Hearthpwn

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 Lee

This 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 Lee

The 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