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Hearthstone | Posted by | 5 years, 1 month ago
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My wish for weekly quests

We know there are many changes in store for the reward system as the year rotates. The one thing I want more than any other change is this:

The ability to opt out of weekly quests for different game modes.

I don't want to deprive anyone of such quests if they enjoy them, but it's supremely annoying that I have to reroll a weekly quest several times before I get one that involves the primary game mode. More than once this has left me with just three or four days to complete a quest that I would normally have the whole week to work on.

Coercion is not the best way to get people to like something.

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  • We know there are many changes in store for the reward system as the year rotates. The one thing I want more than any other change is this:

    The ability to opt out of weekly quests for different game modes.

    I don't want to deprive anyone of such quests if they enjoy them, but it's supremely annoying that I have to reroll a weekly quest several times before I get one that involves the primary game mode. More than once this has left me with just three or four days to complete a quest that I would normally have the whole week to work on.

    Coercion is not the best way to get people to like something.

  • Yes! And no!

    I would really like the idea of being able to opt out and reroll ALL quests.

    I play every single game mode, I don't have a focus, I just play whatever I feel like playing (yeah... even Duels, though not ranked), except Arena.

    And while I complete all my daily/weekly quests the moment I get them, I sometimes feel robbed of my time when I have to go Ranked... The main quest, the unrollable quest, should be "play 7 games" period, not "WIN 5 games of RANKED", it's like, forced to play the "main" mode blizzard wants, not the "main" mode the player wants.

    So, yeah, you should be able to reroll/opt out of EVERY quest slot.

    Let's say that at least, you can reroll them.

    • I definitely agree. That locked-in quest has always seemed weird to me. No one should be forced to play any particular game mode to get weekly quest XP.

  • I think it is fine that some of the quests want you to play a specific mode. You get 3 quests and 7 chances to re-roll them, which makes it very easy to avoid doing any quests you don't want. It is difficult to reward players for playing a specific mode without also forcing everyone to play that mode to optimize their rewards, but I think the devs did a good job. There are only 3 quests that want you to play a mode other than regular constructed out of 10 quests total. And with one of your 3 quests always being the same, you should be able to easily avoid having to play other modes. 

    I do agree though that the "win 5 games in ranked" quest is stupid. It makes sense having a quest that wants you to play ranked, and since you have all week I don't mind that you have to win, but it makes no sense whatsoever that this appears every week and can't be skipped. Again, it is fine that certain quests want you to play a specific mode. And as long as you can skip them it is no big deal. But this quest forces you not just to play ranked, but to win. Meaning that the average player will have to put 10 games a week playing a mode they may not like.

    Friendly
    • Quote From KANSAS

      I think it is fine that some of the quests want you to play a specific mode. You get 3 quests and 7 chances to re-roll them, which makes it very easy to avoid doing any quests you don't want.

      As I already pointed out, it is not "very easy." The pool of weekly quests is extremely small -- there are only nine of them if you don't count the permanent Ranked quest. Three of the nine have to do with Battlegrounds and/or other modes. That means every time you reroll, you have a 25% chance to get another Battlegrounds quest, and there's no failsafe in place to keep you from getting a quest you abandoned earlier in the week. So a string of slightly bad luck can leave you having to finish the entire weekly quest in just a few days.

      • Quote From FortyDust
        Quote From KANSAS

        I think it is fine that some of the quests want you to play a specific mode. You get 3 quests and 7 chances to re-roll them, which makes it very easy to avoid doing any quests you don't want.

        As I already pointed out, it is not "very easy." The pool of weekly quests is extremely small -- there are only nine of them if you don't count the permanent Ranked quest. Three of the nine have to do with Battlegrounds and/or other modes. That means every time you reroll, you have a 25% chance to get another Battlegrounds quest, and there's no failsafe in place to keep you from getting a quest you abandoned earlier in the week. So a string of slightly bad luck can leave you having to finish the entire weekly quest in just a few days.

        The main point that I was trying to make is that you can choose to opt out of a weekly quest via the skip button. It can be inconvenient when you run into a quest you don't want multiple times in a row, but in my personal opinion I don't think we need extra skips just to make it easier to avoid quests we don't like. Every quest "forces" you to do something in order to complete it, I don't get why we would handle certain quests differently just because some players dislike the objective of some quests more than others.

        Friendly
        • Quote From KANSAS

          I don't get why we would handle certain quests differently just because some players dislike the objective of some quests more than others.

          In the past, all quests were related to Hearthstone, so no matter what the quest was, you were still playing Hearthstone. Everyone playing Hearthstone got quests for Hearthstone.

          These weekly quests can now send you to Battlegrounds or Duels, which are arguably not even the same game as Hearthstone. A lot of people do not play Battlegrounds or Duels, so it's a lot different than being asked to play a few games as Priest when you prefer Hunter.

          Moreover, the rewards from the rewards track don't really do much for you if you are primarily a Battlegrounds player, but that's a different topic.

  • While I agree that all quest should be able to be reroll, I wonder if there's gonna be any use for the 4th slot in the weekly quest. So far, Legendary quests always placed in the daily one.

    • Quote From h0lysatan

      While I agree that all quest should be able to be reroll, I wonder if there's gonna be any use for the 4th slot in the weekly quest. So far, Legendary quests always placed in the daily one.

      Sometimes UI designers wisely choose to leave space for unspecified future content.

  • I think this is an issue that team 5 will inevitably have to address if they seek to make Hearthstone a platform of various game modes. I imagine that the addition of more major game modes (like the upcoming mercenaries game modes) could further dilute the weekly quest pool in future updates. Granted, this discussion is about the current weekly quests, not hypothetical future quests, so I won't digress. 

    With the current UI, perhaps they could implement a guarantee that rerolling a Battlegrounds and/or other modes quest will give a standard quest and vice versa? That way, rolling for quests that apply to the game modes you like would be easier to get. There are some flaws though: if you're stuck with a quest of your preferred game mode that you dislike (I'm looking at you "Play 30 Corrupt Cards"), you'd have to reroll twice to get another quest of your preferred game mode. It's not a perfect solution, but I do think its upsides could help players who prefer specific game modes.

     

  • I think everyone would feel better if the quests didn't have the "win" requirement, and just a "play" requirement, which to be honest, Battlegrounds and Duels, are still Hearthstone, that they are not the same mode, and does not got with the same rules as standard/wild constructed, yeah... The same can be said about Arena, Brawls, PVE, and soon Classic and Mercenaries.

    So, it's not a matter of "they should ban X quests", it's "they should rework X quests".

    Because, being honest, I wouldn't mind getting XP for surrendering 3 or more times.

    Winning... That's entirely another story.

  • i definately think the Win 5 Ranked games should be changed to win any 5 of any vs player mode (so excluding any PVE).

    We were promised "play hearthstone your way" so I don't see why people should be forced to play ranked if they don't want to.  I play pretty much ranked exclusively anyway so not a major issue for me, but I don't see why others should be forced.

    • Quote From og0

      i definately think the Win 5 Ranked games should be changed to win any 5 of any vs player mode (so excluding any PVE).

      We were promised "play hearthstone your way" so I don't see why people should be forced to play ranked if they don't want to.  I play pretty much ranked exclusively anyway so not a major issue for me, but I don't see why others should be forced.

      That would be awesome, since i dont play ranked pretty much at all, and i cant be bothered to achieve 5 wins per week. If i could complete it in BG or Arena, that would be good for me.

      But i do understand the decision behind it, promoting the main game mode and to win, you need cards = trying to boost sales.

      Staff

  • Choosable quests might be even better in my opinion. I mean, The game can ask you whenever you open the game for the day first time like discover mechanic and choose between options of game modes, not especially the quests. It can be a random quest from chosen category like;

    Opened the game;

    A screen of choices appeared as "Arena, Duels, Battlegrounds, Casual/Ranked"
    I chose you, Casual/Ranked !
    I obtained a new random quest related with Casual/Ranked
    He chose you, Battlegrounds !
    He obtained a new random quest related with Battlegrounds !

    Everyone is happy !

    Oh, And there is some extra;

    "I didn't like this quest, let's reroll"
    I obtained a new random quest related with Casual/Ranked again !
    "He didn't like that quest, let's reroll"
    He obtained a new random quest related with Battlegrounds again !

    Everyone is Happier !

    That must not be so hard to implement, I presume.

  • I get where a lot of the criticism of the weekly quests is coming from - it can be frustrating to get a quest for a format you don't really want to play. But I think focusing exclusively on individual player responses to a given quest ignores a critical part of why Blizzard gives quests at all, and that's player engagement.

    Blizzard could just as easily give you no quests, and just replace them with daily login rewards whereby you get 1000 XP just for logging in. That would be easy, and it would mean that no one has to play any format they don't want to just to max out rewards. But that wouldn't push players to engage with the game.

    Let's take the "Play 3 Games As [Class A], [Class B], or [Class C]" example. It's not a hard quest to complete, but if you don't want to play any of those classes you might be disappointed to get it. (You might also be frustrated if they're classes without top tier decks.) Blizzard could just as easily see what decks you have constructed, or see what your play rates are for different classes, and give you a quest that better matches your preferred constructed play.

    But they give you this slightly harder quest in the hopes that it will push you to branch out over time, explore the playstyles of every class, and maybe find a class you didn't think you liked, but actually love. That kind of discovery is positive for the player, and it increases engagement, which in turn can increase revenue. 

    With all that in mind, I wouldn't expect them to change this approach at all. Varied quests encourages playing between formats, which is good for Blizzard. That said, I do like the idea of swapping Win with Play - maybe something like swapping all "Win X" quests with "Play X + 2" or "Play X + 3" to reduce the burden of completing a quest for a format you don't like.

    • Quote From meisterz39

      Varied quests encourages playing between formats, which is good for Blizzard.

      It really, really doesn't, though, with the sole exception of the quest you cannot reroll. As long as a reroll option exists, I will always choose that over actually playing Battlegrounds.

      Players are willing to give new things a try when they are free. Free Arena/Duels tickets encourage people to try those modes. Battlegrounds being completely free has made it extremely popular. Hearthstone itself snares most of its players by being "free" (in air quotes). We've all tried all of these things not because of quest rewards, but out of simple curiosity. But once you've tried them, you know whether or not you like them. This weekly incentive to try them again is not engaging; it's annoying.

      • Quote From FortyDust

        It really, really doesn't, though, with the sole exception of the quest you cannot reroll. As long as a reroll option exists, I will always choose that over actually playing Battlegrounds.

        You can't really assert that "it really, really doesn't" in general; you can only make that claim for your own personal experience. The only way to know whether or not there's a real increase in user engagement across the millions who play the game is to get usage data from Blizzard. And anyway, I'm not arguing that this sort of "quest-driven cross sell" effort is highly effective, I'm just saying that it's why Blizzard (and other CCGs like MTGA and LoR) offer randomized quests - they're hoping to encourage you to engage in more of the game. This can be as simple as trying a class you wouldn't otherwise play, or it could be engaging in a different format like Duels.

        Your point about rerolling quests in any format you don't like is clearly true for you, but there are plenty of other players who don't do that for every quest. For example, the "Deal 1500 damage to enemy minions in Battlegrounds" is pretty easy to finish in two or three decent runs because of how much damage you can deal in a single game. Plenty of "Constructed main" players prefer just completing it rather than going through the hassle of rerolling until they get a more constructed-friendly quest (particularly given the 25% odds you've already mentioned of getting another Battlegrounds quest, and the comparative difficulty of other weekly quests - including constructed ones like "Play 30 Corrupt Cards" which requires a specifically tailored deck and potentially lots of games).

        Quote From FortyDust

        Players are willing to give new things a try when they are free. Free Arena/Duels tickets encourage people to try those modes. Battlegrounds being completely free has made it extremely popular. Hearthstone itself snares most of its players by being "free" (in air quotes). We've all tried all of these things not because of quest rewards, but out of simple curiosity. But once you've tried them, you know whether or not you like them. This weekly incentive to try them again is not engaging; it's annoying.

        I agree that content being free is a necessary condition of getting player engagement. This is why Hearthstone dropped its "Finish an Arena run with 4 wins" weekly quest; no one wanted to pay into the format just to complete a weekly quest. But it's not always sufficient for it to be free, because implicit in everything is some time cost (i.e. if I spend an hour playing Battlegrounds, that's an hour I can't spend playing Constructed). In-game rewards is the most concrete way to convince people to spend that time in a format they would otherwise avoid. Sometimes this is in the form of Legendary Quests, like the recent Lunar New Year quests, which had players playing every major format to get packs. But these regular weekly quests serve the same purpose.

        Moreover, I think Blizzard is strongly incentivized to keep giving you these quests even after you've tried a format (even if you feel like you don't want to play that format) because they keep updating these formats. They cannot know whether an update to the format will finally interest you unless they drive you toward that format again. (I think Duels is a good showcase of this sort of thing. When Discard Warlock was super broken, the balance for the format was an issue that drove players away. After several updates, a lot of those players might like the format, so quests help to drive re-engagement.)

        If the quest rewards system starts decreasing overall engagement (e.g. players dropping out of the game because they're sick of weekly quest rewards pushing formats on them, etc., leading to a sense that the game is not rewarding enough), you can probably expect changes to the reroll system. Maybe they'll add a "duplicate protection" to rerolling weekly quests over the course of a week, or maybe they'll give you two "weekly rerolls" at the start of the week to help kick things off right. But they really have no reason to let you cut yourself off from entire formats because that kind of cross-sell is a good way to get more/longer engagement from players.