Ben Lee, Game Director of Hearthstone, has responded to the community about the rewards track.
Quote From Ben Lee We have been listening to your feedback regarding the Rewards Track and it’s clear we missed the mark both in how we communicated and implemented the full functionality of this first version of our rewards system.
We apologize for the confusion and disappointment we have caused.
During the natural progression of the rewards cycle, our intention was, and still is, to give out extra XP over time through a variety of ways. The aim is to help players get through the Rewards Track, or catch-up if they join later in an expansion phase, ultimately ensuring players earn more rewards.
We also didn’t provide any details for how events will link into and support the rewards system. We will be providing bonus XP for various activities at each seasonal event every expansion cycle, and any additional bonus events as needed, again with the aim of ensuring that our players obtain more rewards. Our failure to communicate these factors has led to incomplete projections, for which we apologize.
In addition, you’ve provided us with a wealth of feedback, and we agree that the pack rewards at the end of the track don’t feel appropriate for the effort it takes to get them. We’re going to adjust these rewards in the later stages of the track, swapping six packs for a total of 1350 gold that players can spend as they see fit. If any players reach this milestone before we implement these changes, they will be retroactively compensated.
Our goal for the Rewards Track continues to be that all Hearthstone players earn more gold and total rewards per expansion. We’ll continue to evaluate the impact of these changes, listen to your feedback, and iterate as needed until we get it right.
We will stay true to our word and ensure that the system lives up to what we all believe Hearthstone deserves.
Thank you,
Ben Lee
Game Director
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
Hearthstone had its heyday. It's finished now. Meanwhile, there are MUCH better CCG's (collectible card games) out there, like LoR or Eternal.
Nothing like pretending your opinion is universal to make you feel good. It's pretty pitiful, though.
May I suggest giving Mythgard a shot? The game is a lot of fun and pretty F2P friendly.
I have bought the paid path so this expansion is kind of a test for me. I play around 5 or 6 games a night when I can so if I cannot reach the end after paying for extra xp then I shall not bother next expansion.
If you are also keeping up with the daily and weekly quests, you should reach level 50 of the rewards track with time to spare, with or without the tavern pass.
Edit: I assumed you're playing ranked ladder, if you're not then the above may not apply because a significant amount of weekly exp is tied to ranked wins.
I'm not sure about past events giving extra gold. Most event quests under the old system gave packs I think. But none of the comparisons took events from the old system into account either.
Midsummer Fire Festival 2017-2019 awarded double gold, some other like Taverns of time awarded gold and same amount of dus
Actually only the first two fire-festivels had the double gold thing going on, and the gold+dust thing only happend in the Taverns of Times event.
I have yet to see a good-faith calculation that shows the new system is going to short players on rewards. I really think this whole "controversy" is pretty over the top, and some of y'all truly need a time out. There is no apology or promise they could have made at ANY point in this process that would've stemmed the avalanche of nonsense from supposed "fans" of the game. If you're determined to be toxic and demand that they "owe" free-to-play users the moon and the sky, you will never be happy.
I look forward to your downvotes - let's see how quickly you can get me to -25! I believe in your negative energy, guys. Can you do it in less than 12 hours?
I don't have anything to add, I'm just doing my Part in Downvoting you.
You can do it, I believe in You! ;D
What do you mean you haven't seen any good-faith calculation? People used Blizzard's method of calculation, corrected for certain flawed assumptions, and arrived at similarly low numbers. Yes, some of the reaction has been a little over the top but you reducing the controversy to simply toxic and entitled fandom adds to the negativity. Check yourself.
Not gonna downvote you. I agree that a lot of the reaction is overblown. I still think this is a legitimate problem, though. (As far as recent F2P blow-ups do, I’d say this is worse than Runeterra mixing a pop band into their world, but not as bad as Magic’s Walking Dead set or Clash Royale’s Clan Wars overhaul.)
I’m curious if you have a good-faith calculation that shows this system being an improvement. I’ve only made vague estimates myself, but they came out to “about the same, if you look at it right”, and they were assuming we’d get the usual free legendary and packs when the expansion launched.
This battlepass "problem" reminds me of the apex legends, look at this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/joz3jk/fix_yourself_apex_its_not_good_enough/
the same thing is happening guys
Yes! I thought the exact same thing! Man, I love Apex!
Same here mate. It's sad to see the battle pass feature in these games being so grindy and unfriendly to casual players...
zeddy was right, they did this on purpose. This was obviously a marketting tactic. they tipped their toe out the door to see how much they could get away with and now they're going to release what they were going to release anyway.
He was also right about people forgiving blizzard for doing this, like they didn't just do this on purpose.
Shameful excuse.
"how we communicated"? You didn't. The first we heard of the news was from the survey sent out to random players. If this site hadn't reported on it, it would've disappeared without feedback from the larger community. It's not impossible that they targeted a select group of people with it. The whales, those are the people whose feedback matters to Blizzard. Later, we only got scarce pointers and random screenshots. We did not get anything concrete and calculable, comparable until when the system was launched.
This vague communication cannot be a "we missed the mark". It was deliberate to avoid community-wide feedback (what they are getting now). Imagine Blizzard not making a beta for the next WoW expansion. Imagine them going "oh, we got this cool new raid, find out if it's balanced at all on release day".
Secondly, did Ben just reveal that they knew this system is not final? That they knew this is the "first version"? And thus a second will follow soon after in response to our "wonderful feedback"? They knew what kind of feedback they were getting for this.
no no no, just changing one reward doesn't fix the problem. now is the time to fix ALL the mistakes blizz did. more xp, more gold, more dusts, lowering pity timers... come on!
that's exactly what they did by replacing 6 pack with 1350 gold
So, what's the point of defending the current system's reward value in your last official response, like there was nothing wrong with it, without additional details, when you had it planned to compensate with events xp? You admit only just now that we should be getting more (not even directly). Of course they aren't going to admit that those 'unsaid factors' are just their Plan B in case we riot, and them not providing any details about those events right now just confirms that.
Also, we had those events before, we got bonuses for them as well, and we knew exactly what we were getting. How are we even going to compare those to XP? Better skip all those comments that 'we'll end up getting more than before', please, and focus on being more honest and transparent with those statements.
This second response does not put me at ease at all, despite that gold change which was a really bad design from the start.