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.
This is the Battle Pass all over again. The announcement was kept super vague without details, and what a coincidence, it turns out to be shit and everyone's upset, again. My guess is, in a week or two, they'll come up with a not-apology ("sorry If you have negative feelings"), and a week later, the quests will probably be harder to complete still, but nowhere near as bad, like 7 or 10 wins.
I don't even understand why this was done. Even greed makes no sense. Whoever wants to bring up the good ol' "they need to make money"-argument has to explain to me in what shroomiverse this step could possibly boost their revenue.
Making quests numerically more rewarding does not encourage me to spend more money. Playing more games does not encourage me to spend more money. As I make more exp from quests and playing additonal games, I probably end up seeing less of a reason to buy stuff. People who don't buy passes or bundles are not incentivized to do so now, and people who do buy them have no reason to spend more now. On the other hand, a shitstorm has the potential to make some people spend less or give up the game entirely. It also doesn't help to attract or keep new players.
The game does not generate revenue from in-game ads (yet??) and there's no need to coerce people into playing the game for longer. Maybe they want to improve queue times but this is arguably the worst solution for that.
Unless some tone deaf analyst who previously worked on Candy Crush saw a weak correlation between play time and spending, this seems like a really stupid idea to me.
I just don't have that much time to play Hearthstone and I'm a casual player who likes trying out fun decks. Even winning those 5 games was difficult for me, and at 15 it's simply impossible
this is like fake sales in shop
You gotta play hearthstone EVERY DAY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctVrpQ-orss
Quests in 2076:
Win 130 games in a row as Warlock with only using your hero power.
Reward:
5 XP
This feels like work, not fun.
Perfectly said.
I’ve played since closed beta as well and as a gigantic whale who owns everything in the game I don’t feel like quitting over an increase in the weekly quests. The only people this impacts are people who hardly play the game or have very few cards to begin with. I cleared every quest for the entire week on Monday in less than 90 minutes. 15 games won is a tad over 2 each day of the week. You can still do that on a phone or tablet while getting rid of last night’s pizza. You can afk in BG and complete the win 15 without doing anything in case you didn’t know that already. Any minion quest can be done in casual by playing a deck of entirely that minion coupled with class quests and every other quest.
I’ve completed the 400 levels on the track since I can remember and it’s very easy to do without much effort if you think about it.
15 wins in a week for what equates roughly 14000xp a month on the BP and at 1500xp per 50 gold on the bonus levels that’s not even 500g a month for just that one quest if you don’t feel like doing it or just can’t for whatever reason.
I still remember the meltdowns when they took away the 10g for 3 wins because amazingly it was easier to sit and win 30 games a day for what equated to a .56 cent pack of cards each day…it never ends.
I’m already at 120 on the reward track and I have zero issues doing 400 and will be done with it weeks before the season ends.
I know everyone here would just like to have everything for free but Blizzard doesn’t exist to make free games for everyone. I’m all for taking away the ability to complete quests in casual tbh because the ladder is an utter FKG bore. Maybe if we had people playing the ladder with quest decks it would be more fun but then again the meltdowns would ensue over that.
The f2p players need to realize that Blizzard just devalued your time even more in hopes that you will shell out $20 bucks here and there for the work they do for the game you all play.
I have won everything there is to collect in the game ,aside from signature cards because even whales as big as me draw the line somewhere, and having to win 10 more games a week to complete the quest isn’t even an issue.
Stack your quests and complete as many as possible at once and it’s pretty easy. After all I thought everyone liked the game so what’s the problem if you have to play it for another hour a week?
Hearthstone isn’t cheap by any means but I’m glad Blizzard is finally recognizing people who spend little to no money on the game don’t deserve to have an easy time collecting the free things they do give away the same as someone like me who has supported the game for over 10 years and has contributed very heavily to the games continued enjoyment by those who contribute little or nothing.
So, by your own account, it is very easy to complete the reward track anyway (btw. I'm sure all that flexing is deeply satisfying on *some* level, but keep it in your pants, ok?).
And now people will end up making even more exp, both through more rewarding quests and ending up playing more. And that's supposed to show dem filthy f2p plebs what they deserve? Being able to get more stuff for free, albeit at the cost of more playing?
Does "supported the game for over 10 years" include your free standup comedy gigs?
We can't understand you with Blizzard's cock in your mouth.
That's actually 200% increase in requirements.
Even if it was 3 times the reward for 3 times the effort I would completely hate it. I am already playing over an hour a day and in many cases the quests dictate what kind of mode I have to play. I often find myself farming quests in casual mode just to finish them.
Now they expect me to put 2-3 hours a day just to be able to finish the quests? No thanks, rather just drop the game altogether.
Sticker shock my a$$. The fact they didn't communicate this properly ahead of time is also a huge part of the problem.
I really loved the game for 10 years and despite my friends all quitting it I kept playing and enjoyed it very much. Didn't think there could be anything that would sour me on the game but here we are...
I think their remark about sticker shock was to indicate that there had been so little communication about this and that no one expected what was ultimately pushed to live servers.
Honestly, I have no idea why communication about this was so bad as there has been a definite increase in trying to get ahead of messaging like this in the last year or 2.
Which means there's 2 options:
1) they legitimately didn;t think this was anything that would upset the playerbase too much. Which would be a HUGE lack of being in touch with your playerbase. Anyone with even a SLIGHT finger on the pulse would have seen this reaction coming.
2) they knew it would be a shitstorm, and did it anyway, because the plan all along has been to throw it out there in unreasonable form so they can roll it back to something slightly less awful, which is still a good deal worse than the situation before, but maybe not enough to cause riots on the forums.
And it is very very possible that this was all done without properly checking with the people who would knwo the reaction of the community.
It's all too easy given how things have gone with the game lately (increase in price of Diamond cards for a recent example) to imagine some suit with an MBA in the financial department of Blizz to go "Hey, you know how the players say they only play till their quests are done? what if we just TRIPLE the time it takes to get their quests done? THINK OF THE ENGAGEMENT NUMBERS!" and then they got patted on the back and given a raise for the brilliant idea, and they put a dev or 2 on it to implement it in time to take advantage for the rise in player numbers from the Anniversary.
But maybe I'm just jaded. =/
If you read RidiculousHat's comments on Reddit, you can understand between the lines that he knew it would create a shitstorm and he tried to prevent it without success.
They will probably revert it to something like 10 ranked wins instead of 15 which still sucks.
waiting for Zeddy`s video about it (people hate this already)
It's kinda rude they call it sticker shock...do they think people are so dumb they can't do basic maths?
This makes me so angry i guess i need to buy some skins for 8.5$ to compensate my frustration!
i am upset about this. the things i want to say are not allowed on these forums
I've been playing since the closed beta. I've never missed a monthly reward. Tbh, this is the first time I'm actually considering quitting the game.
Completely same here. I have been actively playing since Naxx came out and now its probably time to stop as the game is still worse and worse...
On one hand, some of these quests were arguably too easy to beat. 5 Constructed wins could be done in less than an hour even with a 50% winrate. For a weekly, that's kinda pathetic, especially when there's only 3 weeklies.
On the other, holy shit between 2-3x the effort for 20-30% more reward is ridiculous. And what's more, they are still WINS. If you go on a massive losing streak, that is 0 progression to the weeklies. And the "Spend 500 mana" and "Use your Hero Power 50 times" ones getting worse are horrendous - oftentimes I had to create special decks just to get those done because DAMN they are tedious, now one is even worse and the other is (mostly) reverted back to the nightmare it once was.
I wish they took the Overwatch angle of "Complete games. Wins grant double progress" because even losing matches felt like progressing the weeklies, unlike this where only the wins matter.
Exactly! At least 1 point for playing a game, and double points for winning it.
I don't get why anyone would agree to be forced to spend 200-300% more effort for 20-30% more rewards. What a terrible deal! maybe if you're a hardcore HS player, but the rewards would be of no value to them at that point anyway.