Hearthpwn

Grats on almost hitting the 1k portrait on DH - looks sick!

Hey guys and girls, I'm curious which level 50 skin you like the most and which you intend to choose. I'd love to hear your opinions...

Personally, I think they all look great. However, I'm a little torn between rogue, druid and warlock.

*Just as a little side note: please don't use this thread to voice your opinions about Blizzard, your disinterest in skins, or the new rewards system - there are plently of other places to so*

 Fun deck man - really enjoying it so far!

In my opinion, the system seems a lot better now:

1) There's a clear progression path.

2) Every game you play awards xp. You are no longer incentivized to play only aggro decks - you can now gain gold by playing the decks you enjoy. The key factor is the time spent playing - the more you play, the more you are rewarded. In addition, you can gain xp by playing other game modes.

3) The rewards are varied - packs, skins, legendaries, and gold.

4) The system is front-loaded allowing people to go into the new expansion with more resources to buy packs and craft cards.

5) Certain achievements award xp, giving people an alternative (or additional) way to progress.

All in all, I'm really enjoying the new system and I'm really glad the change was made!

The new system looks great for free to play players. I'm really struggling to see why those who are not paying for the game are still complaining?

You have the same rewards as those who pay (excluding some cosmetic skins) and the ability to grind out huge amounts of gold if you put in the time (not to mention multiple free legendaries and packs).

Blizzard has mentioned multiple times that rewards will be the same, if not more than the previous system.

In addition, the system is front-loaded, the first rewards are easy to obtain and take little effort. This system seems to allow free to play players the ability to grind enough gold to get quite a few packs when the expansion drops next week, the battleground pass, or to save for the mini-expansion.

 Simply put, yes, it's too early. By this time tomorrow, we will know what the remaining cards will be. It's probably best to save your energy and wait to cast your judgement until all of the cards have been announced. 

This is amazing, especially with Totemic Reflection and Splitting Axe!

Why the downvote? It's 1 mana for an additional 8/8 (with rush) in stats?

A great target for Felosophy

Quote from Plahtica >>

Quote from DropDeadCynical >>

Quote from 3nnu1 >>

it's funny that the only argument the shills seem to have left is 'stop talking' and 'go away'

 It's funny that the only argument the complainers seem to have is to call anyone who disagrees with them a shill.

 Dude, how can you say that 100$ every 3-4 months for 60% of the product is not too much? Why are you like this? 

Got a couple of questions for ya:

1. Does your momma buy you packs?

2. If not, do you have any compassion towards people that can't afford these insane and bloated prices?

3. Why defend a multi billion company that doesn't care about letting people have fun?

To conclude, due to the high price of the game, many people grind with aggro decks and high winrate decks since they can only craft a few decks, This in turn brings everyone's experience down. 

Stop being a brownnoser and get some heart dude.

 That's literally 1$ per day. You people make a fool out of yourself saying this is too much for a game apparently people are willing to grind 2+ hours a day for 100g. So you have 2 hours free to grind for that pack but no job that you could buy the same pack for 1.99$?

Hi guys,

The other day I was wondering how much XP do I have to get to reach level 50; then I decided to do the maths and this is what I got:

The first level of the tavern pass requires 1000 XP, and this number will increase by 100 every level, so the last level of the tavern pass will require 1000 + 100 x 49 = 5900 XP.

This means that the total XP you'd have to get to reach level 50 is given by an arithmetic progression:

TOTAL OF XP = ((1000 + 5900) x 50) : 2 = 147.000 XP          That's the answer to the first question.

Now, how much will it take to reach level 50?

You can calculate it by your own using this formula:

7 x 400yz + 7000z + 6000z = 147.000 where "y" is the number of hours you play a day, and "z" is the number of weeks. You just have to replace "y" with the time you spend playing hearthstone a day (in hours) and solve the equation.

If you play an average of 1 hour a day it will take you about 10 weeks to reach level 50 without buying the tavern pass (only if you complete all of your daily and weekly quests).

Hope this solves some of your doubts about the new rewards system.  :)

So you will get an average of 5500 gold + 1 legendarty + some packs in "only" 10 weeks. 

Oh missed ur answer. Yeah shes awesome and I took out one reader for a Diligent but might switch out another one I barely need her, though when I do shes awesome but not often needed.

Quote from Tyk3 >>

Without F2P I can't imagine how small the player base would be and the game would pretty much die.

 Do you have any stats to back that up?

Just curious, because I hear it a lot, but as far as I can tell, nobody except Blizzard has any way of knowing what proportion of players spend money.

So the new progression system has not been received well by the community - so much so that Blizzard actually issued an apology and mentioned some half-hearted ways that they were going to "improve" it. I wanted to post some ideas of how I believe the progression track could be improved. Some initial comments first though: 

* I initially liked the progression track. It seemed like a fun and visual way to move through an expansion. And the first 10 levels or so make you feel like you're getting 10x more rewards for playing Hearthstone. However, once you hit level 20 or so, you're looking at fairly long stretches of time between levels (obviously, depending on how much you play). Where I originally thought that pack rewards were awesome, I quickly realized that I didn't want to get an old AOO pack for an entire day of playing Hearthstone. When it takes half a week of playing, just to get 100 gold to buy a new pack, that just doesn't feel good. 

* While their solutions were not good, I am impressed that Blizzard issued an apology. There have been so many times in the past where I wanted them to apologize for a snafu so badly, but they never did (Demon Hunter at AOO launch, I'm looking at you). This gives me at least a little hope that they're willing to make changes in the future.

* The random legendary reward at level 25 is really cool - especially since that's what we really want from packs anyway.

* I have no problem whatsoever with the monetization of the "fast track" for progression. 

On to some ideas that I think could work to improve the progress track (this is an aggregation of my own ideas and ones I have seen in the forums or Reddit): 

1. Do away with pack rewards. As I stated above, getting an old pack from a set that you have most of the cards feels horrible as a reward. Gold doesn't really cost Blizzard anything more to give instead, and gives autonomy to the player to buy whatever pack they find most interesting at the time.

2. Make it easier to understand how much XP you will get for playing. I've been shocked that the XP bar doesn't show up at the end of every game, letting you know how much XP you earned for that game. (It seems to only do that when the XP will level you up, unless I'm missing something?) I understand that there are likely a variety of factors at play (length of game, did you win or lose, etc), but it would be great to know in general how much XP to expect from a game in each mode. For example, if Blizz said, "A Top 4 finish in Battlegrounds will, on average, net you 100 XP" or "Even a loss in Ranked Standard will net you 20 XP" etc. Understanding what my time is worth would at least make me feel a little better about the new system, rather than just being lost in it.

3. Slightly improve the legendary Pity Timer. If the new progression system is slightly worse than the old system and Blizzard doesn't want to change it right now, they could change the pity timer to maybe 35 to improve the player experience and compensate a bit. I know they need to make it challenging to get all of the cards (in order to properly monetize the game), but there's probably a sweet spot somewhere slightly lower than the 40 timer.

4. Make all achievements worth at least some XP. I know that achievement systems are typically just for the player/bragging rights (which is why I've never understood them), but right now I find it really weird that Blizz has implemented an odd middle ground in that achievements don't give you XP...unless they are for Darkmoon Faire or Duels. I think that making all achievements worth XP could provide an interesting way to play Hearthstone. Oh you want more XP? Play a bunch of Yogg decks until you've gotten all six options to show up on the wheel. I could personally see myself enjoying this a lot. 

5. Make certain game modes worth more XP each week. This idea is essentially if at the beginning of the week you got your 3 weekly quests, along with a message that said, "This week, Wild games are worth 10% more XP!" It would be a way to move up the track faster if you really wanted to, but also get people playing more modes in HS like Wild or Tavern Brawl. (Though admittedly, I hate tavern brawl.)

6. Improve de-enchant values. As with the idea about changing the legendary pity timer, this is really just an idea for Blizz to make overall game progression (read: collecting cards) feel better, despite the lower-value progression track implementation. If legendaries were worth 600 or 800 dust instead of 400, new players could feel like they have better access to cards they find interesting.

Just some thoughts. I'd love to hear other ideas from the community! (And when I say "ideas" I do not mean posting, "Blizz would never do any of this because they are greedy bastards.")

Cheers.

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.

I just face mages and warlocks 60% of games according to tracker.

25 games, 3 Priests. must have been bad luck on your side

Good to hear! I've got more guides coming, stay tuned :)