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 That is not to say that the quest system is bad, just that some parts feel like they are outdated and kept for no good reason whatsoever.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.
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Comments
As someone below mentioned, Blizzard intended the 50GP (now 900XP) quests for players who find the 60GP (now 1000XP) quests too challenging, and that 'normal' 60GP quests always re-rolled into 'easy' 50GP ones.
My theory: keeping the nominal difference in reward allows casual players to know which type (easy or normal difficulty) of quest they've got and allow them to make a more informed decision as to whether or not to re-roll.
That said, if casual players are truly turned off by the 'normal' difficulty quests, then maybe Blizzard should just do away with them altogether, give the 'easy' difficulty quests 'normal' rewards, and save us min-maxers the annoyance.
Funnily enough, I didn't even realise that there were low roll quests at all. Honestly, I constantly reroll quests, especially the ones which I can't complete, like the ones asking me to play classes other than DH and Paladin (I don't have cards for the other ones): I really like those quests, they are super easy to complete, and I really don't care about the 100 exp, which is not a lot.
I hate getting battlegrounds quests when I don't play battlegrounds, they are just duds for me
Same
There's a little double dip of sadness with the low-rolls.
You get the low-roll 900xp *and* it is almost impossible to not complete (draw 30 cards). So, if you play at all, you can't avoid completing the quest you didn't want.
There are several of these little toxic features in the game. Usually when they are mentioned people get angry at the poster. Interesting that you have create a whole article on it.
This indeed. The quests should encourage you to play or try out something different (class/game mode), but it feels like the low-roll quests are often doing the exact opposite (if you care about maximizing your xp, that is).
Perhaps it's worth recognising that plenty of folks prefer the low-roll quests because they are easier to complete - isn't it simply a matter of taste, and what each individual player expects/wants from the game? It seems perfectly fine for Blizzard to have quests which appeal to the portion of the player-base that doesn't care about min-maxing . . .
my own experience has been getting between 6k and 8k gold collected per expansion available at day 1 of new set.
right now i have around 5,5k still around 2 months i believe from next set. i have saved 17 free packs of MDF for the mini exp. my guess is i will have more gold than in other expansions.
NOW THE PROBLEM is they will keep doing the stupid mini expansions that instead of being a point blank 2.5k gold like with other ones its gonna be a slot machine fiesta to get the 35 cards out of the regular expansion packs.
It's not a slot machine fiesta. The cards count as Darkmoon Faire cards, so the no-duplicate rules apply.
I would expect maybe 1 or 2 legendaries, and maybe a handful of epics in such a small set. Collecting all the commons and rares will require 20 packs at most -- 15 if you're extremely unlucky and get only one epic and no legendaries. Hopefully you've saved some dust if you think the rarer cards are going to be important to you. You already know a legendary drop is pretty unlikely -- but I suppose there's always a chance they'll hand out the legendary for free. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it part of a bundle.
Don't get me wrong -- I do think the blind pack system is outdated and predatory, but I don't think the mini-expansion is the time to be angry about it. Save your rage for when they announce the "big changes" coming with the new Hearthstone year. They claim they are going to make the game more accessible to small-budget players, but I'm not sure I believe the Activision overlords are going to let them do anything too revolutionary.
I almost made a forum post last night very similar to this article. Basically I was analyzing my own gold earned over the course of the expansion so far and how much more I expect to earn over the course of the expansion based on my current level of progress. It all kind of depends on when the track resets, but I was thinking I may end with about 12,900 gold. That's with low roll quests only, and about 2000 (maybe 2400, can't remember) of that being left over from last expansion still. Some of that MIGHT get spent on mini set, but I also have 26 packs from rewards sitting in my inventory so not sure.
Anyway, my usual total gold on the old system was about 8,000 to 9,000. So earning about 10,500 this cycle is a positive gain for me. But again, I'm calculating that amount figuring only low roll quests AND I'm not factoring time played XP either. And I'm seeing that increase WITHOUT buying the Pass and without a noticeable change in my playing time.
While I still think the system needs a little more tweaking to make the game more affordable, it ultimately is showing to be an improvement (at least in my own, personal experience). I am also encouraged by the quick response from Team 5 to make improvements, and the fact that they are looking into ways to continually improve the system.
Great analysis though!
The differences in gold between the current rewards track and the original rewards track are stunning. I think that I am a C1 player on the new rewards chart. Most of the time I don't care enough to reroll dailies, and I make sure to do whatever I get plus I reroll weekly quests until I have a set that can be completed in ranked standard play. If I had the C2 level of gold when the next expansion came out, I would have quit the game.
I agree, mostly because I don't like to reroll 1000g quests, even if I don't like their condition. I find this frustrating, as I don't want to feel forced to play a class when I would rather play a different one, or just play battlegrounds ot something. My biggest gripe is actually with the forced rank win quest, though. Last week I didn't want to play ranked, and I was even on a long losing streak, making me extremely fed up with the game mode. It took me from monday to friday not being able to get 5 wins while playing here and there. There should be an alternate condition for that quest to just play 10 ranked games, so I at least feel like something is happening when I lose.
I would also prefer, if it would be just to play ranked games, not win. They made this change to all the "win X games as Y class" in the past, too.
But i can understand that they want to push ppl playing the game's main game mode, cant fault them too much for that, and they did lower the requirement from 7 games to 5, which is very noticeable. Still, I havent completed the 2500xp quest myself for like 3 or 4 weeks now, because i just dont enjoy playing ranked and my time is spent better elsewhere, i just have to accept that i lose on some xp. Like i said, would love if it was just play, but i can understand reasons behind this particular one.
Wow... this is quite, expansive.
The official Blizzard response to this is that there are casual players who appreciate having quests that are easier to complete.
Note that such players are the least likely to visit or post on fansites (or official forums, for that matter), so we have no way of knowing how many of them exist. Just don't assume everyone else in the world shares your opinions. Hearthstone is the kind of game that can easily have a silent majority.
I personally don't care too much about the XP. I reroll quests only when they ask me to do something I don't want to do (like play Murlocs or Battlegrounds).
"The official Blizzard response to this is that there are casual players who appreciate having quests that are easier to complete."
Could you provide the source, please?
The difference between the easier and slightly more difficult quests is minimal. They recently made quests easier overall, so why not go 1 step further and remove the lowest XP quests altogether which reduces the dillution of the XP quests pool giving us a better chance to reroll into the highest XP quests and get rid of the feels bad. Sounds like a win-win situation to me, even if I might or might not be part of the majority.
Btw, you're basically also assuming the contrary; that the majority of the players that do visit forums or fansites are trying to max out XP gains. I expect this would be more likely true for us, but no one else besides Blizzard knows which camp is bigger than the other. Why did you bring this up and add it into the discussion in the first place?
I will thank you not to tell me what I assume.
I merely brought up the possibility that there are opinions out there that may differ from those expressed in this column, and that no one knows how many people hold each opinion. I thought I made it clear that I was not assuming one way or the other.
Blizzard explained why there are two buckets of quests when they changed it so that 60g quests would always reroll into 50g quests. They said they assumed if you are rerolling a more rewarding quest, it must be because you wanted something easier to complete. This is stated in the patch notes here, but I'm pretty sure a developer was more explicit about it in social media.
I'm familiar with those patch notes where Blizzard pretty much also assumes why players reroll quests.
Sure, they have all the statistics, but I can't help but think since they are ultimately a profit-making company that this was primarily or secondarily (to give them a slight benefit of my doubt) introduced to make it harder to reroll into higher XP (previously gold) daily quests.
It's simple, making it harder to reroll into more XP/gold rewarding quests means players having less XP/gold to spend on buying free packs.
If they also implemented the vice versa; rerolling less XP/gold quests always into more XP/gold quests, I wouldn't be suspicious about this.
Btw, we don't have to agree on this and that was also never my intention. We are just sharing our opinions on this cool forum/fansite 😉
No, you were telling me my opinion and disagreeing with that.
As I said, I actually don't care about XP, but I pointed out Blizzard's position because someone was wondering about it. So then you decided THEIR opinion was something other than what THEY stated.
If you never actually believe what the other person is saying, you're not "sharing" anything. You're just being belligerent.