Veteran Players Experience – How Important Are New Goals And Incentives?

Ever since Hearthstone’s official launch, so-called “new players experience” was one of the hottest topics to discuss. Today, over 4 years later, you could say the same thing – the older the game gets, the more expansions launch, the more complex mechanics get printed, the harder it is for new players to get into Hearthstone. It’s a serious concern that Blizzard has tried to address multiple times – sometimes better, sometimes worse. One of the earliest ways to improve new players experience was introducing Tavern Brawls. Not only do a lot of them not require a card collection, but the weekly free pack is a nice bonus. Despite going for the three expansions per year model (instead of two expansions and an adventure), it looks like the new players experience has somewhat improved recently – guaranteed Legendary in the first 10 packs and no Legendary duplicates, one random Legendary for free every expansion, more and better deals on packs, worthwhile events (such as the current Taverns of Time), free PvE content etc.

Recently, devs have stated that they want to work even more on that, now from a gameplay point of view, by introducing more ranks before R25, which are accessible only to new players – once you get out from there you can never go back. (Source) It would would mean that new players no longer have to fight against already established meta decks, which are present even below Rank 20. And that’s great. Even though I was long past the “new player” phase before most of you had even heard about the game, new players experience is important to everyone. Without the influx of fresh blood, the player base is going to shrink, and the game would eventually die. However, that’s not the only way a playerbase can shrink. On the other side of the players spectrum, there are old, veteran players, that simply stop playing, because they get bored with the game. Yet, despite the fact that it would seem almost as important to keep them playing, no one is really discussing the “veteran players experience”, nor Blizzard is doing much to cater for that part of their player base.

If you read the source I’ve linked above, you will also notice another answer. “Usually when we add new features or rewards we like to make something that can be obtained by 10% or more of our players.” Which shows their, in my opinion a flawed, design philosophy – they don’t want to cater to the minorities, and really veteran players ARE minority. For now.

This article was inspired by Ben Hearthstone on Twitter. Thank you for the idea!

Are Veteran Players Important?

I thought that this was not a question that is even worth answering, but I was wrong. After talking with some of the people I know, a few of them, mostly new players, said that there is no point in adding more content for veteran players. After all, veteran players have lots of experience, big collection and can just enjoy the game by playing different decks. And I have to say that there is some truth in that sentiment, at least from a new player’s perspective. When you struggle to craft your first fully playable meta deck and someone who is playing the game for 4 years says “man, why won’t Blizzard release more content for me”, it seems like you have a moral high ground to demand more. Still, not everything is black or white. Better experience for old players doesn’t have to mean cutting down content for those who have just started playing. On the contrary, adding more goals for older players can also be great for new-ish players!

Let’s start with stating the obvious concept that some players still doesn’t understand. Playing the game for the sake of playing the game is not always fun (remember that fun is subjective, so your idea of “fun” might not apply to someone else). I know that it sounds weird, but most of the players like to have some sort of goal, something they can look forward. Chasing that goal is often more fun than actually getting there. And to be fair, there aren’t many of those goals in Hearthstone. When it comes to the competitive part of the game, your target might be hitting Legend or 12 wins in Arena. Oh, and finishing the PvE encounters, but after Adventures are gone, the only challenging one is beating The Lich King with all 9 classes (which is actually a nice example of a cool achievement for veteran players with a worthwhile reward).

But what about players who have already done it, sometimes multiple times, or those who just aren’t good enough or don’t have enough time? Well, the only other incentive for veteran players are golden Hero portraits that you get for winning 500 ranked games. As cool as they are, that’s only one thing to work towards, not to mention that most veteran players have already got them, at least the ones they’re interested in (for example, I have ~300 more wins to go on Shaman, and I won’t likely get it any time soon, since it’s my least favorite class). And what next? What other goal can they work towards? Well, to be honest, there is none. While technically they could work towards a full collection, that’s something you get by dropping thousands of dollars on the game, not by playing the game for a long time. Full Classic collection is attainable, but the incentive is silly – you get 100 Gold for completing your Classic collection. That’s it. But why is it important to cater for the veteran players’ needs if they’re minority? There are a few of reasons, actually.

• Even if veteran players are only a minority, that’s still hundreds of thousands of players, often paying customers. And that group will only get bigger as the game gets older. Old games will attract less and less new players with time, and it’s important to prevent the player base from leaking on the other end.
• New players will be veteran players at some point (unless they quit earlier, of course). I can’t stress how many times I didn’t start playing a game, or I quit it quickly, just because I read that once you hit the level cap / get to the late game / whatever, there isn’t much to do. Why would I spend so much time and/or resources to get through the “new player” and “experienced player” phase if the final phase isn’t satisfying? More “late game” activities gives new players a reason to stick with the game longer.
• Promoting loyalty is important. Veteran players are often your most die-hard fans. Even from a PR perspective, someone who was supporting you for years quitting the game because you ignored them, didn’t care about their experience etc. doesn’t really look good, and definitely does not advertise your game.
• It’s not even difficult, nor it is something you have to do all the time. For example, even something as simple as having another reward for 1000 ranked wins with a certain class would already make a lot of players happy. Add a few more late game incentives and they will last for years to come. By the time a significant part of your player base gets all of them, you will figure out new things.

So why don’t they do it? The only explanation I’ve found so far is the one I’ve posted above. They don’t want to do something that can’t be obtained by less than 10% of the players. However, that’s just a silly design philosophy. It’s like deliberately punishing players for being good or for playing the game for long time, and it should be the opposite. Maybe they should also remove the Legendary card back, since it can’t be obtained by most of the players? I don’t see any players who can’t get to Legend being salty about not having that card back. On the contrary, for a lot of players it was the incentive to try harder and finally hit Legend for the first (and usually the only) time. I know lots of people who pushed to Legend once for the card back and then just didn’t care, because there was no reason to do it anymore.

Since we’ve already established that it really wouldn’t hurt anyone if veteran players have gotten more goals to work towards, let’s take a closer look at what those goals might be and what rewards veteran players could be getting. And I’ll repeat it to make sure that everything is clear – these things should NOT come at the cost of new players experience, which is still far from perfect. And the rewards for veteran players should be cosmetic only, to not widen the already existing gap between the new and old players.

New Kinds of Cosmetic Rewards

Before I even start talking about new goals for veteran players, I absolutely need to address this issue first. What’s the point of having more goals if all you’re going to get is card back number 127 that you’re never going to use anyway? Card backs are always the go-to cosmetic rewards and it got dull a long time ago. When you’re a new player, with only basic card back to work with, every new one you get feels exciting. But once you get 10 of them, then a few dozens of them, they don’t really feel rewarding anymore. I’ve been using mine since Kobolds & Catacombs (the Candle King one), but before that, I’ve used the same card back for over 2 years. I honestly even forgot that I can change it. It’s cool that we have so many options, and the monthly card back feels rewarding (especially since veteran players can wear some old card backs as a token of their experience), but is it really the only cosmetic reward Team 5 can come up with? Even disregarding the veteran players experience, Hearthstone needs more types of cosmetics. And here are some ideas – some of them are easier and more obvious, others would be hard to implement, but they would all feel better than yet another card back:

Portraits – Yes, I do know that Hearthstone has no portraits right now, but my point is that it could be changed. Other Blizzard games have portraits and picking a cool one is a nice way to show off. I probably pay more attention to my opponent’s name/rank than his card back ,to be honest. If having both rank & portrait is too much, I think that portrait could just replace the rank symbol. Those are pointless anyway, they just show some card arts in the back… which is basically the same thing portraits would be doing. The rank number would be left, obviously, but they could show it on the portrait you choose instead. Legend players could be distinguished by let’s say a glowing orange border. Pretty much everyone has their favorite card art, and they could show it off if it was turned into a portrait.

Rank Borders – If you weren’t a fan of the portraits idea, because you thought that it would be too clunky (to display both portrait & rank) or too confusing (to replace ranks with portraits), borders/frames should be a solid alternative. Right now, rank borders change color the higher you get, but they basically all look the same (only R25-20 ranks look differently, funnily enough). What if you could get some ways to adjust that – new colors, textures, or maybe you could add some extra elements, like small ornaments. On top of that, it could also add a frame around your nick name, instead of the standard shade we have right now. It would be a nice touch.

Hero Portrait Borders – Since we’re talking about borders, another way to implement them would be adding new Hero portrait borders. Right now we have two – the standard one and the golden one. That’s it. But there could be more. It’s probably the best way to reward people for getting past 500 ranked wins. It wouldn’t devalue the golden portrait, since it would still be there, but it would add something “extra” for people who go well beyond 500 wins. For example, a diamond border for hitting 1000 wins with a certain class. Maybe even something for getting to 1500 or 2000 – I know that some people are already there, and with time, only more players will get to those seemingly absurdly high amount of ranked wins.

Titles – One of my favorite parts of doing achievements in WoW was earning unique titles, and this is something that would totally fit into Hearthstone. It would be best when tied to the achievements system, just like in WoW, but I’ll discuss that part below. In general, titles are a fun way to reward players. They stand out, you can pick the one you like to show off, and they aren’t really clunky, not to mention that they don’t require much extra work. After all, you don’t need any new assets, you just add title to your name (or below it, in the place where the Class is currently displayed). For example, you could get “The Legendary” title for, well, getting to Legend (or getting to it multiple times, something I’m also talking about below). But outside of the few obvious ones that would specifically fit into Hearthstone, you don’t even have to come up with new stuff – WoW has lots of titles they could already use, just tie them to some difficult task and that’s it.

Game Board Customization – This would be such an interesting feature. Hearthstone is known for its cool, interactive game boards – even if you aren’t really into clicking random stuff, for some people growing a boot or blowing up the volcano every time they can is a sort of ritual. But what if you could go one step further and customize your own side of the board? I’m not talking about a complete renovation, of course, but rather having a cosmetic reward that lets you e.g. put an extra, clickable object. To not mess up with the themes, each of the board could have separate cosmetics. Since they’re releasing one every 4 months, it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to add a few extra clickables, unlocked as the cosmetic rewards (you would be able to pick one at a time, on top of the ones that are already on the board).

Custom Emotes – This one would probably be too difficult to implement, but there’s no harm in mentioning it. It would be pretty cool to have some custom emotes available. In the best case scenario, each Hero could have let’s say up to 10 emotes, and you could choose which 6 you want to have “equipped” at a time. You don’t like that “Threaten” emote? Or maybe you want your “Sorry” back? You could unlock extra Emote for let’s say Gul’dan and then equip it. It definitely wouldn’t be a problem when recording voice lines for new Heroes. After all, each Hero has 30+ voice lines, so recording a few extra ones shouldn’t be a big difference. The difficulty here, however, would be recording all of the extra voice lines for the already existing heroes. It is possible, like they added new mirror matchup emotes recently, but getting a few extra emotes on each Hero to start with might be too big of an investment for a cosmetic feature.

And more. Those are just some ideas, give me a few hours and I will come up with ten more. However, coming up with them is not a problem – implementing them is. I’m pretty sad, because Hearthstone has huge cosmetic potential, yet all they’re doing are card backs. A lot of the stuff I’ve mentioned above could obviously be sold in the store too. Like, you could be able to unlock some portraits through achievements, but others might be sold for $2.99 (or whatever price they see fit).

Now that we know how the extra cosmetics could look like, let’s think about the other important part – what activities could reward them?

Goals, Achievements, Activities

And finally, the main point of this article. Because what’s the reason of adding more cosmetics if there are no ways to get them? Just remember that when I’ll be talking about rewards below, I don’t mean card packs / individual cards / whatever. I mean cosmetics only. Like I’ve said before, widening an already existing gap between new and old players is pointless. New players should be rewarded with the playable stuff, while the old ones (who most of the time already have a solid collection) should get cosmetics. Simple. And here are some of the activities that veteran players could work towards:

More Rewards For Ranked Wins – This one is very simple. Winning ranked games before you hit 500 wins on one of your Heroes feels extra good over time – you just see the slow progress and know that soon you will be able to get that golden Hero. But after that? For people who just want to play the game, it doesn’t matter. But for achievers, or cosmetic-lovers, it just feels bad to see your wins increase without anything extra to get. It’s that feeling that the wins on your favorite Hero are “wasted” after you get past 500. Why not give extra incentives and reward players for getting to 1000, 1500 or even 2000 wins? Yes, most players wouldn’t be able to get there, but you can pretty much say the same thing about 500 wins in the first place. Most of the casual players aren’t getting to 500 ranked wins and I don’t see anyone making a fuss over it.

Achievements System – That’s something I was hoping for a long, long time. Hearthstone actually has sort of an achievement system – hidden, one-time Quests that give you rewards after you meet a certain goal. For example, you get something for winning 1000 ranked games, you get something for completing a full Classic collection etc. However, not only is there only a few of them, but they’re also boring and don’t give you anything cool, just some gold and that’s it. What I would like to see instead is a full-fledged achievement system. This is actually something that might benefit new players too. For example, you could have a lot of simple achievements – like “deal 1000 damage”, “play 200 minions” etc. and a small reward attached to it, like a Classic card pack or 100 gold. It would make the initial progress much better.

Then, on top of those “simple” stuff, there might be achievements aimed at veteran players. Goals that are more difficult to get than just playing a few matches. For example – loyalty achievement. “Played the game for a year/two years/three years” etc. It’s something everyone will eventually get, but why not give some sort of cool cosmetic to show off that you’re playing Hearthstone for a long time? Another idea would be adding some tasks, maybe even things that you have to specifically build your deck around. For example “Have 100 points of Armor”, “Deal 30 or more damage in a single turn”, “Stay at less than 5 health for 5 turns in a row and win that match” or “Mill 10 cards from your opponent’s deck in a single game”. Of course, you would only be able to finish achievements on the ladder, so no easy cosmetics from friendly matches. Trying to get those achievements would be very interesting – on top of having to pick the right deck, or even build it yourself, you would need to adapt your strategy and sometimes play it for hours or even days to succeed. On the other hand, those achievements wouldn’t be “exclusive” to veteran players – a rather new player would also be able to finish them after trying really hard.

More achievements could be added with each new expansion. You know, difficult tasks that would be related to the new content or mechanics in some way. Just a couple of achievements per expansion might give older players enough goals to work towards and make the game way, WAY more fun in the long run. By the time they finish those, a new expansion will be coming out, with even more achievements.

Monthly Challenges – Making an entire achievement system from the scratch would not be an easy task, so I came up with this idea. It would be easier to implement and might be a good start. Instead of having different difficult achievements, at the start of each month, players might get a single, difficult “task” to finish. It’s like a special Quest (by that time I hope that they revamp the UI and add a separate section for the Event/Special Quests…) that you get at the start of each month, after opening your monthly chest. It would be similar to the harder achievements I’ve listed above, but you’d have a time limit to finish it – a month. At the start of next month, it disappears (if you haven’t finished it) and you get another one.

Those would, again, only give you cosmetics, so new players wouldn’t feel “forced” to do them (but by all means, they could also try). When it comes to examples, well, imagine this scenario. After you open your chest, you get an extra pop-up – “Monthly Challenge – I’m Still Standing”. “Deal 30 damage to your Hero (and survive)”. Difficult? Definitely. But possible to do. You’d probably need to build a specific Warlock deck with lots of self-damage and healing. Wild format would work best for this kind of stuff, but it would also be possible in Standard, since there are lots of self-damage and healing cards.

Those challenges should basically be stuff that you pretty much can’t complete while just playing the game – they wouldn’t really be “challenging” then, right? And I probably don’t even have to mention that you could only complete those on the ladder. They still wouldn’t be as good as an entire achievement system, but it would be a nice start. Players would have an extra goal to work towards each month.

I initially thought that weekly challenges might be better, but monthly would be fine I guess. In case of weekly, they would need to have a lower difficulty because of a lower time limit (which would remove a part of the challenge), it would be much easier to miss them, it would be difficult to come up with 52 challenges per year (as opposed to 12), not to mention that it might also be hard to pump out cosmetic rewards at that rate too.

Bring back Heroic PvE – While I do understand that not every player likes PvE (for example, I don’t), this is a pretty easy way to bring more challenging content without having to invest a lot of extra resources. Even though Blizzard has decided to keep the PvE content alive after getting rid of adventures, one of the most fun experiences I had with Naxx, BRM or Karazhan were Heroic encounters. I mean, yes, they were bloody frustrating, but finally coming up with the right deck, getting lucky with your draws and beating them felt rewarding.

Closest thing we had to Heroic PvE was the Lich King encounter from Knights of the Frozen Throne’s “mini-adventure”. While it wasn’t technically a Heroic encounter, finishing it with every single class was rather difficult. The only thing I dislike is that Murloc decks just worked too well for too many of the classes, which decreased the overall difficulty level. I still found some of the mechanics (like the Hunter’s or Paladin’s) really interesting.

What I don’t understand, though, is why Dungeon Run or Monster Hunt had no Heroic mode. Because to be honest, they were both easy, especially Monster Hunt, which was also much shorter (since you didn’t have 9 classes to win with). A Heroic mode which ups the difficulty, and gives you extra reward when you finish everything would be a nice touch. While I liked both of those PvE modes, I feel like they lacked replayability. After finishing them with every Hero, I didn’t feel like coming back to play them again. I know, I know – they can be played for fun, not for the rewards, but I, just like many other players, find playing more fun if there is a reward waiting at the end, even if it’s just a stupid cosmetic to show off. Heroic mode would give more reasons to go back to it, at least for people who like that sort of thing.

Incentive to Reach Legend More Than Once – This is actually something that I’d personally like to see. You get a nice reward for reaching Legend the first time – one of the most sought after card backs. That’s cool. But after that, what kind of reward you get for your long hours of grinding? One more Golden Common compared to Rank 5. That’s 50 Arcane Dust more, which is pretty much negligible.

What I would love to see is some kind of reward for getting to Legend multiple times, to really show your long-term dedication. Again, cosmetic stuff. This could be a part of the achievements, of course, but I wanted to highlight this part, since I see questions such as “is there even a point in getting to Legend more than once?” very often. For example, getting another cool, cosmetic reward for hitting Legend (either in Standard or Wild) 5 times, 10 times or 20 times would all be very cool. Legend card back was a cool way to show off back when the ranked system was created, but right now, a massive part of the player base boasts it. This would be a nice way for the best, veteran players to show off, as well as another goal those who didn’t see a reason to hit Legend more than once could work towards.

Closing

To answer the initial question – I feel like adding more goals and rewards to improve the veteran players experience is very important. While everyone talks about new players, people who play Hearthstone for 3 or 4 years are often ignored. Yes, being able to play lots of different decks, not struggling every expansion etc. is always fun, but I feel like this experience could still be so much better without negatively impacting anyone else.

Despite how much I like this game, two or three months after the expansion’s launch, I’m simply bored. Sometimes I don’t even feel like logging in to finish my Quests. After hitting Legend for 50th time in a row, I really have nothing else to do, no other goals to work towards. And I know a lot of players who feel the same. Adding just a few extra incentives to play the game, grind wins or even just do some wacky stuff would make my experience so much better.

Think about the veterans, kids. Right now you might be saying “what the hell is he talking about, he can play anything and he still complains”. But you will once be in that spot too, with lots of cards in your collection, equipped Legend card back, 12 wins Arena key… and nothing else to do.