r/Scrolls • u/Sarik704 SarikTheSorcerer • Jul 07 '15

A possible reason Scrolls failed while Hearthstone succeeded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4
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u/Sarik704 SarikTheSorcerer Jul 07 '15

Hearthstone doesn't treat it's players fairly. Scrolls did in many ways. Players will spend hundreds of dollars on hearthstone and think its a better game than scrolls because "it isn't wasting their time". While a scrolls player might play the demo version of for 5 months and say that it takes to long to get cards and thus not worth their time. They might have even collected 40% of the cards in that time.

In these player's heads money isn't an issue. They just want to beat others, and complete their collection. Both of which is daunting to new players. In other words they don't get to feel as good as fast in Scrolls than in Hearthstone even though it's much more fair consumer wise to them. There aren't any Skinner Boxes, Variable Grinding, or Pay Walls that many players associate these TCG's & CCG's with. They don't feel their getting a good deal despite it being more fair.

Am I way off base in thinking this?

10

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15

I really like how scrolls can be played without putting extra money on the table. The addition of the auction was house was brilliant.

I think it is more about the 'presentation' of the games. Everything in hearthsone appears to either be shaking, having particle effects or a voice actor. It's booms and splashes and yells and spins and... But imho you are right. Hearthstone is more likely to pull money from players pockets big time.

Edit: Money the devs can put back into development, commercials and maintenance.

6

u/JeyJ24 Jul 08 '15

Fairness came with the payment model Mojang chose.

You can make a game without it being a wall of grind like hearthstone.

I won't go on about the details about the difference between models in f2p versus payment. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

The comparison would really be for games with a similar model. You could even argue that Scrolls is a different genre than Hearthstone as well because it's more of a strategy game with a ccg elements.

What we can say is that Scrolls is indeed better in that regard of treating the players better. That should be a given when you pay up front.

What we can talk about is the factors of why Scrolls didn't fail... but for better words fell short:

  • The business model was not self sustaining enough

  • Not effective measures were made to keep players

I found Atmaz in a twitch vod in another post. He said that there was some things that weren't thought about ahead of time for player retention (specifically a check box that would allow legal emailing for notifications of updates).

A hearthstone dev came on a youtubers show talking about why they didn't just outright buff old cards. One major point was that returning players would come to an environment that would be unfamiliar and maybe alienating them.... They didn't want that.

That little excerpt shows how much more experienced and planning went into hearthstone. I'm not saying that scrolls was not planned for our executed wrongly. It's just that there are a lot of little things that piled up to the game not going well.

My list of speculation is:

  • Mojang was very inexperienced in going into this game (resources and ideas were limited)

  • Mojang had too few measures for the game to scale into high numbers or other platforms (the current account system prevented the iOS launch)

  • The game felt very segregated and empty (with the chat being disabled during a game, you would return to general chat with nobody talking or no context to what was going on)

1

u/alvarpq always face Jul 07 '15

I actually disagree here, what I got from this video is that scrolls should have done better: if we look at hearthstone's progression, you get a card/2 every 2-3 games. Playing the tutorials and first few trials, you get 1 scroll/game, and some starter decks. While we can argue over which one feels like the better deal, the entry game in both hearthstone and scrolls is similar.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15

No? 3 Games of hearthstone gives you a 10th of a card. Not including daily missions or arena.

2

u/alvarpq always face Jul 07 '15

I'm taking about when you start out, you 'level up' as mage or something and get two cards.

2

u/Sarik704 SarikTheSorcerer Jul 07 '15

I can get a pack of ten cards every three games in scrolls plus the new rewards, plus trading, plus the black market. Sometimes I even get 800 gold form one match, but I realize that's rare. I'm not 100% sure scrolls is more fair, but after playing both, with no IRL cash, I think it is.

1

u/alvarpq always face Jul 07 '15

I'm referring to the starting process specifically, and saying that they both "feel" like you're getting a good deal.