All Comments

You're welcome my friend - and thanks for your kind words.  And I agree.

Many of us are so invested in the game, financially and emotionally that we can have strong feelings about changes to the game - especially if promises made were broken.

Nonetheless, I agree any backlash should strive to be as reasonable and constructive as possible.  I've made a few posts tinged with sarcasm, but hopefully most of the things I've posted here and on reddit would qualify as analytical and reasonable.  That's for others to judge I guess :)

I just want to thank you for laying out your argument in a reasoned manner. Almost everyone is reacting with sarcasm at best, and inflammatory rhetoric at worst, and that doesn't help anyone.

Thing is, the concept of xp track is VERY good, virtuous for both players and stakeholders.

However, the current implementation of it is barely decent. Definitely not as good as it could and should be.

The community is crying out of hysteria, and that is of no help, but Blizz is not delivering correctly.

Also, it's taking too long for them for a proper reaction.

There's been a lot of hate toward Blizzard in these past couple of weeks, which seems to have come to a head during the spamming of the recent Duels tournament with #StopBlizzardGreed. Some of the anger is very reasonable - there have been a lot of bugs in Hearthstone around these newly released systems, and Blizzard deserves to be blamed for releasing buggy products and has a responsibility to resolve any unfairness that has come from them (they've already promised to do so with respect to the recent quest bugs). But they've also made a ton of great changes to the game that no one seems to want to give them credit for.

So real quick, where is the hate coming from? Mostly it seems like it's coming from two places: the cost of Hearthstone generally, and the negative reaction to the new Progression system. Both stem from what I believe are bad-faith arguments:

• Hearthstone is often compared to AAA titles, with people complaining that buying into an expansion costs way more than a typical $60 game.
  • This is a ridiculous comparison - AAA titles don't get regularly patched, they don't generally feature weekly evens (i.e. tavern brawl) or seasonal events (e.g. the Felfire Festival). Developing these patches and the content for these events costs Blizzard money, so the base price is going to be higher.
  • CCGs and AAA titles are generally not even the same type of game. It makes much more sense to compare Hearthstone to other CCGs, and while it's not the cheapest CCG on the market, it's not the most expensive either (e.g. in MTG Arena you can easily spend $200 just building a single deck.
  • You don't have to buy a full set of expansion cards to play the game, so comparing a $60 sticker price for a AAA title to $130 for pre-release bundles is disingenuous.
• People were furious when the amount of gold they'd be getting went down, and have complained about lacking a sense of progression because the new system slows as you get higher up in levels
  • The overall rewards between new and old progression system never favored the old system - it's simply that many of the new rewards were in the form of packs and cards, which angry players valued less than gold. Blizzard responded to this by replacing the late-level packs with gold, and now it's very easy to have a F2P experience where you complete daily and weekly quests and get strictly more out of the game on all reward dimensions.
  • The "lack of progress" complaints must be coming from people who have never played an RPG, because all of those games feature slower levels as you progress, and no one gets mad about it. It's true that there will be some weeks in the new system where the weekly rewards you earn are lower than what you would have earned in the old system, but you early more on a weekly basis early and late in the system, so that lull only lasts for about 10 or so levels in the middle.

It's easy to focus on the cost of the game right after an expansion, or to be mad about a system right when it releases, but those arguments are short-sighted. Blizzard has done a lot of good stuff with Hearthstone this year:

• Back in November 2019 they changed a bunch of daily quests to make them easier to complete (e.g. "Win 2 games as [Class A] or [Class B]" became "Play 3 games as [Class A] or [Class B] or [Class C]"). The old quests penalized you for the bad luck of getting meta losers in your quests, while the new quests are trivial to complete.
• In phase 1 of Year of the Phoenix, they added duplicate protection for all rarities, making it way cheaper to collect all the common and rare cards. This makes it much easier for F2P players to create a wide array of budget decks.
• The new ranked system has better rewards than the old ranked system, added a ton of ranked floors, and dramatically decreases the amount of grinding you need to do. This frees players up to play low-tier or off-meta decks without risking major ladder progress
• They've added several F2P-friendly formats (Battlegrounds, Duels), and will be adding another new mode before the end of the Year of the Phoenix
• The new progression system switched away from rewarding gold for wins to rewarding XP for playing, which further incentivizes people to play low-tier or off-meta decks if that's what they want to do because losing a game doesn't mean getting nothing out of the game.

The net result of these changes is that players have more opportunities to be rewarded for playing Hearthstone the way they find most fun. Despite the bugs, and the fact that Hearthstone is not the cheapest CCG on the market, I think it's plainly the case that the long view of what Blizzard has been doing with Hearthstone has been very positive.

My mistake, this time, only the large bundle gave a golden legendary, the normal had a non-golden one. I misremembered. Every set preorder since Saviors of Uldum until now gave a golden one.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/hearthstone/23533210/it-s-madness-at-the-darkmoon-faire-hearthstone-s-newest-expansion

So there's no explanation why you got a free golden. I also logged in, but I got nothing. I didn't preorder.

Well I was lucky enough NOT to get any of those two quests yet. Maybe you got all mine? :P

On serious note, I never reroll quest until it´s 800XP, which I got only few times so far. I´d definitelly reroll the Arena one for sure tho.

Never saw the BGs one. Seems easier to.achieve than the arena run tho

Originally it´s targeted for Warlocks Deck of Chaos, but Jeppeto could be a good replacement. I was "lucky" to get the prior as my free legendary, but I´m sure Jepetto would work just as good.  Have no idea about other way to get it done tho.

EDIT: Maybe Paladins Prismatic Lens in Wild?

Does anyone else just get the 800 XP daily quest since the change of the reward track?

Re-rolled every time, bust just get 800 over again. I have to keep one spot open and need to fulfill one of three, to not miss on even more XP.

You mean something like the series of wild weekend decks they've been posting consistently for several months? 

I'm fine with quest diversity, but I'm not fine with the Arena one.

I play every single game mode, except Arena or Ranked Duels, because they are making me pay 150 (now really hard earned) gold, to give me a little bit of XP and the CHANCE of rewards? On top of that, you need to win 4 games? Which is like, RNG dependant, time consuming, and a lot of effort for an average player who just wants to have fun and not have his mind like "If I don't win the next one I just wasted 150 gold and have to invest 150 extra, so I got to put my mind 110% in the game."

No.

Just no.

I tend to default to latest expansion if there isn't a mechanic linked to a specific expansion in my card but looking at the feedback I got I'm thinking either Karazhan (to go with kindly grandmother) or Witchwood

Some feedback I have (I don't know much about card design so not sure how useful it will be)

@fungusABao

@DestroyR

@linkblade91

@KANSAS

@ChickyChick

Quote From Tetsuo

I get the sentiment of the original post, but I disagree that control is dying. In the last meta alone, we've had a number of viable control decks like Control Priest, Control Shaman, and Big Warrior. Even the Galakrond Bomb Warrior was played like a control deck sometimes; the game plan was to control your opponent's board long enough to see them die from all the bombs you shuffled in, if you don't kill them with weapon damage first.

I think the previous metas (outside of the Outland one, where DH was dominating) are pretty balanced, where you've got a good mix of aggro, control, and midrange decks to choose from. Honestly, I don't want a meta dominated by control. Do you remember the Dr. Boom, Mad Genius days? The Elysiana Warriors were terrible to face too. The games were long, grindy, and tiring. I definitely don't want to see a similar meta again.  

You not serious calling control shaman viable in the last meta it was tier 999999 XD you def not know the last meta if you say things like tha

"Hey, we know we've been a little greedy with all our game desing, but hey! Now you can put more money in, get 2 legendaries from our current set, and 20 packs from an old set, for a FAIR price! We know that the prices we used till now are way off, but this one, this one is FAIR!"

Yeah... F'off.

I've had the BG quest once, and re-rolled it into something easier to complete. I haven't seen the Arena one at all. Most of my weekly quests have been super easy, so this seems like probably just bad luck.

I have to agree that playing hearthstone isn't as it once was. While its nice to know that a lost now isn't the end of the world, since both sides gets xp for it, you can go upwards to 7 wins a day and feel like nothing has changed.

I do expect some kind of response. The duels tournament fiasco should be enough to force blizz into one. Let's hope that they see sense and make some positive changes, and get back to the good graces of the community again (at least neutral if nothing else)

I bought the smaller pre-order and the only legendary included was a non golden. I'm quite surprised they are giving me a golden one and tell me it's part of the bundle it doesn't make sense. It may have something do to with a daily quest missing because last week I didn't had one.

i buyed the little preorder aswell but got only at the start 1 normal legendary but never got a golden 

I've been posting concerns both here and reddit (which I never used to post on before this debacle) since day 1 of rewards tracks release. Analysis, graphs and XP per hour calculations.

But whatever you think about the new rewards system and whatever the maths say, Hearthstone just doesn't feel as good as it used to.

Grinding for XP often with no feeling of progress some days, not even 10g for 3 wins (not that it was super good but it was something), no quest completion in Tavern Brawls and so much else - including broken promises (play your way/same gold for same effort).

I used to find it a fun, warm place to spend downtime. No longer. I've already given up my NA and Asia accounts. I hope they make changes to make the game feel good again or my remaining EU account will have to go to and I'd prefer the game too still be good and keep playing.

Let's hope they address these player concerns.  Hearthstone is a great game and I'd like it to remain that way.

A random golden Legendary is included in every only the large preorder bundle. Was this the first time you opened the game since the expansion release? If yes, then you just got that one. You did say you preordered.

Edit: sorry, my mistake.

Quote From clawz161

Quote From AngryShuckie

...

• Druid: Keeper of the Grove (not great, but arguably better than the Owl at least)

...

As someone that has played a lot of druid this year, which includes quest druid, gonk druid, taunt druid, lucentbark druid. I can say that Keeper of the Grove is not a card one should EVER consider putting into their deck unless they invent a time machine first. After you play your 4 mana 2/2 against one big paladin minion, they'll just play liadrin or some other dumb shit and beat you down with that instead. All while you waste 4 mana to silence a minion and summon a 2/2 they can easily ignore on board when they resume to hit you in the face, while laughing at you all the way until you hit that concede button.

 

The only viable option for silence is mage or shaman or demon hunter(because demon hunter is supposed to be good at everything don't ya know). And blizzard has made sure of that. tinkmaster overspark is one of my favorite cards and he's a meme.

 

Alternatives would be using [Hearthstone Card (sylvanas) Not Found] and Play Dead and Nine Lives in wild https://hsreplay.net/replay/dNgxu2NaUp7c2fwrFda2YB#turn=5b

Well I did say Keeper of the Grove was not great. To be honest, it wouldn't help against libram pally even if it was still a 2/4, not because it would be a bad card, but because druid removal is utter garbage and silencing 1 thing isn't going to get you very far in that match-up if you cannot clear multiple big minions.

I do think you are undervaluing the ability of rogue and priest to deal with libram pally though. I admit I'm not an expert on priest, but I have a lot of experience making libram paladins cry just by running some hard removal in my rogue decks, e.g. 2x Coerce, Flik Skyshiv and 2x Sap. True, none of those are actual silences, but there are few cards in the game against which they don't do just as well. 

Also, for the record, there is at least 1 thing Demon Hunters are bad at: buffing minions. That Redeemed Pariah achievement would be a whole lot easier if they were any good at it. Then again, perhaps this is just the same as saying Demon Hunters are strong against silence... Hmm.

I'm out of this game. It's hard (an expensive) to have a good competitive deck of the class that you are more comfy playing with, you revamp the reward system into a one that doesn't seems fair enough and also you are giving to us cards from previous expansion? I feel totally dumb giving Blizzard my money and having back this kind of treats, honestly. That deal will be a good one if it was offered 5 months ago, not now. Why I should waste my money on a different set thant the current one where is it supposed to be the current meta based on?
Scholomance has good cards to offer but most of the decks are made around new cards like the 4 old gods and corrupted ones. This kind of offers should be, if offered "out of time", at least with current year packs. Offering now scholomance packs is like offering Outlands one, can be interesting for some people but doesn't fit the current needs of the people. My feel (and I see that lots of people thinks the same) is that Hearthstone is runned by people that seems is no listening its customers.

I think that year of the phoenix is the last for me, that's the last straw. I totally loved this game and I expensed big amounts of money on this but every day I feel more and more playing in a pay2win game instead a free2play one. 

Is that an Awesomenauts reference I see in the Humming Droid? I didn't expect to see that game referenced here, it's super underrated and underplayed.