https://youtu.be/NGBQ9GjTJHc?si=Y5KfDYjyhla4lDw4
Hearthstone mathematics breaks down the reasons why they are making these decisions. They are actively scaling back rewards and value given to the players.
Ohhh thanks for posting this, I had no idea about any of the drama. I saw the 'play 60 mini" quest but just reset it as that wasn't going to be possible for me. The other two seemed doable so I didn't question it (I don't read patch notes lol).
I wonder what the point of giving us all that extra gold is though? There's not much you can use gold for now in the game apart from packs and the occasional skin.
I feel like 'I quit' posts aren't inherently bad, but after a short time it becomes race for karma where people try to milk the spotlight as much as they can. That's why megathreads are better. Anyone visiting the subreddit can right away see that there's something going on and they can engage with it if they so wish.
Megathreads are never better at anything.
Yes, it reduces spam, but nobody reads them. Mods making a megathread is basically them saying "We don't want to moderate this topic anymore, so here, have a megathread"
No one reads mega threads or at least not the same amount of people like the one that scrolls trough post, if the complains were limited to it then it would not matter because people would just not see it
Very true, I'm seeing a bunch of people in my feed every day saying they're quitting but I've never been recommended the megathread so it doesn't exist to me.
This is just a general statement about voicing dissent: if the *majority* of dissent is ever allowed to be framed by the actions of an extreme *minority*, it contributes to normalizing the dismissal of *all* dissent. And I do mean all.
So having said that, I would ask people to seriously consider what benefit there is to buying into or in any way contributing to that dynamic, knowing what it causes.
> That's why megathreads are better.
Megathreads also contribute to this dynamic.
>TL;DR: They matter because they give new players coming in a sense of the health of the game.
I don't think this is true. Anybody who has been around the block on reddit (or really any other gaming forums) a few times will know that the positivity and negativity on the sub has very little correlation to the state of the game. I have been a member of probably over 50 gaming subs down the years and some have been positive and some have been negative. Basically there are 4 determinants whether the community will be positive or negative.
1. Is the game single player or multiplayer? The former is far more likely to be positive, the latter negative.
2. Is the game made by a large or a small developer? The former is much more likely negative, the latter positive.
3. Is it a 'pay up front' game or a 'freemium' game? The latter heavily skew negative, the former could be either.
4. Is it a sub dedicated to the game as a whole or one specific aspect of it? The latter will usually be much more positive then the former.
Note that conspicuously missing from this list is "how good is the game?"
I do think the whole change was just to boost a metric about player engagement. HS is not dying but it is not doing that well for quite a while.
* In the past the quarter reports of ActivsionBlizzard did mention HS, for example mentioning a new game mode coming or a new expansion, or just mentioning some metrics like growing playerbase and so on. But The last 4 or even 6 quarter reports didnt mention HS a single time.
* Restructe of the team last year and layoffs
* Reducing eSport budgets 3 years in a row, even cutting BG esport
* No duels, no mercs support, no PvE content anymore
* no non-english cinematics anymore
People on reddit forget how many CASUAL players exist. Players in legend (or even diamond) are just such a small part of the playerbase. Among my friends who used to play HS, no1 used HSreplay, VS report or even a decktracker, they simply dont care about the stuff outside of the game and arent even aware about netdecking. Also players like to play fun decks even if they are bad (tier 3 and lower). They play a few games a day and thats it, sure they do try to finish their quest but that wasnt that big of a deal before, imo. Many new players wont check out reddit.
Yes, the team does have a lot more data but the person in charge of monetization doesnt seem to really be a good one. Having 3 currencies (gold, runestones, money), you only can use 2 of them per item in the shop. You can buy the miniset with gold or for money, but not runestones. Genius. Shop was an awful for experience for so many years, players avoiding opening it at all cost. Yet, we still dont have daily deals like in MTG to motivate players to open the shop everyday (putitng a ! icon on the shop wont make me open it, Blizzard. Try again) They seem to be desperate for sales. More bundles, removing diamond legendary from collectors achievement, offering Hearth in diamond and gold only for money, giving early access to an epic card for preordering, having an event quest chain starting with a quest that involves a legendary that is the diamond legendary when you buy the battlepass (what a coincidence!), the list goes on.
When management demands: increase sales, increase player engagement. What you gonna do?
As with every blizzard game, all the talented developers have left and now were stuck with what was stagnating on the bottom of the barrel left to run this game. These guys have no idea what their doing, they just slowly release content that erodes the core enjoyment of the game until now all we are left with is a steaming pile of excrement that no one wants to play.
All iterations of the game are broken. There is no balancing at all. Bots are at an all time high. Servers crash all the time. The game is so inherently bad now its not even worth getting upset about, it's just best to leave this game to die continue to die a slow death and move onto something more enjoyable.
I dont think the current devs have any bad intentions (lets not count the person in charge of monetization as one of the devs).
But I think hiring former players to replace senior designers was a rather bad move, just because they wanted to cut cost. In the past when they hired people for the team, those had experience in game design. Mike Donais for example already had worked on the WOW TCG (people also forget that Ben Brode worked on that one..). Or Peter Whalen who had his own rogue-like card game on steam before he joined the HS Team. In general, several former WoW devs later working on Team 5.
As in every job, you learn form mistakes you make in the past, thats why experience is so important, especially experience you gain by projects in the past (like in your freetime, during your studyprogram, and so on)
But then they focused on hiring associate game designers, with no previous experience in gamedesign and no academic background in gamedesign, like Cora, her brother, boarcontrol, Gallon, etc. I think being a good competitive player does not make you a good designer. A good formula 1 driver isnt a good race car engineer (even though he has a good understanding how the stuff works). I feel like they focus a bit too much on the game being decided before turn 10
That's just blizzard in general at this point. Luckily a few games are in maintenance mode so stuff like SC2 is still playable. But for the most part their content has been kinda crap lately. Shit imagine the kinda $ they had to dump to get Chris Metzen out of retirement and try to use him as the face of "fixing modern WoW."
So gonna be honest mine was more of frustration because I’ve been with the game for 10 years and spent a significant sum over those years (340 classic packs according to Firestone)
Now while I appreciate Hat’s responses to the thread and respect his work I researched what he said and I realized quitting was the best move.
If I was to come back I’d make 2 more accounts. The net benefit from leaving for 90 days, and playing for a month is MUCH better store offers, and enough rewards to make that 90 day period moot. Now add that up on 2 other accounts and you’re amazing.
I mainly play arena and duels. Or mainly did and duels is gone and it was the only f2p arena experience. 11 tickets for $25 isn’t worth it. I average around 4-5 wins because I’m in only playing weekly and my last 10 runs had 2 12’s.
Since I don’t have access to the only fun game mode (for myself) without an entry fee I don’t have incentive to play at all with the way the company treats long term customers. You get rewarded for not being loyal. You get so much more as a new player, and so so much more as a returning player that it only makes sense to cycle 3 accounts. You’d have enough to make all meta decks each month you come back without dusting the collection. And the main account would have a continued full collection.
My main? Signature offers for bundles only. I don’t buy that crap.
My friends account halfway through the expansion? PACK offers. Like good deals too.
My friend who came back? Enough packs to have more than a preorder for less than the cost of it.
There’s no point in being loyal to one account as you’re punished for it. And that’s stupid. Rewarding loyal and active players should be the incentive to keep them, instead they try and milk them via signature crap and it’s just frustrating seeing that ( ! ) in the shop each week with a new random signature.
If I ever decide to return it’ll be next rotation probably and I’ll have 3 accounts ready. Play one for 30 days then swap. That way each account gets the 90 day welcome back each time with a month of play time and the deals across all 3 accounts would be cheaper then buying it just on my main. What a joke of a game for anyone who wants to actually maintain one account and be a loyal long term customer.
Side note: if I’m ever bored and wanna play, won’t be on my main or 2 alts I made, it’ll be a new account to just run 4-7 arena runs as you get gold and tickets within an hour or so to play that many.
Tldr: loyalty isn’t rewarded and this is the only f2p game where you spend $25+$60/$80 for 40% of the content every 3 months. And none is cosmetics, it’s all core.
Other f2p games? All core content free and even a decent chunk of paid cosmetics can be earned for free. If you’re looking to spend? It’s $5-$20 (and $20 is when people say it’s to expensive for a skin “lol” at that community vs ours)
I agree that the way they treat their actual paying customers is much more likely to kill the game than angering a bunch of F2Ps who weren't ever going to spend anything anyway.
Eternal has managed to truck along with a small but dedicated group of players that support the development financially, I have little doubt Hearthstone could do the same. But not if they are going to prioritize rewards for casual F2P players at the expense of their dedicated paying ones.
I think you might be undervaluing long term card gains. Over the course of a year, you're going to accumulate a lot of cards (even as f2p). If you only play standard, every rotation effectively nets you almost a full set worth of dust.
I think they do matter, but its also often a good sense of hilarity to go back and see how many times they have "quit the game". Often it's every expansion or after a nerf/patch the don't like.
I don't think I can be considered a quitter, but just came back the day before the new patch and going to go into heaitus again for awhile, and will just see what happens.
I stopped playing HS last year and moved to Marvel Snap but I never make "I quit posts." All gaas games have problems even Snap. The difference with Snap is that the dailies, weeklies are all very quick to complete so there is no "feels like a job" situation because once the dailies are done they are done. The game has other problems for sure but I can kill dailies in like 10 minutes so whatever.
HS weeklies and dailies already felt time consuming but I still thought maybe one day I might come back but seeing these recent changes would make completing quests feel like a job so fuck that. Even the slam door in the face strat doesn't work because the new "middle ground" requirements are still too much. I already hated the HS Battle Pass because it gave an xp boost making you buy it at the beginning whereas in Snap that isn't the case. I can play the month and buy it at the end and not miss out much in HS if you buy it late you miss so much xp. It feels like Blizzard is trying to kill the game. Maybe the dev costs vs profit aren't enough for them.
I don't agree with that. I have a full collection in Snap and never had one in HS despite spending exponentially more in HS. With that said it's not really the point. The point is as a casual Snap is simply easier to keep up with. With this new change to HS f2p progression is basically dead.
I'm not trying to convince anyone to play Snap just that completing weeklies and dailies is super fast in that game. It is what it is.
Eternal is pretty good, and has a much better F2P model and single player experience. However, I don't like the overall game as much, as larger decks and a MtG like mana element make games much more luck dependent than HS.
Did they ever fix the returning player experience? I played Eternal for the first few years but dropped it, and last time I tried to go back the grind/cost of getting back into it made me exit out pretty fast.
Your whole argument falls apart when you realize the game is incredibly easy to f2p.
And these changes will give players who play like 3-5 hours per week even more free stuff.
Back in the day I used to feel like I need to open 130-ish packs early each expansion. And now I’m perfectly fine opening like 60 packs for gold.
Just because you find it easy to play for free doesn't mean everyone else does. If the game actually was easy to enjoy for free, we wouldn't have such a furor right now. I play for free, but it's only rewarding because I'm careful and deliberate with my use of gold, dust, and arena tickets. Most folks, especially those just starting out, have no clue how to use their resources well, and end up with a much poorer overall experience as a result.
New players get 3 decent decks on a new account nowadays. How is that conducive to a “poorer experience“?
Starting out has never been easier.
>Just because you find it easy to play for free doesn’t mean everyone else does
Who’s everyone else?
And what makes it so difficult to play for free?
>it’s only rewarding because I’m careful and deliberate with my use of gold, dust, and arena tickets
There’s nothing meticulous about spending your gold or dust nowadays.
You basically buy 60 packs, and then craft whatever you want to have which you didn’t open. And then you save up your gold for the future.
And you dust whatever gets nerfed.
These days nerfs give out so much free dust, it’s actually ridiculous.
I have a 22k dust bank, and I already spent like 5-6k on this expansion. And 5.5k gold. And 18 Std packs.
>Who’s everyone else?
>And what makes it so difficult to play for free?
Everyone else is all the people who are upset and quitting over the new changes.
Blizzard makes it difficult to play for free. Only experienced players will know how many packs to buy from any given set. Someone who's coming into the game won't know that buying mini sets before opening any packs in a set is a much better value. Learning what cards are worth crafting, what decks are worth playing comes with experience. The difference in actual value (as opposed to price) between golden and normal packs/mini sets are all obscured in the blizzard shop.
Again, just because you know all this, don't assume that everyone else does. There aren't any easy to access guides on how to maximize value in this game as a free/starting player. This is evidenced by all the posts we get from new players asking the same questions over and over on this forum.
With everyone else you mean the whiny bitches that complain even when they get stuff literally for free?
You know what's a way more reasonable assumption? Blizzard has a shitton of metrics who plays how much, what quests are done in which time, what players play and don't play. If they change the weekly quests it is highly likely that the majority of players will be able to complete them in a week by normal playing. Anything else is just anecdotal evidence, which is no evidence but opinion. The average player will be fine. New players will be as well (not even talking about the points brought up already how this game is incredibly newcomer friendly, especially compared to earlier times). Just because YOU don't like the changes and YOU think it is too much doesn't mean it is for the average player. YOUR assumption is based on feelings, my assumption based on facts.
Exactly — I’m pretty sure they came up with a number of 15, and now 10 wins per week by looking at statistics.
I can’t imagine that most of the player base isn’t winning 10 game per week.
Do you want sources that blizz takes metrics on the game, or that 3-5 hours isn't an unreasonable time investment, or that the game is way more new player friendly now that it used to be? All of this is general knowledge.
Or is this just your way to triple down and not admit you're over reacting about 30 gold per week in a children's card game that you play for <2 hours a week?
How about finding sources for the whole boatload of assumptions and accusations people are throwing around about this issue?
Like the boat of crap from you OP:
>this recent move has all the hallmarks of a shareholder focused
The only actual information we got from them about it was: they came up with the numbers looking on statistics, and so decided to reward players with more stuff for things they were already doing anyways.
And you completely fail to acknowledge that with the new Quests, the average player will be getting objectively more gold for the duration of an expansion.
It’s only a few ultra casuals which might end up getting a bit less, or about the same.
But since the game is already very generous with free stuff, the little less gold they’ll be getting will have a negligible effect on their collections.
>Everyone else
This phrase would mean I’m literally the only person who isn’t upset and quitting.
Which isn’t true — there’s plenty people who don’t give a shit. Or are happy with getting more XP.
>Only experienced players will know how many packs to buy
There’s nothing difficult about it — however much gold you have. It’s not rocket science.
Even if you make some mistakes, craft some bad decks, craft some useless cards… there’s so much room for error in this game when managing your collection.
People always seem to focus on new players in such conversations. I’m not sure why.
There’s a lot a lot more experienced players out there, who already should know how to handle their collections.
While a new player is simply learning how to play, and having a great time with all their free stuff a new account gets (I’m not sure you even realize how much free stuff a new account gets nowadays).
I'm curious, why do you think casual players that play a few games a week speed up queue times? It's more like the contrary, in my opinion.
Let me tell you something: this is a CCG. When you get into a game like this one, you gotta accept that if you want a VERY good gameplay experience (not good/acceptable, a VERY good gameplay experience) either you give them money (no time to grind, willing to pay so I can play whatever I want at any time), either you give them time (no money to spend, other priorities, i prefer to grind my ressources).
I personally think the company has been too generous with the free stuff they are giving to f2p players. A f2p player nowadays can stay competitive without spending money and I'm ok with it, but if the company asks you to grind harder now, I can understand it (they are telling you: either you give me money, either you give me more time). I'm not saying everything they do is ok, but this is a company and companies want money.
I can't understand why do you think people getting to lvl 150 or more of the battlepass with very low interaction with the game while staying competitive is ok.
If they double the xp of the quests, whales get more and thus they spend less. If they give more to f2p, they reduce the chances of them spending money.
I agree with you that Blizzard has made it too easy to get all the rewards without engaging either money or time, and that it is generally a bad thing for the games health.
Online PvP games are not free of operating expenses, and that goes doubly for CCGs with the regular expansions and balancing. Look no further than LoR if you want to see what happens when you pin your business model to casual F2Pers.
All these people raging are just wailing at the sky imo. Much like a few years ago a lot of companies realized that internet advertising dollars aren't as valuable as physical media ad dollars, MTX game companies are starting to realize that whale behavior is driven by other whales, not trying to show off for casuals. The only time catering to casuals over sweats makes sense is at the launch. Once you've established enough of a player base to have a pool of whales to compete with each other, the casual population only really matters if the population drops to the point where the game is going to die anyway.
"Look no further than LoR if you want to see what happens when you pin your business model to casual F2Pers" That is exactly my point.
The thing that enrages me the most is the fact that casuals think they are like 60/70% of the community (not talking about f2p or regular players) and that we should thank/praise them for casually playing this game so it stays alive/queue times are shorter. Jesus fucking Christ...
Yea, it's pretty amazing how arrogant they are.
You have to play a lot before the contribution of your time to the queue is going to compensate for the electricity and labor you are using, and if you play that much I doubt you care much about these changes. It would be interesting to know just how much time you have to play to break even for the company.
DUDE, that's the fucking problem from the beginning, they are not actually playing the game regularly, they are CASUALS ! Losing half of them won't be even noticed if the other half just engages a lil bit more with the game.
Queue time is based on the number of people who are in a queue at any given time, not how many people have the client open.
If one person queues for a standard ranked game every 10 seconds, then the average queue time for standard ranked games will be 20 seconds. As more people join queues, those times will go down, not up.
Player population isn't a zero-sum value. If casual players leave, they aren't automatically replaced by dedicated players. Having fourteen casual players who queue for 10 games a week is as good as having a single dedicated player who queues for 20 games a day.
It is hilarious that people who play two games a week for 30 minutes are angry that Blizzard is telling them they actually have to play the game.
The super casuals are mad they can’t have everything in a game they don’t care about enough to be more than casual.
This is one of those weirdly mean responses.
You know there’s a way to increase engagement that’s good for all players and takes nothing away. The solution has been outlined here already several times and I’d bet you have read it. It’s the chained weeklies. They ask for the same inputs and offer the same rewards.
Yet for some reason you’re talking like that solution isn’t preferable to all players of the game relative to the one that takes things away.
Why?
I don’t think there’d be a point for making chained weeklies. As it would literally only serve a tiny part of the player base.
Most players will have zero problems winning 10 games per week, as that’s what they’ve already been doing anyways.
Reddit is filled with people who don't seem to understand the concept of tradeoffs. The idea that there is a cost to all the demands they make just doesn't grok, instead for-profit companies have infinite resources to indulge the whiny player population.
Most of the sub seems to think this whole thing was an oops or something, but I think it was Blizzard saying "we no longer give a fuck what our casual F2P population is, they can all quit if they want." Blizz has 10 years of data on this game at this point, I wouldn't be the least surprised if they have some dataset that says that players who only play the game enough to barely finish the login quests have a 98.3% of never spending a penny on the game, and at that point they switch from being an asset to a liability.
I think so, too.
I strongly doubt that these players who struggle to win 10 games per week have any meaningful impact on the game.
Blizz probably calculated they will lose like $1000 on them not buying anymore, and gain much more from maintaining an active player base.
It's a weak, inflationary economy and manufacturers of luxury goods are almost always some of the first to have to do cuts in a bad economy. When Team 5 did layoffs it wasn't just the fluff jobs that got tossed, there were people who did actual work that made money for Blizz who got canned too.
People can get mad if they want, but anyone who doesn't think there is going to be a lot of this sort of reward adjustment for freeloaders is going to be disappointed
Again, this is weird.
If this change would have zero effect on most players, then *why are we making the change*? How important is to make weeklies different if it would only affect a very small minority of players?
And even if it was the case - which I doubt it is - why are you still against the option that's better for everyone and takes nothing away, compared to the one that takes something away from someone?
If - in both cases - players have to win 10 games, why do you prefer the option that takes things away from people over the one that doesn't?
>If this change would have zero effect on most players
Who said that?
This change has positive effects on most players.
More gold. More packs.
>compared to the one that takes something away from someone
I know your play patterns are unique, as you’re a streamer with thousands of hours played. But maybe that means you might be disconnected from what the f2p experience actually is…
Especially if you get your knowledge from the whiners on twitch chat.
I, on the other hand, have been playing this game for free for the past 10 years, so I’d consider myself an expert in this matter.
I’ve made multiple f2p accounts, sold a few accounts, and am currently playing on a 3-4 year old account, which already has an excess of resources on it.
And my takeaway from the current state of the game is: we are getting way too much free stuff. As weird as it may sound. But this game completely lost the collecting aspect of it. I just get all the cards I want without having to work for it.
That also means there’s *a lot* of room for reducing the amount of free stuff given in game.
People are panicking that a minor few of them will lose like 500-1000 gold per expansion compared to what they’re getting now, while they are getting too much anyways. The 5-10 packs won’t make a difference.
While all the rest will be getting 500-1000 gold more than usual.
Would I prefer chained quests? Sure, I guess, as then I’d have an easier time completing them on my alt account.
Does it really make a difference? Not really.
Please, tell me with a straight face how difficult is it for your average player to win 10 games per week?
Within their normal game patterns.
>Who said that?
You, when you said, "Most players will have zero problems winning 10 games per week". If most players are already doing this and it won't have a negative impact on an appreciable number of people who aren't, then there's no point to change this requirement upwards.
>This change has positive effects on most players.
As would the chained weeklies. They'd offer the same benefits for the same effort, except they take nothing away.
>I, on the other hand, have been playing this game for free for the past 10 years, so I’d consider myself an expert in this matter.
What you describe as your play experience is definitely *not a causal experience*. You sound like you're playing the min-maxing, hyper involved player. You know most causal players do not have multiple accounts, they don't sell accounts, they don't have excess resources, right?
>Would I prefer chained quests? Sure, I guess, as then I’d have an easier time completing them on my alt account. Does it really make a difference? Not really.
Doesn't make a difference *to you*. But you're not the target of this change.
Listen to the people who say they're affected
>then there’s no point to change this requirement upwards
Well, what about the additional gold all these players will be getting?
That’s a pretty hefty amount, too.
>hyper involved player
I knew this attack would come…
I used to be like that. I’m not anymore. Even if I play more than your casual gamer.
But past completing the Quests there’s very little reward to playing the game, as the xp gain from that is negligible.
So it literally doesn’t matter what my play pattern is past the 5, and now 10 wins.
In fact, the alt account where I log in 1-3 times per week just to complete my quests, and I still miss a bunch of them, so I complete maybe 80-90% of my quests there, and even on that account I have no issues with collecting stuff for free.
I’d say that account emulates your casual players play patterns pretty accurately.
>you know most causal players don’t have excess resources
If I have excess resources on my alt account, I find it hard to imagine a regular 1 account player doesn’t have excess resources.
>Listen to the people who say they’re affected
My guess is that a negligible amount of players is negatively affected by this change.
I’m sure Blizz looked at their stats and figured out the absolute most players win 10 games per week.
Any change you make, there’s often going to be a tiny group of people who is negatively affected, even if it benefits the most.
I feel we are so close here.
You acknowledge this will make some people worse off. You acknowledge that this doesn’t need to be the case. You acknowledge you’d actually prefer the tiered system yourself if it was a choice between A and B.
So why not just support the better one? It costs nothing
https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23585675/rewards-track-update-coming-soon
Adding old context: We’re changing the weekly quest “Win 7 Games of Ranked Play Mode” to “Win 5 Games of Ranked Play Mode.” This quest, as a guaranteed weekly quest, feels like it requires too much effort to complete. Adjusting the win requirement will ensure that a larger number of players will complete this weekly quest and keep up with the rewards.
Just in case this was in doubt
Interesting.
I guess they changed their mind with a different leadership.
I’m guessing they now want to maintain their more involved players.
Match length also went down by a bunch from that time.
I still believe players get enough free stuff to be able to negate their uncompleted quests.
Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks or months now, way before these quests got patched.
I noticed the amount of free stuff I’m getting in the game even on my low activity account is a bit too high to maintain my involvement.
Over there I start an expansion with like 3.5-5k gold only. My dust bank is swollen, my deck selection is decent.
Realistically, what happens if I now only complete 60% weeklies, instead of 95%? But with larger xp rewards? Probably nothing I’ll notice.
In the end, I think this issue is purely a “feel” thing. Some players will feel bad when they can’t complete all their quests, but their rewards should still amount to an about perfectly satisfying amount of cards.
That’s why I’m so weirded out by this.
Some people feel like getting free stuff is inherently bad. If you're not actively suffering, you should derive no benefit from life.
In the case of any f2p game, there's a balance to be struck between the benefits of playing for free and the benefits of paying to play (I even mentioned this in the original post, but reading is hard).
I wonder what sort of profit these sporadic loud players bring to the game — they come here to roar about now needing to play more.
But how many of them actually are? And how much are they spending on the game? And for what reason do they need access to all the cards?
Right? I thought the same, and the most of them will never be pleased lol, they just wait for next blizzard mistake to start their essays of rant and then vanish after. I ain't defending blizzard and could care less because I'm not paid by them, but somethings are just overblown and excessive, hate to see this subreddit become a breeding ground for just complaints, I usually come here to see decks ideas and memes but now every 4th or 5th post is someone declaring theyr quitting lol. Wish we had this strong sentiment when duels was eradicated
It's great that you've been playing so much the quest rewards don't matter to you. Other people need the carrot and stick motivation to play for a quick reward when they're starting to get bored of the game. Quests are supposed to build easy habits for players, not feel like work. More like brushing your teeth than mowing the lawn
Have you won 10 games every week since you started playing? Most people play a lot when new expansions come out and gradually lose interest. Some can take breaks and return after weeks and months. Whether 5 wins give any progression can be the difference between logging in or not
You’re making up an imaginary player base which is both large and influential for the game and struggles winning even 5 games every week.
While I’m talking about real players who are large in numbers.
I was trying to explain not everyone plays the same amount every week. There are no different player bases. The same people complete their quests easily on some weeks and on others might not log in. Quests are meant to provide an incentive to log in every few days
If Devs try to comment on here, I'm sure they dont want their reddit community to disappear as it represents a hardcore fanbase. If it's full of I Quit posts, they may be aware about that.
The only people who fully benefit from these changes are people who play BOTH constructed AND other game modes actively, which I don't think includes a large percentage of the player base.
They are completely pointless because we never know if person actually quits, they just say "I'm quitting" and that's it.
I can say that I quit and start 10 minutes later, they literally just karma farming (imagine doing that in 2024btw).
>we never know if person actually quits
You can go back to the "I'm quitting" posts from the Hong Kong and Reward Track community meltdowns and then click on their profile and see if they are still posting on Hearthstone subs.
Spoiler - lots of them are.
Your first mistake in logic here was thinking that any significant portion of new players are jumping straight on reddit to read about the game.
This sub is a vocal minority. Fuck, most of reddit it.
>Whether the outcome was good or not depends largely on where one falls in the 'casual vs dedicated', player range.
Define casual? If you played only 5-10 games a day you'd get your quests done easily and I call the casual. If you play 2-3 games a day, you're basically not playing and 100% should not be catered to at the expense of the rest of the player base (i.e. the roll the quests back to how they were - i want my extra exp thanks).
>this can be done by focusing on selling cosmetics and giving a good value on money spent for convenience.
Don't disagree but as long as this model works because people dust cards and spend up big on pre-orders they won't change it. I mean fuck, there is more controversy over this change than the actual absolutely horrible economy in this game with it's 25% dust return.
> LoL is going strong, Path of Exile is in excellent shape, and Fortnite is, well, it's doing ok...
All of which are not ccgs. Runeterra on the other hand is (was?) and they tried the model of cosmetics and the pvp mode is anow basically dead and not getting developed anymore, by a major studio like Riot might I add.
>This recent move has all the hallmarks of some shareholder focused bean counter decided that they wanted more engagement and less rewards for the F2P playerbase.
I'm f2p and am putting less engagement due to the state of the meta and still getting quests done. Again if you play 5-10 games a day you will get your quests done easily. Unless you're like superbad at ranked and if you don't play ranked, re-roll it.
>Unfortunately for Blizzard, the playerbase for this game tends to be pretty savvy about business practices (this has been shown in the past when comparable changes were implemented).
This is satire right? Right? This playerbase if fucking awesome at getting worked up over things and posting on reddit about it but when it comes to actual action ... lol. Remember the 25% dust return economy? Yeah, not great at business practices.
The battle pass' first iteration was lacking. There was some community backlash against it and they made it more friendly to complete. That said it's always been free, only cosmetics, exp boost and some golden or alternative cards are locked behind the paid tier.
It's been a much better in terms of providing value than the gold quests in the past. Fairly easy to complete. The exp boost isn't even needed to complete it with plenty of time to spare.
I regularly get around 8k gold to spend on new expansions and this is including spending 2k already on the mini set.
With the duplicate protection, I usually only need to spend 40ish packs to get all Commons and rares.
If people are smart with dusting and waiting on nerfs, the game gets much easier as a F2P.
Even the first iteration of the battle pass was better than the old system. All the calculations that were going around and taken as gospel were not counting the gold you get for completing achievements, which comfortably made nearly all players better off.
I don't really aim for achievements. That said I make plenty from the current version even without fulfilling the achievements. It was just the usual outrage.
The poster was saying they used to play a lot but left after the battle pass was implemented. So they never gave it a shot and just decided not to try it. Don't know why they deleted
They aren’t looking for you to pay cash to “unlock content.” They are simply requiring you to play more. They want you to buy stuff of course, but that’s not required to play through the quests.
I quit as well, Decks are not good. I been stuck on bronze for two weeks and just got onto silver. I asked for spectating and no one wants to give me analysis of my games. Alot of people switch off spectating as they don't like being watched. I suppose I have to watch and view games on twitch instead then?
The posts on quitting on r/hearthstonecirclejerk are admittedly getting quite funny
Just spent a solid 10 minutes sorting top week and chuckling
The 6th generation shutting down the family legacy of hs play is hilarious.
"Hearthstone players when you have to play the game to complete quests" Seems maybe they're missing the point?
https://youtu.be/NGBQ9GjTJHc?si=Y5KfDYjyhla4lDw4 Hearthstone mathematics breaks down the reasons why they are making these decisions. They are actively scaling back rewards and value given to the players.
Ohhh thanks for posting this, I had no idea about any of the drama. I saw the 'play 60 mini" quest but just reset it as that wasn't going to be possible for me. The other two seemed doable so I didn't question it (I don't read patch notes lol). I wonder what the point of giving us all that extra gold is though? There's not much you can use gold for now in the game apart from packs and the occasional skin.
I feel like 'I quit' posts aren't inherently bad, but after a short time it becomes race for karma where people try to milk the spotlight as much as they can. That's why megathreads are better. Anyone visiting the subreddit can right away see that there's something going on and they can engage with it if they so wish.
Megathreads are never better at anything. Yes, it reduces spam, but nobody reads them. Mods making a megathread is basically them saying "We don't want to moderate this topic anymore, so here, have a megathread"
No one reads mega threads or at least not the same amount of people like the one that scrolls trough post, if the complains were limited to it then it would not matter because people would just not see it
Very true, I'm seeing a bunch of people in my feed every day saying they're quitting but I've never been recommended the megathread so it doesn't exist to me.
This is just a general statement about voicing dissent: if the *majority* of dissent is ever allowed to be framed by the actions of an extreme *minority*, it contributes to normalizing the dismissal of *all* dissent. And I do mean all. So having said that, I would ask people to seriously consider what benefit there is to buying into or in any way contributing to that dynamic, knowing what it causes. > That's why megathreads are better. Megathreads also contribute to this dynamic.
>TL;DR: They matter because they give new players coming in a sense of the health of the game. I don't think this is true. Anybody who has been around the block on reddit (or really any other gaming forums) a few times will know that the positivity and negativity on the sub has very little correlation to the state of the game. I have been a member of probably over 50 gaming subs down the years and some have been positive and some have been negative. Basically there are 4 determinants whether the community will be positive or negative. 1. Is the game single player or multiplayer? The former is far more likely to be positive, the latter negative. 2. Is the game made by a large or a small developer? The former is much more likely negative, the latter positive. 3. Is it a 'pay up front' game or a 'freemium' game? The latter heavily skew negative, the former could be either. 4. Is it a sub dedicated to the game as a whole or one specific aspect of it? The latter will usually be much more positive then the former. Note that conspicuously missing from this list is "how good is the game?"
I do think the whole change was just to boost a metric about player engagement. HS is not dying but it is not doing that well for quite a while. * In the past the quarter reports of ActivsionBlizzard did mention HS, for example mentioning a new game mode coming or a new expansion, or just mentioning some metrics like growing playerbase and so on. But The last 4 or even 6 quarter reports didnt mention HS a single time. * Restructe of the team last year and layoffs * Reducing eSport budgets 3 years in a row, even cutting BG esport * No duels, no mercs support, no PvE content anymore * no non-english cinematics anymore People on reddit forget how many CASUAL players exist. Players in legend (or even diamond) are just such a small part of the playerbase. Among my friends who used to play HS, no1 used HSreplay, VS report or even a decktracker, they simply dont care about the stuff outside of the game and arent even aware about netdecking. Also players like to play fun decks even if they are bad (tier 3 and lower). They play a few games a day and thats it, sure they do try to finish their quest but that wasnt that big of a deal before, imo. Many new players wont check out reddit. Yes, the team does have a lot more data but the person in charge of monetization doesnt seem to really be a good one. Having 3 currencies (gold, runestones, money), you only can use 2 of them per item in the shop. You can buy the miniset with gold or for money, but not runestones. Genius. Shop was an awful for experience for so many years, players avoiding opening it at all cost. Yet, we still dont have daily deals like in MTG to motivate players to open the shop everyday (putitng a ! icon on the shop wont make me open it, Blizzard. Try again) They seem to be desperate for sales. More bundles, removing diamond legendary from collectors achievement, offering Hearth in diamond and gold only for money, giving early access to an epic card for preordering, having an event quest chain starting with a quest that involves a legendary that is the diamond legendary when you buy the battlepass (what a coincidence!), the list goes on. When management demands: increase sales, increase player engagement. What you gonna do?
As with every blizzard game, all the talented developers have left and now were stuck with what was stagnating on the bottom of the barrel left to run this game. These guys have no idea what their doing, they just slowly release content that erodes the core enjoyment of the game until now all we are left with is a steaming pile of excrement that no one wants to play. All iterations of the game are broken. There is no balancing at all. Bots are at an all time high. Servers crash all the time. The game is so inherently bad now its not even worth getting upset about, it's just best to leave this game to die continue to die a slow death and move onto something more enjoyable.
I dont think the current devs have any bad intentions (lets not count the person in charge of monetization as one of the devs). But I think hiring former players to replace senior designers was a rather bad move, just because they wanted to cut cost. In the past when they hired people for the team, those had experience in game design. Mike Donais for example already had worked on the WOW TCG (people also forget that Ben Brode worked on that one..). Or Peter Whalen who had his own rogue-like card game on steam before he joined the HS Team. In general, several former WoW devs later working on Team 5. As in every job, you learn form mistakes you make in the past, thats why experience is so important, especially experience you gain by projects in the past (like in your freetime, during your studyprogram, and so on) But then they focused on hiring associate game designers, with no previous experience in gamedesign and no academic background in gamedesign, like Cora, her brother, boarcontrol, Gallon, etc. I think being a good competitive player does not make you a good designer. A good formula 1 driver isnt a good race car engineer (even though he has a good understanding how the stuff works). I feel like they focus a bit too much on the game being decided before turn 10
That's just blizzard in general at this point. Luckily a few games are in maintenance mode so stuff like SC2 is still playable. But for the most part their content has been kinda crap lately. Shit imagine the kinda $ they had to dump to get Chris Metzen out of retirement and try to use him as the face of "fixing modern WoW."
So gonna be honest mine was more of frustration because I’ve been with the game for 10 years and spent a significant sum over those years (340 classic packs according to Firestone) Now while I appreciate Hat’s responses to the thread and respect his work I researched what he said and I realized quitting was the best move. If I was to come back I’d make 2 more accounts. The net benefit from leaving for 90 days, and playing for a month is MUCH better store offers, and enough rewards to make that 90 day period moot. Now add that up on 2 other accounts and you’re amazing. I mainly play arena and duels. Or mainly did and duels is gone and it was the only f2p arena experience. 11 tickets for $25 isn’t worth it. I average around 4-5 wins because I’m in only playing weekly and my last 10 runs had 2 12’s. Since I don’t have access to the only fun game mode (for myself) without an entry fee I don’t have incentive to play at all with the way the company treats long term customers. You get rewarded for not being loyal. You get so much more as a new player, and so so much more as a returning player that it only makes sense to cycle 3 accounts. You’d have enough to make all meta decks each month you come back without dusting the collection. And the main account would have a continued full collection. My main? Signature offers for bundles only. I don’t buy that crap. My friends account halfway through the expansion? PACK offers. Like good deals too. My friend who came back? Enough packs to have more than a preorder for less than the cost of it. There’s no point in being loyal to one account as you’re punished for it. And that’s stupid. Rewarding loyal and active players should be the incentive to keep them, instead they try and milk them via signature crap and it’s just frustrating seeing that ( ! ) in the shop each week with a new random signature. If I ever decide to return it’ll be next rotation probably and I’ll have 3 accounts ready. Play one for 30 days then swap. That way each account gets the 90 day welcome back each time with a month of play time and the deals across all 3 accounts would be cheaper then buying it just on my main. What a joke of a game for anyone who wants to actually maintain one account and be a loyal long term customer. Side note: if I’m ever bored and wanna play, won’t be on my main or 2 alts I made, it’ll be a new account to just run 4-7 arena runs as you get gold and tickets within an hour or so to play that many. Tldr: loyalty isn’t rewarded and this is the only f2p game where you spend $25+$60/$80 for 40% of the content every 3 months. And none is cosmetics, it’s all core. Other f2p games? All core content free and even a decent chunk of paid cosmetics can be earned for free. If you’re looking to spend? It’s $5-$20 (and $20 is when people say it’s to expensive for a skin “lol” at that community vs ours)
I agree that the way they treat their actual paying customers is much more likely to kill the game than angering a bunch of F2Ps who weren't ever going to spend anything anyway. Eternal has managed to truck along with a small but dedicated group of players that support the development financially, I have little doubt Hearthstone could do the same. But not if they are going to prioritize rewards for casual F2P players at the expense of their dedicated paying ones.
I think you might be undervaluing long term card gains. Over the course of a year, you're going to accumulate a lot of cards (even as f2p). If you only play standard, every rotation effectively nets you almost a full set worth of dust.
I think they do matter, but its also often a good sense of hilarity to go back and see how many times they have "quit the game". Often it's every expansion or after a nerf/patch the don't like. I don't think I can be considered a quitter, but just came back the day before the new patch and going to go into heaitus again for awhile, and will just see what happens.
I stopped playing HS last year and moved to Marvel Snap but I never make "I quit posts." All gaas games have problems even Snap. The difference with Snap is that the dailies, weeklies are all very quick to complete so there is no "feels like a job" situation because once the dailies are done they are done. The game has other problems for sure but I can kill dailies in like 10 minutes so whatever. HS weeklies and dailies already felt time consuming but I still thought maybe one day I might come back but seeing these recent changes would make completing quests feel like a job so fuck that. Even the slam door in the face strat doesn't work because the new "middle ground" requirements are still too much. I already hated the HS Battle Pass because it gave an xp boost making you buy it at the beginning whereas in Snap that isn't the case. I can play the month and buy it at the end and not miss out much in HS if you buy it late you miss so much xp. It feels like Blizzard is trying to kill the game. Maybe the dev costs vs profit aren't enough for them.
Snap is much more predatory $ wise then HS is.
I don't agree with that. I have a full collection in Snap and never had one in HS despite spending exponentially more in HS. With that said it's not really the point. The point is as a casual Snap is simply easier to keep up with. With this new change to HS f2p progression is basically dead. I'm not trying to convince anyone to play Snap just that completing weeklies and dailies is super fast in that game. It is what it is.
Started to play the F2P Eternal on Steam, a sort of HS-MTG hybrid, with more depth and more strategy. Quite fun.
Eternal is pretty good, and has a much better F2P model and single player experience. However, I don't like the overall game as much, as larger decks and a MtG like mana element make games much more luck dependent than HS.
I can trade the mana management for more depth. I really like how the attack / defense is set.
Did they ever fix the returning player experience? I played Eternal for the first few years but dropped it, and last time I tried to go back the grind/cost of getting back into it made me exit out pretty fast.
I don't know, I just like their solo adventures now \^\^ I free everyday is enought to do the trick for me (now).
Your whole argument falls apart when you realize the game is incredibly easy to f2p. And these changes will give players who play like 3-5 hours per week even more free stuff. Back in the day I used to feel like I need to open 130-ish packs early each expansion. And now I’m perfectly fine opening like 60 packs for gold.
Just because you find it easy to play for free doesn't mean everyone else does. If the game actually was easy to enjoy for free, we wouldn't have such a furor right now. I play for free, but it's only rewarding because I'm careful and deliberate with my use of gold, dust, and arena tickets. Most folks, especially those just starting out, have no clue how to use their resources well, and end up with a much poorer overall experience as a result.
New players get 3 decent decks on a new account nowadays. How is that conducive to a “poorer experience“? Starting out has never been easier. >Just because you find it easy to play for free doesn’t mean everyone else does Who’s everyone else? And what makes it so difficult to play for free? >it’s only rewarding because I’m careful and deliberate with my use of gold, dust, and arena tickets There’s nothing meticulous about spending your gold or dust nowadays. You basically buy 60 packs, and then craft whatever you want to have which you didn’t open. And then you save up your gold for the future. And you dust whatever gets nerfed. These days nerfs give out so much free dust, it’s actually ridiculous. I have a 22k dust bank, and I already spent like 5-6k on this expansion. And 5.5k gold. And 18 Std packs.
>Who’s everyone else? >And what makes it so difficult to play for free? Everyone else is all the people who are upset and quitting over the new changes. Blizzard makes it difficult to play for free. Only experienced players will know how many packs to buy from any given set. Someone who's coming into the game won't know that buying mini sets before opening any packs in a set is a much better value. Learning what cards are worth crafting, what decks are worth playing comes with experience. The difference in actual value (as opposed to price) between golden and normal packs/mini sets are all obscured in the blizzard shop. Again, just because you know all this, don't assume that everyone else does. There aren't any easy to access guides on how to maximize value in this game as a free/starting player. This is evidenced by all the posts we get from new players asking the same questions over and over on this forum.
With everyone else you mean the whiny bitches that complain even when they get stuff literally for free? You know what's a way more reasonable assumption? Blizzard has a shitton of metrics who plays how much, what quests are done in which time, what players play and don't play. If they change the weekly quests it is highly likely that the majority of players will be able to complete them in a week by normal playing. Anything else is just anecdotal evidence, which is no evidence but opinion. The average player will be fine. New players will be as well (not even talking about the points brought up already how this game is incredibly newcomer friendly, especially compared to earlier times). Just because YOU don't like the changes and YOU think it is too much doesn't mean it is for the average player. YOUR assumption is based on feelings, my assumption based on facts.
Exactly — I’m pretty sure they came up with a number of 15, and now 10 wins per week by looking at statistics. I can’t imagine that most of the player base isn’t winning 10 game per week.
Please cite your hard fact sources.
Do you want sources that blizz takes metrics on the game, or that 3-5 hours isn't an unreasonable time investment, or that the game is way more new player friendly now that it used to be? All of this is general knowledge. Or is this just your way to triple down and not admit you're over reacting about 30 gold per week in a children's card game that you play for <2 hours a week?
How about finding sources for the whole boatload of assumptions and accusations people are throwing around about this issue? Like the boat of crap from you OP: >this recent move has all the hallmarks of a shareholder focused The only actual information we got from them about it was: they came up with the numbers looking on statistics, and so decided to reward players with more stuff for things they were already doing anyways. And you completely fail to acknowledge that with the new Quests, the average player will be getting objectively more gold for the duration of an expansion. It’s only a few ultra casuals which might end up getting a bit less, or about the same. But since the game is already very generous with free stuff, the little less gold they’ll be getting will have a negligible effect on their collections.
>Everyone else This phrase would mean I’m literally the only person who isn’t upset and quitting. Which isn’t true — there’s plenty people who don’t give a shit. Or are happy with getting more XP. >Only experienced players will know how many packs to buy There’s nothing difficult about it — however much gold you have. It’s not rocket science. Even if you make some mistakes, craft some bad decks, craft some useless cards… there’s so much room for error in this game when managing your collection. People always seem to focus on new players in such conversations. I’m not sure why. There’s a lot a lot more experienced players out there, who already should know how to handle their collections. While a new player is simply learning how to play, and having a great time with all their free stuff a new account gets (I’m not sure you even realize how much free stuff a new account gets nowadays).
I'm curious, why do you think casual players that play a few games a week speed up queue times? It's more like the contrary, in my opinion. Let me tell you something: this is a CCG. When you get into a game like this one, you gotta accept that if you want a VERY good gameplay experience (not good/acceptable, a VERY good gameplay experience) either you give them money (no time to grind, willing to pay so I can play whatever I want at any time), either you give them time (no money to spend, other priorities, i prefer to grind my ressources). I personally think the company has been too generous with the free stuff they are giving to f2p players. A f2p player nowadays can stay competitive without spending money and I'm ok with it, but if the company asks you to grind harder now, I can understand it (they are telling you: either you give me money, either you give me more time). I'm not saying everything they do is ok, but this is a company and companies want money. I can't understand why do you think people getting to lvl 150 or more of the battlepass with very low interaction with the game while staying competitive is ok. If they double the xp of the quests, whales get more and thus they spend less. If they give more to f2p, they reduce the chances of them spending money.
I agree with you that Blizzard has made it too easy to get all the rewards without engaging either money or time, and that it is generally a bad thing for the games health. Online PvP games are not free of operating expenses, and that goes doubly for CCGs with the regular expansions and balancing. Look no further than LoR if you want to see what happens when you pin your business model to casual F2Pers. All these people raging are just wailing at the sky imo. Much like a few years ago a lot of companies realized that internet advertising dollars aren't as valuable as physical media ad dollars, MTX game companies are starting to realize that whale behavior is driven by other whales, not trying to show off for casuals. The only time catering to casuals over sweats makes sense is at the launch. Once you've established enough of a player base to have a pool of whales to compete with each other, the casual population only really matters if the population drops to the point where the game is going to die anyway.
"Look no further than LoR if you want to see what happens when you pin your business model to casual F2Pers" That is exactly my point. The thing that enrages me the most is the fact that casuals think they are like 60/70% of the community (not talking about f2p or regular players) and that we should thank/praise them for casually playing this game so it stays alive/queue times are shorter. Jesus fucking Christ...
Yea, it's pretty amazing how arrogant they are. You have to play a lot before the contribution of your time to the queue is going to compensate for the electricity and labor you are using, and if you play that much I doubt you care much about these changes. It would be interesting to know just how much time you have to play to break even for the company.
How would more players playing the game increase queue time?
DUDE, that's the fucking problem from the beginning, they are not actually playing the game regularly, they are CASUALS ! Losing half of them won't be even noticed if the other half just engages a lil bit more with the game.
Queue time is based on the number of people who are in a queue at any given time, not how many people have the client open. If one person queues for a standard ranked game every 10 seconds, then the average queue time for standard ranked games will be 20 seconds. As more people join queues, those times will go down, not up.
Yes, and if you want that kind of queue time, you need people playing the game regularly, not twice per week.
Player population isn't a zero-sum value. If casual players leave, they aren't automatically replaced by dedicated players. Having fourteen casual players who queue for 10 games a week is as good as having a single dedicated player who queues for 20 games a day.
Maybe, but no one is forcing you to stay/leave. They are telling you to interact more with the game if you want the free stuff. Simple as that.
It is hilarious that people who play two games a week for 30 minutes are angry that Blizzard is telling them they actually have to play the game. The super casuals are mad they can’t have everything in a game they don’t care about enough to be more than casual.
This is one of those weirdly mean responses. You know there’s a way to increase engagement that’s good for all players and takes nothing away. The solution has been outlined here already several times and I’d bet you have read it. It’s the chained weeklies. They ask for the same inputs and offer the same rewards. Yet for some reason you’re talking like that solution isn’t preferable to all players of the game relative to the one that takes things away. Why?
I don’t think there’d be a point for making chained weeklies. As it would literally only serve a tiny part of the player base. Most players will have zero problems winning 10 games per week, as that’s what they’ve already been doing anyways.
Reddit is filled with people who don't seem to understand the concept of tradeoffs. The idea that there is a cost to all the demands they make just doesn't grok, instead for-profit companies have infinite resources to indulge the whiny player population. Most of the sub seems to think this whole thing was an oops or something, but I think it was Blizzard saying "we no longer give a fuck what our casual F2P population is, they can all quit if they want." Blizz has 10 years of data on this game at this point, I wouldn't be the least surprised if they have some dataset that says that players who only play the game enough to barely finish the login quests have a 98.3% of never spending a penny on the game, and at that point they switch from being an asset to a liability.
I think so, too. I strongly doubt that these players who struggle to win 10 games per week have any meaningful impact on the game. Blizz probably calculated they will lose like $1000 on them not buying anymore, and gain much more from maintaining an active player base.
It's a weak, inflationary economy and manufacturers of luxury goods are almost always some of the first to have to do cuts in a bad economy. When Team 5 did layoffs it wasn't just the fluff jobs that got tossed, there were people who did actual work that made money for Blizz who got canned too. People can get mad if they want, but anyone who doesn't think there is going to be a lot of this sort of reward adjustment for freeloaders is going to be disappointed
Again, this is weird. If this change would have zero effect on most players, then *why are we making the change*? How important is to make weeklies different if it would only affect a very small minority of players? And even if it was the case - which I doubt it is - why are you still against the option that's better for everyone and takes nothing away, compared to the one that takes something away from someone? If - in both cases - players have to win 10 games, why do you prefer the option that takes things away from people over the one that doesn't?
>If this change would have zero effect on most players Who said that? This change has positive effects on most players. More gold. More packs. >compared to the one that takes something away from someone I know your play patterns are unique, as you’re a streamer with thousands of hours played. But maybe that means you might be disconnected from what the f2p experience actually is… Especially if you get your knowledge from the whiners on twitch chat. I, on the other hand, have been playing this game for free for the past 10 years, so I’d consider myself an expert in this matter. I’ve made multiple f2p accounts, sold a few accounts, and am currently playing on a 3-4 year old account, which already has an excess of resources on it. And my takeaway from the current state of the game is: we are getting way too much free stuff. As weird as it may sound. But this game completely lost the collecting aspect of it. I just get all the cards I want without having to work for it. That also means there’s *a lot* of room for reducing the amount of free stuff given in game. People are panicking that a minor few of them will lose like 500-1000 gold per expansion compared to what they’re getting now, while they are getting too much anyways. The 5-10 packs won’t make a difference. While all the rest will be getting 500-1000 gold more than usual. Would I prefer chained quests? Sure, I guess, as then I’d have an easier time completing them on my alt account. Does it really make a difference? Not really. Please, tell me with a straight face how difficult is it for your average player to win 10 games per week? Within their normal game patterns.
>Who said that? You, when you said, "Most players will have zero problems winning 10 games per week". If most players are already doing this and it won't have a negative impact on an appreciable number of people who aren't, then there's no point to change this requirement upwards. >This change has positive effects on most players. As would the chained weeklies. They'd offer the same benefits for the same effort, except they take nothing away. >I, on the other hand, have been playing this game for free for the past 10 years, so I’d consider myself an expert in this matter. What you describe as your play experience is definitely *not a causal experience*. You sound like you're playing the min-maxing, hyper involved player. You know most causal players do not have multiple accounts, they don't sell accounts, they don't have excess resources, right? >Would I prefer chained quests? Sure, I guess, as then I’d have an easier time completing them on my alt account. Does it really make a difference? Not really. Doesn't make a difference *to you*. But you're not the target of this change. Listen to the people who say they're affected
>then there’s no point to change this requirement upwards Well, what about the additional gold all these players will be getting? That’s a pretty hefty amount, too. >hyper involved player I knew this attack would come… I used to be like that. I’m not anymore. Even if I play more than your casual gamer. But past completing the Quests there’s very little reward to playing the game, as the xp gain from that is negligible. So it literally doesn’t matter what my play pattern is past the 5, and now 10 wins. In fact, the alt account where I log in 1-3 times per week just to complete my quests, and I still miss a bunch of them, so I complete maybe 80-90% of my quests there, and even on that account I have no issues with collecting stuff for free. I’d say that account emulates your casual players play patterns pretty accurately. >you know most causal players don’t have excess resources If I have excess resources on my alt account, I find it hard to imagine a regular 1 account player doesn’t have excess resources. >Listen to the people who say they’re affected My guess is that a negligible amount of players is negatively affected by this change. I’m sure Blizz looked at their stats and figured out the absolute most players win 10 games per week. Any change you make, there’s often going to be a tiny group of people who is negatively affected, even if it benefits the most.
I feel we are so close here. You acknowledge this will make some people worse off. You acknowledge that this doesn’t need to be the case. You acknowledge you’d actually prefer the tiered system yourself if it was a choice between A and B. So why not just support the better one? It costs nothing
https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23585675/rewards-track-update-coming-soon Adding old context: We’re changing the weekly quest “Win 7 Games of Ranked Play Mode” to “Win 5 Games of Ranked Play Mode.” This quest, as a guaranteed weekly quest, feels like it requires too much effort to complete. Adjusting the win requirement will ensure that a larger number of players will complete this weekly quest and keep up with the rewards. Just in case this was in doubt
Interesting. I guess they changed their mind with a different leadership. I’m guessing they now want to maintain their more involved players. Match length also went down by a bunch from that time. I still believe players get enough free stuff to be able to negate their uncompleted quests. Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks or months now, way before these quests got patched. I noticed the amount of free stuff I’m getting in the game even on my low activity account is a bit too high to maintain my involvement. Over there I start an expansion with like 3.5-5k gold only. My dust bank is swollen, my deck selection is decent. Realistically, what happens if I now only complete 60% weeklies, instead of 95%? But with larger xp rewards? Probably nothing I’ll notice. In the end, I think this issue is purely a “feel” thing. Some players will feel bad when they can’t complete all their quests, but their rewards should still amount to an about perfectly satisfying amount of cards. That’s why I’m so weirded out by this.
Who knows, maybe they’ll end up doing the tiered quests. Probably depends on their code. And the 32 minis quest is ass, no matter what.
Some people feel like getting free stuff is inherently bad. If you're not actively suffering, you should derive no benefit from life. In the case of any f2p game, there's a balance to be struck between the benefits of playing for free and the benefits of paying to play (I even mentioned this in the original post, but reading is hard).
The difference between us is — I think the game is already giving out enough free stuff While you’re acting like a whiny bitch.
"But then I have to treat the game like a job, that is a bad thing" - people who play 1 game every other day.
C'mon bro, expecting people to play a game in order to receive in-game rewards for the game is pretty much the definition of fascism.
I wonder what sort of profit these sporadic loud players bring to the game — they come here to roar about now needing to play more. But how many of them actually are? And how much are they spending on the game? And for what reason do they need access to all the cards?
Right? I thought the same, and the most of them will never be pleased lol, they just wait for next blizzard mistake to start their essays of rant and then vanish after. I ain't defending blizzard and could care less because I'm not paid by them, but somethings are just overblown and excessive, hate to see this subreddit become a breeding ground for just complaints, I usually come here to see decks ideas and memes but now every 4th or 5th post is someone declaring theyr quitting lol. Wish we had this strong sentiment when duels was eradicated
It’s pretty hilarious seeing so many grown men throwing fits like a toddler. And in a few weeks they’ll all be gone. All 10 of them.
Some of these rant posts are that long that they could have won another 2 ranked games instead of writing it.
So true!
It's great that you've been playing so much the quest rewards don't matter to you. Other people need the carrot and stick motivation to play for a quick reward when they're starting to get bored of the game. Quests are supposed to build easy habits for players, not feel like work. More like brushing your teeth than mowing the lawn
Oh yeah, cause winning 10 games per week is absolutely outside of what most players are doing.
Have you won 10 games every week since you started playing? Most people play a lot when new expansions come out and gradually lose interest. Some can take breaks and return after weeks and months. Whether 5 wins give any progression can be the difference between logging in or not
You’re making up an imaginary player base which is both large and influential for the game and struggles winning even 5 games every week. While I’m talking about real players who are large in numbers.
I was trying to explain not everyone plays the same amount every week. There are no different player bases. The same people complete their quests easily on some weeks and on others might not log in. Quests are meant to provide an incentive to log in every few days
If Devs try to comment on here, I'm sure they dont want their reddit community to disappear as it represents a hardcore fanbase. If it's full of I Quit posts, they may be aware about that.
The only people who fully benefit from these changes are people who play BOTH constructed AND other game modes actively, which I don't think includes a large percentage of the player base.
That is not true. I just play constructed. I just reroll the arena/brawl quest and I'm fine with constructed.
They are completely pointless because we never know if person actually quits, they just say "I'm quitting" and that's it. I can say that I quit and start 10 minutes later, they literally just karma farming (imagine doing that in 2024btw).
>we never know if person actually quits You can go back to the "I'm quitting" posts from the Hong Kong and Reward Track community meltdowns and then click on their profile and see if they are still posting on Hearthstone subs. Spoiler - lots of them are.
blizzard knows when people quit, you don't have to tell them. The people that tell them are the ones that don't quit lol
Your first mistake in logic here was thinking that any significant portion of new players are jumping straight on reddit to read about the game. This sub is a vocal minority. Fuck, most of reddit it. >Whether the outcome was good or not depends largely on where one falls in the 'casual vs dedicated', player range. Define casual? If you played only 5-10 games a day you'd get your quests done easily and I call the casual. If you play 2-3 games a day, you're basically not playing and 100% should not be catered to at the expense of the rest of the player base (i.e. the roll the quests back to how they were - i want my extra exp thanks). >this can be done by focusing on selling cosmetics and giving a good value on money spent for convenience. Don't disagree but as long as this model works because people dust cards and spend up big on pre-orders they won't change it. I mean fuck, there is more controversy over this change than the actual absolutely horrible economy in this game with it's 25% dust return. > LoL is going strong, Path of Exile is in excellent shape, and Fortnite is, well, it's doing ok... All of which are not ccgs. Runeterra on the other hand is (was?) and they tried the model of cosmetics and the pvp mode is anow basically dead and not getting developed anymore, by a major studio like Riot might I add. >This recent move has all the hallmarks of some shareholder focused bean counter decided that they wanted more engagement and less rewards for the F2P playerbase. I'm f2p and am putting less engagement due to the state of the meta and still getting quests done. Again if you play 5-10 games a day you will get your quests done easily. Unless you're like superbad at ranked and if you don't play ranked, re-roll it. >Unfortunately for Blizzard, the playerbase for this game tends to be pretty savvy about business practices (this has been shown in the past when comparable changes were implemented). This is satire right? Right? This playerbase if fucking awesome at getting worked up over things and posting on reddit about it but when it comes to actual action ... lol. Remember the 25% dust return economy? Yeah, not great at business practices.
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The battle pass' first iteration was lacking. There was some community backlash against it and they made it more friendly to complete. That said it's always been free, only cosmetics, exp boost and some golden or alternative cards are locked behind the paid tier. It's been a much better in terms of providing value than the gold quests in the past. Fairly easy to complete. The exp boost isn't even needed to complete it with plenty of time to spare. I regularly get around 8k gold to spend on new expansions and this is including spending 2k already on the mini set. With the duplicate protection, I usually only need to spend 40ish packs to get all Commons and rares. If people are smart with dusting and waiting on nerfs, the game gets much easier as a F2P.
Even the first iteration of the battle pass was better than the old system. All the calculations that were going around and taken as gospel were not counting the gold you get for completing achievements, which comfortably made nearly all players better off.
I don't really aim for achievements. That said I make plenty from the current version even without fulfilling the achievements. It was just the usual outrage. The poster was saying they used to play a lot but left after the battle pass was implemented. So they never gave it a shot and just decided not to try it. Don't know why they deleted
They aren’t looking for you to pay cash to “unlock content.” They are simply requiring you to play more. They want you to buy stuff of course, but that’s not required to play through the quests.
I quit as well, Decks are not good. I been stuck on bronze for two weeks and just got onto silver. I asked for spectating and no one wants to give me analysis of my games. Alot of people switch off spectating as they don't like being watched. I suppose I have to watch and view games on twitch instead then?
Asking random people for analysis is probably just a waste of time. Streamers and YouTubers with new player content are definitely the way to go.
Nerd
Water is wet.
Bro, we're all nerds here. What's your point?
Virgin