We've got a massive post this afternoon from Hearthstone's Game Director, Tyler Bielman, surrounding upcoming updates to the game's various systems of progression. We've got the entire post available farther down below, but first let's look at a quick overview of what is changing.
Changes will be going live to these systems in Patch 31.0 which is the same patch that prepares Hearthstone for the launch of The Great Dark Beyond.
Weekly Quest Changes
The completion requirements and XP rewards are being fully reverted to how they were prior to Patch 29.2.
Blizzard admitted they were wrong in Patch 29.4.2 with some adjustments, but now has come to the conclusion the best course of action is a full revert. They have seen players playing the game less and skipping over the harder quests. Direct player feedback said the weekly quests were a chore.
Rewards Track Changes
Five of the early 50 Gold grants on the Rewards Track will instead grant The Great Dark Beyond packs. Additionally, four The Great Dark Beyond packs will be added to the Tavern Pass.
This is a great addition providing more overall value to the rewards track when you consider a card pack is worth twice as much Gold. It does remove some choice from players in how they want to spend their gold, though we're lead to believe way more card packs is never a bad thing. How do you feel about this change?
Tavern Brawl Changes
Instead of seeing Standard card packs, we will now see packs from the latest expansion be rewarded.
Standard packs can feel dull at times, especially so when you get closer to a card set rotation at the start of a new Hearthstone year. Now the cards you receive should be more relevant and stay in your collection for a longer period of time. The larger amount of engagement we may see in Tavern Brawl because of this could be interesting should Blizzard ever release any numbers.
Official Announcement
Quote From Tyler Bielman Hi, everyone!
Before we blast off into The Great Dark Beyond, I’m here today to share some information about our next progression adjustments, coming in Patch 31.0. To better understand where we’re going, let’s first go back a bit to see how we got here.
Earlier this year, we made some adjustments to our Weekly Quests. Our initial changes in Patch 29.2 were aimed at rewarding our most committed players while encouraging others to play more. But after the changes went live, they didn’t reward players for their time in-game quite like we had hoped. On the contrary, we saw that some players gave up on those harder quests and played less instead of more. Those who did work to complete the Weekly Quests told us they saw them as a chore.
An important part of design is acknowledging when a change doesn’t work, learning why it doesn’t work, and then adjusting in a different way. So, starting in Patch 31.0, we’re making three changes to our progression systems, aimed at giving players more accessible goals and getting them to new content faster:
- Reverting Weekly Quests (completion requirements and XP grant amounts) back to what they were prior to Patch 29.2;
- Improving the Rewards Track by swapping out five of the early 50 Gold grants for five The Great Dark Beyond Packs and adding four The Great Dark Beyond Packs to the Tavern Pass; and,
- Updating the regular Tavern Brawl reward pack from a Standard Pack to a pack from the latest expansion!
Some of you have been asking for this quest reversion for some time, or liked the changes we made, so I want to give some insight into why we’re making these changes now.
Our goal is for Quests to be achievable and rewarding for everyone – in order to work towards that, we need to return to a baseline for us to build from for future adjustments. We’re making the change now for two reasons. The first reason is that we wanted to see how our 29.4.2 changes impacted a full expansion cycle to make better-informed decisions. This took us through Patch 30.4 and gave us time to evaluate a plan for this next expansion. The second reason is that making the Weekly Quest change at the 31.0 patch meant that we can also make the adjustment to the Rewards Track at the same time—these systems are intertwined, so updating them both simultaneously helps allow for a better overall experience for you.
Looking forward, we plan to continue monitoring and tweaking these systems. Rewards Tracks are trickier to adjust while active, so changes there will probably be made only once every expansion or two. Quest adjustments are more flexible, so please continue to send us your feedback as we keep iterating on them. Other aspects of our progression systems, like the Tavern Brawl rewards, might fall somewhere in the middle.
More details will be shared in our usual Rewards Track Refresh blog with all the new Rewards Track details, coming closer to launch. I'll also be back next week to share some details and insights about the unique Pre-Release Tavern Brawl we’re doing this expansion. Until then, we’ll see you in the Tavern!
- Tyler
How do you feel about all these changes and Blizzard's reasoning behind them? Let us know in the comment below!
Comments
So, back to win 5 games. Play 10 was definitely easier, so I'm not too thrilled about this. There's been times where I've had shit luck with a deck and failed to win my 5 games and missed out on 2500 XP. Not so thrilled about the Brawl granting latest expansion packs either. I too liked to hold Standard packs until the release of a new expansion. Granting upcoming expansion packs after the announcement wouldn't make up for it, and I doubt they would even do that.
This is a scam in disguise. They want us to be thankful for these changes really ? I %500 agree with anchorm4n, i'm doing the same thing and latest expansion packs are only valuable at first month or until mini-set for a f2p player. Standard pack hoarding almost completes commons and rares single-handedly right now if you open your hoard at first day of an expansion then start hoarding and expansion packs gives you value of dust with first balance patch with duplicate dusting. There is no value on dupe dusting on last month of the expansion. Also Standard packs fills some holes of older expansions.
Do they really want us to stick with what we have on release for 2 years of an expansion ? No more filling some holes with standard packs unless you are buying them with money/gold. Let's be honest, who buys standard packs with gold? Noone.
Hearthstone goes rapidly unplayable state for f2p due to predatory marketing and becomes a f2p-looking p2p asian game. They are desperately trying to find some more gain areas, They tried decreasing quest rewards, it didn't work. Now they are trying this and that pre-release event. They must be losing a lot of players/money to be this much predatory.
I never thought that I would say this but MTG:Arena have %500 better system than this game right now, at least you can collect whatever you wish, you can go for historic(wild) events and collect them if you want, you can buy pass with playing draft, collect cards by playing draft, you can collect older standard cards with rotating drafts, even collect historic(wild) cards by playing draft from time to time, pass gives some older standard packs etc.
There will be no way to gain older standard cards with release of next expansion anymore. Arena gives only latest packs, arena rotations means nothing because of this shitty reward decision and shitty draft mode design. reward track gives like 3-5x standard packs i assume? now Tavern gives only latest packs.
HS won't give the value of the time you spent anymore. If you were here at expansion releases, good for you. If you start the game after expansion release, you won't find the time to collect other standard cards because you will be busy to collect latest expansion and game won't give you older standard expansions so probably you can't create decks because you are missing some staples of older expansions.
tl:dr; That's a horrible change for both new and old players. Noone except Blizzard wins here.
As a hyper-engaged player I really dislike these, especially the Tavern Brawl reward pack. I usually hord Standard packs from day 2 of an expansion until the release of the next one, sometimes getting up to 50 of those. That's a huge head start into the new set for free. Getting a pack from the current expansion might be of the same value on the surface, but now the timing is fucked. Late in an expansion cycle these packs are almost worthless for me as I typically already have all the cards I really want by then.
100% agree on this as I do the same. I have a feeling Blizzard caught on to this as they probably have the data on how many players save their standard packs for the next expansion. It's just one of those sneaky ways Blizzard is forcing players to buy more packs
On the tavern brawl rewarding expansion packs rather than standard packs, in a perverse sort of way I kinda prefer the standard packs. Two different packs possibly is just better chances of getting legendaries/epics and the fact is I usually just craft most of the more useful legendaries within the first two weeks of the expansion anyway.
As for the quest completion nerf, because lets call it for what it is: its a nerf. Sugarcoat it how they like, its done entirely because its giving out more gold without actually increasing engagement, and in many cases might actually decrease engagement, because all that was needed essentially is to play (instead of win) 10 games per week and that's about it. Blizz tried their hand at radically increasing the weekly requirements, got backlash and whimpered out. Now theyre taking away the extra rewards too while they brood over their next move.
I appreciate the communication and reevaluation of their quest changes. It's great to see them take a step back and go honestly say "that didn't work, we'll start over". Adding to that the extra packs on the reward track and tavern brawl being an expansion pack is great.
I'm definitely one of those players who just does quests and leaves. Love the game, despite balance hiccups, and could/would play more with a different rewards structure. It just feels like the hit and run aspect is what the game promotes right now. I hope they find that balance of "if you want more stuff, then play, but you don't have to in order to keep up". It's a tricky thing for sure but communication is welcome even in the face of failures.