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Hey all. A threadđŸ§”! I wanted to take a moment to share our thoughts behind the dust refunds on Drek’thar and Vanndar. https://t.co/mtQEtl3vig

Hey all. A threadđŸ§”! I wanted to take a moment to share our thoughts behind the dust refunds on Drek’thar and Vanndar. https://t.co/mtQEtl3vig

  • Chadd Nervigg
    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
    Hey all. A threadđŸ§”! I wanted to take a moment to share our thoughts behind the dust refunds on Drek’thar and Vanndar. https://t.co/mtQEtl3vig

    • Chadd Nervigg
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      The main point of dust refunds has historically been to handle nerfs; you can safely craft a card, without fear that it’ll get nerfed and you’ll have ‘wasted’ your investment. But another situation started coming up a few expansions ago.

      • Chadd Nervigg
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        In Barrens, we wanted to have specific cards on the reward track. But most importantly, some were openable right away at level 1, and were valuable Legendary cards. This posed a problem.

        • Chadd Nervigg
          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
          If you opened your packs before claiming the card on the reward track, you could ‘waste’ your reward. The only immediate solution we came up with for Barrens was to do the full dust refund at launch thing.

          • Chadd Nervigg
            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
            We didn’t like it because it required people be in-the-know, and actually *reversed* the problem (it became better to open packs first). But we had no other viable option. So, that’s what we did for Barrens, despite its drawbacks.

            • Chadd Nervigg
              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
              We planned to solve it in a better way for Stormwind, but didn’t find/implement a better solution in time, so did it there too. And then again for Alterac Valley.

              • Chadd Nervigg
                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                The point of these dust-refund-at-launch cases has always been to handle that launch day, where you could do things in the wrong order *immediately on launch*. It didn’t apply to things you get later, like cards deep on the reward track, or via achievements.

                • Chadd Nervigg
                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                  If you open a card on day 1, use it all expansion, and then near the end of the expansion reach the reward track level to get a golden version of it
 Well you used it all expansion, you got reasonable value out of it; and the golden reward you got is cool as a cosmetic.

                  • Chadd Nervigg
                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                    That’s the bucket that Drek/Van fell in. If you open one of them on day 1, great, you can use them starting on day 1. If you get to the end of the honor event questchain by the end of the expansion, then you’ll get the golden one too, a nice cosmetic upgrade.

                    • Chadd Nervigg
                      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                      Or at least, that was our thought process. In practice, Drek/Van are much more desirable than the cards at the end of the reward track have been previously. Players have understandably felt like they should ‘optimize’ this, and do the honor quests first.

                      • Chadd Nervigg
                        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                        Part of our hesitance in reacting to this has been not wanting to set a precedent that for every reward we make in the future, you need to be careful about the order you get them, and that they’ll all effectively come with a wildcard of a second card of their rarity too.

                        • Chadd Nervigg
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          Our goal here isn’t to set that precedent. One might ask, “why not just be generous?” We love to be generous; the AV reward track and event are the most free stuff we’ve ever done. But we want to do it intentionally; we’d rather put that value into planned rewards.

                          • Chadd Nervigg
                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                            Another reason we’re doing this now is that we finally have a plan for how to solve this problem in a solid way, in the future. No promises when we’ll get that implemented, but at least we no longer see this bandaid solution as being required forever. End đŸ§”! Love ya all!

                            • Saor17614198
                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                              @Celestalon Appreciate the insights! I'd love to hear about the whole Golden Uncraftable concept as well, seeing as they violate duplicate protection rule in spirit (mainly Rewards Track Epics) and how for some of us a golden card is literally of 0 value; yet we are being forced into them.

                              • Chadd Nervigg
                                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                @Saor17614198 Sure. The point is that they’re special, they’re a status symbol, exclusive. You can still get the normal one through packs or crafting, but if you have this in golden, it means you did something special. Like a golden hero.

                                • Chadd Nervigg
                                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                  @Saor17614198 And if you don’t have them at all when you get the golden one, well great, that’s a nice bonus.

                        • lympanda
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          @Celestalon Actually, at this time point. Many hard core players have finished the honer quest and already got the golden version. They lost the chance to get the "any legendary". And the players who didn't "optimize" their order got the benefit. Is this intended to penalize HC players?

                          • Chadd Nervigg
                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                            @lympanda Nope, they haven't. Check out the hotfix notes posted today; everyone gets it.

                            • lympanda
                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                              @Celestalon I think you didn't understand what I mean. Hard core players choose to finish the honor quest before opening the packs. This action avoid to get "Drek’thar and Vanndar" from packs. But now, this action became stupid as getting D & V means "any legendary" and they just avoid it.

                              • Chadd Nervigg
                                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                @lympanda Oh, yes! And that's a good thing. Open your packs! Have fun!

                                • Chadd Nervigg
                                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                  @lympanda You might mean that people who already did the full questline effectively got a random other legendary, whereas everyone who opened their packs gets the full dust (which is better)? Yes, that's one of the downsides of this that I mentioned, but is much smaller of an impact.

                                  • lympanda
                                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                    @Celestalon Yes, correct. This is what I mean. The decision was made between "penalize small amount of well-planned hard code players" and "benefit non-optimized big amount of players". Bliz. just chose the latter one because of the pressure from them. Well done.

                                    • Chadd Nervigg
                                      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                      @lympanda It's also a difference of a very minor loss for the former, and a much much larger loss for the later.

                      • SnuggleKingHS
                        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                        @Celestalon I feel like early start of the event made a real difference here. If it all was happening on actual day 1 people wouldn't think of this reward this way, but since on day 1 there were already people finishing the Honor grind, it felt like others were "missing out".

                        • Chadd Nervigg
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          @SnuggleKingHS Yeah, totally true. Starting a week early definitely made 'just do the whole honor questline before opening packs' more of a feasible-sounding thing. Also unplanned.

    • nayarasylvestre
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      @Celestalon I love this kind of insights!! Thanks!

      • Chadd Nervigg
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        @nayarasylvestre I love sharing this sort of insight! Both because it's interesting, and also because when players *don't* know what they're thinking, they tend to just imagine something, and that often is something negative, when really it's nothing of the sort!
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