I was prompted to write this article by continuous sour experiences with daily questing in Hearthstone. This has been an on-and-off thing for a while now, but the recent change to quests has made me question it again. That is not to say that the quest system is bad, just that some parts feel like they are outdated and kept for no good reason whatsoever. But before I get to that, let's get some perspective about the quest system in general first.
Maximum Amount of Gold Earned From Quest XP During the Expansion Lifetime
We are going to assume that the expansion lifetime is roughly 119 days which equates to 17 weeks. The majority of expansions were released on Tuesday or Thursday. This is important for the purpose of (not) having an extra set of Weekly Quests count towards the Rewards Track of an expansion. The numbers could change in the future, let's just work for this average that has been true in the past, to keep it simple.
I am also going to completely ignore high-roll Quests for these calculations, meaning possible 100g or 80g Quests in the old system and 1500 XP Daily Quests in the new one.
Rewards Track XP and Gold thresholds are taken from here, here and here (thanks Torgal).
Scenarios
- Scenarios (A) will show the absolute minimum effort with every Daily Quest being a low-roll (900 XP or 800 XP respectively) and all Weekly Quests skipped.
- Scenarios (F) will show the best effort, every Daily Quest rerolled into a 1000 XP and all Weekly Quests completed.
- For purpose of scenarios (B) and (E), I assume the Ranked Weekly Quest skipped (2500 XP).
- Scenarios (C) represents 900 XP Daily Quests with all Weekly Quests completed.
- Scenarios (D) represents 1000 XP Daily Quests with all Weekly Quests skipped.
OG Reward System
I'm putting this here just as a reference, so we can see that things are better now, but we do have to play more actively.
- Expansion lifetime: ~119 days (17 weeks)
- Total Gold earned when
- every Quest rewards 50g: ~119*50=5950 g
- every Quest rewards 60g: ~119*60=7140 g
Current Rewards Track
- Expansion lifetime: ~119 days (17 weeks)
- XP needed for LVL50: 155200 XP
- Gold earned at LVL50: 5650 g
Scenario | Daily Quest XP | Weekly Quest XP | Total Quest XP per Week | Total Quest XP per Expansion | Rewards Track LVL reached | Total Gold Earned |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A1 | 900 | 0 | 6300 | 107100 | 40 | 3350 |
B1 | 900 | 3500 | 9800 | 166600 | 58 | 6050 |
C1 | 900 | 6000 | 12300 | 209100 | 87 | 7500 |
D1 | 1000 | 0 | 7000 | 119000 | 42 | 3750 |
E1 | 1000 | 3500 | 10500 | 178500 | 67 | 6500 |
F1 | 1000 | 6000 | 13000 | 221000 | 95 | 7900 |
Original Rewards Track
- Expansion Lifetime: ~119 days (17 weeks)
- XP needed for LVL50: 192200 XP
- Gold earned at LVL50: 4200 g
Scenario | Daily Quest XP | Weekly Quests XP | Total Quest XP per Week | Total Quest XP per Expansion | Rewards Track LVL reached | Total Gold Earned |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A2 | 800 | 0 | 5600 | 95200 | 37 | 2300 |
B2 | 800 | 3500 | 9100 | 154700 | 45 | 3600 |
C2 | 800 | 6000 | 11600 | 197200 | 51 | 4350 |
D2 | 1000 | 0 | 7000 | 119000 | 40 | 2700 |
E2 | 1000 | 3500 | 10500 | 178500 | 48 | 3900 |
F2 | 1000 | 6000 | 13000 | 221000 | 56 | 5100 |
Difference Between Current and Original Rewards Tracks
Keep in mind that when we compare current and old Rewards Tracks, we cannot simply compare old and new Levels, they do not correspond to each other due to the XP differences. But we can still compare the maximum amount of Total Gold Earned since we can derive that from each Rewards Track respectively.
- XP needed for LVL50: -37000 XP (~20% decrease)
- Gold earned at LVL50: +1450 (~35% increase)
Scenario | Daily Quest XP | Total Quest XP per Week | Total Quest XP per Expansion | Total Gold Earned | Total Gold Earned [%] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
A | +100 | +700 | +11900 | +1050 | +46% |
B | +100 | +700 | +11900 | +2450 | +68% |
C | +100 | +700 | +11900 | +3150 | +72% |
D | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1050 | +39% |
E | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2600 | +67% |
F | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2800 | +55% |
Conclusions
All gold amounts mentioned in this article are solely from doing quests, you will get much more in the end when you add up XP from playing and achievements. Not to mention the non-gold rewards.
- The current Rewards Track provides roughly 1050 - 3150 more gold compared to its first iteration.
- Almost half of the Total Quest XP per expansion comes from Weekly Quests.
- Roughly 20% of Total Quest XP per expansion comes from the Ranked Play Weekly Quest alone, which can be a good or a bad thing:
- if you don't have time to play Ranked, you are losing only 20% of the total potential rewards from questing,
- but 20% still isn't a small amount.
- Trying to re-roll every single 900 XP quest into a better one has only a very small effect on total rewards during an expansion lifetime.
Why Are There Low-Roll Quests in the Game?
Now, to the main reason why I wanted to write this article. First, I wanted to figure out for myself what would be the optimal effort to spend on questing. Since I don't like to play Ranked very much lately, that one Weekly Ranked Quest can be quite tedious for me. Second, I wanted to present a base for my argument - Why are these 900 XP, low-roll quests still in this game? It makes even less sense with the recent change to their XP reward, increasing it from 800 XP to 900 XP.
Why wasn't the change to a full 1000 XP? Why keep the low-roll quests with such a minimal XP difference? As we've demonstrated earlier, the difference between low-rolling every quest or tryhard to never complete anything worse than a 1000 XP one is so marginal that it is mostly not even worth the hassle.
That brings me to the problem I have with low-roll quests, they create that bad feeling of missing out, even though what you are missing out on does not matter that much in the end. A couple of hundred gold total at worst, in reality, less.
I would like to re-roll my quest because I don't want to do the one I currently have, not because I got unlucky and rolled low.
With that comes another issue, how often do you not re-roll a 1000 XP quest just so you don't end up with a 900 XP one? I'm fairly confident I know the answer. What is the point of having high-roll quests in the mix, if players are discouraged to try to get them? If you re-roll a 900 XP quest, you just want to get to 1000 XP, if you get a high-roll, jackpot! But you don't really care if that happens or not, since the chances are so slim. You might also not have time, or not want to complete the 1000 XP one waiting for you, but fear of rolling into 900 XP makes you bite the bullet. That does not sound like a player-friendly system to me.
In the current pool, there are 65 different Daily Quests of which only ten are 900 XP ones. And six high-roll ones, awarding 1500 XP. Two of which actually felt like high-rolls in the old system, one being "Watch a friend win in Spectator Mode." and second "Challenge a friend. You both earn a reward!". A full card pack or an 80g (or 160g if you traded with a friend for theirs) did feel like a really nice reward, didn't it? The rest of the high-roll quests are just the basic quests with a higher requirement, but wait, Weekly Quests already act the same way, for the most part! Mhm.
One of the latest changes in the old system was to make 50g quests be easier to complete and 60g quests be a bit harder, while also guaranteeing a re-roll from 60g to always land into 50g quests. So players who wanted to finish their quests faster would have a guaranteed option to do so and were penalized with lower rewards. Why?
Nowadays, there is such a little difference in the amount of rewards players get out of the re-rolling hassle, why continue to create an environment of feelsbad moments for no good reason?
We'll look at Legends of Runeterra for example as their baseline for quests is 1000 XP and high-roll is 1500 XP. Sounds familiar, eh? But there are no low-rolls! If you don't want to play a certain champion or a deck, just re-roll the quest without any fear of losing out on anything and do a different one. I know, mind-blowing concept. Lately, they even introduced "dual" quests, where there are two different conditions to be fulfilled and you only need to satisfy one. Maybe so that players with small collections don't feel forced to craft new cards or re-roll just to clear a quest? Whaaaat?
The Future
The Rewards Track itself is still undergoing changes, which makes sense, and will most likely continue to do so for a foreseeable future. So is there hope for more changes to quests as well? I think so. How about making all basic Daily Quests in Hearthstone easy to complete, which for the most part they are already, get rid of low-roll quests completely and perhaps introduce more high-roll quests into the mix. With Weekly Quests being a thing, they could keep them as a kind of unique way to incentivize players to try different game modes, while not forcing them to do so, keeping the requirements reasonable. And make the high-roll quests to be slightly more difficult versions of basic ones. All the pieces are there, the system as a whole just needs a little bit of a nudge to get where it could (should?) be.
So to answer my own question, why are the low-roll quests still a thing? I honestly don't know. Is that a remnant of the old system that devs didn't realize could be removed or does it have a specific purpose? If so, what is it? Would the argument be to have players log-in every day to try and get rid of low-rolls and not only every three days to clear their quest log? And by logging-in each day, there would be a higher likelihood that players stick around more? Maybe. I just hope that going forward, we will eventually get a quest system where you are completing the quests you want to, not the ones you are left with because you fear you might lose out otherwise.
Well, that is it from me. If you managed to read all the way here, go get yourself a cookie, you deserve it! What is your opinion on the current state of Quests in Hearthstone? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
Then I simply misunderstood your first comment: "Just don't assume everyone else in the world shares your opinions." thinking you chose a particular side. My apologies for that.
To summarize, you don't care about XP. I do care and that's the end of our discussion.
Cheers!
I've always just rerolled any 800/900 quests, then if I don't get 1000, I just do it anyway. That's all the effort I care to put into maximizing my XP.
Yeah, pretty much what I end up doing most of the time, and now that I went over the math, it doesnt even bother, from the reward gain standpoint. Still bothers me that it is even a thing tho.
I'm pretty sure the 900 XP quests are there to give people who love min-maxing games something to do.
Its just a vestige of history. Like the human tail bone, it simply exists because it used to be there, much like an empty carton of milk in the fridge, everyone know its trash but no one wants to take up the task of getting rid of it.
The difficulty of a low rolled quest is about the same as a high rolled quest, and the difference in the xp reward is small enough that it might as well not exist while being just big enough to annoy the shit out of players who have limited play time, but would want to maximize as much as they can, like myself.
There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to allow a 1000xp quest roll to guarantee a 900xp quest, while the reverse is not true.
btw, just once, it happened that the daily quest was a 1500 gold quest ... since then I was wondering to always reroll a daily quest ... but one appearance in the life is a too low chance to pursue ... anybody else had the 1500 gold daily quest ?
I got challenge a friend 2 weeks in a row and the specate a friend's win sometime in the next week. I don't remember if I rerolled into them. Just luck, but 1500 instead of 900 or a 1000 is a big jump.
There are two 1500xp daily quests, Watch a friend win in Spectator Mode." and "Challenge a friend. You both earn a reward!". They used to award a full classic pack and 80g respectively in the old system. I did get both of these quests a few times in the new system already. But they never felt like anything too special, just extra ~500xp, kinda disappointing.
It would be less disappointing, if there was a 1000xp baseline and more than two 1500xp quests you could roll into, it would actually make sense to try and would feel nice if you could roll into them every few days or so.
I have been avoiding constructed completely for a while and only playing Battlegrounds. It feels even worse when you re-roll the 1000 exp quests (most of them can't be done in BG) and get stuff like "Draw 30 cards". I have to re-roll again on the next day and that usually leads to another 1000 exp quest. This can easily become an unbreakable cycle and i will be forced to play constructed even though i don't want to. Also, the fact that the 5 wins in ranked makes up to 20% of the total exp is absolutely ludicrous.
I don’t say you are wrong about that, it sure must feel bad to miss out on stuff just because you don’t like to play another game mode. But tbf, standard remains the main game mode of Hearthstone and cards are the main thing to spend gold on.
If you only care for BGs, you should have next to no problem getting enough gold for the battle pass, don’t you?
BG is very popular. They are going to monetize it harder, eventually. I believe that the gold will become more important for the mode in the near future.
I've hated low-roll quests since they were introduced, it just makes me re-roll things twice (since you can get a higher value rerolling the lowest ones). Hope they remove them and add extra high value ones, since at least I feel I see them less than before, hope they didn't change the spawn rate of those because of the introduction of weekly quets.
Well said. The low-roll quests now are just annoying: I'm missing 100 xp (about 2 games?) for nothing. I thought they felt even worse at the roll-out of the rewards track because there was a developer clarification/defense somewhere that said, "if you reroll quests..." Like it was figured in to the track xp, and that was one more thing we HAD to do (and HAD to get lucky on) to get MAXIMUM VALUE (value, value, value [insert echo effect]) out of the track.
I think there is an opportunity to push more weird stuff in high-roll quests. Like the play 20 murlocs or play X weapons quests.
Really good read and good point. Also yoinked your excel sheet - that one is useful. Great work!
Thanks, but the sheet is not mine, Torgal did that and posted it in one of our articles before. I used it because it was a nice reference for this purpose. Unless you mean the scenario tables in the article 😅
I’m glad to hear that my spreadsheet helped you :-)
Article itself is on point and I fully agree with all of it. I personally hate lowrolls on quests (and frankly, a few months ago I had another spreadsheet where I tracked my 50g and 60g quests, it was that bad). Its stupid that reroll of 1000xp will always give you 900xp, but it won’t work the other way round. Because of this I never ever reroll 1000xp quest, and I’m also hesitant to even play the game when I’m on the low roll.
Maybe you misunderstood that part, I was mentioning that in regards to the old system. Re-rolling a 1000xp quest should not guarantee a 900xp one today. Some of those aren't even easier to complete in comparison, funnily enough :D But having them in the pool does dis-incentivize you re-rolling 1000xp ones looking for different conditions to fulfill or trying to get a 1500xp one for sure.
Personally, I think they want keep some sort of slot machine (gambling) feature inside this game by offering these 3 tiers of XP quests. What I hate is that a low XP quest can get rerolled into another low XP quest. They implemented the always get a lower XP quest from a higher XP quest behavior, but rerolling to get a same tier XP quest is the ultimate feel bad regarding quests. Especially, since you pointed out how very few low XP quests there are, this feels even worse.
I do not want to repeat my test situation here specifically, but by having rerolled with a handful of F2P accounts for the past 2 years up until yesterday; I have noticed that the highest tier XP quests are super-ultra-gold-foiled-premium-legendary rare to reroll into. It seems that their appearance are even lower now than they used to be before the reward track was introduced.
Btw, the fact that they still did not implement the always show the increase XP progress bar after each game played, seems to me that are unwilling/not-caring/incapable of adding proper quality of life changes to this game. Why do we still need to keep revisiting the journal to witness our XP progression within the same level? Just unbelievable!
EDIT: Forget to mention that I really enjoyed reading this well-written and informative 5-stars article, kudos! 👍
Oh yes, i somehow totally forgot to mention rolling 900 into another 900,which happend to me for 8 days straight, while also getting yet another 900 in next days. That was what made me finally write it all down and see how much upset should i be, turns out, not too much. But the bad feeling it creates is still there and there really isnt a good reason for it to be.