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!
Comments
Hmm.. I tracked as well and got a bit over 400 and hour in wild and standard. (even minus the bonus for purchasing the package). Not sure what the difference was.
I think the XP system is based on the character XP system. So you make sure you play all the cards you can if you are loosing. Stay as long as you can. This seemed to help. Also, games that lasted past turn 7 seemed to yield more xp.
Obviously, this is just observation.
Love the new system. Old one was boring.
I think blizzard got jalousie of valve and they want to kill there game too , well keep it up like this you will do it sooner then later
I have terrible Fear of Missing Out when it comes to.video games. The old system if i missed every quest in the expansion its fine, i could just buy packs. Now if i miss them i miss out on wonderful cosmetics that Im unable to buy. Very disappointed in the new system. As soon as I get overwhelmed by FoMO disease in any game is generally when I stop playing. I like playing at my own pace and being able to use money to make up for lost time.
They factored in those achievements? when half of them require SPECIFIC LEGENDARIES?
I like that they did the achievements finally but the execution is lacking..
they could at least add gold rewards to achievements.. why? to make new players have a lot of it to kickstart their collection and have long time players some reward as well.. for being.. long time players?
add about 50 gold to each achievements specially the starter ones.. and you have the usual "new players get a lot of content early but progression slows later" which is quite popular and a "Reel in" strategy...
It will make it so at least starting hs makes sense you know.. I don't recomend HS to anyone cause it's so hard to start playing if you don't invest tonnes of time in the game you don't get anywhere near a competitive deck..
For achievments they should give out same gold as achievment points. 20-50, per difficulty. This is a limited income (you can do the achievment only once) so controlled by Blizzard, but could help a LOT for F2P and new players.
If they had that and added in the 10 gold per 3 wins back, it’d probably be something everyone could be happy with, since it’d probably come out to a bit more than before at that point
Second question, I completed both Naxxramas and BRM, why does it not show completed in Achievements
Doesn't show at my account either.
Also, a lot of these basic gameplay achievements don't seem to work for me. Played a Galvadon Quest Pala in Casual Wild yesterday until fatigue against a Reno Priest. This means a whole lot of buff spells being cast by me.
Achievement: Cast paladin spells on friendly characters - progress: 0. How can this be? Won't this start until the launch of the new expansion? It's listed under Basic not under Darkmoon Faire.
The wild ranked achievements refuse to actually register as being completed when I click on them too, which is just lovely
So much has already been covered by the highly intelligent members of the OOC community I will try to keep this brief!
The hypothetical example of a presumed casual player (1hr a day for 120 days) almost beggars belief! some of those achievements will be damn near impossible let alone a generous 75%
My personal example is that of many members with job, kids, etc. clear quests every 3 days or so and I can net approx 7k -8k gold per expansion.
My real issue comes that they've taken away player agency in terms of gold spending (and it will be less). I don't want a scholomance pack on level 4 or a card back on level 10 unless it's in addition to 100g.....100g should be the standard for every tier, and then thank you very much for the scholo pack on top of that. That is generous and going above and beyond the old system.
The mini-sets increase the cost of the game further therefore less gold impacts the economy even further.
I have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 on the game since inception, but this really pushed me to no longer support until it is fixed. It really is worse off for all players.
Lol Blizzard trying to play math tricks on card gamers
Players- The math doesn't add up. You're wrong about your promises.
Blizzard- Pay no attention to the numbers behind the curtain. It's all the same as before. We swear!
For the Achievements. They actually factor into XP? And why only Darkmoon and Duels? I hate Duels, but damn that’s a ton of XP
It’s probably because those two are the things added right when the new system was put in, so everything new going forward will probably have something
I knew it was super fishy that Blizzard didn’t reveal the reward track until it actually came out. At least with the old system I was guaranteed to get gold for completing a quest, now I only get... one third of a level for completing a quest? For an old pack? Screw off. At least keep the 3 wins for 10 gold or increase it to like 20-30 gold
The one thing about new system that always really bothered me: why they had to give us old packs in a NEW expansion? Just give the damn gold instead, or new packs, later levels are really slow, and you get basically nothing for some of them. How is that exciting and motivating?
Is this small amount of gold really going to hurt your pockets that much, Blizzard? If you really want to give some value to players, increase the rewards to be what we are used to. Replace those old packs and increase gold. I'm sure that people who usually preorder (probably main source of income) would do it anyway if you were more generous. Those who buy individual packs, maybe a bit less packs sold here, at a price of trust of those who live by gold.
I believe we are openly lied to with their promises, that's what's maybe the biggest problem. You won't get the same reward for the same time invested as before. Nothing has changed in terms of flexibility, it probably just got harder to keep up, and you say the opposite.
You have the chance to fix your system and hopefully tone down your greed. Unfortunately, I doubt anything will change, as this is maybe exactly the same as in that initial spreadsheet.
I know you have to make a living, I respect your work and love this game, just be honest to us and respect the player base as a whole.
I've followed Chadd's math and I remain unconvinced. Firstly it's practically impossible to complete solely 1000xp daily quests. Furthermore, to assume 1 hour/day of ranked play from someone who can only complete 75% of their quests is way off. I re-roll and keep up with my quests every day and I spend less than 1 hour/day on ranked play. I also don't expect to play much of duels. I used to accumulate 7000+ gold for each new expansion; the math suggests I won't now. One unaccounted variable that could make a significant difference is the special event quests - we'll just have to see how Blizzard handles that.
Key concern for me is that winning feels very lackluster, even if it would not matter. Maybe it's time to leave HS
If you feel like you’re not having fun with it (due to not feeling like there’s enough of a reward or it gets too repetitive) either change how you’re playing, take a break, or go play something else. I’ve been there, and just trying to tough it out really doesn’t work out too well