After we broke the news and caused a flurry of outrage surrounding the Hearthstone Rewards Track/Battle Pass, Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig responded to the community feedback that started to pile up. Let's look at what he has to say and give it a recap.
Rewards Track
- More features are coming.
- You should earn more total rewards than before. Leaving out certain XP sources hurts the math.
- New expansion packs are weighted heavily towards the front of the rewards track so you get them early when they are more valuable.
- Numbers in the new system can still change, nothing is set in stone.
Achievements
- More achievements will be added to the game over time.
- Chadd thinks it would be "really cool" to do achievements for old adventures. We agree!
- The wild and standard-specific achievements were unable to be autocompleted based on their data.
- Every expansion will see new experience earning achievements.
Quests
- The brawl quests should be playable against friends.
- There will be event quests that reward experience.
We believe that Blizzard, with their continued insistence that everyone is going to make the same amount of gold (if their play pattern doesn't change), means that as we close in towards the end of the pass if things are not looking great, they'll make changes and likely give us some nice ways to boost the experience gains. Of course, don't use that as a quote because Blizzard certainly hasn't said anything remotely close to that, but with the amount of publicity surrounding the rewards track and the number of times they have stated that things aren't going to be different, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't make things right. Chadd does mention that they could tune experience before we get to that point, so that's an option too!
How do you feel about the rewards track so far? Are you enjoying achievements? Let's talk about progression in the comments below!
Source Material
Quote From Chadd Nervig Loving all the experiences/feedback that people are sharing about the new Progression system! We're reading it all, and thinking about ways to make it the best it can be. This is only the beginning; we've got lots of ideas for the future: more features, more achievements, etc.
One of the goals we set out with was to give more total rewards, whether you play 5 hours or 500 hours in an expansion. I'm seeing a ton of great discussion about that today. But, discussion involving math can get difficult, sometimes, so I'd like to help out!
It's a really complex system, with a wide variety of XP sources, and a ton of different rewards, so the math can get rather involved. Leaving parts out or estimating things can lead you significantly off.
So I wanted to share a distilled summary of a couple hypothetical situations, to help that discussion out. Here are a couple hypothetical players, and the rewards they'd get from the new system, with current tuning numbers (which could still change before anyone gets there).
Added clarification: These numbers are WITHOUT the Tavern Pass. All of that is from the Free Reward Track.
From this thread, Chadd went on to answer community questions.
Quote From Chadd Nervig I gain around 9000-10000 Gold per expansion. Get to rank 5 minimum and reroll quests and always complete my quests. Some days I only complete my quests and not play. I hope I can still earn roughly this much gold.
Same here. I want my packs on day one, not dribbled throughout the expansion.
The latest expansion packs are heavily frontloaded on day 1 (levels 2, 3, 4). If your play pattern is to save up gold all expansion to buy packs on day 1 for the next expansion, you still can do that, just as well as before.
Thanks for the reply. Frontloading does help. Will I have about the same 10,000 gold to spend though?
It's impossible for me to give you exact numbers without having a ton of exact details about your specific play patterns, but yes, that's the goal.
Since you’re appreciating feedback: it’d be nice if you could hover over an Acheivement after you earned it to see what it was for. Or at the end of the game show again the Achievement and what it was for. It’s a bit tedious to remember the name and exit out to the Journal.
Yep, some improvement to that is definitely on our minds right now. Not sure exactly what we'll do, but we agree it's a rough edge.
Should we expect achievements for previous adventures?
Nothing specific to promise yet, but we think it'd be really cool!
So I have at some point in time reached legend in standard and wild, after playing a game in both modes, I have unlocked achievement for standard, but for wild it’s still “to do”.
The data we could carry over from before was based on your highest rank in either Wild or Standard, so you probably started with that achievement. But the Wild-specific or Standard-specific achievements are not historic; sorry.
i just really wish i could play duels. like, why the need for me to have all classes on 10? i know i will be probably bad, but i have so much fun with these kind of things. i loved the adventures, and thats the nearest i get.
would be awesome if this could be changed.A handy tip for this: Unlocking Demon Hunter actually bumps you up to level 10 on all 10 classes, immediately unlocking Arena and Duels.
One thing though, is that Duels rewards are, I assume, a one-time only affair. So, when the next expansions starts, isn't that bit gone forever?
Yes; Duels achievements having XP are because it's a new mode and we wanted to celebrate it a bit more. There will be new XP-rewarding achievements every expansion though.
So I'm in example #1 here. Currently I earn around 8k gold per expansion. In your example I will earn around 5400. This doesn't feel good at all, sir. I believe you missed the mark considerably. You guys led us to believe we'd earn more. This feels horrible.
If you earn around 8k gold per expansion right now, you're considerably above example #1, and will earn considerably more gold than 5400g. Rerolling quests, consistently completing all your quests will add more. Arena/Duels can give more. Seasonal events still exist, etc.
It will not add much more because after lv 50 it's just hard to level up. If you just complete your daily quest (reroll for 60) with the old system (15 min of play), it's 7200 golds in 4 months. With the new system is just less.
The 5400g example is someone who doesn't do all their Quests, and doesn't reroll. Someone who *does* reroll for max gold, and does all their quests/achievements, will get much more than that. (About the same as before, plus other rewards.)
Is there anyway you'd reconsider making weeklies not progress against friends? as someone who only plays against friends, the new weekly quests and their requirements harm my battlepass progress a lot, so if this is set in stone I can't justify playing this game anymore :(.
Quests (including Weeklies) do progress in Friendly Challenges, unless otherwise specified. Which one would you expect to work, but doesn't? Might be a bug, I'd love to investigate that!
The one that surprised me was the "win 5 games in brawl", in the old system quests for brawl wins could be completed against friends, now that doesn't seem to be doable anymore. I wish you reconsider and change "win X" quests in general into "play X" instead, reduces frustration.
That one should work fine against friends. Must be a bug; I'll look into it. Thanks!
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
Absolutely, if you don't think it's worth your time to play the game, you should not play the game.
I haven't been following the uproar about the new system. My first impressions weren't bad but i'm not exactly thrilled either. The reward structure seems to be the same as shown during initial previews. They said that players should expect to earn about the same as they did in the previous system with some bonus on top. The thing is: the game is becoming more expensive. The new mini-set idea is going to cost extra gold from the player which will harm them in the long term if they wish to remain F2P. They will obtain less packs at the beginning of an expansion thus they will have less cards to play with. And this will keep piling up until they can no longer keep up without paying. It looks like a nasty snowball. The cosmetic rewards won't make up for such loss. They said that numbers can still be adjusted so let's see what they are going to do.
So you're actually surprised that Blizzard doesn't want you to be f2p forever?
It's not nasty -- it's how they keep the lights on.
Forgive me for having to point this out, but as media coverage has well and adequately shown, Blizzard is in no way in danger of not keeping the lights on.
Right, because they conduct business in a way that encourages people to spend money. There is nothing wrong with that.
If you don't want to spend the money, don't. If there's not enough demand for the product at the price they set, they will lower the price. It's the most basic rule of economics. They are under no moral, ethical, legal or fiduciary obligation to give their product away for free.
I'm not F2P. I already spent a lot on this game and it astonishes me that it keeps getting more expensive. I care about the F2P aspect because if the F2P playerbase leaves then the game will die for sure due to a lack of significant audience. This game is already way too expensive and it keeps getting worse. I already found an alternative in Legends of Runeterra if this keeps happening. You can defend this as much as you want but the price to keep up with the game simply isn't justifiable in any way.
The price hasn't gone up, though. If anything, it dropped dramatically when they propagated the no-duplicates rule to all rarities. At least, I know I personally don't have to spend nearly as much to keep up my collection.
And no, the game would not be in danger of dying if all the f2p players disappeared. That's a weird fantasy propagated by f2p players with absolutely no evidence to back it up.
An idea to fix the track
Replace every pack here a random epic card
Every five (maybe ten) levels give random legendary. Leave gold as they are, if there is a cosmetic as a price, leave this one also in
I'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but as long as they're listening to community feedback and being open about it I'm fine with the new battle pass system. This is literally the second day it's been implemented so we don't exactly know how it will go in the future other than predictions and calculations. We can only hope that they're willing to improve the system when the change is not good enough.
You know, this whole community outcry kinda remindes me of an essay I wrote a while ago. It was about the different phases on how people reacted to new things. "We" are currently in the 6. Phase where People belive the new thing isn't good enough and that this isn't going to change even though there is no reason to belive that. The next phase would be beliving that newcomers would be overwhelmed by the new thing.
Also, since this is the second day it has been implemented, the community feedback will be much less valuable to blizzard since there's really not that much data they can work with. So if you want to complain, at least wait for a month or so.
For now, we just have to accept the new system since they most likely won't be changing it anytime soon.
I am looking forward to new challenges but can't afford to play every day for one hour...
Having a family and a job you find yourself often enough in a position where you hardly play 3 games per day.
So Yes, i bought that pass, but i will not change my behavior. If i will not be able to reach rank 50, i am likely to quit, as i am a fanatic collector sind 1at Saison...
If you can't play very much, then you weren't making a lot of gold before. There's no reason to complain about the new system.
You also probably won't get your money's worth out of the pass. You should not have bought it until you had a better idea of how far you might get. The Tavern Pass rewards are retroactive, so even if you buy it on the last day of the expansion, you still get everything you would have earned up to that point.
Same here. With family and work I finish all quests every two-three days. Last expansions it netted mi around 7000 gold. Spending an hour every day is not possible for me. I will see and decide upon real results but I’m afraid the new system gives less. I’m not interested in old packs as they are 40 dust mostly. Also, getting the 4th or 5th skin for Jaina is pointless, as I now have 5-6 skins for class on average and I can play only one.
300 levels with the same amount of points between them is better than 50 with the increasing system they have now
Like MTG arena 1000XP needed to level up is constant
but here 100, then 200, then 2000 by the time we get to from 49 to 50 it will be a million points *
* math is not accurate but the sentiment its the same, feel free to calculate or added the real values.
Edit: not talking about rewards just how many points it takes to level up.
People have calculated the real values. That is exactly how Chadd arrived at the numbers he gave us in this article. That is how he knows you should have no trouble making as much gold as you did before.
The current system forces you to play ranked. The old system didnt. In order to get the top weekly quest you have to win 7 ranked games. That leaves out people who mostly play battlegrounds or Duels. You cant even reroll it to get a weekly quest that gives lower experience.
This sure doesnt sound like "play Hearthstone your way".
Ranked includes both Standard & Wild. If you don't want to try to complete the win 7 game weekly on the mode you ladder than just smorc the other mode for the easy wins.
I have not been playing any ladder since Battlerounds was released, but I have bought 80+ packs the last expansions to keep up. I am reluctant to craft a deck before an expansion to not waste dust. I might play some ranked wild as I have been playing since Ungoro, and I have the adventurers and a few card packs from the expansions before it.
But it would be nice if they just added a few more win 7 game 2500 experience quests in diffrent modes.
1. I would rather not estimate the xp I get out of my quest but your system leave me with little choice since there's an effing tier system that makes no sense. Why the hell would I not reroll an 800xp quest for a better one? Again, I don't understand why they'd even go with this bs tier system in the first place. Not only will I reroll every 800xp quest, if I get another 800xp from my reroll, I wouldn't want to play more hearthstone that day so I can reroll it tomorrow. In effect I'm softlocked from the game, because ironically making it easy to accomplish also makes it impossible to avoid finishing.
2. Variety of xp sources is in effect meaning accomplishing the achievements. I already ranted earlier about this, so the gist of it is this: I don't like achievements, and find the conditions not only walled off by needing specific cards, it also handicaps my gameplay. I don't have anything against anyone who'd go all out in their way to do this, but the xp gain here should NOT be considered in the pool
Also, it counts xp from duels. I played it (because of the packs, obviously) and I'm not keen on it. I wouldn't do it again too. I don't feel like counting the xp gains from a mode that's not fun to me as fair to me, or to anyone who shares my opinion. Just saying.
I would recommend that they stop twisting and turning and start telling us straight: Are we getting more gold (and only gold) from the new system as compared to the old one? If the answer is no, then why aren't we getting it? Especially since it was promised earlier.