I’ve been a interested observer of Hearthstone for a good while now. I consider the card-game to be one of the company’s best chances of hitting huge revenue with its micro transaction architecture and cross-platform play.

But as the game goes on, it seems that with each expansion that Activision-Blizzard choose to release for their casual-friendly card game, they drive further from two of their core audiences.

As far as I see it there are three key Hearthstone players:

The Athlete

Sitting alongside The Rich and Powerful, the Athlete is one concerned with the balance of the game towards competitive play. Reducing the power of RNJesus[1]by eliminating chance as much as possible; balancing cards, decks and classes to be equal; and favouring new features and depth over new cards. The Casual

The player more concerned with ‘playing for fun’ more than ‘playing to win’, The Casual is my theoretical core of Hearthstone’s audience. Those that are not on /r/hearthstone every day (or even know what it is). Those who have only bought one or two of the adventure packs (or none!). Those that play a bit of ranked or a bit of arena but generally are just happy to win and not worried about having the best mana ramp or playing the best meta classes. The Rich and Powerful

The slim percentage of players generating all the revenue[2]. The Rich and Powerful keep Blizzard in business by picking up the slack of The Casuals. They buy every adventure pack the moment it comes out, they pick up card packs in sets of 40, they disenchant legendaries because they need the dust to craft the ones the RNG is not providing them.

There are some subsets of the above: the streamers (those that are rich either through streaming or for streaming), the celebrities (those with an interest in the athletics of it, but are not playing at that level), the casual-hardcore (those that are /r/hearthstone subscribers but don’t tend to spend any money). But I believe I have the majority.

Over the course of Hearthstone’s release and its recent expansions, it seems that the playerbase is shifting in their seats. I would consider myself the casual-hardcore, I have bought some of the expansions, but I’ve never paid for packs and from playing the game casually from month to month, watching streamers and tournaments, and reading /r/hearthstone, I’m seeing an environment that is increasingly hostile to new players and casual gamers.

The core problem stems from Hearthstone’s reward mechanic. The only way a player is rewarded at any time in Hearthstone is for winning, or accomplishing something that is more-often-than-not winning. Quests, Hearthstone’s biggest free gold producer for the casual player, are usually winning a set number of games with a combination of classes [3]. Very occasionally are they ‘Play 30 minions’ or ‘Deal 100 damage total to players’ that don’t actually require the player to win the game. The other is through the repeatable 10g for three wins mechanic, which can happen in any game mode, but still requires the player to win.

Who of all people requires this ‘free gold’ more than anyone else? The Casual.

And yet winning is becoming more and more difficult by the day for this kind of player. Matchmaking consistently pits newbies with common cards against so called ‘portrait-farmers’, experienced players with powerful decks of legendary cards in unwinnable contests. Although this doesn’t happen every game, it is rare to be put against a player of your own standing.

Originally with 302 cards, this didn’t seem like too much of a problem. “Oh”, your Casual mind would think, “he has a Leeroy Jenkins”, as you lose, “oh well, I’ll play a few more, open a few packs and maybe get it”. Now, however, not only are cards like Dr. Boom, Loatheb and Sludge Belcher considered essential, but they are behind ridiculous paywalls. Dr. Boom is one of 20 legendaries from the Goblins vs Gnomes expansion, and Sludge Belcher is behind 700g of Naxxramas Wings.

The bar for entry is raised with every exciting expansion, and though the game may seem to gain with every new release, in reality it is gradually losing. Imagine, as a new player, without the 25500 gold saved to get a good attempt at completing the latest expansions[4]. What is your introduction to the game going to look like? It’s like a brick wall with a coin-slot.

There’s even gentle power-creep in the latest TGT expansion. As Blizzard attempts to drive interest in their digital CCG, they run up against the folly of all physical card games. This comment sums up their position exactly. Ice Rager is directly better than Magma Rager as Evil Heckler is a directly better version than Booty Bay Bodyguard. There are dozens of other examples of power creep, including the famous Mysterious Challenger that brought about an entire meta, but these examples are exactly the same in cost and playstyle. Ben Brode addressed this by saying the more powerful cards are forms of ‘progression’, purely because they are behind a paywall. This game was always pay to win, at least toan extent, but is this an answer that can be deemed acceptable? We are two expansions in, imagine this world in a year’s time.

I believe the only way to solve this problem is to take a hard look at Hearthstone’s mechanics, gameplay and UI in a aim to totally renovate the game. Hearthstone is a victim of its own success, driven through it’s simplicity, now truthfully too simple to diversity without linear power creep and flat RNG ‘abilities’ like Joust[5].

Blizzard need to, at the very least, drastically improve the methods that players have to earn in-game currency and the ways they can enjoy the game.

Further than this the game could benefit from a holistic rethink as to how a collectable card game with a freemium model — which can only exist in an online environment — can progress into the future without losing the core of the players that make the game ‘freemium’. Else, if all the free players are driven off, what was the point of the freemium model in the first place?

Given the painfully slow pace of Hearthstone development[6], whether either of these things will happen at all is up for debate. Whether they will happen in the next crucial 12 months is even less likely.

Originally published with footnotes on my blog at tk.gg