Hot take - Blizzard is actually not that bad

There's been a lot of hate toward Blizzard in these past couple of weeks, which seems to have come to a head during the spamming of the recent Duels tournament with #StopBlizzardGreed. Some of the anger is very reasonable - there have been a lot of bugs in Hearthstone around these newly released systems, and Blizzard deserves to be blamed for releasing buggy products and has a responsibility to resolve any unfairness that has come from them (they've already promised to do so with respect to the recent quest bugs). But they've also made a ton of great changes to the game that no one seems to want to give them credit for.

So real quick, where is the hate coming from? Mostly it seems like it's coming from two places: the cost of Hearthstone generally, and the negative reaction to the new Progression system. Both stem from what I believe are bad-faith arguments:

• Hearthstone is often compared to AAA titles, with people complaining that buying into an expansion costs way more than a typical $60 game.
  • This is a ridiculous comparison - AAA titles don't get regularly patched, they don't generally feature weekly evens (i.e. tavern brawl) or seasonal events (e.g. the Felfire Festival). Developing these patches and the content for these events costs Blizzard money, so the base price is going to be higher.
  • CCGs and AAA titles are generally not even the same type of game. It makes much more sense to compare Hearthstone to other CCGs, and while it's not the cheapest CCG on the market, it's not the most expensive either (e.g. in MTG Arena you can easily spend $200 just building a single deck.
  • You don't have to buy a full set of expansion cards to play the game, so comparing a $60 sticker price for a AAA title to $130 for pre-release bundles is disingenuous.
• People were furious when the amount of gold they'd be getting went down, and have complained about lacking a sense of progression because the new system slows as you get higher up in levels
  • The overall rewards between new and old progression system never favored the old system - it's simply that many of the new rewards were in the form of packs and cards, which angry players valued less than gold. Blizzard responded to this by replacing the late-level packs with gold, and now it's very easy to have a F2P experience where you complete daily and weekly quests and get strictly more out of the game on all reward dimensions.
  • The "lack of progress" complaints must be coming from people who have never played an RPG, because all of those games feature slower levels as you progress, and no one gets mad about it. It's true that there will be some weeks in the new system where the weekly rewards you earn are lower than what you would have earned in the old system, but you early more on a weekly basis early and late in the system, so that lull only lasts for about 10 or so levels in the middle.

It's easy to focus on the cost of the game right after an expansion, or to be mad about a system right when it releases, but those arguments are short-sighted. Blizzard has done a lot of good stuff with Hearthstone this year:

• Back in November 2019 they changed a bunch of daily quests to make them easier to complete (e.g. "Win 2 games as [Class A] or [Class B]" became "Play 3 games as [Class A] or [Class B] or [Class C]"). The old quests penalized you for the bad luck of getting meta losers in your quests, while the new quests are trivial to complete.
• In phase 1 of Year of the Phoenix, they added duplicate protection for all rarities, making it way cheaper to collect all the common and rare cards. This makes it much easier for F2P players to create a wide array of budget decks.
• The new ranked system has better rewards than the old ranked system, added a ton of ranked floors, and dramatically decreases the amount of grinding you need to do. This frees players up to play low-tier or off-meta decks without risking major ladder progress
• They've added several F2P-friendly formats (Battlegrounds, Duels), and will be adding another new mode before the end of the Year of the Phoenix
• The new progression system switched away from rewarding gold for wins to rewarding XP for playing, which further incentivizes people to play low-tier or off-meta decks if that's what they want to do because losing a game doesn't mean getting nothing out of the game.

The net result of these changes is that players have more opportunities to be rewarded for playing Hearthstone the way they find most fun. Despite the bugs, and the fact that Hearthstone is not the cheapest CCG on the market, I think it's plainly the case that the long view of what Blizzard has been doing with Hearthstone has been very positive.

Thing is, the concept of xp track is VERY good, virtuous for both players and stakeholders.

However, the current implementation of it is barely decent. Definitely not as good as it could and should be.

The community is crying out of hysteria, and that is of no help, but Blizz is not delivering correctly.

Also, it's taking too long for them for a proper reaction.

I really agree with you. I just do not think the format the track is presented right now is perfect.

Take a look at Pokemon TCG Online (Not the amount of free resources it gives, wich is more, but they also get more expansions) but how you get something. Even 5 gold (translating to hearthstone numbers for just playing) all the time.

I made the numbers in a comment for a hearthstone mathematician video, but the important part is.

You have Login rewards, Daily Quests wich you can select out of 3, Rewards for wining everyday (up to 11 wins, then is just a little "gold" per win), a 21 day, reward track concept (wich nets you more "xp" if you are in a streak, the higher it is). Tournaments that give you nice rewards for wining (you have to spen tournament tickets to enter too) and a Theme deck format (hi there whizbang!)

Basically I think that, without changing any numbers on the free resources you get, if every reward was given faster and in a smaller amount, people would be much happier with it.

Personally I do not dislike the new system at all. Had some complaints about the last levels having packs but well. I feel that aproach would be better for most people in general, and much less people would hate it.

I agree with a lot of your points! I think a lot of the reaction is emotional, which isn't to say that I don't respect what people are feeling, but it is more nuanced for a few reasons: 

• People feel lied to. How many times did they say you would get equal to or more rewards? They had to have known that wasn't true, so why push it so hard? 
• If Blizzard had released this while offering slightly more rewards overall, people wouldn't have looked more closely at the monetization model that they don't like. Runeterra existing makes this reaction more pronounced, because they can look across to another game which does it differently (and cheaper). 
• To your point, people have created a false equivalency between the value of a GaaS (which Hearthstone is, more or less) vs a single player AAA title. I recently bought Ghost of Tsushima, which is an amazing game, but it will eventually end. Even if they make some kind of DLC expansion, the gameplay is largely set; it won't ever be as variable as something like Hearthstone (nor should it be, they are entirely different games). 

But you have included a lot of good that they have done for the game to make it better and cheaper, which might be forgotten when in a rage. I think the progress towards leveling is what I take issue with. I agree with your point that this is similar to how it works in many RPG systems, but I don't know that I want progression to be like an RPG. Later levels aren't worth that much more than earlier levels (200 gold vs 100) so why does it take so much longer? It also changed the play experience from the old system, where you felt you could earn something everyday, to the current system, where you earn a bit Monday/Tuesday and little else the rest of the week. If I were them, I would double the levels, half the XP needed to gain each, and spread the rewards out across the track. Packs should always be paired with at least a little gold. It is more of a psychological thing though. 

I feel like they have to respond to this in some way, but at this point, I don't think most people who are angry are going to be satisfied. They aren't just going to remove packs and go LoR overnight. I think at best, they increase the amount of XP people earn (and reverse the terrible decision to make it based on time only). Maybe they also lower the pity timer on legendaries, but it is going to be tweaks in the short term, not an overhaul. 

While I agree with many things you stated here, I will state that from what I have seen in the reddit threads and from forums like this one, the hate is coming from the following;

- Hearthstone is expensive. This perhaps should surprise no one, least of all anyone who'd ever played a trading card game. But I'm having trouble naming any other virtual card game thats flagrantly more expensive to have fun in than hearthstone. We don't really need to go into specifics. All that is required is to simply ask the question: Can you recommend this game to any of your friends in good faith. And the short answer would likely (or almost certainly be) no. And that's largely because every one of us understands how expensive, and how much commitment it takes to get to where we are today.

- In conjunction to the above, the new progression system did nothing less than bring greater focus on the price of the game. The tavern pass (which up until then was the name given to the BG pass) now rebranded without any notice, and as such it was not included into the 80 bucks preorder. So on top of a preorder, which pretty much gave the buyer all the exclusive cosmetics previously, there's now an added 20 bucks needed to absolutely have it all. So, if you don't want to miss out on all the exclusive items, it now costs a mind blogging 100 bucks. And to top it all off, you're not likely to even get half of all the legendaries.

Your argument that you don't need to get all the cards to play the game is correct. But to put things in perspective. I opened 60 packs in darkmoon and got 4 legendaries, none of which were the old gods. Can't experiment much when you're missing out on the centerpiece of this expansion. Can't even experiment much actually, since I got both pally legendaries and I don't have some of the core cards needed to play pally at any decent tier. So Im pretty stuck with the same decks I had in the previous expansion with a few tweaks. And this is not the first time I find myself in such a position.

- Midexpansion is a thing now. So with all the stated above, this one makes it even worse. Its hard not to point at sheer avarice when preordering doesn't get you much, and you're now praying there would be a 'promotional' 20 bucks sale from blizz just to keep up.

- But perhaps the greatest reasons for all the hate was simply blizz was seen apparently breaking their promise when they said they weren't taking away the amount of gold we can get from the old system, in the new system. A blatant lie, as even poor mathematicians like me can spot that we were pretty much shafted around 1000 - 2000 gold.

Yes, the card packs and cards should be taken into account when totaling the rewards. Doesn't change a thing, since the promise was explicit. Whether it was intentional or reasonable for blizz to have one of their guys make such a promise is not the issue. Fact is that everyone was kept optimistic. And they were let down like a father breaking a promise to his 10 yr old kid. Not exactly sterling public relations work.

And it took like a 2 weeks before blizz addressed this issue at all. The changes were good, coming really close to breaking even, but its a case where its just too little too late.

Bottom line is, I don't think this battlepass debacle is the end of the world, but unless they quickly address all the bugs, fix some of their own quest requirements (play 50 corrupt cards might as well be a bug, or a middle-finger design choice), relook into hearthstone's general costs, and for gods sake improve their own communication with the community, hearthstone will forever be tainted by its negatives, as opposed to its positives.

There is nothing to argue. You objectively get less gold than the old system. They said multiple times by at least two different devs (Iksar and Celaston) that you will earn at least the same amount of gold with extra rewards. And that was a blatant lie.

Bilzzard are terrible. It's mind boggling why anybody would defend a multi billion company for screwing over their user base. You literally get nothing in return for defending them. And no matter what type of player you are you get less gold to spend. Being a contrarian is not worth it.

The community outrage is not in ''bad faith'' nor is it unreasonable. The old system was bad, yet they somehow made a worse one while insulting our intelligence in the process.

It's easily fixable but the only logical reasons I can think of for not making it better is :

A/That was intended from the first place to make HS more expensive and they are just waiting for the thing to die

B/ It actually wasn't intended but those devs did the wrong numbers and they aren't willing to admit their mistake. Both of the devs I mentioned were defending the battle pass in the first couple of days but stopped talking about it all together a week ago. So either they are really incompetent or just told by higher ups to not comment on the matter.

Either way it's a bad look no matter how you analyze the situation.

Quote From meisterz39

So real quick, where is the hate coming from? Mostly it seems like it's coming from two places: the cost of Hearthstone generally, and the negative reaction to the new Progression system. Both stem from what I believe are bad-faith arguments:

• Hearthstone is often compared to AAA titles, with people complaining that buying into an expansion costs way more than a typical $60 game.
  • This is a ridiculous comparison - AAA titles don't get regularly patched, they don't generally feature weekly evens (i.e. tavern brawl) or seasonal events (e.g. the Felfire Festival). Developing these patches and the content for these events costs Blizzard money, so the base price is going to be higher.
  • CCGs and AAA titles are generally not even the same type of game. It makes much more sense to compare Hearthstone to other CCGs, and while it's not the cheapest CCG on the market, it's not the most expensive either (e.g. in MTG Arena you can easily spend $200 just building a single deck.
  • You don't have to buy a full set of expansion cards to play the game, so comparing a $60 sticker price for a AAA title to $130 for pre-release bundles is disingenuous.

Just a couple of thoughts:

• I think you overestimate the cost of weekly events / patches in HS; I mean brawls are recycled permanently (how many new do we receive per year? not many) and events are mostly a special quest or double gold or something (which is little work); I would argue that the effort here is not huge
• Your claim on MTGA is wrong imo, if you are completionist yes but all other players no; I am almost F2P and have several meta decks with enough wild cards lying around for 2-3 others; HS is the most expensive mainstream CCG by far imo
• A new expansion comes not even close in cost to a newly developed AAA game but they charge twice the price; based on effort a new expansion would have to be much cheaper than a new AAA title (a new AAA game costs about $60-80 million); I bet a HS expansion is a fraction of this
• There are enough Freemium games out there with regular updates which do not charge as excessively as HS

That said most of the current outrage stems not from Blizzard charging too much, but from them making false and misleading statements; players are rightfully pissed off; people are feeling ripped-off and that is entirely their fault

I do not expect Blizzard to be cheap or give a multitude of freebies but I expect them to honor their promises and statements

I take umbrage with your first bullet point and subsequent follow ups.

The comparison to AAA games is very apt in my opinion and the idea that many games do not have sustained patches or events is strange. I can name many games off the top of my head that I've played that have had years of patches after being played, sometimes even if I bought the game on discount. (Fifa, Witcher series, Mass Effect Series, Halo Series, DLC's are equivalent or exceed the season events in many instances). Heck Persona even put out a new entire game with Royale. Total cost between 60-100 depending on how many things you buy

I know that many FPS games have similar content.

To suggest that it only be compared to other CCGs is the disingenuous aspect here imo.

The quality of life improvements are things that should have been implemented since the beginning of the game, let alone 5-6 years after launch....about that "stream of content and events". Do you remember how it felt to open 4 of the same legendary? I do, and that happened for 4-5 years. I encourage you to look up on youtube psychological, gambling, and addictive tricks that game companies are utilizing to encourage you to spend your $.

The game is fun and I enjoy it, but I can no longer in good conscience give them money.

Take Path of Exile - a hack'n'slash RPG. It have 3 expansions each year and is completely free, paid only by selling cosmetics. 

And it works, because people who love the game drop a dollar or two (or more)

Quote From FinalOlive

Bilzzard are terrible. It's mind boggling why anybody would defend a multi billion company for screwing over their user base. You literally get nothing in return for defending them. And no matter what type of player you are you get less gold to spend. Being a contrarian is not worth it.

I don't know that I'd call describing Blizzard as "not that bad" as really defending them. More than anything, I'm trying to remind people that, amid all the negativity right now (some of which is certainly justified), Blizzard has done a lot to improve the game over the last year and to make for a better F2P players. There are lots of ways they could still make the game better or more player-friendly, but the level of vitriol against them is not warranted.

And the adjustments to the progression rewards have absolutely made it so that people who complete their daily and weekly quests will now get nearly the same amount of gold as the previous system (this is before accounting for XP from playing the game and achievements). It's easy to forget that leveling up gets easier after level 50 - that's going to result in more gold for the hardcore players.

This is not me being a contrarian. I just honestly believe people spend too much time focused on the short-term negatives, and flip out and assume the worst intentions, when in reality Blizzard is trying to stay competitive in a denser CCG marketplace, and making a lot of long-term improvements to the game to do so.

You ignore the reason everyone's faith in actibliz has hit rock bottom. There have been several controversies this year and last from them, which all boil down to the concept of actibliz not caring about their community in favor of their own wallet. And when they release the battlepass it was the final straw on the camel's back. They lied constantly about how they won't be taking players gold how you'll be able to get more than before. Which we know now was a lie. Everything has culminated in this. 

Now let's break down what you actually bring up.

"AAA titles don't get regularly patched"

This argument has been made a lot of times to cover for shitty business practices in the "current year". People said this all the time when battlefront was receiving their fair share of backlash over a similar situation. It is not a point of pride that you update your game. It's understandable. It's something that shouldn't be noticed. You shouldn't need to lord that over the players like it's something that they don't deserve.

"CCGs and AAA titles are generally not even the same type of game."

Ah yes the good old trading card argument that's been made a thousand times. Except there is no upwards mobility with hearthstone. Packs and cards don't have REAL VALUE. If i unpack a hearthstone pack and get a legendary from a tier one deck in the meta all year, it has the same value as a meme legendary no one would ever play ever. This is not the same in other card games. Even artifact one had a upward mobility system. When the game released people were saying certain heroes were pay to win and the only way to win, and they would sell for $20 on the steam market. Know what people did then? They opened a lot of packs and got those heroes and sold them for more packs. You can't do that in hearthstone, and the devs will never allow you to do that, they like the closed loop system. When you pay $80 now for a AAA game you are expecting quality, you're expecting a good experience. When you pay $80 for hearthstone what do you get? According to many people's threads i've seen 5 legendries. That's it. And most of them unplayable meme legendaries and not old gods.

"You don't have to buy a full set of expansion cards to play the game, so comparing a $60 sticker price for a AAA title to $130 for pre-release bundles is disingenuous."

This would be true except for the ridiculous amount of powercreep hearthstone has. Every expansion cards get more busted and in order to play you need those cards. Sure you can play river crocolisk and bloodfen raptor mage every expansion and that counts as being able to "play" the game. But it's more like when you were 10 and you ask big brother if you can play video games with him and he hands you an unplugged controller. Yes you can play that way, but not really.

"The overall rewards between new and old progression system never favored the old system - it's simply that many of the new rewards were in the form of packs and cards, which angry players valued less than gold. Blizzard responded to this by replacing the late-level packs with gold, and now it's very easy to have a F2P experience where you complete daily and weekly quests and get strictly more out of the game on all reward dimensions."

Blizzard fixed the rewards for late stage into the battlepass, where almost no one is at because of a hell of a grind it is. They did this so A. They wouldn't need to give players anything to compensate for the change and B. to try to sate the rabid dog of a community by throwing it some chicken bones. The change was nothing. There is still useless packs for rewards in the early features of the system that is still there. Solem talks about this in his latest video https://youtu.be/wQLFDXb9hU0?t=315 the reward is basically useless.

"The "lack of progress" complaints must be coming from people who have never played an RPG, because all of those games feature slower levels as you progress, and no one gets mad about it. It's true that there will be some weeks in the new system where the weekly rewards you earn are lower than what you would have earned in the old system, but you early more on a weekly basis early and late in the system, so that lull only lasts for about 10 or so levels in the middle."

See this? This is a steeljaw snapper, found in tanaris. They're around lvl 38-45. When i played vanilla wow i ginded on these instead of doing quests from lvl 35-50. Because 1 i enjoyed grinding instead of questing, the loot drops were good selling for decent value incuding pearls which i could pier to pier to players for more value and skinning for the same reason. It wasn't a very common grinding spot because people knew of better ones, but for me it was perfect. Do you know the difference between me grinding turtles for 15 levels in WoW and the new battlepass is? The rewards. I got hundreds of gold off these turtles in exchange for my time. In hearthstone i get very little. Even if i do all my quests(when it doesn't give me the do arena quest of the finish top 2 in BGs quest). This isn't about grinding it's about greed. You shouldn't need to grind constantly in a system that promises rewards daily. Grinding shouldn't even need to be applicable since it's fringe strategy that only psychos like me enjoy doing instead of the normal system.

"Back in November 2019 they changed a bunch of daily quests to make them easier to complete (e.g. "Win 2 games as [Class A] or [Class B]" became "Play 3 games as [Class A] or [Class B] or [Class C]")"

This goes to show how much the difference is since they also changed the rewards to be higher and now we just receive experience now into the pass system that does not give rewards from that experience.

"In phase 1 of Year of the Phoenix, they added duplicate protection for all rarities, making it way cheaper to collect all the common and rare cards."

This was a good change. But it doesn't matter to most f2p players that only focus on one or two classes and choose to disenchant other class cards they get because they need dust to craft things.

"The new ranked system has better rewards than the old ranked system, added a ton of ranked floors, and dramatically decreases the amount of grinding you need to do. This frees players up to play low-tier or off-meta decks without risking major ladder progress"

Considering the only way to get experience now is to play ladder then yeah i guess you have to play meme decks or testing decks on ladder now.

"They've added several F2P-friendly formats (Battlegrounds, Duels), and will be adding another new mode before the end of the Year of the Phoenix"

You can call BGs a "f2p-friendly format" since most of the changes you get from paying are high marginal.(even though having extra chances to get one of the current busted heroes per game is better than not having it) But i wouldn't say duels is. Just like in arena it's important to win early and when you don't have all the wild cards you'll need and you're against someone that does it's always an uphill battle for you. And incentivizing crafting those for that game mode is terrible optics.

In closing i agree that SOMEONE at actibliz in the past was trying to make HS a better game, i agree with you on the new ranking system(even though it makes it more grindy it sprinkles decent rewards throughout), the free decks to new and returning players which you didn't mention, the "noob ladder"(which is basically demon hunter ladder), and changing quests to give more gold and be less of a pain to complete. But these changes are just about reverted as of late. Since they all feed into a broken system that promises everything and delivers nothing.

Lots of well articulated comments, and a civil discussion - exactly why this site/community is great. I love reading forum threads like this.

I am a paying player, but it was not always that way. I love this game - it is nearly the only game I have time for any more.

When I think about the new content and the new progression/rewards system the thing that keeps getting driven home is: "does the new system feel better? Do I feel like I am having a better experience?" And the short answer is unfortunately "probably not". It certainly doesn't feel better, which I think is what is upsetting so much of the player base - the final numbers (gold/dust/packs/legendary cards etc.) may not have settled yet, but I think the system feels greedier, grindier and not palpably more rewarding at this point.

I am not about to quit playing because I enjoy the gameplay, the animations, the WoW characters and quasi-lore, but because the system doesn't palpably feel better yet I have my concerns.

The duplicate protection changes they made earlier this year were awesome (and long overdue). Scholomance Academy is the first expansion (other than the old style adventures) where I have 100% of the epics, and am threatening to get all the legendaries. That feels great for a collection oriented person like me. I unpacked 5 Sul'thraze back in the day, and that by contrast felt awful (as an example, there were others like that - looking at you 4x Furnacefire Colossus).

I ultimately want a system that rewards people daily and feels better than what we had yesterday. I want the game to succeed and be a going concern for years to come.

No you are just wrong and massively misinformed. 1350 gold, does NOT fix anything. The minimum gold loss from the old system is 2000 gold.

Quote From FinalOlive

No you are just wrong and massively misinformed. 1350 gold, does NOT fix anything. The minimum gold loss from the old system is 2000 gold.

Oh, it does change a lot. If you compare it now to the old system you gain 600 less gold, but gain 7 extra packs, an extra legendary and 2 tavern tickets for the same ammount of playtime. Plus events are still a thing. Also wonder why you would want to calculate the minimum gold gain instead of the average.

source because I'm to lazy to explain all the math here (starting at 6:00:00, result at 7:28:00)

Quote From Suchti0352

Quote From FinalOlive

No you are just wrong and massively misinformed. 1350 gold, does NOT fix anything. The minimum gold loss from the old system is 2000 gold.

Oh, it does change a lot. If you compare it now to the old system you gain 600 less gold, but gain 7 extra packs, an extra legendary and 2 tavern tickets for the same ammount of playtime. Plus events are still a thing. Also wonder why you would want to calculate the minimum gold gain instead of the average.

source because I'm to lazy to explain all the math here (starting at 6:00:00, result at 7:28:00)

The free legendary and free packs for the expansion is obviously a bonus from the battlepass and not something that they have already been doing and would have still been doing for each expansion without the battlepass....(they gave out free arenas with expansions too, but i'll let you have that one since it wasn't for every expansion.)

Quote From clawz161

Quote From Suchti0352

Quote From FinalOlive

No you are just wrong and massively misinformed. 1350 gold, does NOT fix anything. The minimum gold loss from the old system is 2000 gold.

Oh, it does change a lot. If you compare it now to the old system you gain 600 less gold, but gain 7 extra packs, an extra legendary and 2 tavern tickets for the same ammount of playtime. Plus events are still a thing. Also wonder why you would want to calculate the minimum gold gain instead of the average.

source because I'm to lazy to explain all the math here (starting at 6:00:00, result at 7:28:00)

The free legendary and free packs for the expansion is obviously a bonus from the battlepass and not something that they have already been doing and would have still been doing for each expansion without the battlepass....(they gave out free arenas with expansions too, but i'll let you have that one since it wasn't for every expansion.)

I know what you are trying to say, but the result already subtracted the normal free legendary(you get one at level 1 AND 25) and  the 3 Packs we usually get (I just looked it up and we actually got 6 packs for scholomance, but that's still 4 more packs they wouldn't have given out for free)

Wrong lol. We want gold instead of those. Literally most people who complain about the new system DON'T WANT old packs instead of gold. 100 gold is always a pack, but a pack value is not always a 100 gold.

The free legendary and 3 packs are also bonuses in new expansions that you used to get on expansion launch, so lol@ adding it to the pass as if it's a new thing to trick naive users like you.

Tavern tickets also aren't something everybody wants. Events always used to be a thing, they keep going downhill if anything. From double gold at it's best and gold dust to I don't even remember what the last event did, that useless arena thing?

If the new system is better than it should award more base gold than the old system. You can literally play 30 mins in 2 days only doing quests and getting 100 gold guaranteed. Now and especially in the later levels you aren't guaranteed anything, and the weekly quests are very time consuming.

Quote From FinalOlive

Wrong lol. We want gold instead of those. Literally most people who complain about the new system DON'T WANT old packs instead of gold. 100 gold is always a pack, but a pack value is not always a 100 gold.

 

The free legendary and 3 packs are also bonuses in new expansions that you used to get on expansion launch, so lol@ adding it to the pass as if it's a new thing to trick naive users like you.

 

Tavern tickets also aren't something everybody wants. Events always used to be a thing, they keep going downhill if anything. From double gold at it's best and gold dust to I don't even remember what the last event did, that useless arena thing?

 

If the new system is better than it should award more base gold than the old system. You can literally play 30 mins in 2 days only doing quests and getting 100 gold guaranteed. Now and especially in the later levels you aren't guaranteed anything, and the weekly quests are very time consuming.

I will reply to a few points below, but first and foremost, can you please use a more respectful tone when making your arguments? You are not going to convince anyone of anything if you start calling them naive and use absolutes like only your opinion is valid. The best discussions often arise through disagreement, but they only work if both sides respect each other.

---------------------------

Anyway, regarding Tavern Tickets: at absolute worst these amount to a pack of the most recent expansion plus a small amount of dust or gold. And that's what you'll get it you commit 5 minutes to building a deck and just conceding 3 games. If you actually try, you can get a decent amount of extra gold / dust. Now, I'm not saying Arena /Heroic Duels rewards are perfect (I mean, who wants those non-golden commons... seriously?), but the rewards are absolutely what players want, even if they wouldn't normally spend 150 gold on the game modes involved.

You are also portraying XP like it is worthless unless it pushes you over a level there and then, which is nonsense. Rewards in the progression track are more spaced out than the old trickle of gold, but the XP that gets you half way through a level is just as important as the XP that gets you over the level threshold. There is a clear psychological effect with many players where accumulating, say, 200 gold over time feels better than waiting to get it in 1 lump, but unless you are using that gold as you collect it there isn't an actual difference there. Now, what Blizz should do is just show the XP being added after each game, so you can see what it has earned you.

Finally, are weekly quests really that time consuming? Because they are often restricted to specific game modes it is fair to say different players will take longer on different ones, but let's use the default "Get 7 wins in ranked" quest as an example. Assuming 50% win rate, that's 14 games, or 2 a day. That's less than the daily quests ask for, so no, they are not really time consuming once you recognise they are spread across the week.

Show Spoiler

Quote From AngryShuckie

Quote From FinalOlive

Wrong lol. We want gold instead of those. Literally most people who complain about the new system DON'T WANT old packs instead of gold. 100 gold is always a pack, but a pack value is not always a 100 gold.

 

The free legendary and 3 packs are also bonuses in new expansions that you used to get on expansion launch, so lol@ adding it to the pass as if it's a new thing to trick naive users like you.

 

Tavern tickets also aren't something everybody wants. Events always used to be a thing, they keep going downhill if anything. From double gold at it's best and gold dust to I don't even remember what the last event did, that useless arena thing?

 

If the new system is better than it should award more base gold than the old system. You can literally play 30 mins in 2 days only doing quests and getting 100 gold guaranteed. Now and especially in the later levels you aren't guaranteed anything, and the weekly quests are very time consuming.

I will reply to a few points below, but first and foremost, can you please use a more respectful tone when making your arguments? You are not going to convince anyone of anything if you start calling them naive and use absolutes like only your opinion is valid. The best discussions often arise through disagreement, but they only work if both sides respect each other.

—————————

Anyway, regarding Tavern Tickets: at absolute worst these amount to a pack of the most recent expansion plus a small amount of dust or gold. And that's what you'll get it you commit 5 minutes to building a deck and just conceding 3 games. If you actually try, you can get a decent amount of extra gold / dust. Now, I'm not saying Arena /Heroic Duels rewards are perfect (I mean, who wants those non-golden commons… seriously?), but the rewards are absolutely what players want, even if they wouldn't normally spend 150 gold on the game modes involved.

You are also portraying XP like it is worthless unless it pushes you over a level there and then, which is nonsense. Rewards in the progression track are more spaced out than the old trickle of gold, but the XP that gets you half way through a level is just as important as the XP that gets you over the level threshold. There is a clear psychological effect with many players where accumulating, say, 200 gold over time feels better than waiting to get it in 1 lump, but unless you are using that gold as you collect it there isn't an actual difference there. Now, what Blizz should do is just show the XP being added after each game, so you can see what it has earned you.

Finally, are weekly quests really that time consuming? Because they are often restricted to specific game modes it is fair to say different players will take longer on different ones, but let's use the default "Get 7 wins in ranked" quest as an example. Assuming 50% win rate, that's 14 games, or 2 a day. That's less than the daily quests ask for, so no, they are not really time consuming once you recognise they are spread across the week.

 

Experience IS worthless unless it pushes you over the level limit though since the level limit is what gives you rewards. Experience for the sake of experience is nothing. And when you get past the level 15 mark is it increasingly hard to raise your level and get those rewards and those rewards are poor. This is what people are talking about. Welcome to the conversation.

I think the core of the problem is the same as it has always been: the high crafting costs for epic and legendaries. The first ~50 packs you open of an expansion are great value, but once you have all the commons and rares, you're mostly getting dust from packs and you need a lot of dust to be able to craft one legendary. The duplicate protection does help, that was a great move. However, I don't think it's enough to fix the issue.

Preorders are about $1 per pack (regular price is much worse) and packs contain about 100 dust, so if you want to craft a 10k dust deck (not uncommon for control decks), that's a $100 deck. Of course you don't need to craft every single card; some you will have pulled from packs. But even if you're only missing 2 legendaries and 4 epics, that's almost $50 worth of dust. I think that's a lot of money when I can get full indie games for $10 to $20, or even AAA games from a few years ago.

I'm not sure yet whether the progression track is better or worse than the old system for me, since I never used to grind for 10 gold per 3 wins anyway. I complete almost all my quests and then occasionally play more when I'm fine-tuning a deck. But I think it is safe to say that, apart from the first few levels, the new system is not significantly better than the old system.

I think a lot of people were tolerating the old system because they had gotten used to it, not because they actually liked it. So even if the new system is roughly equal in terms of rewards (as Blizzard claims), it's still not going to give them a good impression.

Quote From AngryShuckie

Now, what Blizz should do is just show the XP being added after each game, so you can see what it has earned you.

This exemplifies one of the core issues that lead to the backlash from the new system: there is a huge lack of transparency in it.

We have no idea if there are plans to make events XP based instead of gold/packs based. We have no idea how many of those events will there be on an expansion cycle. The only idea that we have right now is this:

So, I just lost an hour worth of a post here.... but tl;dr of that post: we need clarity. The improvements in rewarding players are negligible unless events fix that issue and we don't know what those events will give us. Therefore, sending most of the gold gains for the back end of the expansion cycle ends up feeling extra bad. Also, like @AngryShuckie said, show us the XP bar growing after each game. Again, for clarity.

Quote From Suchti0352

source because I'm to lazy to explain all the math here (starting at 6:00:00, result at 7:28:00)

I like watching Trump, but he kind of missed out on the calculations though. I didn't see the whole thing, but he was implying we'd get to level 50 on around day 90. However, according to Chadd Nervig's post here, that means we'd need 30 days to get the extra 8 levels Chadd Nervig calculated (he said a player with 1hour/day average playtime would reach around level 58). 

That Level 58 determination assumes you're only doing 75% of your daily and weekly quests (as noted in the table breakdown). He's quite clear in the Q&A section that doing all of your quests gets you a lot more ("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.")

Now, I'm sure there are players out there who aren't doing every daily and weekly quest, but I suspect anyone engaged enough to join this discussion (and probably anyone engaged enough to be mad about this system) is doing every daily and weekly quest.

I’m glad that this post has a much calmer and more positive tone to it, but we have to accept the reality that Blizzard has messed up. The new rewards track, while a step in the right direction, is a complete disaster. It is an unrewarding, slow and grindy mess. My biggest problem is Blizzard’s complete and utter lack of communication about the issue, I have no idea what their plan is or if they even intend to address the player outrage. I mean, just look at Naga Sea Witch for a good example of Blizzard’s modus operandi when it comes to things we don’t like. I am just so fed up and completely disappointed in this system, and their lack of transparency and even outright lying to our faces just adds fuel to this

Quote From PopeNeia

I’m glad that this post has a much calmer and more positive tone to it, but we have to accept the reality that Blizzard has messed up. The new rewards track, while a step in the right direction, is a complete disaster. It is an unrewarding, slow and grindy mess. My biggest problem is Blizzard’s complete and utter lack of communication about the issue, I have no idea what their plan is or if they even intend to address the player outrage. I mean, just look at Naga Sea Witch for a good example of Blizzard’s modus operandi when it comes to things we don’t like. I am just so fed up and completely disappointed in this system, and their lack of transparency and even outright lying to our faces just adds fuel to this

They did respond though? Didn't you see this?

We're supposed to give C'thanks for the battlepass, just like in the "apology letter" we didn't understand how the rewards system REALLY worked.

Quote From clawz161

Quote From PopeNeia

I’m glad that this post has a much calmer and more positive tone to it, but we have to accept the reality that Blizzard has messed up. The new rewards track, while a step in the right direction, is a complete disaster. It is an unrewarding, slow and grindy mess. My biggest problem is Blizzard’s complete and utter lack of communication about the issue, I have no idea what their plan is or if they even intend to address the player outrage. I mean, just look at Naga Sea Witch for a good example of Blizzard’s modus operandi when it comes to things we don’t like. I am just so fed up and completely disappointed in this system, and their lack of transparency and even outright lying to our faces just adds fuel to this

They did respond though? Didn't you see this?

They even planned a Q&A session.

And then they realized Battlepass is what they need to talk about and they silently cancelled (?) the Q&A session.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/k17px8/here_is_the_deleted_twitter_post_for_blizzards/

Quote From Alfi

Quote From clawz161

Quote From PopeNeia

I’m glad that this post has a much calmer and more positive tone to it, but we have to accept the reality that Blizzard has messed up. The new rewards track, while a step in the right direction, is a complete disaster. It is an unrewarding, slow and grindy mess. My biggest problem is Blizzard’s complete and utter lack of communication about the issue, I have no idea what their plan is or if they even intend to address the player outrage. I mean, just look at Naga Sea Witch for a good example of Blizzard’s modus operandi when it comes to things we don’t like. I am just so fed up and completely disappointed in this system, and their lack of transparency and even outright lying to our faces just adds fuel to this

They did respond though? Didn't you see this?

They even planned a Q&A session.

And then they realized Battlepass is what they need to talk about and they silently cancelled (?) the Q&A session.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/k17px8/here_is_the_deleted_twitter_post_for_blizzards/

That's from the Blizzard ANZ account, not the main Blizzard corporate account. So, yeah, it's possible that they cancelled it when they realized they'd mostly have angry players asking questions they - the ANZ branch - couldn't answer. I'm not sure that reflects unwillingness for Blizzard to communicate so much as it understandably reflects a desire to have the message come from someone higher up. Those people would certainly not have been available, as today is the US national holiday of Thanksgiving.

Quote From meisterz39

That Level 58 determination assumes you're only doing 75% of your daily and weekly quests (as noted in the table breakdown). He's quite clear in the Q&A section that doing all of your quests gets you a lot more ("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.")

Now, I'm sure there are players out there who aren't doing every daily and weekly quest, but I suspect anyone engaged enough to join this discussion (and probably anyone engaged enough to be mad about this system) is doing every daily and weekly quest.

Fair enough regarding the level 58 thing, although it's quite inconsistent that a player plays for 1 hour every day and only completes only 75% of dailies...

But damn, I wish I didn't lose the other post though, I used the 5hr/day example instead for some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that in the old system, a player would get around 15000g-16000g (something in the middle, I don't remember exactly), which compared to the new system (14400g + packs/legendary/tickets), the new system would give slightly more value, but that extra value was very minimal before speculating on event rewards and reaching the conclusion I put on the other post I posted here: we need clarity. I even used this:

Quote From Angry Shuckie

Now, what Blizz should do is just show the XP being added after each game, so you can see what it has earned you.

as an example of adding clarity to the system without even giving more rewards. 

PS: I'll probably remake the calculations and edit here later, I'm getting frustrated not remembering the exact number.
PPS: As someone who played his fair share of Pokémon, Angry Shuckie is an awesome name.

EDIT: Calculations made, with some rudimental winrate analysis included (fun fact: you needed an 80% winrate to get 100g from wins in 5 hours with my calculations)

I had the same kind of thoughts lately. 

I just can't understand why people feel like they can criticize Blizzard for "wanting to make money". 

1) Blizzard is not a charity, it is a business that works out of a psychological supported business model. 

2) Someone has to pay all the developers and teams who are working on developing your favorite games. 

3) I am an old mellenial, growing up, I could never have dreamed of having a game like Hearthstone for free. 

4) Solem made thepoint that HS is not "pay to win" but "pay to have a full experience". That seems fair to me. 

5) I am currently a F2P wild player. It takes work, but you can make fun decks that win without spending money. 

6) HS is like any other product. It has a price tag, you think it is worth it, you pay money for it. you think the product doesn't;t worth it, you move on. 

7) Blizzard always listen to the fan base. It has gone much better than the early days. They listen, and than fix and improve. 

So maybe we should turn down the level of poison a little bit. 

They've added several F2P-friendly formats (Battlegrounds, Duels), and will be adding another new mode before the end of the Year of the Phoenix

this statement can't be further from the truth.. the pass for battlegrounds gives you an insane advantage 2-> 4 hero picks.. when some heroes are busted are, not to mention how broken are some heroes on release, having early access to them before they are nerfed is a huge advantage...

duels..F2P friendly? are you sure? please check again.

300$ per year for a third of the expensions is the only argument that prove they abuse us. I cannot think of another game that is so expensive. We are all drugged by this game and they know it. So why not take all from us if we are willing to give them ??? For decency's god sake !

You miss the main aspect here: Blizzard making misleading and false statements about the new system. They made statements / promises they did not honor. And that is certainly a thing people can rightfully be angry about.

Quote From Thraxus

You miss the main aspect here: Blizzard making misleading and false statements about the new system. They made statements / promises they did not honor. And that is certainly a thing people can rightfully be angry about.

That, and the whole fiasco has served to bring straight to the limelight just how expensive and unrewarding Hearthstone has always been, in comparison to other games. But people were already invested in it, and they were used to it, so they didn't notice what it meant that they were dropping $80 or $130 three times per year (and still not getting all the cards they wanted to get) - all for Blizzard to create a few hundred cards and curate some events, plus pay out some prizes for e-sports. (And incidentally, they didn't even do all the payout for those events - they crowd-funded some of those payouts, despite being easily able to afford to just pay them out from the game's profits).

It's not even about the Battle Pass anymore. The fiasco with the Battle Pass has just served to wake people up to all the problems with the way the game has always been operated. I think Blizzard is permanently losing a LOT of players who have just had enough - they don't want to give another dime to a company that they now see as greedy and corrupt.

I hopefully open every day the OOC site to check - was there, somewhere, ANY communication from Blizzard?

No, there is not any.

BTW there was a "buy packs now" statement in the official expansion art for the game..

They are just trying to get every single bit of money in the scummiest way possible before going down, don't defend the undefendable, please.

Let the game die, go play gwent, LoR, mtga or any other card game, they are worth your time and money much more than this cash grab game, Blizzard got the lowest the have ever been, they are not even trying to hide their plans from us, using every psychological trick in the book: FOMO, frontloaded rewards then slow going, etc. 

Quote From DoubleSummon

BTW there was a "buy packs now" statement in the official expansion art for the game..

They are just trying to get every single bit of money in the scummiest way possible before going down, don't defend the undefendable, please.

It not only was but still is (just checked) and in the screen there are 3 BUY buttons. 

Quote From sto650

It's not even about the Battle Pass anymore. The fiasco with the Battle Pass has just served to wake people up to all the problems with the way the game has always been operated. I think Blizzard is permanently losing a LOT of players who have just had enough - they don't want to give another dime to a company that they now see as greedy and corrupt.

This story of people "waking up" to the greed is more than a little overdone. Here's a post on their forums from the early days of COVID in the US where someone is complaining that Blizzard should be giving away more free stuff to...help frontline workers or something like that? And here's an r/hearthstone post from years ago with mostly the same theme of Blizzard being too greedy.

And this is not unique to Blizzard - Wizards of the Coast gets its fair share of hate too. Here's a petition that cites a popular MTG youtuber talking about the predatory designs of MTGA, and an article from last July about the greedy (at the time) new Mastery system in MTGA. The fact is, the internet is full of people complaining about how greedy CCG companies are whenever they make any changes, because in that moment those people feel personally that they're not getting the value they want for their money.

In some ways, this gets back to a response from @clawz161, who said "Packs and cards don't have REAL VALUE...[because] you can't [resell your cards] in hearthstone, and the devs will never allow you to do that." This argument is flawed, and sits at the heart of the "greed" discussion. Hearthstone cards do have real value for anyone who enjoys playing Hearthstone because value isn't defined exclusively as "resale value." What value these digital products have will vary person to person, and if someone sees that value equation flip for them in a game they enjoyed, they cry out "this is greedy!" because the value equation no longer works for them.

I'm not saying Blizzard and WotC and companies like them should not do more to make their games more F2P friendly. I would love to see these games be more F2P friendly. But I think Blizzard has taken steps over the last year to do just that. They can do more, but they deserve some credit for what they've done.

So many problems and if some people are too busy defending Blizzard its at their own loss.

Not gonna go in and add more stuff to the pile of problems but recently i just found out something REALLY FUNNY. Zalae posted on twitter that he doesnt know if the battle pass is good or not but HE DOES KNOW he didn't buy it.

Now thats funny  and shows how bad the whole thing was publicised by Blizzard

I think I will add something too.
It's all arguable. Some say it's good, some say it's bad.

Me? I would love to hear their respond. They promised a lot. Transparency, Details, & Feedbacks.
So far? a little, yet so vague, uncertain, unclear. They state only for the common good, but avoid the most vital part.

I can only judge whether they're good or not based on how they respond. And it's AWFUL.

Quote From h0lysatan

I think I will add something too.
It's all arguable. Some say it's good, some say it's bad.

Me? I would love to hear their respond. They promised a lot. Transparency, Details, & Feedbacks.
So far? a little, yet so vague, uncertain, unclear. They state only for the common good, but avoid the most vital part.

I can only judge whether they're good or not based on how they respond. And it's AWFUL.

They lied about being more open to feedback since AOO or RoS I don't remember when did they promised they are gonna be more open to questions and feedback.

They didn't respound so far cause they are not interested in the community 2 weeks since the implementation and no official respound to the community outrage (and not fixing a bug andgiving a little more gold is NOT a fix)

Agreed. And Reddit has already been a shitshow since a week ago. Love seeing how Hearthstone unify all the players to go against them.
Google Apps down to 3.8, App Store down to 3.5, Amazon down to 3.8

Idk at this point, if they don't respond to the outrage in monday then HS's future is in a big doubt.

It wouldn't have taken much to please the outrage when it first started. But now since they waited too long, more and more people are focusing on the general cost of the game and not just the battle pass anymore.

Never wanted a company to fail more in my life. So greedy.

By the way, calculating, that casual player will do 75% of achievments is VERY far from truth. You need a specific legendary for a lot of them. You need to grind the ladder A LOT with very specific decks to get them (kill 25 minions with rabbit, deal 500 damage with Tonks, Silence a minion with 3 different buffs, play 10 outcast cards while a specific minion is in play, keep a minion in your hand the whole game, attack with rush minions 50 times while specific small legendary minion is in play etc.) 

Edit: I just discovered that achievemnt is to summon 200 Dreadboughs, not 20 as I thought before.

OK, so I have been sitting out of the whole discussion for a long time because while I don't agree that the rewards track was ever really that bad, I am also unimpressed with how Blizzard has handled it so they deserved a bit of an uproar. However, it has reached the point where I'm actually leaning towards the community's handling of it being worse than Blizz's. To help say why, let's break down the gold acquisition in rewards track for me personally:

Now, I know that just because the numbers are kind to me, it doesn't mean they are so kind to everyone. But if I put myself in the devs' shoes and saw the community rage despite the numbers actually being perfectly fine, I know I'd be keeping quite quiet too. What else can you do?

• Tell the community they are wrong? Even if that is true it would only provoke further anger.
• Perhaps they decide the community is completely right and the game should be made cheaper, but that change cannot come overnight and they cannot make promises before they know what they will do, so they cannot announce anything there either.
• If they take the middle ground and say "we have heard the concerns and are discussing them but don't propose any changes yet", then the community accuses them of being out of touch anyway.

So where are we? We have a community holding pitch-forks angry about changes that, by my calculations, don't deserve nearly so much anger as they are still generating. And a dev team that messed up by lack of communication, and have got themselves caught in a tough spot where almost anything they say will spark more anger (seriously, even if they finally told us how much XP per hour we get in each game mode, you can bet people will be angry they haven't also announced a 'fix' to the whole system), as will saying nothing.

I went into this affair being neutral because I wanted to experience everything for myself before making a judgement. Now I'm neutral because, quite frankly, neither side has handled it well enough to deserve my support.

Blizzard needs more than "slightly more gold" the game has become much more expensive since the old system was in place.. this system should make the game feel better to play, more affordable and more satisfying, it does none of that.

They only dug themselves deeper with EVERYTHING done this expansion.. just look at the duels requirements, the achievements that grant exp requirements, the price of the battle pass the outrageous "thank you blizzard" bundle with spelling errors (legenderies XD), yogg crashing the game.

There's no announcement to be made, people just need to get the memo and quit the game there are many many other games that the companies running them respect their players, at least more than money bags like Blizzard treats you or anyone else p(l)aying their games.

There are certainly some bad-faith arguments in the community. There always are, and always will be because this is the internet and, in general, people are stupid. Lots of old, bad blood comes up that isn’t relevant to the rewards track, and that obfuscates the root problem.

The root problem is simple. The community was specific and absolute in its response to the leaked survey: The gold earned between expansions is saved to buy packs of the newest set. The first iteration of the rewards track looked like it would reduce the amount of gold earned. Card rewards, packs from old sets, and Tavern Tickets cannot be used to buy packs. (This is something Blizzard has pulled before with arena rewards 4-5 years ago, adding packs and cards into the loot boxes to reduce the amount of gold earned.) Assigning values to those non-gold rewards is disingenuous because those rewards are not 1:1 equivalent to gold, as they can’t be used to buy packs.

So, was the gold earned reduced?

For me, the simplest way to calculate the gold earnings is to use a casual, 1 hour per day player. This player can log in, reroll & clear a daily quest, and win 3 games. This player would have earned a minimum of 60 gold each day over the 120 days used in Chad Nervig’s example, linked here. A very simple calculation in the old system (60gold x 120days) shows this player earns a minimum of 7200 gold.

Using Nervig’s charts, we can calculate the total gold under the initial version and the updated version that removed packs and added 1350 gold.

TOTAL: 290,475xp

290,475 XP puts our player at level 72. In the initial version of the rewards track, level 72 earned our player 6300 gold. The player base went ballistic because it was clear the gold earned would be lower than the minimum we had in the old system. The new rewards track grants a total of 7650 gold at level 72 now, which is better but still below the more accepted total of 8000-8500 gold most would earn in our 1-hour-casual example.

There are also several big issues just with play time and quests:

1. Our 1-hour Casual player would earn more if they won 6 games in that hour under the old system
2. Our 1-hour Casual would earn more if they have a few 100 gold quests over that 120 days
3. This player would earn more if they were gifted any Challenge a Friend quests.
4. They could earn that minimum in 30 minutes of play with a top deck (this would cut their XP down to 24000, knocking them down to level 66 and removing another 900 gold)

There are also several big issues with the game becoming even more expensive:

1. Achievements requiring Legendary and Epic cards will deplete a player’s dust reserve while crafting cards that may not be viable in other modes
2. Mini-set bundling into existing set packs means lower chances to open those new cards (Buy Packs Now!)
3. Duels has the best starting treasures locked behind collection requirements for DMF epics

On top of all of that, the system makes progress feel much slower. The only time I see any indication that I’ve progressed is when I get the required XP to move up a level. There are complaints by players that want to start an arena/duels run but can no longer grind gold that day, instead being forced to wait several days if they are staring down a few feelsbadman pack levels between their current level and the next gold reward.

Then we add Blizzard’s response via Ben Lee that tells us we didn’t have all the information needed about XP from additional events. Of course, that response didn’t bother to give us any of the information we were missing, only the promise that there will be more XP and bonus events “as needed” and that we should blindly accept that they “will stay true to” their word.

There are positives to the new system but they were crushed by a tidal wave of negatives because of Blizzard's bad-faith gold-equivalent math, substituting rewards that can't buy packs and considering the value assigned to be equal. 

So right now is when the HS PR team/community manager or w/e put out statements. So it seems their strategy is literally to ignore us.

Hahaha, wow. 

So yeah @OP, Blizzard is not that bad, they are awesome :) /s

Quote From AbusingKel

Card rewards, packs from old sets, and Tavern Tickets cannot be used to buy packs...Assigning values to those non-gold rewards is disingenuous because those rewards are not 1:1 equivalent to gold, as they can’t be used to buy packs.

This is not really fair.

Card rewards for legendary and epic cards enable you to buy fewer packs. If I'm planning to get a full collection, then after about 50 packs or so I've got all the common and rare cards. A legendary comes in about 1 out of every 20 packs, so in some sense, that free legendary has saved me the cost of 20 packs. (Note that my math on this does not value a Legendary card at 2000 gold, but the 1 in 20 packs is illustrative of my point that they enable me to buy fewer packs on my way to a full set.) We can reasonably debate what the right gold-equivalent value of those is, but it's clear that anything that enables you to spend less gold on an expansion has a gold-equivalent value.

Tavern Tickets translate to Arena runs and Heroic Duels runs, which net packs of the latest set and gold. They are effectively much better than gold, as you can save them up until the next expansion and spend them to get packs and gold with which you can get more packs (all while completing your daily quests).

Packs from old sets are complicated, but it's clear they're not worth nothing because the dust you get from them can go toward crafting new cards. Where it gets tricky is in determining how much they should be valued.

Let's start with an extreme case, where the player in question has a full collection. Every pack from every set has the exact same value until a new set comes out. When the new set comes out, those new packs have dramatically greater value, but that value difference drops significantly after about 50 or so packs when all that's left to collect is the epics and legendary cards. The new packs are still more valuable because every now and then they'll provide some new card, but oftentimes you'll just get a bunch of common and rare cards you already have, all of which become dust. Those packs are basically the same value as a pack from any other set.

A much more common case is that the player in question doesn't have every card in every set, which shrinks the value differential even further because there are lots of older epic and legendary cards that see play in top tier decks (e.g. Kayn Sunfury and Soulciologist Malicia in Soul DH, Lady Liadrin and High Abbess Alura in Pure Pally, and Dragonbane and Lorekeeper Polkelt in Face Hunter). 

Yes, everyone saves up gold to buy cards from the new expansion. But that's not because everyone collected up full collections and don't get anything new from old packs, it's because they know they'll get a lot more out of that gold by buying all the common and rare cards of the next set, plus a couple of legendaries. But that's not a compelling case for saying that a pack from an older set has zero gold-equivalent value. Given that much of the time, packs of each set are worth the same (i.e. some amount of dust because they're all dupes), it's at most a decent case for saying that a pack from an older set has less value than 100 gold (though how much less will vary by player).

Quote From meisterz39

Quote From AbusingKel

Card rewards, packs from old sets, and Tavern Tickets cannot be used to buy packs...Assigning values to those non-gold rewards is disingenuous because those rewards are not 1:1 equivalent to gold, as they can’t be used to buy packs.

This is not really fair.

Card rewards for legendary and epic cards enable you to buy fewer packs. If I'm planning to get a full collection, then after about 50 packs or so I've got all the common and rare cards. A legendary comes in about 1 out of every 20 packs, so in some sense, that free legendary has saved me the cost of 20 packs. (Note that my math on this does not value a Legendary card at 2000 gold, but the 1 in 20 packs is illustrative of my point that they enable me to buy fewer packs on my way to a full set.) We can reasonably debate what the right gold-equivalent value of those is, but it's clear that anything that enables you to spend less gold on an expansion has a gold-equivalent value.

Tavern Tickets translate to Arena runs and Heroic Duels runs, which net packs of the latest set and gold. They are effectively much better than gold, as you can save them up until the next expansion and spend them to get packs and gold with which you can get more packs (all while completing your daily quests).

Packs from old sets are complicated, but it's clear they're not worth nothing because the dust you get from them can go toward crafting new cards. Where it gets tricky is in determining how much they should be valued.

Let's start with an extreme case, where the player in question has a full collection. Every pack from every set has the exact same value until a new set comes out. When the new set comes out, those new packs have dramatically greater value, but that value difference drops significantly after about 50 or so packs when all that's left to collect is the epics and legendary cards. The new packs are still more valuable because every now and then they'll provide some new card, but oftentimes you'll just get a bunch of common and rare cards you already have, all of which become dust. Those packs are basically the same value as a pack from any other set.

A much more common case is that the player in question doesn't have every card in every set, which shrinks the value differential even further because there are lots of older epic and legendary cards that see play in top tier decks (e.g. Kayn Sunfury and Soulciologist Malicia in Soul DH, Lady Liadrin and High Abbess Alura in Pure Pally, and Dragonbane and Lorekeeper Polkelt in Face Hunter). 

Yes, everyone saves up gold to buy cards from the new expansion. But that's not because everyone collected up full collections and don't get anything new from old packs, it's because they know they'll get a lot more out of that gold by buying all the common and rare cards of the next set, plus a couple of legendaries. But that's not a compelling case for saying that a pack from an older set has zero gold-equivalent value. Given that much of the time, packs of each set are worth the same (i.e. some amount of dust because they're all dupes), it's at most a decent case for saying that a pack from an older set has less value than 100 gold (though how much less will vary by player).

I completely agree there is value to those items. Your post seems like a reasonable delve into the value but, ultimately, you agree the value is not 1:1 with gold. 

The context is everything here. Again, the concern was absolute and specific: will we earn the same amount of gold in between expansions? The answer is no. It's still no even with the added 1350 on the track, and that is only when compared to the absolute minimum gold earned in the old system. Devs plainly stated we'd earn the same if not more and that is false. 

I have very little faith I'll hit level 72 (just to break even) without an event dumping a large amount of XP. I refuse to play the game a different way to earn the same gold. The devs even stated we'd earn more for playing the way we want to play and I haven't even brought that aspect into the discussion, or the free legendary card at launch being moved to the reward track. I don't have any desire to achievement hunt (though I am glad it's available for those that do) and expect I'll fall well short of the achievement totals quoted by Nervig. 

Quote From AbusingKel

I completely agree there is value to those items. Your post seems like a reasonable delve into the value but, ultimately, you agree the value is not 1:1 with gold.

The context is everything here. Again, the concern was absolute and specific: will we earn the same amount of gold in between expansions? The answer is no.

For one, a very recent analysis by Bunnyhopper suggests that lots of players will end up with more gold not less at the end of the expansion (https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srg57g). But more to the point, gold doesn't matter, and neither do packs really - all that matters is cards. Gold is only in contention here because specific things were said about gold, and historically it's the most direct way for F2P players to get new cards at the start of an expansion. Blizzard could just as easily have said "we're getting rid of gold entirely, and will be rewarding you with new 'player packs' that you can trade in for packs of any set you want" and you'd have a functionally equivalent system because gold is just a means to more cards.

My contention with your original point was not that the non-gold rewards were all equivalent to the gold rewards in value, but rather that you shouldn't throw them out of the analysis entirely the way you did. Understanding their gold-equivalent value is important to understanding the overall value to the player. The question that actually matters is not "will I get more gold?" but rather "will I get more new cards?" That question just happens to be easiest to answer in terms of gold-equivalence because gold still buys cards in the same way it used to, and gold is an easy tool for comparing to the old reward system. (Gold is also a good but imperfect way to measure card acquisition concretely, as it's easy to count packs from gold, but card probabilities from packs is largely opaque.)

For those interested in Bunnyhopper's work (https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srg57g) on the new system. Here's what I can summarize; (check it out. Its a worthwhile read)

- He made two assumptions, where 1 hour of gameplay will yield 400xp or 350xp (as it has been reported that waiting times don't add in to the xp gained). He concluded that if we assume a rate of 400xp per hour then at 2 hours and above it will pay out slightly (which is enough to win the argument anyway) above the old system, again assuming that we get 12.5 gold per hour in the old system (quests + 57% win rate)

The assumption is of course, just an assumption. I don't believe that 400xp per hour (as claimed by devs) is actually factual, since its clear that waiting times aren't technically gameplay. Also, there's been rumblings about that wins gets you more xp than losses. I can't confirm that naturally.

- Another thing from his analysis, is that in both his hourly xp gain assumptions, players playing less than 2 hours a day (most of us have to contend with family, work, and other games in our lives) will not be gaining from the new system.

- He has advised that we keep track of our hourly xp rate for a better picture. I do agree. Would of course be easier if blizz just have every match xp shown when the match ends, but we just can't have nice things can we?

There's just so much opaque about how this works exactly. Sums up what I really think about the new progressions system in general.

Who cares if in the long term some players are getting slightly more gold?

The system feels much worse, you can't complete quests in tavern brawls some quests force you into some modes/actions (ranked/arena also playing old gods), some rewards are still old expansion packs.

Packs still feel bad to open, the dust system still sucks, the game is still expensive AF, and feel very grindy.

The new system should've be a CLEAR IMPROVEMENT over the old one.. which it's not.

Quote From meisterz39

Quote From AbusingKel

I completely agree there is value to those items. Your post seems like a reasonable delve into the value but, ultimately, you agree the value is not 1:1 with gold.

The context is everything here. Again, the concern was absolute and specific: will we earn the same amount of gold in between expansions? The answer is no.

For one, a very recent analysis by Bunnyhopper suggests that lots of players will end up with more gold not less at the end of the expansion (https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srg57g). But more to the point, gold doesn't matter, and neither do packs really - all that matters is cards. Gold is only in contention here because specific things were said about gold, and historically it's the most direct way for F2P players to get new cards at the start of an expansion. Blizzard could just as easily have said "we're getting rid of gold entirely, and will be rewarding you with new 'player packs' that you can trade in for packs of any set you want" and you'd have a functionally equivalent system because gold is just a means to more cards.

My contention with your original point was not that the non-gold rewards were all equivalent to the gold rewards in value, but rather that you shouldn't throw them out of the analysis entirely the way you did. Understanding their gold-equivalent value is important to understanding the overall value to the player. The question that actually matters is not "will I get more gold?" but rather "will I get more new cards?" That question just happens to be easiest to answer in terms of gold-equivalence because gold still buys cards in the same way it used to, and gold is an easy tool for comparing to the old reward system. (Gold is also a good but imperfect way to measure card acquisition concretely, as it's easy to count packs from gold, but card probabilities from packs is largely opaque.)

 

Your conclusion that "analysis by Bunnyhopper suggests that lots of players will end up with more gold" seems vague. How are you defining "lots of players" in this situation?

I'd have to do some digging to source it [edit: source], but team 5 is on record stating that ~75% of players were below rank 15 in the old ranked system. That seems to suggest that most players are not putting in more than an hour per day, since even schlub's like me reach rank 5 with 1 hour per day of play. This suggests that most players are playing less than the 3 hours per day in Bunnyhopper's calculations. My math, which is actually supported by Bunnyhopper's math that you linked, suggests that all players that are under 3 hours per day will earn less. Combining both suggests that 75% of the player base will earn less gold in this new system. Again, I'll mention that those calculations are based on the minimum we'd earn in the old system. 

This is why I feel that the bad faith started with Blizzard, and why I disagree with your assessment that the player base is arguing in bad faith. 

I will say it's not cool for people to be attacking streamers and/or devs on their channels/streams. That's not going to help and is way out of line. 

A thought occurred to me.  Perhaps part of the rewards system revamp/battlepass system is a first step in a direction that disincentives against aggro deck farming.  

There were (and still are) people who think the only way to play is to play aggro decks because the old system encouraged fast games with aggro decks to farm wins (3x wins=10 gold).  This of course promoted aggro play by people who wanted to farm the maximum per-day gold.

The new system with experience being generated on a variable game-length basis doesn't incentivize any particular deck. (if you spend 4 minutes in 1 game, 16 in the next, you're still getting 20 minutes of experience regardless of the deck you are playing).  

This system of "growth" coupled with the ranked floor changes from the beginning of the year allows people to play decks they want to play, as opposed to playing strictly meta decks or strictly aggro decks.   From my perspective this is a positive outcome.  Perhaps not exactly the view people were looking for... "Blizz bad, me get pitchfork" but still I try to look at things to see what other reasons the system was changed.

Quote From Sykomyke

A thought occurred to me.  Perhaps part of the rewards system revamp/battlepass system is a first step in a direction that disincentives against aggro deck farming.  

There were (and still are) people who think the only way to play is to play aggro decks because the old system encouraged fast games with aggro decks to farm wins (3x wins=10 gold).  This of course promoted aggro play by people who wanted to farm the maximum per-day gold.

The new system with experience being generated on a variable game-length basis doesn't incentivize any particular deck. (if you spend 4 minutes in 1 game, 16 in the next, you're still getting 20 minutes of experience regardless of the deck you are playing).  

This system of "growth" coupled with the ranked floor changes from the beginning of the year allows people to play decks they want to play, as opposed to playing strictly meta decks or strictly aggro decks.   From my perspective this is a positive outcome.  Perhaps not exactly the view people were looking for... "Blizz bad, me get pitchfork" but still I try to look at things to see what other reasons the system was changed.

That is a positive of the system, and it's not the only positive. Gaining XP in arena is huge for arena players (though the mode is hurting) and achievement hunting is something people enjoy. There are plenty of positive changes. 

The problem is they are lost in the tidal wave of negative Blizzard brought on themselves.

The better way to discourage gold farming would have been to revamp the system into a wholly more reasonable economy. Farming is less of a concern if players can actually craft the cards they want to play without fear of choosing wrong and being set back by months of play time to catch up again. 

I’ve said this before, and even on the official HS forums, but the system could be vastly improved by 1 or 2 small changes.

1) Bring back 100 gold/day for wins.  What I suggested on the official forums was actually just making it 5 gold/win, making it 20 wins/day to cap out instead of 30.

2) Give a little boost to quest XP; or, hand out daily quests at 12 am AND 12 pm Blizz time (or whatever time for each region).  XP increase helps make progression faster and therefore feels more rewarding like Blizz said the system would.  However, option 2 of having 2 daily quests per day also works towards increased player engagement like they wanted from the “time played” XP.  If you play more often and grind out quests, you get rewards.  If you miss playing a day you might miss out on 1 or 2 quests based on when timing.  However, you could stop with no quests, come back with 3... it’s still like you got one more quest than before even if you didn’t play for a bit!

These suggestions wouldn’t likely get us to the final version of the track, but could boost it immensely while they figure out if it works that way or if there is another iteration that works better.

But I’m not a game designer, or a marketer.  So what do I know.

People play aggro because it's quicker and more optimal for climbing. Aggro is as popular as ever both in Ranked and Casual.

And there is already bots that farm exp by roping and only hero powering every turn.

Of course every calculation ignore casul players. 

Before Reward track a player who rerolls all quest for 60 gold and does them in causal playing 30 minutes daily on average (like me) would gain 120*60=7200 gold (not counting some gold for 3xwins)

Now the same player gets 1000*120 XP (daily quests) + (1750+1750)*16 XP (weekly quests completeable in casual) + 350/2 * 120 XP (playtime XP) = ~200 000 XP reaching level 50 on reward track. This means 4950 gold. 

That player (and I was often playing like that) playing the same gets MUCH less gold per expansion. 

He gets one more random legendary, which, in case it is unplayable for him means 400 dust (4 packs worth). 

Omg this is such a TLDR showdown. Let's make it simple: HS is the best CCG out there so much so it made the game it ripped off be awful in comparison. Magic made tons of money over those years. So the cash grab worked. Now they are going to have to adapt bc game and favor is waning. My guess is that will be slowly. 

Quote From AbusingKel

Quote From meisterz39

Quote From AbusingKel

I completely agree there is value to those items. Your post seems like a reasonable delve into the value but, ultimately, you agree the value is not 1:1 with gold.

The context is everything here. Again, the concern was absolute and specific: will we earn the same amount of gold in between expansions? The answer is no.

For one, a very recent analysis by Bunnyhopper suggests that lots of players will end up with more gold not less at the end of the expansion (https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srg57g). But more to the point, gold doesn't matter, and neither do packs really - all that matters is cards. Gold is only in contention here because specific things were said about gold, and historically it's the most direct way for F2P players to get new cards at the start of an expansion. Blizzard could just as easily have said "we're getting rid of gold entirely, and will be rewarding you with new 'player packs' that you can trade in for packs of any set you want" and you'd have a functionally equivalent system because gold is just a means to more cards.

My contention with your original point was not that the non-gold rewards were all equivalent to the gold rewards in value, but rather that you shouldn't throw them out of the analysis entirely the way you did. Understanding their gold-equivalent value is important to understanding the overall value to the player. The question that actually matters is not "will I get more gold?" but rather "will I get more new cards?" That question just happens to be easiest to answer in terms of gold-equivalence because gold still buys cards in the same way it used to, and gold is an easy tool for comparing to the old reward system. (Gold is also a good but imperfect way to measure card acquisition concretely, as it's easy to count packs from gold, but card probabilities from packs is largely opaque.)

 

Your conclusion that "analysis by Bunnyhopper suggests that lots of players will end up with more gold" seems vague. How are you defining "lots of players" in this situation?

I'd have to do some digging to source it [edit: source], but team 5 is on record stating that ~75% of players were below rank 15 in the old ranked system. That seems to suggest that most players are not putting in more than an hour per day, since even schlub's like me reach rank 5 with 1 hour per day of play. This suggests that most players are playing less than the 3 hours per day in Bunnyhopper's calculations. My math, which is actually supported by Bunnyhopper's math that you linked, suggests that all players that are under 3 hours per day will earn less. Combining both suggests that 75% of the player base will earn less gold in this new system. Again, I'll mention that those calculations are based on the minimum we'd earn in the old system. 

This is why I feel that the bad faith started with Blizzard, and why I disagree with your assessment that the player base is arguing in bad faith. 

I will say it's not cool for people to be attacking streamers and/or devs on their channels/streams. That's not going to help and is way out of line. 

 

For what it's worth, those numbers are very stale. The 2019 numbers had already begun to move upward, with only 63% of players below rank 15 (even before the major update to the ranked system, which is much better for ranked progress and amount of rewards for ranked play). And Dean Ayala mentioned that a large chunk of players get counted in these analyses simply because they played a tiny bit of ranked in the month despite mostly playing other formats (e.g. Battlegrounds or Arena mode). All that is to say, I think treating season rankings as a proxy for time spent playing Hearthstone wouldn't have been correct when these numbers were released, and it's made even worse by the continued increase in different game formats (Duels recently, and another mode coming up soon).

I don't see how your math could be supported by Bunnyhopper's analysis unless you're making different assumptions about XP per hour. His conclusion is pretty explicit - "If the new system does award 400XP/hr then only players that play 1 hr/day will actually lose gold in this system and the rewards easily make up for it and that is not considering seasonal events." So, the non-gold rewards make up for the missing gold in terms of value, and it may yet be the case that seasonal events push these "losing players" over the line on actual gold.

Perhaps the 400 XP per hour figure isn't right, but that number came from Blizzard, and if people aren't seeing that in practice then Blizzard needs to adjust the numbers to realize that figure. Mind you, there's some indication that people aren't seeing those numbers because queue times and time spent in client changing decks, etc., doesn't count toward XP, so an hour of honestly playing Hearthstone doesn't necessarily translate to an hour in matches. That seems like something Blizzard should adjust for given the analyses everyone has been performing - including them - use these values as a baseline.

Quote From Live4vrRdieTryn

Omg this is such a TLDR showdown. Let's make it simple: HS is the best CCG out there so much so it made the game it ripped off be awful in comparison. Magic made tons of money over those years. So the cash grab worked. Now they are going to have to adapt bc game and favor is waning. My guess is that will be slowly. 

lol.... still one of the best things about this site, for me. Discussions are civil, well constructed, and (generally) free of short/useless/troll posts. 

To me it's all very simple: the casual player gets screwed over by the new system. That's a tremendously lousy move by blizzard. I have never seen the outrage at the current level and I think it will absolutely have a detrimental effect on the number of players that stick with HS, and that's a shame.

I fully expect that my ~1.5 hour per day gaming will have me fall well short of my usual earnings. I find that completely unacceptable. I've already decided to stop all purchases and have started LoR to get up to speed over the course of this reward track. What's worse is that the clear bad faith by BlizzAvision makes me unlikely to restart purchases even if they throw some "mystery events" at us to boost XP. I'm no whale, but my ~$100 per year tacked on to how ever many other ~$100 per year players will likely add up. My friends list, which is only anecdotal evidence, seems to reflect a decline in player interest. At any previous set launch I would see ~50 friends online playing whenever I logged in each day. With this set, I see 12-20.  

So sad they aren't even acknowledging our existence. I hope it blows up in their face.

Quote From FinalOlive

So sad they aren't even acknowledging our existence. I hope it blows up in their face.

Well, technically, they are acknowledging our existence. They're just making it clear they don't find our current expenditures to be substantial enough. 

Quote From Alfi

Take Path of Exile - a hack'n'slash RPG. It have 3 expansions each year and is completely free, paid only by selling cosmetics. 

And it works, because people who love the game drop a dollar or two (or more)

Take Magic The Gathering - a collectible card game. It have 3 expansions each year and people pay hundreds of dollars.

And it works, because people who love the game drop a dollar or two (or more)