What was already a bittersweet day with the removal of Duels contrasted with the arrival of the Duos game mode in Battlegrounds, had an even bigger shadow cast over it when realization hit over what Blizzard had meant with "Some Daily and Weekly Quests have been adjusted to be harder to complete but will grant more XP. " in the Patch Notes last Thursday.
As an example, an image below of 2 very common quests to get as your Weeklies in Hearthstone.
The Quest on the left is the weekly everyone gets to win Ranked games. This used to be Win 5 Games and is now Win 15 Games. This used to reward 2875 xp (assuming you had the battlepass) and now rewards 3450 xp. So 575 xp increase on a 2875 xp total. That is a 20% increase in XP for 150% increase in requirements.
There have also been reported upgrades to quests from 16 Miniaturize Minions played up to 60 Minis played, Spend 500 Mana increased to Spend 750 Mana, 50 Battlecries played increased to 100 Battlecries played and Use Your Hero Power 20 times increased to 40 Times (which is quite ironic because this quest was actually made easier not long ago, only for it now be harder to complete than it previously was).
All the quests follow the same pattern of having greatly increased requirements, off set with not even close to the same increase in rewards.
A Blizzard CM on reddit called it "sticker shock" but that does not seem to accurately describe the feelings in the community over a change that sees the typical requirement for quests go up 150% and the typical reward not even increase by 30% in response to it. We created this post for you to vent your feelings over this change, submit ideas for what needs to change, or leave comments on what you are going to do after this change has been made.
Be aware though that our usual rules apply, and we will not condone threats, hateful language and similar bad behaviour.
Overwatch was never a subscription service. It was a 1-time $20 payment for the game. Loot boxes could be purchased with real money or earned in-game for cosmetics. You did not ever have to pay a monthly cost to play the game.
overwatch 2 being free to play is just more in line with standard gaming practices; f2p gets more players in the door, who are more willing to “support the devs of a game I like” by shelling out for cosmetics every month or so.
when the reward track was implemented into Hearthstone, I remember a lot of people number-chrunching who determined that it was less gold as a ftp. However, my anecdotal experience was an increase in the amount of gold I earned; likely because I was not min-maxing and had never hit the 200g max from 3-wins that was present before the reward track. I prefer the reward track system, as it helps contextualize my time spent and rewards me with things other then just raw gold.
And there is nothing wrong with your assessment of his logic. Blizzard not caring if f2p leaves is not the equivalent of blizzard being anti-f2p. A f2p model gets people in the door, which encourages spending. People who come, and don’t pay but remain f2p are good for community health, but are not the target audience of the financial side of the business. And when the business needs to make more money, decisions are made regarding the established purchasers, not the prospective ones.
My bad regarding Overwatch being subscription, I misremembered.
You're wrong about this, however:
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/hearthstones-reviled-new-reward-system-is-getting-a-major-overhaul/
I mean, you do mention that your evidence is anecdotal but, as you're aware, that's beside the point. The point being: there was an overhaul because people quote 'threw a fit' which benefit all the players. So, 'throwing a fit' is something which is, at times, justified.
Who's saying Blizzard is anti-F2P?
My understanding is that the F2P model works because, given enough time, there's a good probability f2p players will end up investing at some point. To say Blizzard doesn't care if those potential customers leave is, therefore, false. Who's to say who will end up investing at some point or another? What we can say for certain is that people who quit the game altogether aren't likely to spend at all. In other words, 2fp players are potential customers. As you've put it yourself, the idea is to 'get people in the door'.
I don't understand how that relates to what we're discussing, sorry. Do you mean that the decision to increase requirements but to lower rewards is to cater to paying customers as opposed to f2p ones?
And...?
For the past year or so, I've been looking for an excuse to quit the game because I wasn't enjoying it very much. However, it felt bad to abandon my collection (after all, daily quests are not much of a hassle, right?). I just found an excuse, thanks Blizzard!
I totally agree! That's the straw that breaks the camel's back :-(
Good change, as long as you can reroll quests to get easier ones
That sucks - it is not like I struggle to do the weekly quests in the first place. 5 wins in ranked always get me cause I like playing meme decks, arena and battlegrounds. Winning 15 will atleast take me 3 weeks.
You can use rerolls to move all the quests to ones that you can get by messing around (like play battlecry minions, deal damage to enemy hero etc). I did exactly this and have been playing the new BG stuff stress free. The 15 win requirements are brutal and I would realistically not hit this without deliberately grinding for it - absolutely not what I'm looking for in a casual IPad card game.
Ridiculous change and I hope someone at Blizz gets a severe telling off
"I have been playing this game for the last 5-6 years, and in that time, I have missed only a handful of quests. However, this latest update has made me 90% certain that I will quit the game. The only thing that has kept me going so far is the fact that by completing the quests every week, I can build any deck I want to play for free. But as a 36-year-old, I do not have the time or the will to play this game for 50 hours a week, and therefore, I have no choice but to say goodbye to this game."
That is the same for me. Now it's time to play some more SNAP.
Same, and why Snap is essentially replacing HS. The devs don't seem to understand, a lot of people don't have time for endless hours of grinding.
Can we just go back to earning 100 gold per quest?
Only play a friend and spectate a friend were 100g the rest were 50-60g.
I like the exp system more than 10g every 3 wins (with 100g daily cap) cuz it still gives you exp on loss and it applies to arena.
These changes are a very big turnoff to casual players like myself. Is this a game for the masses or professionals only? Some increase in difficulty might be warranted, but not the ones made this week. If this doesn't change, I will probably not be playing. These changes have the feeling of a money grab and makes what is fun, not fun. Think :shrinkflation."
Useless changes that pissed off the most of the community! Please revert these changes!
While I agree, because of how much I tend to play, it shouldn’t stop me from completing quests and I’ll get more XP/gold.
HOWEVER, judging by all the people who are pissed and wanting to leave HS over this I’d say it is a problem for me. I would rather queue into actual players instead of only bots! So if going backwards and not getting the gold bump keeps more of the casuals playing then I’m for that.
Besides, Old Guardian did an in-depth analysis of the increased benefit for “hardcore players” who will have no problem completing the changes quests. The increased reward isn’t worth the added effort or the likely decline in human opponents.
Those requirements are absolutely atrocious. Who's fucking idea was this?
Hi there,
I define myself a daily-yet-casual player. I've played at least 30 minutes every single day since the beta, even on holidays or while abroad. I was recently concerned about that addiction to be honest. But the tripling of the Weekly Quest Chores might be about to cure me of my addiction.
Maybe I'm slightly off topic but I sense there are a lot of converging facts happening, in addition to that tripling of the Weekly Quest Chores.
First, I LOVED playing Duels, much more than regular Hearthstone actually. To me, Duels was a way to finish those grindy achievements without dropping too much in Hearthstone Ranked (I hit Platinum once. I was shocked).
It was a way to get that weekly Quest faster, too – the one where you had to win 5 [now 15] Brawls, Battlegrounds or Arenas [or Duels, in the good old days].
So without Duels it's possibly harder to get achievements rewards XP and Quest XP, right? Which means less Gold at the end of the season.
Secondly, the latest expansion has very few achievements (albeit more rewarding) as compared to the previous ones (hence less XP to gain, hence less Gold to get).
Duels had no paying option: you had to play with regular Hearthstone cards. No avatars or anything to spend real money on. On the contrary, Battlegrounds is all about cosmetics and Battle pass and such, and I can only guess a lot of people do pay to enjoy all that (to me, at least) insignificant stuff. Even Regular Hearthstone sells avatars and diamond cards and cosmetics.
So in my opinion killing Duels is a way to reroute players to Battlegrounds and Ranked Hearthstone, whether they like it or not, while rewarding less and less Gold to casual players. One stone, two birds.
The tripling of the Weekly Quests chores is another example. Such a shitmove can only drive casual players away from the game. How will that help Blizzard getting even more money though? I do not know. Most non-hardcore players now have a choice to play for fun and for climbing the ladder OR play to finish those gawddamn Quest chores in time.
To me, Blizzard was a genius company once (I've been a hardcore solo Warcraft 2 and 3, Starcraft 1 and 2, Diablo 1, 2 and 3 player) which died when Activision/Vivendi and most of all Micro$oft bought the dream away.
So maybe it's time for me to abandon Hearthstone for good. There's never been such a nice Conjunction of the Spheres.
So increase prizes for 50 % but force us to play 300% time more. Seams fair.
As an Arena player, the 15 wins for Arena/Brawl/BG is pretty insane. When you consider the average Arena run goes 3 wins, that is on average 5 full Arena runs (750g) you have to do to hit this in a week. Crazy.
Not only that. The time you have to spend is enormous. My last arenagame was 23 minutes. The others about 15 minutes. In ranked you can choose a fast deck to get your wins faster, but arena needs often more time per game. Atm I just have time for 1-2 runs per week. With the average wins of 3 games this isn‘t even the half of it. I still have free tickets as I started recently playing arena. But 750g per week… Sorry, no way.