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The biggest question about the new reward system: is it better or worse than old one? There are many misconceptions about it, some people love it because its front-loaded (meaning: its very easy to get a lot of rewards in the beginning but later it will be harder) and some people just hate it because they cant get that sweet 10g per 3 wins anymore.
Now we have the numbers and I dont wanna wait for the Hearthstone Mathematics channel, because I love to do the number-crunching myself. So the answer to the question mainly depends on what kind of player you are. Lets see the first one:
UPDATE: Before that, lets talk about the "apology blue post". We will have 6 less packs and 1350 more gold on the reward track from level 1 to 50. I didnt update the original number crunching, only the conclusions at each category, because it was easier to do. I have also renamed the 4th category to "competitive player". BTW I should mention here that I have used these numbers for the required xp for levels: https://outof.cards/hearthstone/2200-the-rewards-track-how-long-to-get-to-level-50-644000-experience-required-to-get-to-level-150 and by their calculations you can achieve level 50 in 12 and a half weeks with 1 hour play per day. You can still achieve it within the expansion cycle with less gameplay, since most of the xp comes from quests.
The Questing adventurer:
In this category I will assume that you are just logging in to do your daily quests (and weekly quests) and play less than an hour per day. In the old system you could get an average 55 gold per quest and I will assume 3 wins for the 10 gold. So 65 gold * 120 day = 7800 gold per expansion cycle. Now lets see the new reward track. Up to level 50 you will get 4200 gold, 16 packs, 2 arena/duel tickets, 2 legendaries and 1 epic card. 1 pack is worth 100 gold, the ticket is the same because the questing adventurer doesnt have time for this, but instant conceding is still worth a pack. Cards are a bit more tricky, but we can measure them in dust, and a packs average worth is around 100 dust. Lets say we are pessimistic and you just want to disenchant your rewards. (BTW I dont know if the reward cards could be golden but lets assume they are always non-golden) So a random legendary is equal to 400 gold and a random epic is 100 gold for this calculation. If we add this up we get a value thats worth 6900 gold. From there, you gain 150 gold for every level up.
So lets see the new quest system. Every week we get 3 weekly quests, 1 has 2500 exp reward and the other 2 has 1750, so its 6k exp per week. We also have 66 new daily quests, 50 of those worth 1000 exp the rest are 800 or 1500, so I think its reasonable to count 1k as an average. Easy math, 7k + 6k means 13k exp per week just from quests. You can also gain xp just from playing the game. Winning means more xp but the main factor is the time and its capped at 400 xp / hour in ranked. Lets assume that the questing adventurer doesnt have time to play a whole hour per day, so I will count with 200 xp per day which should be attainable in less than 30 minutes. Thats another 1400 xp per week.
So we are at 14400 xp per week, and an expansion cycle is 120 days or 17 weeks, so the Q.A. will get 244800 xp which is equal to level 61 on the reward track. So its 1650 gold bonus above level 50, which means 8550 gold in total. So for the Q.A. its 7800 gold vs. 8550 gold or 5850 gold + packs and cards.
There is also another source of xp, namely achievments. There are some that gives you xp, overall they can give 3-4 more levels so 450-600 bonus gold but we know that the questing adventurer dont have time for this. I would say for this category the new system is better, but some people dont think that a pack is actually worth 100 gold, so its maybe less good for them.
UPDATE: Old system: 7800 gold vs New system 9300 gold value OR 7200 gold + packs and cards.
The farmer:
The farmer plays a very fast aggro deck, he always does the quests and always farms the daily 100 gold for 30 wins then immediately shuts down HS. 155 * 120 = 18600 gold per expansion cycle (thats the cap). Assuming a 50% winrate and 5 minute matches, the farmer plays 5 hours every day. In the new system that means 5*400=2000 xp per day, so 14k xp per week + 13k from the quests so 27k per week, so 459000 xp in the expansion cycle. We will be generous this time and give him 500 achievment xp to earn level 109. This means 8550 gold above level 50, for a total of 15750 gold. The farmer doesnt like the new system.
UPDATE: Old system: 18600 gold VS New system 16500 gold value OR 14400 gold + packs and cards.
The hardcore player/streamer:
The farmer capped out the old system with 5 hours per day. But I was curious if someone can max out the current reward system. The math shows that you will need an average 9 hours per day to do that (which is really high, I know), but the new cap is actually higher than the old one. On max level you have 21900 gold, or 19200 + the goodies. So the hardcore player likes the new system.
UPDATE: Old system 18600 gold VS New system 22650 gold value OR 20550 gold + packs and cards.
The competitive player:
This is my category, a player who doesnt have much time on the weekdays but plays a bit more on the weekends. My assumption is that the average player plays 1 hour per day from monday to friday and somewhere between 2-5 hours per day on the weekend. For this calculation I will use 10 hours per week. In 10 hours a farmer would get 200 gold, but the competitive player also plays other decks than hyper-aggro, so lets calculate with 80% effectiveness, that would mean 160 gold per week from the 3 wins deal plus 7*55=385 from quests for a total of 545 gold per week on average. This is 9265 gold per expansion cycle. In the new system we have the 13k/week from quests and the 4k/week from gameplay, which means 289000 xp per expansion cycle. It means level 71 on the reward track, but the competitive player is interested in doing some achievments for xp, so we will give him +2 levels. The summary is 10350 gold or 7650 gold + goodies.
UPDATE: Old system 9265 gold VS New system 11100 gold value OR 9000 gold + packs and cards.
The conclusion:
If you agree with my conversion rate of the goodies, you can see that the new system is better for most players. The pure gold will be lower, but it is compensated by cards/packs. Since the new system is front-loaded, you will get more stuff in the beginning of a new cycle, which is good IMO. Later you get mostly gold, which you want anyways for the next expansion. Needless to say that the xp bonus from the premium track helps a lot, but as far as I know it doesnt change the hourly cap from gameplay. Personally I like the new system better, but I can see why someone would like the old one better. One thing is for sure: its NOT more grindy than the old one, you get rewards based on how much you play the game.
I did these calculations mainly for myself, but I hope it will help you too to understand what you should expect from the new system on the long run.
Conclusion UPDATE:
At first I didnt consider that the loss of pure gold would upset most of the playerbase, but that was my mistake, since Blizzard specifically stated that we will make more gold in the new system, and its obviously not the case, by my math not even after the update (-6 packs and + 1350 gold). I am a mostly wild player and I also like to collect cards, so for me any pack that can give me a card I dont have has a 100 gold value. If you are not like me, you can use the updated numbers with pure gold + packs and cards. So I still like the new system better BUT we will have a mini-expansion with 35 new cards and the slightly better rewards wont help us to get them. All we can do is hope that the promised events will get us enough xp to help with that.
Thanks for the feedback, if Blizzard will update the rewards track again, I plan to do the same with my post.
You sir get an upvote for the good effort.
Just 2 comments on the non-gold rewards:
1) The packs earned: 100 gold is the value of a pack from the latest expansion, older ones are usually much less valuable for most players. The current reward system offers 5 packs from the latest expansion in the first 25 levels. I expect most people will reach level 25 quite fast (it needs only 41950 xp which should be a matter of ~2 weeks) so that these packs are worth pretty much their full value. The rest of the packs, either from past expansions or that are earned a bit too late are worth ~100 dust each, which is not equivalent to 100 gold
2) We also earn 2 legendaries and 1 epic from the latest expansion in the first 25 levels. Being from the latest expansion, the odds that they are somewhat useful are quite high, so they are worth more than 900 dust and probably more than 900 golden in equivalent terms.
Questing Adventurer here! Just wanted to say thanks for the effort of doing this post, it helped me atleast. Also i wanted to ask if any of you guys has the Tavern Pass and wanted to know if the extra percent experience is accumulable and worth it? I kinda like the hero portraits and here where i live seems worth the purchase for the value.
You are welcome! I have the pass and I thought the xp bonuses are cumulative but now I can see they are not. So level 1 10%, level 10 15% and when you get to level 35 you will have 20% bonus total. For a Questing Adventurer its 8-10 more levels on the long run, so +1200-1500 gold. If you like the portraits and you can afford it, I think you should go for it.
from what i understand they'll give you packs/cards of the current expansion. but what if i wanna save gold for next expansion? as a long-time f2p, doing daily quests, starting saving gold more or less day after every expansion release, i was able to open at least 70-80 packs at day 1. now it appears i will not be able to do it anymore and that's very bad for me. surprise surprise, they wanna privilege new players or to encourage you to be an "hardcore player" who plays many hours every single day (and ofc they want you to spend money).
Some packs are from the Darkmoon Faire (5 of them in the first 25 levels as SirJohn said) and some are from Scholomance / Year of the dragon, so its not that bad ATM. If Blizz will do something similar at the next expansion, so refreshing the reward track a week before the expansion and they are frontloading the rewards with new packs, its gonna be fine IMO. Also the card rewards (2 leg + 1 epic) are from MDF.
So you will have less gold to spend on anything you want, but you can also get a good value from the newest cards at the start of the new cycle.
"rewards path" we are seeing now is the one that will last during all darkmoon faire expansion, so during *darkmoon faire* we will get *darkmoon faire* packs & cards plus others from precedent xpacs. new reward system started now, few days before new expansion, so for us these are packs of new expansion, but from now on (probably) a new path of rewards will start at beginning of every new expansion, so u'll start getting packs of a certain exp while that exp is already out. u can't confront obtaining old packs with saving gold for next exp
it's similar to runeterra's system, but runeterra gives u more resources in general
The system is marginally better for most people which is not enough. HS is already very expensive as compared to other games, we need a lot better rewards or a better dust economy. Blizzard gave us neither.
Don't forget they are going to do mini-sets from now on, so more cards which are good but where is the gold to compensate for the increase in the total price of the game?
Exactly, Also the rewards are way less versatile because gold is always better than an current expansion pack, even more than old one
Now that's a hot take! I think the average player plays nowhere near that much.
Well I calculated with 10 hours per week, I think thats the average. But if you can show me a poll result about this, I will gladly redo the math.
This is absolutely true. I hope Blizz will give us something (midseason event with good loot or just more gold after level 50) so F2P players can catch up with the mini set.
And another thing about the new system you can farm afk in BG and Solo adventures. I think that will be a problem in the future they will limite or reduce exp soon unlucky
Where did you take the 10 hours from? 10 hours is a lot, especially if you expect players to do this week in, week out. I'd be very surprised if the average player plays more than 5 hours a week.
So let's see if you would be really level 73 after 3 months? I am eager to find out if your numbers and theory would comply with reality and practice. Let's see!
Don't hate on OP. He put a lot more effort in this than any of you guys did. If you don't agree with the 10 hours assumption he made, make your own assumption and redo the math..
I don't know if i'm an average player. But i do know that i dont spend 10 hours a week in the game right now. The first month of an expansion on the other hand, i probably spend a lot more than 10 hours a week. So it's really hard to find out what rhz actual average is.
Anyway, i mainly play for fun and do the quests in the meantime. It's nice to know, that for gold farming purposes, the 20 euro probably isn't worth it if you dont care about the skins. If you're going to spend money, it would be more cost-effective to prepurchase a bundle.
Thx for taking the time to do the maths!
There's one problem however - Math is only one side of the coin. You'll understand this when your current level is way lower than the expected after 3 months.
which then means you are barely investing time in H$, probably sometimes even accidently missing out on a Daily Quest (3 maxed out issue)
and generally spend more time into more important things in life (which every sane NORMAL human being SHOULD do)
Still the new System beats the old one for this healthy category of players, the ones who are getting legendary rank in first week and remain as Questing adventurer for the remainder of the month, because theres just rly nothing else to do, and BG is crap, and while Duels is OK'ish, theres no motivation or Rewards to waste time in that gamemode.
I still thing they should change the xp required per levels to scale the same. not getting a levels or a long periode is imo bad game design when u want to reward player