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Hearthstone | Posted by | 5 years, 4 months ago
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Afk BGs

What is your opinion of it? I tried it for about 4 hours today and i barely got 200 xp, maybe it was good when the system first came out and i heard rumbling of a stealth nerf to it. But personally i think it's a decent workaround for the system if you don't care about playing the game or your BGs ranking(i went from around 1.5k to zero doing this very quickly, which doesn't matter since i don't care about the ranking and it doesn't matter) I have two accounts, i have a phone i don't use it's pretty easy to do, and it helps people get their "finish in top 2 in BGs" quest which shouldn't even exist.

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  • What is your opinion of it? I tried it for about 4 hours today and i barely got 200 xp, maybe it was good when the system first came out and i heard rumbling of a stealth nerf to it. But personally i think it's a decent workaround for the system if you don't care about playing the game or your BGs ranking(i went from around 1.5k to zero doing this very quickly, which doesn't matter since i don't care about the ranking and it doesn't matter) I have two accounts, i have a phone i don't use it's pretty easy to do, and it helps people get their "finish in top 2 in BGs" quest which shouldn't even exist.

  • 200 xp is worth around 10 g or less, so for 4 hours no way it's worth it even if you scripted it. I think we should all take a break of thinking about xp and the system and enter the game when we want to relax and have fun :) 

  • If you can bot it then its still free xp. Essentially the idea is that you can leave it up all night and be up like around 1000xp per day depending on the hours you're willing to leave your device turned on.

    There's going to be a time where blizz starts putting a cap on the max amount of xp possible in a day, and perhaps even implement something like giving extraordinarily low xp for those under, say, bottom 2 of the list, or tie it up to the number of moves completed per game. You getting only a mere 200xp for 4 hours is testament to them willing and having spent every ounce of muscle to stop easy xp from rolling in.

    But 200xp for no effort on your part is still free xp. Why not?

    Friendly

    • You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

      • Quote From Ethardoth

        You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

        I have no idea why you're equating this to that

        • Quote From clawz161
          Quote From Ethardoth

          You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

          I have no idea why you're equating this to that

          Because it may be cheaper to buy packs for money than to pay for electricity for “free” pack

          • Quote From Alfi
            Quote From clawz161
            Quote From Ethardoth

            You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

            I have no idea why you're equating this to that

            Because it may be cheaper to buy packs for money than to pay for electricity for “free” pack

            But then you're supporting Blizzard with your money. Which is the polar opposite of what most people want to do currently.

            • Quote From iWatchUSleep
              Quote From Alfi
              Quote From clawz161
              Quote From Ethardoth

              You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

              I have no idea why you're equating this to that

              Because it may be cheaper to buy packs for money than to pay for electricity for “free” pack

              But then you're supporting Blizzard with your money. Which is the polar opposite of what most people want to do currently.

              Saving environment by preserving energy should be more important than boycotting a greedy company.

              Anyways, I just think it's too small of amount of exp to rationalize afk-ing BG. Maybe in ranked it's worth it in terms of personal gain, but you ruin other's entertainment. If you want to send Blizzard a message, it's probably better to play less, rather then increasing their playtime numbers with afk-ing. 

              Playing the game naturally is healthier for everyone.

      • Quote From Ethardoth

        You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free. 

        Obviously when I used the word 'free' it is in the context of the current situation which is 'playing the game', therefore the intention of my original use of the term is to describe the pursuance of experience points without putting the necessary effort as another person would in the same situation.

        Friendly

        • Well, you can also just buy packs if financial aspect is not a problem. That's why I made that point, clawz. 

  • I tried it for about 4 hours today and i barely got 200 xp, maybe it was good when the system first came out and i heard rumbling of a stealth nerf to it.

    This is much lower than what I've seen on reddit, where the average xp/min is around 4.5 (including this analysis from a couple of weeks ago). Perhaps you're right, and there was a server-side patch to the system, but if you could, I think it would be useful to provide more info about how you implemented the strategy (e.g. how long do you think you were in queue, did you consistently queue up right after each match or was there some delay, etc.).

    Depending on how you're implementing it, it's very possible that your four hours spent doing this AFK strategy translated to much less time in games than a bot doing the same thing would have had.

    You getting only a mere 200xp for 4 hours is testament to them willing and having spent every ounce of muscle to stop easy xp from rolling in.

    Is it really so bad that they want to limit people AFKing the game for XP? It makes for a more worse player experience if your opponents are regularly just roping/doing nothing. That negative impact is certainly diminished in battlegrounds (because you have six other opponents), but if everyone who AFKs ends up with a low MMR, it also creates two pretty bad results: 1) it means anyone trying out BG for the first time may be stuck with lots of AFK opponents at very low MMRs, and 2) it means the potential of wasting the cost of running servers on games populated mostly by AFK BG lobbies.

    The game ought to reward you for playing the game rather than merely spending time in the game. There's room for improvement to how players gain XP, and the issues around queue times, etc., that make it hard for players to get the full value of an hour spent honestly playing the game. But despite that, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to try to prevent people from manipulating XP systems, because no matter how generous they are to players who are seriously playing the game, people will try to manipulate the reward system with bots, etc.

    • Quote From meisterz39

      I tried it for about 4 hours today and i barely got 200 xp, maybe it was good when the system first came out and i heard rumbling of a stealth nerf to it.

      This is much lower than what I've seen on reddit, where the average xp/min is around 4.5 (including this analysis from a couple of weeks ago). Perhaps you're right, and there was a server-side patch to the system, but if you could, I think it would be useful to provide more info about how you implemented the strategy (e.g. how long do you think you were in queue, did you consistently queue up right after each match or was there some delay, etc.).

      Depending on how you're implementing it, it's very possible that your four hours spent doing this AFK strategy translated to much less time in games than a bot doing the same thing would have had.

      You getting only a mere 200xp for 4 hours is testament to them willing and having spent every ounce of muscle to stop easy xp from rolling in.

      Is it really so bad that they want to limit people AFKing the game for XP? It makes for a more worse player experience if your opponents are regularly just roping/doing nothing. That negative impact is certainly diminished in battlegrounds (because you have six other opponents), but if everyone who AFKs ends up with a low MMR, it also creates two pretty bad results: 1) it means anyone trying out BG for the first time may be stuck with lots of AFK opponents at very low MMRs, and 2) it means the potential of wasting the cost of running servers on games populated mostly by AFK BG lobbies.

      The game ought to reward you for playing the game rather than merely spending time in the game. There's room for improvement to how players gain XP, and the issues around queue times, etc., that make it hard for players to get the full value of an hour spent honestly playing the game. But despite that, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to try to prevent people from manipulating XP systems, because no matter how generous they are to players who are seriously playing the game, people will try to manipulate the reward system with bots, etc.

      If a system is bad and built around exploiting you, you should be able to do the same to it without a guilty conscience. It literally gave me nothing doing this, i only did it because i was close to leveling up an didn't want to play any more games because i was busy with something else. I had already done my three quests i had and it didn't even give me a level up. The system is a joke. I think everyone should afk BGs, because "don't you guys have phones?" The small indie company that is ACTIVISION BLIZZARD can afford to pay for servers....Get in as much experience as you can before they cap it to to 1k experience a day and screw us even harder.

      • Quote From clawz161

        If a system is bad and built around exploiting you, you should be able to do the same to it without a guilty conscience. It literally gave me nothing doing this, i only did it because i was close to leveling up an didn't want to play any more games because i was busy with something else. I had already done my three quests i had and it didn't even give me a level up. The system is a joke. I think everyone should afk BGs, because "don't you guys have phones?" The small indie company that is ACTIVISION BLIZZARD can afford to pay for servers....Get in as much experience as you can before they cap it to to 1k experience a day and screw us even harder.

        I feel like you're kind of putting words in my mouth here. I'm not saying that you should feel guilty about exploiting the system as it exists. Rather, I'm saying that there several compelling reasons for Blizzard to disincentivize that kind of behavior (including the costs of running the game and a bad player experience), so if they're doing that and making it harder for people to game the system, I'm neither surprised nor upset. At the end of the day, it's all just economics. The game should be rewarding for people who are playing the game in earnest, and it should not be rewarding for players who are trying to exploit it. If they succeed at that, whether or not you "should" feel guilty about exploiting it would be irrelevant, as that would simply be a dumb thing to do.

        Certainly, any effort to "stealth nerf" the XP for this AFK strategy would be the "stick" approach to nudging players towards positive gaming experiences in Hearthstone rather than exploitative ones. And you're right that they could stand to push harder on the "carrot" approach by making the system more generous for when people are playing the game for fun, thus decreasing the incentive to exploit it. But one way or another, I doubt I'll adopt this approach - it just seems tedious and boring.