a deck they like or even multiple decks, so LoR would be the best choice ...
I joined Hearthstone in 2019 and was a solo only player for a long while, and got a healthy collection from that. When I joined competitive modes, I felt like I understood the game well enough that I didn’t suck and could enjoy it. When my younger sister joined Hearthstone much later, there wasn’t that same supply of solo enjoyment, and she jumped into competitive, and burnt herself out. I think the decline in accessible solo content that teaches you how to play instead of doing a big story or something very different from normal mechanics (sorry cooking minigame) really makes it harder to onboard new players, and that seems to align with that reversal in fortune for Blizzard.
I been f2p for a while. I like the game from the beginning on and off. I enjoy it as long I can rank up with an off meta build.
@Hearthstone Mathematics
Good to see you again!
Apart from Mercenaries, I am trying to do a bit more content on Standard and Battlegrounds
I kept playing Hearthstone cuz it was relatively cheaper to get cards than other card games
After Standard came along, I lost a lot of initiative to buy packs, knowing the cards will not be usable some day...
Standard and Wild split in 2016 actually made me a F2P player, from a "buy 60 pack, or whatever the biggest bundle is every expansion" sort of player...
Tbh making a card only useable for a year makes zero sense to me
Usually in other games, those 'card' are become obsolete by time itself. But ppl still able to play it however they want if they want to
I started losing interest in Hearthstone back in Kobolds & Catacombs, with The Witchwood striking the deathblow.
It was around this time when the game became really uninteractive and decks felt unfair. Corridor Creepers allowed for 10/10 of stats to be played around turn 3 in every aggro deck, Kingsbane Rogue was invulnerable with a massive lifesteal weapon unless you drew weapon removal, Twig of the World Tree and Ixlid had Malygos Druid OTKing people left and right, and Warlock had two awful decks to play against with Cubelock and Control Warlock with Rin. You ended up in so many situations where you felt helpless. You can't run more weapon removal against Rogue, you can't do anything about 10/10 on turn 3, you can't outvalue Rin no matter how many cards you shuffle into your deck, and you can't respond reactively against an OTK.
This was so far from the Hearthstone I fell in love with, the Hearthstone where everything had a counter, advantages were incremental, deck value mattered a lot, and the most damage a deck could do in a single turn from an empty board was about 15. These problems became even worse in Witchwood, so I quit to wait out better times.
I came back for Fractured in Alterac Valley to see if the game had improved. It had not. In fact it had gotten much worse. Creating helpless situations for your opponent and winning with OTKs was still the main way decks won, nothing had changed there. Added on top of that was a healthy dose of power creep, especially when it came to card draw. Decks had also become more homogenous with aggro decks now having lategame win-conditions, and control decks having good tempo in the early game. There were no attrition decks, no combo decks that sacrificed all tempo to rush an OTK, and no aggro decks that dumped their whole hand immediately to squeeze out a win before turn 7.
Yet I stuck with it and I'm still playing today. Not much has changed, I still think the game is so much worse than it once was, but at least now I have more money than before, so even if I don't enjoy the gameplay as much at least I can buy packs and play a bunch of decks.
most team 5 members already left to second dinner company
old team 5 members messed up the balancing..
i've missed you, guys. im really happy to see you again
My lost of interest in hearthstone came from my favorite hearthstone youtubers becoming battlegrounds streamers.
So true man. BG isn't even fun to watch. Okay, it's pretty decent if you play a couple games, but watching someone play for like 5 hours doing the exact same builds that end up with divine shields and poisonous... I mean, in Standard you eventually grow tired of playing the same deck and swap it, so it could be about 2-3 different meta decks to watch someone play (and also learn how to play) during the stream. As a fellow Russian, I was sooo disappointed when my favourite streamer and pro player Silvername left Standard т_т
I just wish there was a way to get back into the game. It's hard to come back to hearthstone knowing you need 6 expansions worth of cards.
Hi, my personal opinion on how to bring back old players and how to continue Hearthstone is to give this game a new engine after all these years. It is so slow, not that pretty anymore and not as convenient as other card games out there. I would like to see a monk class. New graphics. The video here mentioned that player don't like well balanced cards as much but I think we do, just that we need more innovation in card effects, the engine brings limitations. Besides all these things HS is a super expensive game for a "f2p" game. Collecting cards without spending money just through playing the game isn't as lucrative. The amount of dust you get compared to the amount of cards there are (especially for a wild/casual player like me) sadly is ridiculous.
Cut the cost of everything in game by 60 %. Pricing in this game is ridiculous.
I played HS ever since Nax and I've paid for every expansion up until Darkmoon Faire. With every expansion, things kept getting more expensive to upkeep this hobby. I would spend $80 on a bundle and still not have enough cards to play competitively. Then they added a battle pass which I only completed once, and it took so many hours of my time just to reach that point for an alternate hero skin. It was then I decided to quit HS entirely.
Now two years have passed and I haven't looked back until now. How much has things changed? Has HS improved and become more affordable? Is it worth me getting back into things? Could I spend $60 and be close to a full set of cards to play with and be competitive? Or should I stay clear away from it and continue to forget about it?
I think a big thing to mention that 100% impacted the player base, would be Ben Brode leaving the HS team. It was devastating.
It's good to hear from you and I hope you're safe. I stopped playing in 2018 but came back in 2022 with the voyage expansion. I bounced around from various digital tcgs but magic arena economy really made me mad so i came back and really enjoy the game right now.
I think what caused the decline of hearthstone was that it just didn’t keep up with current day business models. You can get the entirety of legends of runeterra being completely free to play in a couple of months. Lots of games became free to play, and those games that did cost money gave you the entire game as a one time purchase. However hearthstone continues to charge you a triple A game 3 times a year just to keep up and players finally realized that other games can just do what hearthstone can but cheaper and better
No, it's that it uses the modern day business model, which is to never give the player everything and continue charging one-time purchase level costs many times a year. Games that don't use this model are rare, less profitable, but almost always fan favorites.
Crafting system was unfair expecially because of the collection aspect. 1 legendary in exchange of 4(!). The worst thing i experienced btw was when i used to buy new packs and crafted new cards and they used to be nerfed to the ground after some days. Yes they refund the single card, but you had to lose the entire deck integrity when it relied on a single card or few of them.
Especially bad if that was the only viable deck you could scourge up
2019 when avarice broke the bag, when I made an estimate on how much many I needed to play I called it quits
You know what would definitely bring me back? If they implemented some seriously scummy monetization models. Once they told me that Runestones were always going to be sold in exact allotments with products, and then immediately proved themselves liars about, how could I not want to go back?
The problem has been multiplicitve.
Telling players that they need to buy new cards as the power creep is off the board. Players that want to have fun deal with either get botted into oblivion , or flat out lose to aggro .
They could use a system that says these cards in their own category of wild and punish players that try to cheese the game
3rd the free to play adventures have been lazy at best . The challenges have 0 replay ability.
4th: here is a random legendary. Instead of picking the legendary you want or get the dust for the cards .
Better clarity of cards . I had pulled a golden bright wing and try to disenchant the extra one from the core set , or if they add to said caed to core set than a dust refund so that this mistake isn't repeated
Mercenaries has been trash
Bg has lost it luster
For me, one of the biggest issues is the lack of rewards for Legend ranks, kill my desire to compete. It feels like the game is only designed for new players or card/items/skins collectors.
I left Hearthstone with the ashes outland expansion, I was spending a lot of time trying to hit legend, and when I did it, I started to play less and less. At some point, I only played to do the quests and sometimes play with a friend, and I eventually stopped when I realized that the new quest system required to play quite a lot. So I did not left because I was angry or something, but just because I had enough of It and that's the reason why I continue watching Hearthstone content, Trolden's vids, competitions and also the mathematics behind the game 😊
It's just sad what blizzard did to hearthstone, such a great game dying like this.. I used to play it everyday since 2014 and quitted the game like 2 years ago because it was no fun anymore and seemed more pay to win than ever but always hoped that it would come back to its glory someday, but at this point it seems like blizzard doesn't even care anymore, they're just trying to make the most profit out of it before the game dies completely
bro hearthstone never dead wdym ?
I needs a revamp with nft anyway
One thing that would delay me deleting the game is segmenting the unwanted game modes to save space, Hearthstone essentially has a bunch of bloatware on it if you don't play those modes, one of which is really just pure trash in my opinion.
Hearthstone is killing itself by having such incompetent developers that say crap like 'a card has to pass a vibe check before being released' or how they dont know what cards to put into a core set because they dont know which expansions will be released and when... the last QnA was shocking and ive no idea why so few are talking about it
Is that it? Please make a part 2 with the rest of the years please, I really want to know more!
thanks:]
Glad I quit last week , but this content is still worth watching
Me too, I quit since Outland, but I still subscribe to here & Trump's channel.
I quit yesterday. Power Creep +New Currency for real money +New stuff requires real money made me sick and angry. Hearthstone is dead.
I also quit yesterday, the new miniset is crazy and made the game go bonkers in my opinion, is no longer fun but frustrating. And I have most legendaries needed in standard and wild.
interesting... rotating classic... a big part was fading of competitive streams, tournaments, masters tour was mismanaged... flashy tournaments with big payouts and hype faded
idk, don't understand normal people i guess
i liked rastakan rumble, the problem was the power scale of the rest of the game, it needed nerfs to other cards to breathe, or maybe they didn't plan card architype rotation to wild properly when rastakan rumble came out
For me i'm hesitant to buy pack bundles or season pass (i've spent over 900$ on hs years ago)
hesitant because i don't like the power crept gameplay of the last couple years
that and i feel it's overpriced
I'd like to invest in the older cards
but there's no reason to and buying packs for wild is totally unreasonable value proposition
If rotating classic came about and there was a reasonable way to spend a bit of money to fill out those old sets i'd consider spending money again
so i'm just waiting for rotating classic
I hate that companies are never satisfied with 10 million dollars, they always need to have 20 million, then 30 million, then 40 million. It's never enough, and constantly trying to squeeze out every last morsel of money from people in the short term in return for money they'll never use - even after obliterating any long-term survivability - and STILL refusing to use any of it on making their game of compay workplace better whatsoever.
I miss the old solo adventure style, curse of naxxramas/blackrock/karazhan were all great and I didn't mind dropping the 20 bucks on them at all at the time. And I really loved it when an expansion completely changed how the game played. Whispers of the old gods was my favorite expansion.
Commenting for you guys for the algorithm, also you guys are the best in the business and I look forward to all of your analytics! If hearthstone goes down the tube I will keep following you if you do this for other games
I've had three kids since I started playing Hearthstone 8 years ago. I feel like I should stop spending so much time and money on it but I'm stuck. If I just stop playing I'll never catch back up and I don't want to feel like it was all for nothing. The amount of money I have to spend is increasing and the amount of fun I'm having is decreasing. I'll probably play for another 8 years though...
Dude, just quit then. You've spent the money, but you've also had your fun. It wasn't for nothing. Life is short. No point in spending your time playing if you're not enjoying it.
@@VagabondShoes I agree but it's hard to pull the trigger. This has been part of my routine for 8 years.
@@bradencluster4739 sure, but you'll be surprised how much time it frees up for other, ideally more meaningful and/or enjoyable, pursuits.
I know a lot of people might not believe this, but i have been playing Hearthstone since GvG and i have not spent a single dime on it. Even after all these years, i still enjoy the game because i dont play for long periods of time (like 5-6 hours) but i try to play at least 1 hour every day (or every second day) for the quests. This way i have enough gold every time a new expansion is announced to buy between 50-60 packs and later 2000 for the miniset. Even though i dont even own half of the legendaries, i try to make due with what i get and i always end up reaching diamond 10-diamond 5. I think a lot of people lack this basic mentality, they both want to have every single card in the game and at the same time they complain that the game is very expensive and that you cant play it or have fun as F2P player! No offense, but i've been doing it for years (which means you can do it too) and unless Blizzard decides to unleash a new but worse United in Stormwind meta, i aint see myself quitting anytime soon!
I'm hugely pure free 2 play but when hearthstone came out on mobile I felt I need to be thankful to Blizzard and bough a 20$ package and again a few years later .
But I will never again fund that company after the Hong Kong incident
11:58 *the game was still profitable*
It's pixels on the screen made by a handful of people. Zero raw materials, minimal staff salaries. Duuuuuh
I've been playing since beta. Up until the year of the dragon hearthstone had been a hobby that I would gladly give massive amounts of time and a bit of money to.
The main reason for this was my desire to keep my collection decent. On average I would leave an expansion with about 6 legendaries and 10 epics missing.
I felt compelled to stay near that average even at times when I wasn't enjoying the game as much.
During the year of the dragon, most enjoyment had gone. Lackeys had been released and with them any ability to play around cards in your opponent' deck was gone. Full hands would often consist of all randomly generated cards.
With the release of descent of dragons, and the realisation that from now on we would have 3 expansions and 3 adventures to pay for, something broke in me.
I didn't play for about two months, and when I returned I was changed. I no longer cared about maintaining a decent collection. I played mostly wild and battlegrounds, crafted whatever looked fun, and simply wouldn't play if I wasn't having fun. The addiction was gone.
I still enjoy the game from time to time but it's no longer a hobby. I appreciate this channel because it has always voiced it's concerns about the game when other hearthstone content creators would pretend everything was dandy. It's not, but that's all right. We've had good times with this game and still do, but the obsession is gone. And for people not earning money from hearthstone that's a good thing.
"This video was not intended to incite hatred towards Blizzard." No, that's just an added bonus. :D
The quest system sucks. When you take a break from the game returning feels bad, unless you waited exactly 6 months. They should make all quests just "Play 3 games in any mode" which you can complete simuntenously. No blizz, I don't want to paly priest, druid or paladin, nor a battlegrounds game.
Preorders also suck, you don't even get all the cards. For how expensive they are, they should just give you all the cards of the expansion for that money.
I mean, class related quests were always there. But the amount of frustration that "Complete(!!) 3 UiS questlines" brought to me was tremendous. How am I supposed to complete those, say, in Sunken city, when the only deck that mattered was quest priest (which by the way I had and really enjoyed because I'm a priest main lol), but HOW LONG does it take to complete a priest quest :D
Play something legendaries were also a miss. Probably another way to further try and monetize the game, I guess
Honestly if Blizzard released a subscription for HS where you get the $40 pre-expansion pack as the main benefit for the subscription, I’d probably be willing to pay that if it was a little bit more financially efficient for the players than the pre release bundle
Its sad to see the game's decline as it's still very fun to play. Many people tend not to see the big picture that Hearthstone, even if its prime years have always been plagued by being a part of Blizzard and a lot of decisions were made outside of Team 5, by the mother company taking charge of the financial decicions. Other problems also arose from the game suffering poor management internally. Ben Brode, as loveable as he was, wasn't really the greatest director for the game and it cost a lot of players lots of frustation, with the mentioned Patches, Shamanstone and Odd/Even decks. Other controversies in the later years only made the case worse for the popularity of the game and some hit or miss decisions, which needed to be patched and reworked a lot of times.
What a video! Kudos. Recently Hearthstone offered me 150 free packs to return (after a year off) - It was like running into an ex and getting drunk and having a bang, then remembering why you split up and feeling bad day after. I bought the new bundles etc. but I feel stupid and the game makes me cross. They can do one. I'm over it.
I just uninstalled Hearthstone/Battlenet yesterday. The new way to force money out of players while Blizzard keeps up the power creep and the selling of broken cards shows the death of the game.
For me i guess what reduced my interest was the increasing cost of new decks and how little legendaries i got to try. I could count with one finger the amount of legendaries i had during my 4 years of playing the game, let alone which of these were decent and my deckbuilding skills are subpar. Which is a bit funny because i ended up playing gachas instead which aren't known for giving you everything for free precisely. Master Duel somehow gave me the opposite experience. With the new player rewards it was easy to make one or two good decks and i already knew the kind of deck i wanted and getting it was way easier thanks to secret packs and a way less annoying pity system.
for me there is two main reasons that I wont get back into hearthstone
1. too hard to get back in, too expensive, i took a pause and fell behind in my collection and the cost to buy myself back in just increased, my attempts to play it free to play has been a failure as i lose interest faster than i gain cards.
2. everytime I have been ready with my credit card in hand to buy packs, blizzard as a company has had a scandal of some sort, which has saved me a lot of money.
a tournament mode however as I like being competitive and I find ladder quite boring could defintely make me reconsider. and with microsoft buying blizzard maybe I can fool myself that im not supporting the bad ones any longer.
500$ a year is insane! You can not easily stick to one deck or make substitute. I'm free to play on MTGA because I'm good at draft and have many decks in all formats. I mostly spend gold on cosmetics now ;)
honestly, i could be hearing you discuss this topic for hours with full attention, thanks for the video, great job!.
I hate (but not really) that I cannot stop contributing to the problem. I love cosmetics!
I still watch hearthstone content to this day but I haven't been a player in some time, I log in every expansion, receive my free card and bail. Here are the factors that stopped me from playing
1)The only time I put money into a preorder for the game, ungoro, I got 4 copies of sunkeeper tarim
2)shifting to three expansions a year priced me out, I wasn't willing to drop triple the money on something I'd only tentatively done the precious year and got burned on
3)there's actually no real mechanic for a returning player, there's a single quest and it gets you like a classic set pack? Gee thanks really helpful
4)wild, the only gametype I was willing to play, got effectively ruined when a large portion of cards are made impotent by a continuously powercrept metagame
5)people stopped deckbuilding by and large, (this is not just a hearthstone problem) but this has been exacerbated in hearthstone specifically by the devs. Releasing expansions a week early for streamers; a core component of a card game is the deck building experience, the first week to a month of trying out new cards, having fun and seeing what happens. We now fast track that experience
6)this is another deck building gripe (and this has been going on for a long time) but because nobody deckbuilds anymore they now tailor expansions to forcing archetypes, they don't care to create interesting cards or a singular legendary and just let people try and make it work, they have (per expansion) around two decks purposely made for a specific archetype or style of play, this causes them to create cards that go outside the boundaries of what used to be, just to fit a worthwhile package into the archetype
I knew about hearthstone since 2014 but I was reluctant to try it, it was just a card game I said to myself. But in 2016 I saw my roommates playing it and told to myself that should try it. This was love at first sight. Simce then I have spend enormous amount of hours playing and collecting cards. But unfortunately the monetazation problem was growing bigger and bigger. I am from Bulgaria and I don't have a lot of excess money to spend especially not 100$ for a bundle of digital cards so I spend most of my time trying to make it as a free to play player and I managed to have at least 2-3 sometimes more meta deck every time and even reached legend 2-3 times but the problem with gathering the necessary cards just got bigger with each passing year so unfortunately this year I stopped playing Hearthstone for good. I haven't been playing it for 6 months now and I don't plan on returning any time soon I mean how can I it will be even harder for me to gather the necessary legendaries for even one relevant meta deck nevermind 2 or 3. Insted I switched to legends of runthera where the meta is much more diverse and I manage to have 80% of the meta decks and even have leftover resources to craft more. To be honest I miss playing heathstone, I miss the visuals, the whacky style it has and the cool mechanics but I am tired of playing it for years and only being able to craft 30%-40% of the meta decks each year. I hope this changes and blizzard become more generous to us f2p players but I am not holding my breath. Nevertheless thank you Hearthstone Mathematician for your content and honest opinion I am a big fan of this channel and even though I am not playing Hearthstone now I am still interested in how the game progresses and your channel is the only Hearthstone-related channel I still watch. Thank you and Слава Україні.
Game was always inbalanced and RNG based, but the main thing that made me say "ok, this is enough" is the expansions and minisets in short time. And now when I was trying to get into battlegrounds , this new quest system killed the game for me.
I stopped playing Hearthstone in 2018 because there was no way to climb in the ladder with the spare time I had. Also I did not pay for packs. I came back to Hearthstone when the Elemental tribe was added to Battlegrounds. Since then I ignore everything else in Hearthstone.
I am still not willing to pay 15€ to choose from 4 heroes. It needs longer to get back to 6500 to 7000 MMR but it feels more rewarding good gameplay.
It would be really interesting to see if the changes to Battlegrounds will increase the revenue or not.
My biggest dissapointment wasn't even mentioned here: they prevented the monthly rewards to be golden cards. There's no point now for me to collect these anymore (without help from the rewards) or buy packs, because I only need dailys to reach a gold amount for a few dozen packs every expansion. There was a time when I spent 80€ every expansion, now it's free2play for me, more or less. Clearly a bad sign for HS and Blizz's philosophy. And I don't even care about Blitzchung, scandals and such things... I never will buy Runes btw.
I mean we all know what the problems are: too expensive, not enough new content, company scandals and lack of valid marketing of the product to potential new players. You can see the lack of effort in this last regard by simply looking at the photos and video present in the App Store. It’s 3 years old almost and just doesn’t look slick as it could. Also no real dedication to e-sports… live events would increase the popularity of the game significantly but there has been almost nothing significant, ever. League of legends is great at this and they are able to concentrate a lot of eyes, revenue and success from their esports.
I quit this game for good and I’m never coming back. That card that makes your deck 40 cards and the latest monetization changes absolutely killed the game for me. It’s just not HS anymore.
The money sink just sucks. Complexity also is not good enough to me, I love MTG so... I would love a more complex gameplay. That said I am not the average audience I guess considering I would like hearthstone move towards the way of MTG
I think I quit Hearthstone around the time Madness at the Darkmoon Faire came out, so that's about two years ago. I think the reason why I quit around that time is twofold; part of it was the increasingly random aspect of the game, it felt to me at the time that there are so many cards that could just randomly decide the outcome of the game making it a game of luck not a game of skill. The second reason was that Riot released the Legends of Runeterra (LoR) that same year and I've shifted more and more into LoR and away from Hearthstone. Eventually, I've decided to transition fully into LoR and stop Hearthstone completely. I think it would be very difficult for Hearthstone to become appealing to me again mostly because I'd prefer a very different business model for CCG. In comparison, I've started playing LoR since it's release and now I'm pretty much got 100% completion; I've spend some money from time to time on event passes and tentatively consider getting a few champion skin and board cosmetics. Under the current business model, I don't think I'll be as comfortable spending money in Hearthstone as I do in LoR; in Hearthstone, ever since the separation of Standard and Wild, it always felt like there is constant drive to keep up with the current META which felt a bit expensive to me. I mean it's either that or stay in the chaotic wild. TL;DR: IMO, Hearthstone needs to be less random, give a lot more free cards and shift its selling point to cosmetic options to be attractive to me.
Good evening, I would like you to take as a reference a Chilean card game called "Myths and legends" which knew how to reinvent itself over the years and maintain its target audience with story mechanics such as: a cemetery (of destroyed cards) exile (cards from the cemetery that cannot be reintegrated into the deck) totem (something similar to locations) but in short I would like them to be able to learn from the game that I mention because its success came more than 15 years ago. ❤❤
I have been introduced to HS during Naxx
I have been very casual then F2P of course. I had to stop because of deathrattle hunter making my experience bad.
Then I got back when mysterious challenger was the main deck. I tried myself in competitively HS too.
Then the grind burnt me out. Uninstall of course...
Then I stopped playing for a year or more then came back but with the total opposite mindset. Since then I only play to have fun. I have started to preorder to get the rest of the collection but without the grind.
I think that was the best decision (to look at the game as a fun factor not a competition)
I liked the introduction of the BG but got bored with it soon. Since the new season has started I play much more.
I loved the mercenaries at first glance as it reminds me of chess (in the aspect of you know what each minion can do)
But the grind/time needed to upgrade them... Was more than I could afford
I played a TCG and knew that having more and more cards will be beneficial to the game. Now I look at Rarran and he delivers. HS can be fun in so many ways.
Development team just need to adjust to that.
My solution would be like cancelling certain cards in my opponents deck. Algorithm would not match me with them.
Or just give us two buttons : I wanna see fun opponents or I wanna play with competitive opponents
(I know that casual is somewhat this but I always face players who try to get experienced playing with competitive decks and they always kill fun)
Thanks for the video!!
When something has "Collectable" as a feature the amount of time/money required to complete that collection has to be reasonable. Hs started out in a bad place and gets worse with every expansion. At some point this goal becomes so far away that it's not worth investing anything any more.
I think that wild should get it's own development team, as most old decks aren't usable anymore yet the audience that loves them are still here for example the original C'thun and most of the inspire cards from the grand tournament
I for one would be interested in playing like, "past standard" formats. Where the only legal cards are whatever sets where legal in say, 2017 standard. I think that'd be cool
@Reel M See replace classic with this. Rotate out sets
Personally I believe they should go back to the older model , 2 adventures and 1 expansion each year , they would loose on the short term but earn more money by bringing a pool of active players that would purchase the reasonable cheaper adventures( plus cosmetic bundles that would still sell well on a larger scale of players)
Signal flare! Continue this research!
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thank you for the vid, would be nice to see its continuation
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I couldn't remember why I stopped playing after Rise of Shadows... Life got in the way, and I must not have had much gold after all the solo content. To be fair, I remember it being fun. But after the Blitzchung situation, I just moved on from the game and found other hobbies.
I used to get legend all the time. But u stopped when they ramped up expansions to 3 times a year. I played bg's instead. But when the started making it pay to win, i became f2p. Sitting at 6k mmr and just conceding if i get a bad hero and que again.
The lost of class identity is the main reason I lost interest.
As we speak every single agro deck have tons of way to draw card while putting pressure on board ... Including class that use to have a hard time to draw card.
This is one exemple amount many other class identity that no longer exist.
To me the day constructed died was descent of dragons that power creep was so insane everything else after that was another nail in the coffin
Power Creep means the game is in a decline. Want to get more money? Just sell broken cards until people quit the game entirely.
I think any downturn in profits was exasperated by the release of Battlegrounds. BGs was a free game that became the most popular mode in HS, overtaking even Standard. I suspect that a migration of players from modes that required investment in packs to a completely free mode and a resulting decrease in pack sales has been the driving force for the aggressive monetization decisions that would come in the following years (i.e. OG Duels requirements, Mercenaries, Minisets, and now the more pay-to-win BG battlepass and Runestones).
Blizzard is ruined for me. I will never support again a company with a culture of violence, disrespect and scam. Harassments for women and employee and deafness for clients are things that cannot be forgotten and forgive. We can also talk about scam, yes. Blizzard released mercenaries with the pre-order (130€ of pre-order), and they did not, after 1 year, what they promised (adjust the excess of coins) and they also realized Diablo Immortal, which costs between 100K to 500K to upgrade one character. The thieves do this. I only want to see this company burning because I believe that they are truly evil. No gaming company has ever pushed the boundaries of the disrespect as Blizzard did. Blizzard is only money money money, disrespect and scam, money money money.
I'm still having fun with HS, i am not programming to quit
Just wait until you have to pay for super-broken cards. The power creep is getting worse.
Mini expansions should be completely FREE, now they are just another expansion in disguise.
I'm certain Ben Brode saw where this was going and immediately stepped down.
Hello ! This video was very interesting, plecase consider making the next one.
Thanks:]
Still a fan of a subscription model concept option. Get access to all cards while on subscription.
The rerelease of old 'exclusive' skins is the worst for me.
Theres 2 factors that didnt get mentioned.. Players with multiple accounts, to get Morgl or to play on different servers. And another factor would be that the whales and medium spending players finished the classic collection at some point, leading to less profit 4 sure.
Yup. That's why I moved to play wild rift and lor. Because when I spend money on them I get some pretty stuff for any amount of time and it doesn't impact the gameplay. When I pay in hs I pay to win and for a chance to play part of the game for few months. Until next expansion I have to invest few hundred to again gain access to some part of the game
I actually just recently lost interest in hearthstone. The runestone mechanic absolutely killed it for me. Just for the sake of the fact that they thought it was a good idea to implement it after all this time.
Sure maybe prices of packs are fine. But not if you have to pay in foreign currency when just cause of that it costs like 4 times more next to how much you earn. And with the runestones i thought that would be fixed
Extremely to expensive over $100 for a bundle that will give you 30% of the cards, out of the 30% probably 25% are playable
It’s the money and lack of ethics. I still hop on every now and then, since I’m so rich in the game it’s easy for me to still find fun, but I would never recommend this game to a new player. I’m only lucky I played before things got to where they are and have a collection I can use to have fun still
I just play arena and can regularly get my gold back just by getting 7 wins or more. It gives packs and dust for rewards in addition, so it is pretty easy to be free to play as long as you play well and don’t get unlucky.
After the "tough hearthstone esports moment" my tolerance for Activision/Blizzard boiled over. I was already feeling dissatisfied with the game at that point, but with all these new cards coming out, no new ways to get cards, and how Blizzard treated that tough moment with blitz just sealed the nail in the coffin for me and their franchises. Haven't played an acti/blizz game since and uninstalled all their games which I still hold nostalgia for, but not at the expense of being nickle and dimed for every minute thing, nor the more important part of human rights being ignored.
People always shit on games for being pay to win and having predatory monetization, but most of the time they just keep playing the game. Hearthstone however is one of the few games where its actually so bad that people stop playing. I myself have taken many breaks from Hearthstone, and under every big Hearthstone youtuber’s videos you will find comments like “i dont play anymore, but i still like watching your content”
I hate grinding. I spent 100$ dollars on the game, but that was the most I could give. After that it was an ugly grind of 'play 10 divine shield minions' every time I wanted to do something fun, like play a deck that doesn't have murlocs or divine shield minions.
Legends of Runeterra is better. I don't play any card games anymore, but I will say that Runeterra gave me the best value for my time. I have never felt like there was a deck I couldn't make, they give you SO MANY WILD CARDS. You don't have to be a whale or sell your soul to enjoy it.
I will make a card game of my own someday, even if its just to play with my friends, and I'm going to fix all the problems with Hearthstone, and even Runeterra too. You shall see....or maybe you won't.
And now the geniuses have added runestones into the game, as if hearthstone didn’t already have an issue with having a predatory pricing model…
They’re doing the same thing OPEC, they know gasoline is going out with the introduction of electric cars so they have 2 choices. Sell low and prolong gasoline sales or sell high and switch/invest to electricity.
It's too expensive 2 expansion and 1 adventure was perfect. They need to revamp the esports scene, and the better skilled players should be winning not the luckiest (Pavel). Losing Disguised toast and Kripp not playing arena proved very fatal
How ironic that i wtch this while playing lor, 5days after dropping hs.... and im still here an enjoynur vids
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Excellent video, and what made me truly lose interest in Hearthstone was how they implemented the battleground pass. Before battlegrounds I only played Hearthstone sparingly to do my daily quest, battlegrounds was a breath of fresh air and exactly what I was looking for in an auto battler
*Nothing is ever too big to fail.*
According to Sensor Tower, they now make 4-5m$ on mobile on months w/o an upcoming expansion. I think they still make decent money if they produce so much content but Activision has so much eaten into Blizzard's soul that it's now very hard for them to retain p(l)ayers when they're still so stingent on improving the value/money for small-medium spenders and they can't grow. I think it's likely they'll move HS devs onto other (crappy) mobile games like the new Warcraft 'game' once they saw they can make much more money for much less effort with Diablo Immortal which now makes 25-30m$/month.
Guys, I am very curious. Please make a follow up video!
Thank you so much! :]
RNG+skill to win works well (early Hearthstone and now Battlegrounds). RNG+nothing to win sucks.
Hello, i have a question about the rewards track. Would adding infinite backup slots for daily and weekly quests (only during current rewards track seasons) hurt the game? I'm thinking that this kind of decision would result in lessening the burnout that players would feel from losing their quests. Maybe knowing they have backup quests would make them come back in the game
Hello. I like this idea, but your suggestion would make the game too comfortable for the players. Blizzard has other goals. The current approach forces players to log into the game daily, or at least once every three days. This helps increase your daily activity rate. The second reason is profit. Blizzard's main source of income is the sale of resources. The fewer free resources players have, the more incentives to make purchases. This is where the complexity of supporting games as a service lies. If your game is too comfortable and friendly, you will not earn money for further support of the product.
@@HearthstoneMathematics I just wish they could give us some breathing space... I haven't been keeping up with the news for this game but i noticed that in the battlegrounds mode they added a feature similar to idea i mentioned called "banked missions" for its own version of rewards track. Is there a catch that i'm missing? Is it maybe because of the small portion of the rewards they give to f2p players or maybe because gold is superior reward as a currency that lets you buy things other than packs whereas battleground rewards give you rewards that are exlusive for this mode? Umm, what i'm trying to ask is why does that feature exist if they want players to be consistently active in their game?
To compete with current mobile games Blizzard needs to introduce Hearthstone 2:3D and it's first expansion Harem of Waifus...