After we broke the news and caused a flurry of outrage surrounding the Hearthstone Rewards Track/Battle Pass, Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig responded to the community feedback that started to pile up. Let's look at what he has to say and give it a recap.
Rewards Track
- More features are coming.
- You should earn more total rewards than before. Leaving out certain XP sources hurts the math.
- New expansion packs are weighted heavily towards the front of the rewards track so you get them early when they are more valuable.
- Numbers in the new system can still change, nothing is set in stone.
Achievements
- More achievements will be added to the game over time.
- Chadd thinks it would be "really cool" to do achievements for old adventures. We agree!
- The wild and standard-specific achievements were unable to be autocompleted based on their data.
- Every expansion will see new experience earning achievements.
Quests
- The brawl quests should be playable against friends.
- There will be event quests that reward experience.
We believe that Blizzard, with their continued insistence that everyone is going to make the same amount of gold (if their play pattern doesn't change), means that as we close in towards the end of the pass if things are not looking great, they'll make changes and likely give us some nice ways to boost the experience gains. Of course, don't use that as a quote because Blizzard certainly hasn't said anything remotely close to that, but with the amount of publicity surrounding the rewards track and the number of times they have stated that things aren't going to be different, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't make things right. Chadd does mention that they could tune experience before we get to that point, so that's an option too!
How do you feel about the rewards track so far? Are you enjoying achievements? Let's talk about progression in the comments below!
Source Material
Quote From Chadd Nervig Loving all the experiences/feedback that people are sharing about the new Progression system! We're reading it all, and thinking about ways to make it the best it can be. This is only the beginning; we've got lots of ideas for the future: more features, more achievements, etc.
One of the goals we set out with was to give more total rewards, whether you play 5 hours or 500 hours in an expansion. I'm seeing a ton of great discussion about that today. But, discussion involving math can get difficult, sometimes, so I'd like to help out!
It's a really complex system, with a wide variety of XP sources, and a ton of different rewards, so the math can get rather involved. Leaving parts out or estimating things can lead you significantly off.
So I wanted to share a distilled summary of a couple hypothetical situations, to help that discussion out. Here are a couple hypothetical players, and the rewards they'd get from the new system, with current tuning numbers (which could still change before anyone gets there).
Added clarification: These numbers are WITHOUT the Tavern Pass. All of that is from the Free Reward Track.
From this thread, Chadd went on to answer community questions.
Quote From Chadd Nervig I gain around 9000-10000 Gold per expansion. Get to rank 5 minimum and reroll quests and always complete my quests. Some days I only complete my quests and not play. I hope I can still earn roughly this much gold.
Same here. I want my packs on day one, not dribbled throughout the expansion.
The latest expansion packs are heavily frontloaded on day 1 (levels 2, 3, 4). If your play pattern is to save up gold all expansion to buy packs on day 1 for the next expansion, you still can do that, just as well as before.
Thanks for the reply. Frontloading does help. Will I have about the same 10,000 gold to spend though?
It's impossible for me to give you exact numbers without having a ton of exact details about your specific play patterns, but yes, that's the goal.
Since you’re appreciating feedback: it’d be nice if you could hover over an Acheivement after you earned it to see what it was for. Or at the end of the game show again the Achievement and what it was for. It’s a bit tedious to remember the name and exit out to the Journal.
Yep, some improvement to that is definitely on our minds right now. Not sure exactly what we'll do, but we agree it's a rough edge.
Should we expect achievements for previous adventures?
Nothing specific to promise yet, but we think it'd be really cool!
So I have at some point in time reached legend in standard and wild, after playing a game in both modes, I have unlocked achievement for standard, but for wild it’s still “to do”.
The data we could carry over from before was based on your highest rank in either Wild or Standard, so you probably started with that achievement. But the Wild-specific or Standard-specific achievements are not historic; sorry.
i just really wish i could play duels. like, why the need for me to have all classes on 10? i know i will be probably bad, but i have so much fun with these kind of things. i loved the adventures, and thats the nearest i get.
would be awesome if this could be changed.A handy tip for this: Unlocking Demon Hunter actually bumps you up to level 10 on all 10 classes, immediately unlocking Arena and Duels.
One thing though, is that Duels rewards are, I assume, a one-time only affair. So, when the next expansions starts, isn't that bit gone forever?
Yes; Duels achievements having XP are because it's a new mode and we wanted to celebrate it a bit more. There will be new XP-rewarding achievements every expansion though.
So I'm in example #1 here. Currently I earn around 8k gold per expansion. In your example I will earn around 5400. This doesn't feel good at all, sir. I believe you missed the mark considerably. You guys led us to believe we'd earn more. This feels horrible.
If you earn around 8k gold per expansion right now, you're considerably above example #1, and will earn considerably more gold than 5400g. Rerolling quests, consistently completing all your quests will add more. Arena/Duels can give more. Seasonal events still exist, etc.
It will not add much more because after lv 50 it's just hard to level up. If you just complete your daily quest (reroll for 60) with the old system (15 min of play), it's 7200 golds in 4 months. With the new system is just less.
The 5400g example is someone who doesn't do all their Quests, and doesn't reroll. Someone who *does* reroll for max gold, and does all their quests/achievements, will get much more than that. (About the same as before, plus other rewards.)
Is there anyway you'd reconsider making weeklies not progress against friends? as someone who only plays against friends, the new weekly quests and their requirements harm my battlepass progress a lot, so if this is set in stone I can't justify playing this game anymore :(.
Quests (including Weeklies) do progress in Friendly Challenges, unless otherwise specified. Which one would you expect to work, but doesn't? Might be a bug, I'd love to investigate that!
The one that surprised me was the "win 5 games in brawl", in the old system quests for brawl wins could be completed against friends, now that doesn't seem to be doable anymore. I wish you reconsider and change "win X" quests in general into "play X" instead, reduces frustration.
That one should work fine against friends. Must be a bug; I'll look into it. Thanks!
Comments
I think you are about correct, and Blizzard are too (except I think they probably value cosmetics way too much when they do their calculations - the 'other rewards' - from their point of view, I'm sure it is one more product that they are selling, but it really isn't in my opinion).
But you, and they, should keep in mind that this game is already realllllly expensive. And if you were concerned about that now, and were hoping for something even a little bit better, you are going to be dissappointed. And people are very disappointed. If you look behind the numbers arguments, I want to guess that for most it is not the rational counting and arguments that get to them, it is this feeling that, oh man, I was hoping for this game to give me a break, but it sure as hell didn't...
In all honesty you should disclude the following from your math;
- Achievement xp - I've seen some of the conditions and have deemed them too much a fuss. I don't play hearthstone to purposefully fulfill esoteric conditions that crimps my game. Especially since my opponent will likely not be sympathetic or cooperative in any way. I know some people will find it fun, and I'm not about to shit on that, but that's what it should be: just for fun. The reward structure of xp is supposed to make it rewarding as well, and while I personally don't have anything against that, I start getting annoyed when people start adding it to the pool of 'rewards' that you're supposed to be getting per expansion.
Some of them are, you can say, going to be accomplished anyway, like spinning the wheel of yogg (Yogg will likely be competitive anyway). Others are as painful up the arse as they are impossible, like dealing lethal damage with Oh My Yogg!. Let's also consider this obvious problem: Many of us play only a few classes, and these achievements are not just spread across the classes, they require specific cards to even start doing. What are the off chances of me getting that epic card Darkmoon Rabbit? And that's 600xp off this one card alone. Am I to craft 2x of a card I think nothing of just for this bs?
- Packs from older expansions - This is a bonus. Nothing more, nothing less. After an expansion has passed, I would already have crafted all the cards I want so how much does a pack from, say, Descent of Dragons mean to me? especially since its only 1 pack? The answer is small. About as small as my little pinky is to a piano.
- Cards. Or anything that's not a current expansion pack - Legendaries are not equal to 15 packs, or any other sort of calculations. Again, this is a bonus and should be treated as one. If the argument goes that a legendary card should be taken into consideration as they are extremely rare and therefore valuable, I would say "just give me 15 packs and I'll go away happy". Its obvious a legendary is very valuable indeed. But if we're going to use it as a sort of barometer, I don't see why they don't just give us 15 packs for it. Given the mid expansion being a staple now, I would appreciate 15 packs more anyway.
I'm not particularly up in arms over the new system - yet. But I do think that when they specifically promised that we'll be seeing more gold, they should deliver on it, or we'll hold their feet up the fire until it chars to a nice ebony black. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah the packs from older expansions are just dust. I get that. These packs will be trickling in through the expansion so for most of them by the time you get them they're just dust except for epics and legendaries. You can say the same for those last 15 packs you open up right at the start of the expansion right? That's why these packs come out to about the same value. Instead of 15 packs of dust plus a couple epics and hopefully a legendary you get 12 packs of dust with old epics and a new one and at least one legendary.
Honestly I always preorder so for F2P players maybe those packs will still have rares they need but the main thing is the epics and legendaries and in this system we're slightly better off with those.
As for achievements even you will get some points from achievements. It'll be hard not to get at least 1000 without even trying. A little bit of trying will get you a lot more. But yeah that is effort.
I agree. I won't show all my work, but I worked out the XP math for playing ~10 hours/week and finishing all my daily and weekly quests (NOT including expansion achievement XP or bonus event XP) and it put me at Level 72. That means 7,500 gold, 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g value), 7 Current (MDF) packs (100g value), 9 Standard packs, 2 Current Legendaries, and 1 Current Epic. Let's put the Standard pack value at 50g if they're not from the current expansion, a legendary is worth 20 packs of chance or dust (2000g), and an epic is worth 5 packs of chance or dust (500g).
Now, under the old system I was earning about 450g/week (not including Arena rewards) for 17 weeks = 7,650 gold. People citing 500 gold/week are playing for more than 10 hours/week, and are underestimating their XP rewards under the new system. Plus we'd get 6 Current packs (600g) and a free Legendary (2000g) at expansion launch. So even subtracting that out I'm basically earning 7,500 gold vs. 7,650 (-150g), but I'm getting an additional legendary (2000 gold), an additional epic (500g), 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g), an extra pack (100g), and 9 extra Standard packs (~450g). People are being too dismissive of these freebies. Gold can only buy packs and tickets.
TL;DR
Old System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 10,250 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards
New System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 13,450 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards and Expansion Achievement XP.
You will definitely find players who stop at 6900g < 8400g and argue all the extra stuff can be ignored because Blizz specifically said we'd get just as much gold AND get extras on top. Even if Blizz hadn't said that, the argument that 1500g is worth more than 15 packs still holds up.
I myself am pretty neutral. I'm not an Arena player and don't plan on being a Herioc Duels player, so 100g = 1 pack to me, and if I'm honest the differences in which packs I use them on are negligible. By which I mean, I currently stop buying packs more or less on day 1 so any gold I earn is used for the next expansion, but in the long run that expansion's rewards would still give me those packs anyway, albeit with a bit of delay. That delay might not even be a bad thing with how min-expansions are going to work.
So to me, if all the numbers add up such that I'm not worse off, and there is a hero skin to get at the end, then I'm content with it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the more interesting milestones encourage me to play a little more, so I might end up getting more gold just because I'm more engaged with it.
I am one of the players who complains that it's significantly less gold, for more effort, despite a clear assurance this would not be the case. In point of fact I felt I had to retire my NA and Asia accounts that would easily garner 7260g for little effort that now will not but playing on them would hurt my main EU account.
And this alongside a time when the game is not only made more expensive with 3 extra mini-expacs a year, but you'll need to buy packs at a time one would typically be saving up (our now reduced) gold for the next expansion.
Additionally it may be the 800XP quests are weighted. Certainly my first 3 were all 800XP. That might just be unlucky - this will be clearer over time.
Lots of nice things they've added to the game, but this feels bad. Let's hope they do indeed twiddle the knobs at the backend to resolve.
The importance of the time spent playing looks to be central the whole issue, and it is honestly something that I struggle to find a good argument against. Having had 6 years of aggro being rewarded simply because the games are faster, and people making complaints about that, it only feels right that time spent is the primary method of obtaining XP outside of quests. But at the same time that is the very thing that will be hurting you if you choose to spend time on other accounts.
It is a similar story with the mini-sets: people want more content to reduce the time spent with a stale meta, but they don't want there to be a corresponding cost increase to the game. I am also torn on whether HS is an expensive game or not: certainly it sounds expensive to spend $80 every 4 months and still not have access to every card, but that is balanced by the fact you can enjoy the game for years without spending any money at all. If I wanted to be cheeky, I could argue the F2P players are actually raising the cost for everyone else.
Now I have written all of this down, it is clear to me why I end up neutral on most matters. Almost every aspect of the game has a balance where making an improvement forces something negative elsewhere, and not making an improvement leads to player dissatisfaction anyway. If you were playing at the time, recall the Brode-era HS when major changes were rare but monetisation of the game was quite tame. Contrast that to post-Brode HS which has seen many improvements both small and large, but has also led to more and more places to spend money on the game.
I guess that brings us to whether we trust the devs when they say they really want us to get the same amount of gold PLUS extras. Honestly, I'm not sure we have been given much reason to not trust them yet. There have been many decisions they have made that people have disagreed with, but none that come to mind that don't fall under the description above, where players with different philosophies will always come to different opinions. The only times they've really dropped the ball have been the ludicrous power level of Galakrond Shaman and Demon Hunter upon release, but they were very quick to act on them.
So for now I'll impassively take the devs' word for it, but don't worry, I'll join the chorus of complaints if it ends up actually costing us :)
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Regarding 800XP quests being weighted more highly, I suspect that is indeed the case, but I'm also pretty sure they weighted the 50g quests more highly than the 60g ones before (specifically the 'Play 3 games with class X, Y and Z' ones because there's so many of them you'd rarely see anything else otherwise). So that's nothing new.
Just want to jump into this one specific quote.
- If you're not a wild player then the timeline for enjoying the cards you have now is specifically 2 years. Also, the argument that I can enjoy it for years applies to any game, except none of them will ever end up costing me as much as hearthstone does.
- The idea of F2p players may be costing everyone else (especially those who regularly pays 80 bucks for this) is ludicrous. To begin with, and as artefact has shown us, pasting a price tag on the game and demand we pay for collecting all the cards is a real non starter and will likely end up with many not taking up the game at all. The game is not sustained by its whales, its sustained by its playerbase. Sure, we can paste a 20 bucks price tag to play the game now, and then suffer 10 minutes of queuing time per game because of diminishing players.
Also, let's not forget that hearthstone is a virtual card game. Its not a zero sum world where theres only a specific number of rare-hollows in existence. If Blizz gives out 1000 gold today, it wouldn't crimp the game in anyway, or disadvantage anyone. So there's no reason other than corporate greed for withholding rewards from its playerbase. Like many others, I would prefer that hearthstone makes a profit out of all this, and will and have willingly parted money because the game means something to me. But I've often been taken aback at how greedy that little wide mouthed Yogg-Saron of a company they can get. Its not enough to spend 80 bucks, but not only will you not get all the cards, you're not getting all the content there is as well. On top of that the new mid-expansion idea is going to be a regular thing now. So how much do I have to spend, in both time and money, to get even close to enjoying the game?
Well I did say it would be cheeky, but there is a nugget of truth in there. Blizz's accountants will be demanding some profit margin, and the fewer players contribute to that, the higher the price has to be. Of course it is not nearly so simple as to then say if more people started spending money on it that Blizz would reduce the prices; that could instead be taken as a sign that they could increase prices due to higher demand. Ultimately I don't know where HS sits with respect to keeping the accountants happy, so I'm not trying to claim what I just said is necessarily applying in practice.
I am also fully aware Blizz wants F2P players around to maintain a large playerbase and avoid the issues Artefact had, but it is nevertheless the paying players that fund the continued development of HS. Because of this there is a limit to how generous they can be. That is not to say they are at or even near that limit, only that casually handing out 1000 gold would have to be a rare occurrence. I don't know, maybe at about the frequency they have a good seasonal event (none of that Forbidden Library crap)...
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Regarding enjoyment, it might help to step back and view HS as a hobby. Not specifically a video game, nor a card game, just a hobby. A good hobby could be defined as something with a high ratio of time spent enjoying them to money put in. There are important complications due to opportunity cost, which will prevent this ratio actually being infinite, but you get the point. That metric applies just as well to buying a movie, a video game, Warhammer, D&D, sport, sketching, etc. It's all just killing time in a way you are emotionally and financially happy with.
Where that ratio needs to be will depend entirely on who you ask. It absolutely is possible to be completely F2P and enjoy the game, at which point HS is a successful hobby. Likewise you can spend $80 every 4 months, spend 200 hours on it in that time plus however much time you spend on forums, and come out with a much better ratio than going to the cinema.
I think it is much healthier to view HS this way than to try to compare it to a conventional video game where you spend, say, $60 and play it for however long you play it for. Whether that video game was a good investment is still ultimately decided by how many hours you were happy playing it for. If that's 1000 hours then great, but if its 4 then it was crap. That matters a lot more than the fact you owned the whole thing. Note the important distinction between hours played and hours enjoyed.
Which brings us onto the opportunity cost. Do not ignore this! You should never be doing any hobby if you'd prefer to be doing something else. You are only wasting your own time. So I guess I'd say to put aside qualms with the devs for a moment (you can pick them back up later) and do a bit of soul-searching. [Insert something profound here.]
Its always going to some sort of balance when it comes to profits vs the consumer. As much as corporate wants more money, the consumer will likely want to pay less, or get more for the same. Far as I am concerned, the consumer should plays its part by ensuring that corporate won't get away easily with any excesses, and corporate will play its part by being as greedy as it can be without pissing anyone off. That I think we can put a full stop on and move on.
On the second part of your remark, I have to admit I can't find anything to argue here. I suppose you're responding to my remarks regarding how the idea of 'enjoying a game for years' can be applied to any game not just HS. Its still true even with your remarks applied because the qualitative factor is subjective. Its still applicable and true to say I enjoyed my cinema session more despite having only spent 2 hours and 10 bucks in it, as compared to HS where I've spent near 500 bucks but 1000 hours on it. So its possible to compare my HS experience with my cinema experience on the sole factor which is the quality of my enjoyment. But that's beside the point. What I was trying to say is despite my subjective experiences, I still ended up paying 500 bucks compared to 10 for the cinema, and here's blizz with their new neat idea which I feel disadvantaged me in a way, and I'm pushing back on it.
The fact of the matter is I shouldn't be doing any soul-searching of any sort because I love HS, but recent changes have made it difficult to continue in the same manner. Should we initiate a divorce simply because of one disagreement? Its not a matter of opportunity costs; some of us are also partially emotionally invested into it. If the other party is being unreasonable, we push back for some compromise, not do 'soul searching' as one treats the other like a commodity.
HS is on a serious roll of shitting the bed every time theres some change to the game. how incompetent are the ppl there ?
Seeing how generous Runeterra is I thought that Blizzard will increase their rewards to not fall so behind in terms of accessibility for free to play players. They did the opposite. Like...wtf!
sadly... as someone you played once every 3 days to get his dailies done (in casual to have fun with weird decks) and never really played ranked (so no maths for "play 1hr of ranked every day" for me), i am gonna get around level 50-55.
level 50-55 means that i am gonna get from 4200 to 5000 golds, which is more than 3400 golds less from the 8400 golds i was used to. (overall it s AT LEAST 34 packs less at the beginning of the expansion. Across all the year that s a 102 less packs)
we can then debate about getting bunch of packs during the ranking up. From my personal experience, i was hoarding golds to open as many packs i could at the very beginning of the expansion with 0 delay...
the main disappointment about this is not even that my gold income got halved, it s that blizzard always tried to avoid answering question (and so gathering feedbacks) about this new system. They hide the amounts of gold and the lack of transparency is huge.
They said that "none will lose anything" but it s now kinda clear that if you want to get the same value of the last system, you need some serious commitment and play A LOT in ranked. Maybe we are gonna see changes about this system but the time it will be needed to get back to the old system value gonna be a lot if they couldnt even admit that we were getting far less gold than we used to.
P.s. the fastest solution would probably be the doubling of the gold amount from rank 1 to 50. in that way we are gonna get 8400 gold (up from 4200) like we used to. IMHO this solution would make what blizzard said in their post true. Cause, AT THAT POINT, "no one will lose gold, and everyone will get some extra packs and actually more gold if they play a lot".
I'm surprised that every comment here is trying to show how bad the new system is.
I'm saying, let it progress for a while. It's just the first week. A lot of self calculations is good, but nonetheless a theory.
I totally can't see how many gold I will have in the end of the expansion because it's still new. If the reality sets in, and I got less gold than before, then I can prove it to them how bad the new system is.
But I guess not everyone can think the same as I do.
This is no highly complex social economic modell with different outcomes. We have the numbers. We did the math. There is no let's see how it progresses, since we allready know exactly how. And that's why everyone is upset. It's a car crash with advance notice.
while we "let it progress" we are gonna lose gold tho... that's the problem...
I really enjoy playing this game, but this change is getting me mad, they lied the first time and now they are still lying. We are getting the math wrong? So many people are wrong, sure. We don't consider the events? Also for the old system... I'm really sad, they think we're stupid people who'll give them all the money they want... maybe I should uninstall it and try Runeterra
The answer to this quest tilted me even more: "Will I have about the same 10,000 gold to spend though?"
Answer: "It's impossible for me to give you exact numbers without having a ton of exact details about your specific play patterns, but yes, that's the goal"
they gotta be seriously mocking us at this point. people that were usually get 8400 from their dailies will see their gold income cutted in half. (when all they needed to do was playing 1 hour every 3 days). The fact that they still think the current system "wont hurt anyone AND give people more gold and packs is a joke...
This is horrible. This practice from Blizzard is unbearable any more.
"You don't know everything." "You don't see the big picture." "More things are on the way!" "We've got lots of great ideas!" "It'll be different next time, we promise!" "Just wait until you see them released!" "You think you do, but you don't."
"I'll help you calculate this new system!" Because there hasn't already been lots of player-made calculations showing how lackluster this new system is.
They deliberately didn't compare the new to the old one. No continuous graphs or tables, just 2 calculations. It was a planned decision from them not to give ANY concrete details until release. They knew what they were doing when they switched the 'Tavern Pass' name from Battlegrounds perks to the extra reward track.
Their words contradict the system we actually got.
It reminds me of Warbringers: Sylvanas, an important WoW cutscene. Everyone was guessing about who burned down the World Tree, Teldrassil. That tree is really important in both lore and gameplay. Blizzard has been hyping up this revelation to be extremely significant. It can't be Sylvanas, right? That'd be way too lazy and predictable. They said "Wait and see! Be surprised!"
It was Sylvanas.
Thanks Blizzard. We've had enough of your lies and obfuscated reasoning to distract us from your damaging decisions.
It'll be ok bro. I have not seen any calculations that make the system worse. Not one. And I've been reading a lot.