Dean "Iksar" Ayala talked a bit more about the new Hearthstone progression system this afternoon on Reddit.
- Rewards will be removed from quests.
- Experience earned from quests will be more rewarding than it is now.
- You should not earn less gold or non-gold rewards in the new system.
- The same amount of gold earnings means you can still buy the same number of packs on day 1 of an expansion.
- The intent of the new reward system is to be an upside for all players.
This is the latest information we have on Hearthstone's upcoming Battle Pass, which was last addressed almost two weeks ago by Hearthstone's Game Director, Ben Lee
Quote From Dean Ayala Assuming you play the same amount and have the same quest completion rate, you shouldn't earn less gold or non-gold in the new system. In nearly all circumstances you should be earning slightly more gold and more non-gold (packs, etc).
Our plan is to remove rewards from quests, though the experience you earn per quest on average will net you as much or more rewards as quests give you now.
Something that has come up a lot is the idea that you will no longer be able to obtain the packs you want on day 1, and instead will get a 'drip feed' of packs over the expansion. While you will receive rewards as the expansion goes on, the gold you earn per expansion should remain relatively flat from what you earn now. This should make your ability to buy packs on day 1 similar to what you get now, but with more non-gold rewards added on top.
Our intent with the system is for it to be upside for all players. We've done many checks on different player segments to try and make sure that is the case no matter how you play. Despite all this, we're making XP per level and XP bonuses as tuning knobs in case our predictions were incorrect. We can push legendary quests or give out additional rewards during events as well.
[Source: Countless hours spent staring at an excel sheet trying to get this right.]
You mention that gold gain shouldn't decrease; I will take your word for it since our calculations are probably not taking into account the full picture, as no one here has actually tested the system. I am curious of one thing - the Battle Pass seems very much tuned for Standard; with the lack of more 'immediate' gold gain quests provided, will this affect players' ability to consistently buy Wild packs if they would choose to forfeit grinding the latest expansion?
Quests give you experience, which helps you level up. Leveling up gives you rewards, most of which is gold. Gold gains should be roughly the same amount of 'immediate' in the new system as in the old system. (Source)
Seems more like a big upside for NEW players, while existing players used to ripping 50+ packs on day one of a new Expansion will have to wait ~4 months to get the same rewards
No, the amount of packs you will be able to open on day 1 shouldn't change much because your gold income shouldn't change much. (Source)
I don't want packs instead of gold, i want the same gold (actually more, but at least the same) as before, and then i decide if i want the new packs or to open some frozen throne packs to flesh out some commons and rares. Or use it for arena, battleground perks, adventures or whatever suit my fancy.
But i want to decide, not you. If i want to save 100 packs worth of gold for a big opening day 1 of the new expansion, i should be able to just like i did before.
And i want the battleground perks be purchasable f2p.
Great, we also don't want you to earn packs instead of gold. As a result, you will still earn lots of gold you can choose to do whatever you want with. (Source)
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Comments
I like the direction but I would love to see few more changes, just to show gratitude from Blizzard to players.
The Battle Pass is being introduced to make money, make no bones about it. The explanation following the news of the BS was not good and so they have come out with this. The BS may help but some part of the community will be upset and will see a down size of the player base. What is being taken away is choice about how you spend your gold now. The battle pass takes that away in its present format.
Why? You still get the same ammount of gold and they are not planing to increase the pack prices.
"Gold gains should be roughly the same amount of 'immediate' in the new system as in the old system."
"Great, we also don't want you to earn packs instead of gold. As a result, you will still earn lots of gold you can choose to do whatever you want with."
Overall it's an improvement that encourages more play from players, since you now have levels to reach in the pass, not dailies you can just hoard and re-roll to play out in the most efficient manner (should you so choose). It will bother some, since no one is ever happy in the HS community without another being offended/infuriated/disappointed/etc., but overall this is going to reward players that are on 4-7 days a week.
I'm only going off the principle, and of course the reality will be the real test, but in theory this is going to work out great for the vast majority of people who really care (and - most important to Blizzard - those who put money into the game).
They've already set up a far more welcoming atmosphere for F2P players, so I expect they won't shoot themselves in the foot for the whales who spend $200+ in an expansion, since they'd lose the middle base of pre-order only players or those who make infrequent purchases that add up to about a standard pre-order cost per expansion. I tend to buy a single pre-order per expansion, with the rare bundle purchase if the value is great enough to me, and I imagine I'm not in a particularly small group of players, so we have every right to expect a good experience here.
Anything will be more rewarding than today's progression tbf
We'll see. The main thing is that he said specifically the gold income shouldn't change much. If that is to be true, that excel spreadsheet we saw has to be much more generous with gold in its final version.
Also, in current quest system you can switch all those classic packs (which pop up pretty often for me, especially before a new expansion) and 50g ones to gain gold at significantly better rate. Don't forget those random 80g from friends, which for me is not too small of amount (I add frequently, and also share mine randomly). I really wonder if they are taking all those variables into account for the new system, and not just averaging random daily quests.
I had a lot of questions about battle pass, but from the information we get, i feel a lot more reassured that it's not going to reduce my gold/packs income. I still have some questions about how EXP is going be calculated. Does going on a win stream with the same deck reduce exp gain? And is using a meme/inconsistant deck going to give you more EXP? Let's hope were going to get answers to questions like these
it seems lot more acceptable than the first version ... let's see the actual implementation...
Am I the only person who thinks this is a step in the right direction for Blizzard? My main issue with HS atm is you have to play ranked/arena to complete daily rewards, so queuing a battlegrounds or playing solo adventures feels bad. Least with the BP, we can play whatever suits our fancy and still get rewards from it, even if it's just XP towards the BP leveling system.
You can complete quests with Casual Games and Tavern Brawls if you prefer. There are none that require ranked play or Aren specifically.
My thoughts exactly. Every time I want to play Solo Adventure, I would be in a dilemma. If I play this I would not be getting any currency gain. However, if I do so, I would not have fun as I intended to play an Adventure. In the end, I'll just feel bad about playing in general.
Theres no guarantee that both of those contributes to the xp gain and its more likely than not that it doesn't. A chill session with a solo adventure as compared to a stress-filled ranked play? If both gets xp, then why bother with ranked, especially for most players without an adequate collection.
Solo content has always given xp to class levels, so it's not that outlandish a suggestion.
There is also no doubt the devs actually want us to play the solo stuff from time to time since they put plenty of effort into it. What matters is that the rate of gaining xp isn't higher than when playing PvP game modes (and indeed I'm pretty sure you get less class xp in solo content than in constructed), so if you wanted to be efficient at gaining xp you would go to constructed, but you could still earn something playing a chill solo adventure.
Anyway, neither pessimism nor optimism are really worth anything at this point, and it's better just to get on with other things until the battle pass is formally announced with details on how it will work.
I would like to see the current 3-wins-10-gold system replaced with something that encourages varied play styles and not the most efficient win rate over time. Maybe a formula based on time, rounds or cards played. For now, I feel reassured that I won't have to change the way I play the game to maintain my current gold income.
So we can earn the same gold for packs, of our choosing, and theoretically get some cosmetics to go along with it. So all in all the battlepass is some extra cosmetics.
I am currently grinding a game with a battlepass system (Fall Guys). I hope HS system is nothing like this, as it takes longer to play in HS, and we prefer gold rewards over cosmetics (like in FG).
If I don't have to play every 3 days to not lose value on my quests will be a huge improvement for me, sometimes I don't want to play but I feel obligated to, just to not lose "free gold".
Happy they made a public statement on this.
Makes me a little more optimistic on the battlepass.
Still no actual helpful details about how experience is actually obtained specifically. I play many meme decks, which plainly require many loses (playing for fun over playing just to win, such as going through many games to pull that meme dream off). If experience is tuned for mostly winning games that would theoretically mean the way in which I play will actually punish the rewards I gain from playing the game.
Give me gold not packs, while packs may have more potential value I want to choose which to buy, as many pointed out packs are better earlier in the expansion and pretty much dust before a new release.