Blizzard doesn’t want you to be “bogged down trying to build decks” in Hearthstone

Blizzard wants to make it easier for new Hearthstone players to start playing the game, without necessarily becoming bogged down under a barrage of daily quests and free cards. In a roundtable presentation at Gamescom, Hearthstone’s lead balance designer, Dean Ayala, said that the team are looking at “how we can better put decks into players’ hands so they can just play if they want to play.” Speaking about the beginning of a new expansion, Ayala says “right now, the baseline is that we give you three or five packs, we give you a legendary, and we say go.” After that, players not only have to deal with their own daily quests, but often the card packs they’ve purchased themselves as well. That means that there’s plenty on offer, and a good amount of it comes for free from Blizzard, but Ayala points out that “one of the barriers to entry is what to do with all of that stuff that I have.” Being showered in cards is great in terms of having resources at your fingertips, but it doesn’t necessarily make for the easiest onboarding process, which is something Blizzard are attempting to fix.