Ben Lee Talks About The Battle Pass And A Progression System
Ben Lee just responded on the highly discussed topic about the Battle Pass and a Progression System, sharing some interesting insights.
- This year, they took big steps towards making the game more affordable and they intend to continue maintaining the game affordable going forward.
- Reward and Progression system is something major that they are working on right now.
- The Battle Pass survey wasn't sent to "state" what's the progression system will be about but rather to gather some information about which way they should shape the Battle Pass.
- One of their goals for this new system is to allow you to play Hearthstone your way, you won't be tied to playing only Standard or Wild in order to obtain the majority of the games’ economic rewards anymore.
- Another goal is to "repack" (not reduce) the current rewards in a way that is easier to understand and track for a player.
- In addition, there will be more cosmetic rewards that players might earn during every expansion cycle.
- The system will be beneficial for every player type, you won't have to worry about missing something if you just don't have a time to play every day.
- More details (new features, improvements, etc) to come at the start of the next expansion's reveal phase.
Quote from Ben LeeThis year we took big steps towards making it easier and more affordable than ever for players to acquire an awesome card collection, including making the game more friendly to our free-to-play-players.
With the launch of Ashes of Outland, we implemented the no duplicates rules, introduced free competitive decks for new and returning players, significantly increased ranked rewards, added 1st time ranked rewards, held multiple events with hefty reward packages, offered rewarding expansion quest chains and we’ve also committed to providing free single-player Adventure content for the foreseeable future.
We chose to do these things because they are good for our players and we believe they are the right thing to do for the game. They weren't reactionary measures to competition or a dwindling player-base. We have many millions of players and are going to be here and strive to remain one of the most popular, relevant, and fun games around for many years to come.
We are grateful to our players for their continued support and as described above have worked hard to try and value their time and financial investments fairly. We have no intention of going back on or undermining the progress we have made on this front.
By the above statement, I very specifically mean to identify and clarify that we absolutely intend to maintain the value that players can earn within the game and keep the flexibility of purchases that current rewards provide.
We are undertaking a major rework of our rewards and progression systems. A survey did go out about this recently with the aim of gathering information to help us refine the design of the systems. This isn't something new, Hearthstone has been sending out surveys for years and often what is discussed in these surveys does not represent what ends up going into the game.
One of our goals for this new system is to allow you to play Hearthstone your way, you won't be tied to playing only Standard or Wild in order to obtain the majority of the games’ economic rewards anymore.
We are also planning on repackaging (not reducing) the current rewards that you can obtain in Hearthstone and put that information in front of you in an easy to view and understand manner. We want you to know how many rewards you've acquired, how many more you can earn and what steps you need to take in order to obtain them. In addition, we're adding a number of exciting cosmetic rewards that players can receive during every expansion.
Finally, we are investigating broadening the benefits of the existing Tavern Pass system to supplement the rewards of the upcoming progression system with exciting new cosmetics.
There’s been some discussion that a huge time investment would be required to complete the levels in the system. We don’t intend this to be the case.
I'll use myself as the example here. I reach Legend every month, during an expansion cycle I typically earn more than 5,000 Gold (I would not expect to earn less under the new system). Outside of Hearthstone, I am a busy father of two children, I have a demanding full-time job, active life and I play a huge amount of other games outside of Hearthstone in my spare time. We want people like me who love Hearthstone but also have other responsibilities and interests to be able to complete the rewards track levels.
We want our players to feel good about participating in this new take on rewards and progression, without feeling that they might miss out if they don't have time or that they'd have to make sacrifices in their lives in order to do so.
We look forward to showing you this and a host of other things we've been working on to bring more exciting content to Hearthstone during our Year of the Phoenix Mid-year check-in at the start of our next expansion's reveal phase.
Ben Lee
Game Director - Hearthstone
Quote from Ben LeeThe 5,000 gold that I reference is my personal experience based on how much I am able to play per expansion. Yours would be different depending on how much time you can put in.
This is categorically not a statement that the system is capped at 5,000 Gold. The section highlighted in bold clearly address this also.
-Ben
think they mean to make it every expansion cycle.
Load of BS. Just looking to add yet more cost to gouge loyal and long term players who like to get all available cosmetics.
tbh, I'm fine with them charging reasonable prices for cosmetics - I'm more suspicious of them hiking the time and effort required to grind enough gold for packs.
Why no blue post, or at least a link to the entire AMA this time?
I personally noticed this. Every expansion there would be like 12 people online the 1st day of the expansion. This time it was like 2 people. And they weren't even ''Busting open card packs''. And the reveal stream? What was it like 15k viewers lol? I remember some guy in chat typing ''Remember when there were like 75k views LUL''.
He said in the other interview that he gets max5000g per cycle. I was like dude, darling did u even play a this game ?
what i would like is a separate economy or lets say for example gold dust to craft golden cards, I mean it's not fun to be playing for so many years and not even have a full golden deck, if golden cards can be earned on a frequent basis i wouldn't mind that too, at this moment the only thing that really differentiates a veteren from the pack is card backs.
NOOOO - separate currencies always increase microtransactions.
Right. Because current reward system of earning 50-60 gold of a daily quest and another 10 gold per 3 winning matches is way too complicated for a Hearthstone player to understand, you're going to make it easier to track by adding to it XP, cards, arena tickets, skins, cardbacks and different types of packs. Way to go Ben, now I know why you're game director - you're a master at using newspeak.
To all brilliant game developers at Blizzard - If you're reading this, get together and go to your company's sales and marketing offices and throw everyone out of window on the street. Or even better, just throw some coins out of window in front of them and they'll jump themselves after them. Don't let those greedy bastards ruin all the great work you're doing.
By the way, I'm not completely against battle pass system and I wouldn't mind paying for it if it's done fairly. But reading this kinda nonsense makes me really pessimistic about it. Angry too.
a very expensive FREE to play game. will quit if i have spend money.
I love that you want to be able to play a game completely for free and not even want to spend anything at it.
You even demand that you are able to play the game completely free and be able to be top notch.
You know, you could play mobile games with tons of advertisement.
Once you are grown up you might understand that companies don't give you stuff for free. If you get something for free it's a tactic to get money from those :)
So they say they are making it easier for rewards, but all the f2P grinders are looking at a decent loss of gold?
yup
Î mean, the system from the leak showed the rewards you would get. There were almost as many packs for the costs you would get from buying with gold + cosmetic stuff.
I disagree, a card pack should be about random cards. You want dust then disenchant cards and get dust. Don't complain about randomness. HS should be random.
YOUR 👏GAME👏 IS 👏TO 👏EXPENSIVE 👏
Please... Anything but Battle Pass...
That will erase all spended money and value of earned cards of players for now,especially with huge collection of the cards
No duplicate protection just hammers home how big a scam these card games are. After 50 packs you've got every common and rare and most packs are just useless and might as well give dust directly.
And yet, after 50 packs, you have less than 1/5 of the epics, and 1/10 of the legendaries - the most important cards needed to build decks that are not aggro.
NO DUPLICATES????!!!! I still get duplicates from packs though I don't have the full collection.........