hearthstone Russian Forums Q&A: Vanish Is a HoF Candidate

[Zadina 923]

 

A Q&A took place in the Russian official forums and some interesting tidbits of information were revealed, like Vanish being a candidate for the Hall of Fame.

u/mawilek has kindly translated and summarised the most important points from this Q&A. In short, Trolden (who is also a Community Manager for Russia) requested some questions from the community and he posted the answers the day before yesterday.

Here is what you need to know:

• Vanish is a HoF candidate. That's still not final, but they are even thinking to move Vanish to the Hall of Fame before the rotation in April.

• There are no plans to move Toki, Time-Tinker or Whizbang the Wonderful back to standard after rotation. But they will continue experimenting with this kind of things.

• Zayle, Shadow Cloak's decks are to be reviewed only once after rotation and maybe in case of significant nerfs (you can find our extensive article on Zayle here)

• 26 epics in RoS was an error. They are planning to continue printing 27 epics per set in future

• Adventures: It takes about 2 weeks to create and balance Heroic mode after Normal mode is ready

• Still no information on future PVE formats, but they have huge plans for those and looking for any kind of feedback for The Dalaran Heist.

• They are probably going to keep the Dalaran Heist monetization model for future single player content. Of course, it will still be available to buy with Gold.

For those of you who know Russian, you can find the entire Q&A (which probably contains more answers) here.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Zadina said:

• They are probably going to keep the Dalaran Heist monetization model for future single player content. Of course, it will still be available to buy with Gold.

 

That's good to know. Hopefully they'll make the rewards for buying it similiar to the actual one. :)

[Zadina 923]

I'd prefer if they scrap the whole paying thing and went back to free Adventures. With past Adventures, it made sense to pay since you unlocked key cards needed to play the game. 

Ok, the Dalaran Heist was pretty big content-wise, but it hasn't proven as novel as advertised while also being repeteable and quite long. The rewards were okayish. It is only worth buying if you are *really* into single player content and completing all thing.

Even for f2p people, it has proven a massive gold sink, when we could have been saving for the next expansion (and the next Adventure *sigh*) or just buy packs from the current one.

[FanOfValeera 253]

I hate this new adventure system. Like, I don't see the point of them. It is not about rewards. As long as it is not a new set of cards, they can't give anything interesting anyways, but the system is just the same, over and over again. From Dungeon Run, it is all the same thing, with same/similar treasures mostly, and same/similar card buckets, which evokes RNG as a factor.

Do you remember when League of Explorers actually had a story? I know I do. It brought some deckbuilding challenges with what you actually had, instead of what the game thinks you should have. And the price was the same, for better rewards. Now they think they found the perfect replacement for them. Yeah, sure.

Edit: Sorry for multiple posts

Edited June 8, 2019 by FanOfValeera

[Smorod 33]

On 6/8/2019 at 11:55 AM, Zadina said:

With past Adventures, it made sense to pay since you unlocked key cards needed to play the game.

I would not want this to happen again. I like the idea that PvP and PvE are independent and each player can focus on the part they like the most.

On 6/8/2019 at 11:55 AM, Zadina said:

Ok, the Dalaran Heist was pretty big content-wise, but it hasn't proven as novel as advertised while also being repeteable and quite long.

I agree that the contents is disappointing, especially given all the fuss they made before it was released. There's only a very small number of bosses and cards which really make you feel the ambiance of Dalaran and the heist. Except for Bartender Bob, which is a good addition in my opinion, the rest is pretty similar to Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt. Just there is more of it thanks to the alternative hero powers and starting decks - which is certainly nice for PvE lovers. But to be really good, you would have to actually need these alternatives to win the run.

As a non PvE player, I enjoyed that the difficulty level was significantly lower than the previous solo adventures. In previous adventures, I did not appreciate the fact that you basically had a very low chance of winning a given run, even if you were a decent player. You basically had to avoid poor treasures and hard bosses, and have a fair amount of luck in several games. None of that was in your power, so completing the adventure was essentially about trying a sufficient number of times to have the stars aligned in your favor. I prefer when I have more control and I lose by my own errors. Dalaran Heist made things overall easier, probably too easy on average, without addressing the large part played by random.

I really would like to see a solo adventure that tells a story within the games themselves, not just a written or spoken sentence between games. I also would like to see more variety. They had something really nice with the Puzzle Lab, why not sprinkle some of that within regular adventures? Moving on a map that actually represents the place where the action happens, and actually have to find the right path to whatever we came for? Getting to choose which boss to attack next? Possibilities are many. They got the "solo" part of "solo adventures" right, but what about the "adventure" part?

On 6/8/2019 at 11:55 AM, Zadina said:

Even for f2p people, it has proven a massive gold sink, when we could have been saving for the next expansion (and the next Adventure *sigh*) or just buy packs from the current one.

I don't think free-to-play people are a target for solo contents in the first place. The whole point of having free-to-play people is to always have the critical mass of PvP opponents available for paying players. There is also no media visibility of solo contents, as tournaments are all about PvP, not PvE, so it isn't how you attract new paying players. For games where PvE requires cooperation, free-to-play is also important to get the critical mass of PvE partners, but that's not the case in Hearthstone. I believe that giving up solo contents for free would just be a net loss of income for Blizzard.

I agree that paying the Dalaran Heist chapters with in-game gold is prohibitively expensive. I did not do it and I don't think a lot of people will do it. If I was a PvE lover then I would buy it with real money. That being said, I appreciate that the possibility exists, if this is how some players prefer to spend their in-game gold.

[Smorod 33]

Anyone knows why they think Vanish has become a problem? I agree it is a potentially devastating card, but in practice, I don't think it sees much play except in Pogo Rogue. And while Pogo Rogue is being played more since the cost of Pogo-Hopper was reduced, it's still not a top meta deck.

Are they maybe anticipating a bad interaction with a card to be released in the next expansion?

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, Smorod said:

 

I agree that the contents is disappointing, especially given all the fuss they made before it was released.

That is about the sum of everything Blizzard has become.

No matter the game, they just have a HUGE mouth. They talk big. About how awesome everything they do will be.

No matter if it is the Tristram Event, the last Blizzcon, or  the Dalaran Heist.

It is just talk and as soon as you take a closer look it is very disappointing. In other games stuff like this is done by the community. (Steam-Workshop). Just two differences: The community-made content is for free. And better. Much better.

Think about awesome maps like DOTA. Full conversions like Endereal. Mods like "The Long War".
Or games like Doki Doki Literature Club. Gone Home. This War of Mine. Banner Saga.
All of those are awesome games, with CONTENT. Not just the whole big of nothing. And you even have to pay less for them!

Blizzard is like a boxer who has become old. He is all mouth. Still takes big. How strong he is. How awesome.

But that was 20 years ago. Today every mediocre boxer would beat the trash out of him.

As a boxer he is finished. He just hasn't realized it yet.

 

Blizzard is the same, they just can't produce anything with great quality anymore. They can't tell a story any more, they can't create characters that are even remotely interesting. I just hope they will never release WC 4 or SC 3 or Diablo 4. Please don't tarnish the great games in those franchises by making more trash. Do mobile versions, that's fine. Big cash-grab, no story, that suits you quite well.

[Seksi 208]

You still have a ton of community-produced content in many Blizzard games, such as the RTS games (Starcraft BW and 2, Warcraft 3) and even in Overwatch (workshop) recently, maybe in the future we'll have new tools at our disposal for Hearthstone and even WoW, one man can dream ? 

[Zadina 923]

@Smorod

I am not saying I approve of the first Adventures' business model. I just think that it made at least some sort of sense, since you paid, you got pve content and cards that you would use in the game.

Now, you get PvE content, some packs and some card backs &  Zayle, whereas literally last year you got PvE content + packs (essentially the same deal) for free.

And for your last two paragraphs, there was actually visibility for this Adventure, since they hosted a tournament with some famous streamers. If I remember correctly, they did that for the Rumble Run as well.

I am a PvE-loving completionist and also a f2p player - I might be the minority, sure, but I spent 2 months (half an expansion cycle) saving for it. My country isn't exactly rich, so some of my friends that I know either didn't bother buying the Adventure or they consulted me first and I literally told them not to buy it (having bought it with Gold myself). I really hope it's the only Adventure they do this year, so I can actually get to complete it and also not have to go through the process of saving and not spending on packs again.

Anyway, regardless of what I've said, what bothers me the most is that they should have just said "you know guys, we kinda need the money to keep producing this content" instead of just doing the whole marketing thing "this Adventure is the bestest ever, complete revamp of the single-playert content yayyyy".

I am probably going to do an article on the Dalaran Heist this weekend. If anyone else would like to contribute their opinion on it, it would be really helpful.