Dean "Iksar" Ayala talked a bit more about the new Hearthstone progression system this afternoon on Reddit.
- Rewards will be removed from quests.
- Experience earned from quests will be more rewarding than it is now.
- You should not earn less gold or non-gold rewards in the new system.
- The same amount of gold earnings means you can still buy the same number of packs on day 1 of an expansion.
- The intent of the new reward system is to be an upside for all players.
This is the latest information we have on Hearthstone's upcoming Battle Pass, which was last addressed almost two weeks ago by Hearthstone's Game Director, Ben Lee
Quote From Dean Ayala Assuming you play the same amount and have the same quest completion rate, you shouldn't earn less gold or non-gold in the new system. In nearly all circumstances you should be earning slightly more gold and more non-gold (packs, etc).
Our plan is to remove rewards from quests, though the experience you earn per quest on average will net you as much or more rewards as quests give you now.
Something that has come up a lot is the idea that you will no longer be able to obtain the packs you want on day 1, and instead will get a 'drip feed' of packs over the expansion. While you will receive rewards as the expansion goes on, the gold you earn per expansion should remain relatively flat from what you earn now. This should make your ability to buy packs on day 1 similar to what you get now, but with more non-gold rewards added on top.
Our intent with the system is for it to be upside for all players. We've done many checks on different player segments to try and make sure that is the case no matter how you play. Despite all this, we're making XP per level and XP bonuses as tuning knobs in case our predictions were incorrect. We can push legendary quests or give out additional rewards during events as well.
[Source: Countless hours spent staring at an excel sheet trying to get this right.]
You mention that gold gain shouldn't decrease; I will take your word for it since our calculations are probably not taking into account the full picture, as no one here has actually tested the system. I am curious of one thing - the Battle Pass seems very much tuned for Standard; with the lack of more 'immediate' gold gain quests provided, will this affect players' ability to consistently buy Wild packs if they would choose to forfeit grinding the latest expansion?
Quests give you experience, which helps you level up. Leveling up gives you rewards, most of which is gold. Gold gains should be roughly the same amount of 'immediate' in the new system as in the old system. (Source)
Seems more like a big upside for NEW players, while existing players used to ripping 50+ packs on day one of a new Expansion will have to wait ~4 months to get the same rewards
No, the amount of packs you will be able to open on day 1 shouldn't change much because your gold income shouldn't change much. (Source)
I don't want packs instead of gold, i want the same gold (actually more, but at least the same) as before, and then i decide if i want the new packs or to open some frozen throne packs to flesh out some commons and rares. Or use it for arena, battleground perks, adventures or whatever suit my fancy.
But i want to decide, not you. If i want to save 100 packs worth of gold for a big opening day 1 of the new expansion, i should be able to just like i did before.
And i want the battleground perks be purchasable f2p.
Great, we also don't want you to earn packs instead of gold. As a result, you will still earn lots of gold you can choose to do whatever you want with. (Source)
Comments
I don't think it's fair to require "infinite" value from the Battle Pass. If the Gold progression is going to be the same as before, these packs are just icing on the cake and are definitely not the target of the players who grind out full bundles worth of gold each set. If they were to replace them with more Gold, there's less chance you're going to buy something.
At the end of the day, Hearthstone does need to sell stuff to us to remain profitable. I'd be completely on the side of "packs suck" if it wasn't for their clear messaging that nothing is changing to hurt the Gold income for F2P players. Ben Lee even said he personally made 5K gold per set and he expects to make the exact same without changing how much he played.
A nice balance between the two would be perfect, but it was my impression that Blizzard are counting packs as 100g in the battlepass value, a net 5k of gold per expansion is pretty good but 10 packs of last year expansions (or 30 packs of year of the dragon for example) and 2k in gold is not the same.
Positive message addressing many of the concerns people have.
Seems an even clearer promise that new system will be better than current, and not harmful to f2p.
Glad to read that, and once the new system is live, analyzed and accurate comparisons drawn, I expect the promises to be kept (even if adjustment their end required).
And if they are, and it's a plus for everyone no matter how you play, then I'll say "good job".
12 November 2020
Promise broken.
Of all the F2P games I’m familiar with, Hearthstone has always been the most respectful with my time. You can earn enough to participate in the game with only a tiny amount of time. (Probably as low as 20-30 minutes every 3 days if you push it.) The strong impression I get is that they want to barrier to entry to be low, and they expect people to keep playing the game after those 20 minutes just because it’s fun. (Imagine that!)
However, they have definitely not been as respectful with my money as other games. If you decide you really want to be competitive, it’s a minimum of $50 every 4 months, possibly much more. (I can say from experience that just buying the $50 preorders works, but it will take a few expansions before you can really stop looking at at budget decks.)
I have no reason to believe that they have changed their approach of rewarding play, and we have seen lots of signs recently that they’re adjusting their approach to the cost. It’s not that Blizzard isn’t focused on making money - of course that’s their end goal - but they’ve realized that they need to be more competitive to attract and maintain customers.
We’ll obviously need to see the details when the new system is revealed, but I am confident that they mean everything they’re saying about their intentions. There’s no way they could become more expensive and keep their customers, and they know it.
Sounds like itll be grindier if I am reading it correctly instead of doing things for rewards that actually matter you're doing things for something else for rewards that actually matter....
To be honest the xp system just sounds like new ladder but you're the one keeping track of your score. This wont benefit control players like me that enjoy playing slow decks itll just encourage more aggro...
Not necessarily. Even the existing class levels give xp based on number of cards played as well as wins, and they only have to make the new system do the same and it will already encourage control more than the current 10 gold for 3 wins does. Also, since they changed nearly all daily quests to only require you to play games, and not have to win them, I doubt they are going to lock xp behind wins.
Guess we'll see, but i seriously doubt it'll be like that.
Well, now that F2P is safe, I'm all in for the new system.
I am so excited for this. Hope it comes soon.
I'm starting to warm up to the idea of this battlepass system.
when you climb legend you get some rewards that you can open at the end of the month, but there's no reason to keep climbing in legend unless you're a professional streamer or trying out for 100 gold a day.
So when I'm doing my dailies in legend rank having a little reward to look forward to sounds kinda nice.
The gold is not comparable to what we're able to get now, but the packs (18 current, 14 from the prior expansion) will offer either a chance to get cards you don't have, or the dust to get the cards in the next expansion. Say you get all the cards from the current expansion and have from the last, the minimum amount of dust you can get is like, 40 dust (1 rare, 4 commons). If you're unlucky, the least you could get from these packs would total 1280 dust, which is almost one legendary card from the next set.
The Arena tickets are hit or miss - you'll either have a really good arena run or you won't, but they've been adding arena tickets to the bundles lately anyway, and those are an additional source of dust, gold, and packs depending on how well you do.
The Legendary cards they're proposing we'll need to see if they follow the no duplicate rule or not. A lot of players will post photos of hitting legend the first time and getting a classic legendary they already have. But hey, it's at least an additional 400 dust for something later.
just my two cents, I'm not even going into the paid tier rewards they've proposed - cosmetics aren't worth anything really besides bragging rights
Edit: If Team 5 keeps offering past card backs on the shop that's gold only, this new system would make the gold more valuable, but it'll mean those card backs are more expensive than they are with the limited resources they're proposing
Edit 2: my Math was SUPER off on the dust, I'm sorry. I've recalculated it. They're proposed system will at least give us something to look forward to but it won't offer as much in terms of resources, it seems
Its difficult to imagine blizz nowadays doing anything without some sort of upside towards greater profits, and they usually dont rely on the concept of 'fun' to pull in the money.
The real question would be if this battlepass is supposedly going to make things better than they were, then what's the incentive for them to push this out when its not so obvious that the time, money, and manpower being spent on this can be translated directly into profits.
Even if its not apparent, it would seem like the mini-backlash generated from the surveys had had an effect of forcing them to increase the rewards or at least mask it really well to the playerbase that they are not going to lose out from this deal. And for that reason, we should be continuing to push back against this idea until we can see the full scope covered by the battlepass.
You could easily compare this to paladins. Paladins if you aren't aware is a team based shooter that while unlike hearthstone in gameplay had a similar model back in the day. Before you would play matches and based on wins you would receive gold to buy skins or unlock different characters. But now they have a battle pass system in place. Where you aren't rewarded as much and instead recieve seemingly random rewards that you more often than not dont even want instead of in game currency and of course there is a paid version of the battle pass which yields far better rewards in turn.
This is what I expect from a battle pass in hearthstone in the future. They even state so by the play for xp for in game currency. You think they wont just add an xp cap like they have for win gold which dwarfs the current daily win gold cap? I dont have as much faith in Activision as you do.
I hear you, but really I can't say I'm for or against it until the fully fleshed out system is revealed.
My thoughts as to the incentive to the new system? The paid tier was mostly cosmetics and XP boosts that ramp as you progress to higher levels (based on the previous spreadsheet we saw). So perhaps they are hoping more players will throw an extra $20, or $25 at them to get these boosts and hero skins/card backs. Also, depending on how the XP boosts work, and if they don't cap out gold earnings (which this latest statement makes me think they won't), having the XP boost could be great for players who want to hoard gold for expansion day.
I could also see a world where in this pass system you cap out on pass tiers, and then every X amount of XP earned after that awards you Y gold, and so having the XP boost could potentially push for an even larger gold stockpile than what you currently average if you are grinding out and playing a lot. But again, it'll all depend on how much the pass costs, the actual rewards system, and the total value you're able to earn in the end.
As I said in the edit to my post though, Dean states they have "tuning" points that they can adjust if they are wrong on the new system being equally or more rewarding to players. So that makes me a little optimistic.
I'm a fairly cynical person, but this goes pretty far even for me. I absolutely believe that Blizzard/Activision has a history of trading short-term profits for long-term employee satisfaction and player satisfaction. But there's more viable competition than ever in the CCG space and there's a major spotlight on their bad business practices. Things like this to generate good will are good for business precisely because of how negative an image everyone has of them right now. With that in mind, I think there's very little reason to believe, for instance, that they're simply "masking it really well" to avoid giving players more rewards.
IF it actually plays out the way Dean is saying, with grinding players (like me) able to hoard 8000-10,000 gold prior to each expansion, while also earning other non-gold rewards like packs... OK, I'm on board! But I can't be completely sold on the battle pass idea until I actually see concrete stats on what rewards will be like.
Furthermore, if they make this promise and then it ends up all players are NOT able to earn and hoard as much gold as in the current system, I hope they are able to quickly adjust the system to make sure they keep this promise (and I am taking this statement as a promise from Dean/Blizzard).
EDIT: Looking over the article again, he does mention having "tuning" options in case they are wrong and not all players are getting the same value with the new system.
Hoping it will make the ga
I am still not sure if I can get my 8k gold by the start of a new expansion.
I would really like to hear some concrete numbers from the devs to see what "similar" means.
Yeah if they implement the proposed system you'll only get 3990 gold if you don't make it past level 100.
But they're adding more options for dust, with all the packs and cards they're offering.