Dean "Iksar" Ayala was out on Reddit tonight responding to feedback on the Hearthstone Rewards Track for Madness at the Darkmoon Fair. In his post, he gave us some knowledge on what we can expect from the next iteration of the Rewards Track.
The next expansion, the first of the year and the one that will kick off a new set rotation, will feature 100 levels in the core pass rather than the 50 we have today. This might sound like a negative at first, who wants to grind out an additional 50 levels after all, but Dean shared some additional information on that; The experience requirement isn't changing for the main pass and neither are the rewards.
Large gold amounts will go away in favor of smaller, more frequently earned amounts with no overall loss.
One of the common bits of happy feedback from the community on the update that made the rewards track have a total of 350 levels was that the pacing on the gold rewards felt really good. It should be no surprise that players want to earn rewards in short play sessions instead of having to progress towards them over multiple days as the original system worked that way. Blizzard took this feedback to heart and is making it so that the rewards in the main pass will be dished out more frequently, allowing us to collect a token of our progression faster, even if it means it might be in a smaller amount since the same rewards are going to be spread out within double the levels.
No other details are available yet on the next reward track, but Dean says once they are closer to completion, and the expansion, we'll learn more about it. Hopefully, this will be a different situation than the darkness we dove into when the first rewards track iteration was launched. Transparency will go a long way to keeping the community from getting chaotic.
What do you think about 100 levels instead of 50? Do you prefer rewards that take a bit of extra time to earn or would you rather earn them in smaller chunks, faster? Let us know in the comments below!
Here's Dean's full quote. Keep in mind that stuff in development can change!
Quote From Dean Ayala Our latest reward track for the next expansion has 100 levels, the same amount of required XP, and the same amount of total rewards. Sounds like we're on the same page.
As we get closer to completion (and the next expansion) we'll share more details.
Update: Dean wants to clarify that things could still change with the pass as it is still in development.
Quote From Dean Ayala (@IksarHS) Worth noting I mentioned latest version, these things go through a lot of iteration. Sharing information early always has the risk of design changes at a later date causing confusion, though I think it's still worth it to keep people in the loop.
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Comments
I just hit level 50 with 4800 gold and am pleased as punch about the rewards track. I'm way ahead of where I'm usually at for gold during an expansion.
I'm currently level 44, throughout the week I only play about 2-3 BG's a night and 2-3 ranked games. Then on weekends I tend to play more ranked games. I complete all my quests each week and only just about hit diamond by end of month, sometimes diamond 5ish. I've no idea how much gold I've earned so far as I had some before. Currently at 13645 gold.
Each level is 5000 xp for the past few. Does it stay at 5000xp per level all the way to 50?
If so I get about 2-3 a week so shouldn't be long then I will be able to grind out some of those 50 golds for another 40 or so level before next expansion I hope
This doesn't really address the problem of post 50 level where you get 50 gold for 1350 exp, which means a quest is worth 37 gold at most.
Getting to 50 is super fast even if you don't play much, and then you're rewarded less for playing.
It's like Blizzard doesn't want me to play the game more than 2 hours a week and it's very weird.
Yes, I don't believe anything else was implied there. Just to give you back that faster sense of progression, having getting something each day or so rather than once or twice a week, and then change the pacing again after you reach LVL50, I'd imagine.
But we basically had this "3 wins / 1 level = 10 gold reward " system before... So, what are they trying to build with this all-new "more frequent / less amount" approach now? Oh, at least we got a shining track picture! Also, the idea of grind-grind-grind throughout the whole expansion length was strange from the beginning, especially remembering that this game is playable on mobile...
It's not fun to reach the point where you're only going to gain a level if you do like all three of your weekly quests on the day you get them, and then you won't gain another level for ~4 days worth of daily quests after that. If Blizzard is planning to make that change to "same experience spread over twice the number levels with the same total rewards" I think that is a plus relative to the current system.
For people like me, who spends all the gold earnings at the beginning of an expansion and then start collecting gold for the next expansion without spending any, getting golds in bigger or smaller chunks does not matter. But for the ones who spend their gold during an expansion, it is better to collect them in smaller chunks so that they can enter arena/heroic duel after playing some days.
The important thing is the total amount of gold collected during an expansion. With the new battle pass system, total gold earnings is very low compared to old system. I was able to collect around 8k gold during an expansion but now I'm around 3500 gold @ lvl 45. I don't think I can collect more than 6k gold with the new system.
I don't know why people stop complaining about reduction of total gold during an expansion period. Unless they increase the total collectable gold amount during an expansion, it will become harder and harder for each expansion to collect necessary cards even if we buy the pre-order bundles.
I wonder if these battle pass manipulations are for distraction? I think, we need to make them focus on total gold earnings instead of getting the gold in bigger/smaller chunks..
Ok, I've rechecked my lvl and I am at lvl 42 right now. Sorry for the miss information. So at this level I should have 4250g including the 500 gold bonus from blizzard.
This means I've spent 700g after the expansion. I've forgot that I've bought some packs at the beginning of the new expansion in order to hit the pity timer before starting to craft missing legendaries.
Even though I've made a calculation mistake, the total available gold until lvl 50 is 5650 gold (Next expansion there is no guarantee that Blizzard will give us free 500 gold). In order to reach 7600g, I need to gain 2k more gold after lvl 50 which means I need to reach lvl 90.
I've collected 133k experience in 1.5 months. I need to collect 260k more in 2.5 moths. It seems viable but I'm definitely playing more than what I was playing previously..
And @Alfi, I'm not playing the game that much. Mostly 30-70 games per month until I reach rank 5 diamond. I had been using quest sharing method with friends to increase gold earned during an expansion. The new system does not provide much gold by sharing quests..
Whatever, after making these calculations I'm now more optimistic but as I've said I'm definitely playing more than what I was used to do..
As said above, you should have much more gold with this new system. With old system I was able to get 7000 gold per 4 month. If you got 8000 you had to play A LOT. Now I expect to get around 10-12000 (now I am at 7200 with 2.5 months more to play).
The qualm with this ideology is that you need to continually save to get more. Like others, I would spend my gold on the initial month of an expansion's release and then save up to get packs of the new one that came out. I would usually bank up around 5500 for the release on top of what I bought as a bundle and it helped me not spend much cash on the game. I am wondering how much I will be able to save up now though as changes could still come into play AND the current track has a limited amount of XP that you can get with weekly and daily quests.
@lvl45 you should have at least 4450 gold if you didn't spend it. Plus Blizz gave to everyone 500 gold. In Total @lvl45 at least 4950 gold. @lvl50 it will be 6150 gold. And you have plenty of time to grind 50+ levels to next expansion and get to 8k-10k range.
erm, you said you don't spend gold during expansion and only at the beginning
and you said that you have 3,5k gold at lvl 45....
I'm at level 45 as well without spending any gold since the expansion hit, and I spent all of it on DMF packs and I'm at 6k gold
so where did your gold go?
also once you hit lvl 50, which should be really soon, you still should have around 2months to gain gold, for me its clear I will get MUCH more gold this time around than the last time
The new rewards track launched the week before the expansion. I played a lot in the first week to complete the weekly quests, which means the gold from the first levels of the track was among the gold I spent on DMF packs. So it's certainly possible to not have opened any packs since launch day and be at a lower gold total.
As long as you're getting the same amount of rewards in the same time, im fine with more levels.
I'd be more interested to know if more levels means more unlockables (paid and f2p track).
I sure hope this means that the Paid Track will have more unlockable rewards.
I do not care about unlockables other than +% XP bonus :-) If I get it fast, I will be happy :-) I do not thing they will add unlockables other than cosmetics anyway.
I envy those that has more money than I do. Always.
It doesn't matter much to me personally. I save all my gold for the next expansion anyway, so whether I get it faster in smaller chunks or slower in bigger doesn't change anything. Psychologically, it may be more rewarding to get something more often, but there is also something to be said for working towards a big reward... Anyway, looks like it's getting closer and closer now to the old 'get 50/60G per day' system and buy a pack every other day.
Still, overall it's a positive thing that they are listening more to the community now (who apparently wanted this).
I may have sounded complaining, but this is the sad truth.
Dean starting to be more active in community feels like a very late timing, even when it's better than never.
Honestly, they could have just do it in the past, keep the player updated and feeling that their voice matter, instead of going silent.
Or even better, just appoint some member to answer question in some daily time or weekly time.
Heck, if they could do this from the start, I feel that they can avoid unnecessary problems before it happens.