Very well said sir. I could have said every word myself, though I do play ranked but often casual as well. I've definitely spent over $2000 on this game, maybe closer to $3000. I'm scared to go back and look. It's unimaginable. I'll never tell most people I know probably. My everyday sane mind keeps telling me I can't keep spending $300 to $400 on the same game year after year...but I keep throwing money at em. I've gotten a lot of fun out of Hearthstone of course but in the end I feel like a sucker. I don't feel good at all about having spent that much money just to have this online collection. I don't feel good about feeling like I have to preorder if I'm going to play constructed at all. I definitely feel like I've been milked and milked and I'm sensitive to being taken advantage of even further. Clearly a lot of people feel that that's what's happening with this new system, or they feel that their tenuous F2P or semi-F2P workarounds will no longer work.
As I explained in my post below the rewards in the new progression system do seem to even out with the past rewards for the average player (1 hour/day completing all quests), but some people will get less gold than I showed below due to play time lower than 7 hours a week. However, people that play a lot and don't aggro gold farm will actually make more gold than before as they get XP from all that time played and some extra achievements. Even playing casually and just completing quests you'll get past level 50 but people that play like 2 hours a day and then sometimes 4 or 6 hours will go way beyond that, and for those people the Tavern Pass will almost pay for itself in gold along with the cosmetics.
The main group that loses with new system are the people that ran super efficient aggro decks to farm 30 wins/day. To each their own and I don't blame them too much because, as we know all too well, Hearthstone is unfairly overpriced, so kudos to them for finding a way to work around costs. However, this style of play forces an aggro gold farming economy on the game. It warps the game towards aggro. This has become increasingly wearisome to me. Honestly I'm glad to see it go.
Having said that....it's still a fact that some players are worse off now and Blizzard was pretty explicit in saying that we wouldn't be earning less gold than we have been and would in fact be earning more. That is true in some cases, but not true for people who play less or who farmed wins. They should have been more specific about the cases. They shouldn't have been so vague. Looking at the new rewards it is a bit of a slap in the face to be given packs from old expansion (basically dust) instead of gold. It's hard to interpret that as anything other than them wanting us to have less gold to spend on the next expansion. A much better mechanic would be to allow us to choose: take an old pack you can open now or a pack from the next expansion that you can't open until it starts.
Even though I don't agree with the logic of what a lot of people are saying on Reddit I agree that Blizzard has already pushed us to the limit and not throwing us a bone with this new system and making it clearly, unquestionably more rewarding is really disappointing and frustrating. They're already sucking us dry. Why risk Artifacting the game just to gain that extra little monetary edge? Player loyalty and appreciation is another kind of currency that maybe they don't value enough.
Oh My Yogg! is a very solid disruptor, I think. Not that strong against Mage, but against Priest, which will be counting on that one spell to activate their [Hearthstone Card (Sethekk Voidweaver) Not Found] and begin the discount train, it's deadly.
The same is true against Druids - blocking a Guardian Animals is ruinous, and blocking a Lightning Bloom can screw up their mana curve and delay the deck for a turn or two. If you have other secrets in your deck, you could even intimidate players into wasting an Innervate or Lightning Bloom before playing Guardian Animals, making Kael'thas weaker. Question is, what other secrets could you run?
Compared to Flanking Strike, I'd much rather have the 3/3 than two 1/1s with taunt. Also, the fact that the tokens don't have rush like most of the other token generators DH has means they are less likely to contribute to Feast of Souls and Wrathscale Naga. I think that Renowned Performer doesn't contribute enough power or synergy to the lackluster archetype of Token DH or any other DH archetype for that matter.
This secret reminds me of an older Hunter secret: Rat Trap. That secret was ran in secret packages as a one-of to help guarantee more draws with Subject 9. I could see a similar case with Open the Cages being a one-of secret to help have multiple secrets for Petting Zoo or a secret for Hyena Alpha, but I could also see it being one of the first secrets to be cut from the deck in refinement.
I wonder if using the characters Yrel and Lothraxion here would mean that we wouldn't see anything related to the burning legion in later expansions. Both are rather big characters that can hold up entirely on their own, so its curious that we see them together in one expansion.
I think that the buff isn't going to be that substantial as a +1/+1 buff doesn't scale well with totems. In addition, if you play this on turn 3, then you just sacrificed a lot of tempo and initiative in an archetype that centers around those two features. I just don't see how this is aggressive enough for Totem Shaman to run.
The only way I imagine this seeing play is in a Token DH deck given how it scales well with Command the Illidari and Expendable Performers. However, that won't be this expansion since the archetype doesn't have a consistent enough win condition to be competitive. If Token DH gets some significant support next year, then I'd imagine this being a way to scale up the rush tokens for better trades.
Its still there. Im not sure if you're playing on mobile, but on pc it's the last button when you press the journal on the front screen (that icon that looks like a purple quill pen). Displays all your stats, arena, ranked, bg, duels
I'm not F2P. I already spent a lot on this game and it astonishes me that it keeps getting more expensive. I care about the F2P aspect because if the F2P playerbase leaves then the game will die for sure due to a lack of significant audience. This game is already way too expensive and it keeps getting worse. I already found an alternative in Legends of Runeterra if this keeps happening. You can defend this as much as you want but the price to keep up with the game simply isn't justifiable in any way.
So much has already been covered by the highly intelligent members of the OOC community I will try to keep this brief!
The hypothetical example of a presumed casual player (1hr a day for 120 days) almost beggars belief! some of those achievements will be damn near impossible let alone a generous 75%
My personal example is that of many members with job, kids, etc. clear quests every 3 days or so and I can net approx 7k -8k gold per expansion.
My real issue comes that they've taken away player agency in terms of gold spending (and it will be less). I don't want a scholomance pack on level 4 or a card back on level 10 unless it's in addition to 100g.....100g should be the standard for every tier, and then thank you very much for the scholo pack on top of that. That is generous and going above and beyond the old system.
The mini-sets increase the cost of the game further therefore less gold impacts the economy even further.
I have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 on the game since inception, but this really pushed me to no longer support until it is fixed. It really is worse off for all players.
I knew it was super fishy that Blizzard didn’t reveal the reward track until it actually came out. At least with the old system I was guaranteed to get gold for completing a quest, now I only get... one third of a level for completing a quest? For an old pack? Screw off. At least keep the 3 wins for 10 gold or increase it to like 20-30 gold
Have a look at the full list. I'll cherry pick a few, but outside of more specific demands like play 20 murlocs, you'll find that finishing the 'harder' quests to be either equal or only minutely inconvenient to the 'easier' quest.
Use your hero power 20 times - 800 xp
Win 2 games - 800 xp
Play 10 odd costed cards - 1000xp
Play 3 games of (3 different classes) - 1000xp
That's beside the point here. The rule where you reroll your 1000xp quest will always result in a 800xp quest still applies I think, but the reverse is not true. If they were being sincere about presenting a choice of difficulty then it should be theoretically impossible for me to reroll a 800xp quest to another 800xp quest.
Also, let's point out that the demands of 1000xp quests is 'play' not 'win'. In many cases, you'd only need about half an ounce of effort to finish up any of these so called difficult quests. Even the play 20 murlocs quest, which is about as egregious as it can get, is only a mild annoyance, certainly nowhere near the theoretical 30 minutes it will take for me to earn that 200xp difference.
The one thing about new system that always really bothered me: why they had to give us old packs in a NEW expansion? Just give the damn gold instead, or new packs, later levels are really slow, and you get basically nothing for some of them. How is that exciting and motivating?
Is this small amount of gold really going to hurt your pockets that much, Blizzard? If you really want to give some value to players, increase the rewards to be what we are used to. Replace those old packs and increase gold. I'm sure that people who usually preorder (probably main source of income) would do it anyway if you were more generous. Those who buy individual packs, maybe a bit less packs sold here, at a price of trust of those who live by gold.
I believe we are openly lied to with their promises, that's what's maybe the biggest problem. You won't get the same reward for the same time invested as before. Nothing has changed in terms of flexibility, it probably just got harder to keep up, and you say the opposite.
You have the chance to fix your system and hopefully tone down your greed. Unfortunately, I doubt anything will change, as this is maybe exactly the same as in that initial spreadsheet.
I know you have to make a living, I respect your work and love this game, just be honest to us and respect the player base as a whole.
I've followed Chadd's math and I remain unconvinced. Firstly it's practically impossible to complete solely 1000xp daily quests. Furthermore, to assume 1 hour/day of ranked play from someone who can only complete 75% of their quests is way off. I re-roll and keep up with my quests every day and I spend less than 1 hour/day on ranked play. I also don't expect to play much of duels. I used to accumulate 7000+ gold for each new expansion; the math suggests I won't now. One unaccounted variable that could make a significant difference is the special event quests - we'll just have to see how Blizzard handles that.
This is basically a 3 mana Heroic Strike in a class that already has that card in the form of Twin Slice. DH wants to use their hero to attack face and minions like Glaivebound Adept and spells like Eye Beam and Blade Flurry to deal with opposing minions, so the immune aspect is going to be worthless most of the time. There are just better ways to buff your hero's attack in DH than this.
As the name implies, this Arborist looks like a fair card. I think Druid already has more interesting options for card draw at the 2 mana slot with Breath of Dreams and Wrath, so I think this will be run as a Landscaping that can draw later on when corrupted in Token Druid. The issue is, I don't think Token Druid is as consistent as the frontrunner archetype of the class, Guardian Druid, so I think Faire Arborist and Token Druid will have a limited impact on the meta.
You receive three times as much gold per level near the end of the track, so it shouldn't actually feel all that bad.
What you get for each level is actually irrelevant. What matters is how much gold you end up with by the next expansion. It would be super-crazy for a Blizzard developer to lie about any of this, so I think it makes sense to trust that you'll end up with at least as much gold as you used to, given the same play habits.
Early Darkmoon achievements for XP
Hey good catch, I didn´t know there were XP points for Duels too. I´ll try casual and let you know. Thanks for bringing this up!
EDIT: Okay can confirm that you can finish Duelist achievements in casual mode of Duels, which is great! :)
What Free Legendary did you get?
N'zoth and his Jewel for me. Should make a fun deck. Maybe even get the other N'zoth and see how many times I can rez Sneed's or something ha.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Very well said sir. I could have said every word myself, though I do play ranked but often casual as well. I've definitely spent over $2000 on this game, maybe closer to $3000. I'm scared to go back and look. It's unimaginable. I'll never tell most people I know probably. My everyday sane mind keeps telling me I can't keep spending $300 to $400 on the same game year after year...but I keep throwing money at em. I've gotten a lot of fun out of Hearthstone of course but in the end I feel like a sucker. I don't feel good at all about having spent that much money just to have this online collection. I don't feel good about feeling like I have to preorder if I'm going to play constructed at all. I definitely feel like I've been milked and milked and I'm sensitive to being taken advantage of even further. Clearly a lot of people feel that that's what's happening with this new system, or they feel that their tenuous F2P or semi-F2P workarounds will no longer work.
As I explained in my post below the rewards in the new progression system do seem to even out with the past rewards for the average player (1 hour/day completing all quests), but some people will get less gold than I showed below due to play time lower than 7 hours a week. However, people that play a lot and don't aggro gold farm will actually make more gold than before as they get XP from all that time played and some extra achievements. Even playing casually and just completing quests you'll get past level 50 but people that play like 2 hours a day and then sometimes 4 or 6 hours will go way beyond that, and for those people the Tavern Pass will almost pay for itself in gold along with the cosmetics.
The main group that loses with new system are the people that ran super efficient aggro decks to farm 30 wins/day. To each their own and I don't blame them too much because, as we know all too well, Hearthstone is unfairly overpriced, so kudos to them for finding a way to work around costs. However, this style of play forces an aggro gold farming economy on the game. It warps the game towards aggro. This has become increasingly wearisome to me. Honestly I'm glad to see it go.
Having said that....it's still a fact that some players are worse off now and Blizzard was pretty explicit in saying that we wouldn't be earning less gold than we have been and would in fact be earning more. That is true in some cases, but not true for people who play less or who farmed wins. They should have been more specific about the cases. They shouldn't have been so vague. Looking at the new rewards it is a bit of a slap in the face to be given packs from old expansion (basically dust) instead of gold. It's hard to interpret that as anything other than them wanting us to have less gold to spend on the next expansion. A much better mechanic would be to allow us to choose: take an old pack you can open now or a pack from the next expansion that you can't open until it starts.
Even though I don't agree with the logic of what a lot of people are saying on Reddit I agree that Blizzard has already pushed us to the limit and not throwing us a bone with this new system and making it clearly, unquestionably more rewarding is really disappointing and frustrating. They're already sucking us dry. Why risk Artifacting the game just to gain that extra little monetary edge? Player loyalty and appreciation is another kind of currency that maybe they don't value enough.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Actually they pumped up the expansions with new 35 cards by 30%, so justto keep up you need to be able to earn at least 30% more than before
Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Paladin Cards
Oh My Yogg! is a very solid disruptor, I think. Not that strong against Mage, but against Priest, which will be counting on that one spell to activate their [Hearthstone Card (Sethekk Voidweaver) Not Found] and begin the discount train, it's deadly.
The same is true against Druids - blocking a Guardian Animals is ruinous, and blocking a Lightning Bloom can screw up their mana curve and delay the deck for a turn or two. If you have other secrets in your deck, you could even intimidate players into wasting an Innervate or Lightning Bloom before playing Guardian Animals, making Kael'thas weaker. Question is, what other secrets could you run?
New Demon Hunter Minion - Renowned Performer
Compared to Flanking Strike, I'd much rather have the 3/3 than two 1/1s with taunt. Also, the fact that the tokens don't have rush like most of the other token generators DH has means they are less likely to contribute to Feast of Souls and Wrathscale Naga. I think that Renowned Performer doesn't contribute enough power or synergy to the lackluster archetype of Token DH or any other DH archetype for that matter.
New Hunter Spell - Open the Cages
This secret reminds me of an older Hunter secret: Rat Trap. That secret was ran in secret packages as a one-of to help guarantee more draws with Subject 9. I could see a similar case with Open the Cages being a one-of secret to help have multiple secrets for Petting Zoo or a secret for Hyena Alpha, but I could also see it being one of the first secrets to be cut from the deck in refinement.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Lol Blizzard trying to play math tricks on card gamers
Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Paladin Cards
I wonder if using the characters Yrel and Lothraxion here would mean that we wouldn't see anything related to the burning legion in later expansions. Both are rather big characters that can hold up entirely on their own, so its curious that we see them together in one expansion.
New Shaman Minion - Grand Totem Eys'or
I think that the buff isn't going to be that substantial as a +1/+1 buff doesn't scale well with totems. In addition, if you play this on turn 3, then you just sacrificed a lot of tempo and initiative in an archetype that centers around those two features. I just don't see how this is aggressive enough for Totem Shaman to run.
New Neutral Minion - Parade Leader
The only way I imagine this seeing play is in a Token DH deck given how it scales well with Command the Illidari and Expendable Performers. However, that won't be this expansion since the archetype doesn't have a consistent enough win condition to be competitive. If Token DH gets some significant support next year, then I'd imagine this being a way to scale up the rush tokens for better trades.
New Profile Page
Its still there. Im not sure if you're playing on mobile, but on pc it's the last button when you press the journal on the front screen (that icon that looks like a purple quill pen). Displays all your stats, arena, ranked, bg, duels
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Forgive me for having to point this out, but as media coverage has well and adequately shown, Blizzard is in no way in danger of not keeping the lights on.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
I'm not F2P. I already spent a lot on this game and it astonishes me that it keeps getting more expensive. I care about the F2P aspect because if the F2P playerbase leaves then the game will die for sure due to a lack of significant audience. This game is already way too expensive and it keeps getting worse. I already found an alternative in Legends of Runeterra if this keeps happening. You can defend this as much as you want but the price to keep up with the game simply isn't justifiable in any way.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Second question, I completed both Naxxramas and BRM, why does it not show completed in Achievements
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
So much has already been covered by the highly intelligent members of the OOC community I will try to keep this brief!
The hypothetical example of a presumed casual player (1hr a day for 120 days) almost beggars belief! some of those achievements will be damn near impossible let alone a generous 75%
My personal example is that of many members with job, kids, etc. clear quests every 3 days or so and I can net approx 7k -8k gold per expansion.
My real issue comes that they've taken away player agency in terms of gold spending (and it will be less). I don't want a scholomance pack on level 4 or a card back on level 10 unless it's in addition to 100g.....100g should be the standard for every tier, and then thank you very much for the scholo pack on top of that. That is generous and going above and beyond the old system.
The mini-sets increase the cost of the game further therefore less gold impacts the economy even further.
I have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 on the game since inception, but this really pushed me to no longer support until it is fixed. It really is worse off for all players.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
For the Achievements. They actually factor into XP? And why only Darkmoon and Duels? I hate Duels, but damn that’s a ton of XP
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
I knew it was super fishy that Blizzard didn’t reveal the reward track until it actually came out. At least with the old system I was guaranteed to get gold for completing a quest, now I only get... one third of a level for completing a quest? For an old pack? Screw off. At least keep the 3 wins for 10 gold or increase it to like 20-30 gold
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Have a look at the full list. I'll cherry pick a few, but outside of more specific demands like play 20 murlocs, you'll find that finishing the 'harder' quests to be either equal or only minutely inconvenient to the 'easier' quest.
Use your hero power 20 times - 800 xp
Win 2 games - 800 xp
Play 10 odd costed cards - 1000xp
Play 3 games of (3 different classes) - 1000xp
That's beside the point here. The rule where you reroll your 1000xp quest will always result in a 800xp quest still applies I think, but the reverse is not true. If they were being sincere about presenting a choice of difficulty then it should be theoretically impossible for me to reroll a 800xp quest to another 800xp quest.
Also, let's point out that the demands of 1000xp quests is 'play' not 'win'. In many cases, you'd only need about half an ounce of effort to finish up any of these so called difficult quests. Even the play 20 murlocs quest, which is about as egregious as it can get, is only a mild annoyance, certainly nowhere near the theoretical 30 minutes it will take for me to earn that 200xp difference.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
The one thing about new system that always really bothered me: why they had to give us old packs in a NEW expansion? Just give the damn gold instead, or new packs, later levels are really slow, and you get basically nothing for some of them. How is that exciting and motivating?
Is this small amount of gold really going to hurt your pockets that much, Blizzard? If you really want to give some value to players, increase the rewards to be what we are used to. Replace those old packs and increase gold. I'm sure that people who usually preorder (probably main source of income) would do it anyway if you were more generous. Those who buy individual packs, maybe a bit less packs sold here, at a price of trust of those who live by gold.
I believe we are openly lied to with their promises, that's what's maybe the biggest problem. You won't get the same reward for the same time invested as before. Nothing has changed in terms of flexibility, it probably just got harder to keep up, and you say the opposite.
You have the chance to fix your system and hopefully tone down your greed. Unfortunately, I doubt anything will change, as this is maybe exactly the same as in that initial spreadsheet.
I know you have to make a living, I respect your work and love this game, just be honest to us and respect the player base as a whole.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
I've followed Chadd's math and I remain unconvinced. Firstly it's practically impossible to complete solely 1000xp daily quests. Furthermore, to assume 1 hour/day of ranked play from someone who can only complete 75% of their quests is way off. I re-roll and keep up with my quests every day and I spend less than 1 hour/day on ranked play. I also don't expect to play much of duels. I used to accumulate 7000+ gold for each new expansion; the math suggests I won't now. One unaccounted variable that could make a significant difference is the special event quests - we'll just have to see how Blizzard handles that.
New Demon Hunter Spell - Relentless Pursuit
This is basically a 3 mana Heroic Strike in a class that already has that card in the form of Twin Slice. DH wants to use their hero to attack face and minions like Glaivebound Adept and spells like Eye Beam and Blade Flurry to deal with opposing minions, so the immune aspect is going to be worthless most of the time. There are just better ways to buff your hero's attack in DH than this.
New Druid Minion - Faire Arborist
As the name implies, this Arborist looks like a fair card. I think Druid already has more interesting options for card draw at the 2 mana slot with Breath of Dreams and Wrath, so I think this will be run as a Landscaping that can draw later on when corrupted in Token Druid. The issue is, I don't think Token Druid is as consistent as the frontrunner archetype of the class, Guardian Druid, so I think Faire Arborist and Token Druid will have a limited impact on the meta.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
That's why you are allowed to reroll Weekly quests. I intend to reroll every Arena quest I see, and probably most of the Battlegrounds ones.
I certainly don't mind that those quests exist for the players who enjoy them.
EDIT: I got a BG quest this week, and it's actually so easy that I'll probably just complete it instead of rerolling.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
You receive three times as much gold per level near the end of the track, so it shouldn't actually feel all that bad.
What you get for each level is actually irrelevant. What matters is how much gold you end up with by the next expansion. It would be super-crazy for a Blizzard developer to lie about any of this, so I think it makes sense to trust that you'll end up with at least as much gold as you used to, given the same play habits.