REWARDS TRACK UPDATE - Official Blizzard Statement
Blizzard just posted a lengthy update detailing their plans with the Reward track, what they communicated about badly and what is going to change. Read all about it below!
Quote from BlizzardWe have been listening to your feedback regarding the Rewards Track and it’s clear we missed the mark both in how we communicated and implemented the full functionality of this first version of our rewards system.
We apologize for the confusion and disappointment we have caused.
During the natural progression of the rewards cycle, our intention was, and still is, to give out extra XP over time through a variety of ways. The aim is to help players get through the Rewards Track, or catch-up if they join later in an expansion phase, ultimately ensuring players earn more rewards.
We also didn’t provide any details for how events will link into and support the rewards system. We will be providing bonus XP for various activities at each seasonal event every expansion cycle, and any additional bonus events as needed, again with the aim of ensuring that our players obtain more rewards. Our failure to communicate these factors has led to incomplete projections, for which we apologize.
In addition, you’ve provided us with a wealth of feedback, and we agree that the pack rewards at the end of the track don’t feel appropriate for the effort it takes to get them. We’re going to adjust these rewards in the later stages of the track, swapping six packs for a total of 1350 gold that players can spend as they see fit. If any players reach this milestone before we implement these changes, they will be retroactively compensated.
Our goal for the Rewards Track continues to be that all Hearthstone players earn more gold and total rewards per expansion. We’ll continue to evaluate the impact of these changes, listen to your feedback, and iterate as needed until we get it right.
We will stay true to our word and ensure that the system lives up to what we all believe Hearthstone deserves.
Thank you,
Ben Lee
Game Director
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)EA is bashed because not only do the yearly sports games cost $60, they charge obscene amounts for Ultimate Team gambling microtransactions.
Just like Hearthstone.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)You're doing it wrong.
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Posted Feb 14, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Sorry for late reply. Your assumption is $80 off, I'm F2P.
Soooo... 3*$0=$0.
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Posted Feb 14, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Why are you talking about the cost of a complete collection? The claim I replied to was about what is required. Is a full collection required?
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Not buying it. In fact I'm not buying anything at all anymore. This is the first time I haven't felt like playing HS during a new expansion, I haven't bought an expansion bundle since K&C and I don't plan on it until this paywall is lowered substantially. I work a fulltime job even that isn't enough to keep up with game's expenses. It's so sad how much time and money I have to dish out for this company that probably makes enough as is. Fucking greedy bastards.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)This seems like more bullshit coming from Activision-Blizzard. Battlegrounds are my safehaven so far.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Also let's not forget that there was no legendary quest chain today. This confirms that old rewards are just being rebranded as new, with this new system. In comparison, the Wispers of the Old Gods expansion gave us a total of 12 packs on release day.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)And free C'thun, which was super important to being able to build C'thun decks. This expansion they literally give you weekly quests and achievements for playing old god legendaries that they don't give you!
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Do not believe them. Everything they did was intentional. The way rewards are obfuscated via an additional currency (experience) that hinders your ability to gauge how much your time is worth in regards to rewards, the way they intentionally tied achievement exp to legendaries you don't own yet, the way they assigned weekly quests to playing legendaries of an expansion that isn't even out and you might not own now, or ever.
They knew this would cause backlash, they planned to make this statement, they will increase rewards but it will be in no way greater than what we had before. Hearthstone will remain the most expensive F2P card game in the world, with massive barriers to entry and increasingly stingy progression.
They know no one will be able to figure out that they have been truly shafted until 4 months from now when the next expansion rolls out and people have less gold to spend. They will say anything to fool you until that point, but only the cold hard truth of your own situation will convince you.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)I don't know. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but this seems like a really good change. Scrapping the worthless old packs and replacing them with gold towards the end of the track is obviously a positive change. So, assuming that blizzard actually holds up their end of the deal and makes it so casual players can reach those rewards without having to invest several hours playing every day, then I see this as an absolute win.
Beyond that, there's really no way to calculate xp rewards for future events without further details. I get people are hesitant to take blizzard at their word, and rightfully so, but I personally choose to look at this change in the rewards track as a gesture of good faith. They want to make money and I do believe that their initial intention with having those crap pack rewards were a step in doing so, but more so, they want to bring in new players and bring back old players that have left. They know how powerful community outcry can be in correlation to those goals. So, I think they're are going to try to make good on their promise that players earn a bit more with this rewards system overall.
I admit, I could be naive and Blizzard has disappointed me in the past but at this point in time in regards to the rewards track, I chose to stay hopeful.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)How dare you disagree with the angry mob.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)here it is a real interview guys, https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/jvac8w/official_blizzard_interview_on_battlepass_system/
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)sir I dunno who the hell you are but I gotta say when compared to blizzard employes you are a saint for sending this link alone, thanks for making my day
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)First Blizz said "Trust us, this future new system will give all players as much or more gold than the previous system."
Then, after an outcry because data mining reveals this statement to be untrue about their purposely opaque new system, Blizz responds with another statement that amounts to "Trust us, in the future, this new system will be adjusted to give all players as much or more gold than the previous system, but we will continue not to provide any specifics."
Once bitten, twice shy, Blizz.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Right, so you would prefer they say nothing? Do nothing? What exactly do you want? Grow up, they've not implemented it as they wanted and are making swift changes which I'm sure they will continue to do. If they say nothing, you'd moan, they hold their hands up and apologise and you moan.
I started playing this game around frozen throne and the changes and improvements since then are massive. If you're so perfect why don't you create something yourself and see how you get on with people such as yourself.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Wat we want? Not lying to us and then apologising because they get caught would be a decent start.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Okay, I'll take your bait. You are conflating two distinct things. The monetization is different than the gameplay/game modes.
If this post were about a Blizz statement regarding fixing an issue with the new set or Duels or Battlegrounds, I would completely agree that the great, responsive changes that Blizz has made in the past year or two have earned Blizz the benefit of the doubt and we should all put away our pitchforks and wait for the changes without further complaint.
But this post is about a fundamental change to the monetization of the game that, combined with the addition of four new mini-sets each year, appears to have made an already pricey game substantially more expensive for many players. This is in direct contradiction to what Blizz said about the new system. In that situation, it is not reassuring that Blizz's response is just a reiteration of their prior non-specific assurances. When it comes to monetization, how has Blizz earned the benefit of the doubt? Is this game substantially cheaper than it was a year or two ago? The only change I can think of is duplicate protection, which is nice. But that was a very specific change, announced in a clear way. If you reread my initial comment, you will see that my issue is that no specifics were given in response to the outcry. In the context of Blizzard's monetization, the lack of specifics makes this apology concerning. Blizz is a business and we are its customers. We're not friends, so I'm not really looking for general apologies. If Coke doubles the price of a bottle of its product, what I want to hear in response to the outcry is not an apology but specifics about what the price will be going forward.
I believe that most of the folks upset by this, like me, enjoy this game and are very happy with the direction and pace of change when it comes to gameplay and game modes. (Otherwise, why would we be spending our time on this site?) The issue is that we fear that we and/or our friends will be priced out of being able to enjoy this great game.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)Yeah...Darkmoon might be my last expansion then. If I play Hearthstone after that, it’ll most likely be in Battlegrounds.
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Posted Nov 17, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)You're quitting because the new reward system will make you more gold? What?
And don't tell me it won't do that for players who use it because you don't know that and such a prediction is baseless. You might say that was a straw man, but it's the natural way to read your post: You said you're quitting "then," meaning you're reacting to what he said they're going to do ("You say you'll do X? Then I'll do Y"), and what he said is it's going to accomplish the thing they said it would from the beginning -- net players more gold for their effort. You can claim that's not what's going to happen if you want, but 1. there's no logical reason to believe that, and 2. that's not what your post said and I'd have to engage in a bit of mind-reading to get some other meaning from you, which I don't want to do, just like you have to engage in mind-reading to call them liars with no intention of doing the thing they clearly said they're going to do. (To give you the benefit of the doubt, I've had to imagine what intention you could have other than what you said and I've come to what seems most likely but I could be misreading it entirely -- but at least I'm not intentionally misreading it, like the angry mob here does, and my motive was giving you the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming bad faith, like the angry mob here does.)
The safe bet is obviously that the reward system WILL net players more gold. It doesn't matter if the angry mob insists otherwise. It would be extremely unusual for a commitment of this nature to remain broken after the adjustments to be made in the near future. There's nothing in Blizzard's history to suggest they're a bunch of scam artists, though I'm sure the bitter people will insist they are despite that clearly being false. If it were true, then sue them for false advertisement and whatnot, already, but you know it isn't. And if you want to take it down a notch and say, okay, not scam artists but still liars, based on what? This specific issue which is going to be corrected? You claim it's not going to be, they're just lying again? Again, their history does not line up with this, regardless of whatever anecdote you've got of a very different "broken promise," most of which end up (from past experience in previous threads) not even being real promises or weren't even broken.
Blizzard is not in the habit of making promises about reward structures, failing to meet that goal in any OBJECTIVE way, and then lying to their customers' faces about "really meeting the goal this time" as they laugh all the way to the bank, not implementing anything of the sort. (Objectivity is important: Clearly, a player saying "you promised it'd be fun and it isn't" isn't on the level of being told you'd get X more gold per week for the same amount of effort/wins but you can't.) Paint that caricature all you want but it just isn't accurate. The dishonest people here are those insisting Blizzard are liars on this without any decent evidence of it.
And I'm mostly free to play and don't encourage others to buy anything because, yeah, the game IS overly expensive in my view, and I find certain unrelated matters to be a big problem with Blizzard, so no, the go-to response for children of "shill" does not apply. I'm just not filled with ridiculous rage over something so trivial which, even if we pretend this game is a big deal in the first place, will certainly be a good label since the issue is obviously getting fixed.
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Posted Nov 18, 2020 (Darkmoon Faire)We re not mad they are greedy, we are mad they are ruining the game. I use to enter every day, grind 12 wins, get out. That was 100 gold a day assuming i finished the daily in the process. Now there are 25% more cards in the game. If they wanted to keep the status quo, they would have given us 125 gold for the same amount of playtime. That was the consensus when you started playing, the new player understanding of what to expect from the game, everything that was given as seasonal rewards was surplus and enjoyed as that. They use scarcity of resources to bring the value of their products up. Am i able to get 125 gold from getting in daily?, scratch that, am i still going to be able to get 100 gold? And you ll go defend saying they do not run a charity and so on, we have no right to ask for anything, they may still hold their promise. Yeah they will hold their promise, but only for the existence of the backlash, people not playing the game anymore, people not being able to keep up with the card collections because of pricing. Whats the point of continuing a relationship with a partner that only keeps asking for more and more, and when you do not offer more it takes something from you and then asks 20 bucks to give it back while presenting it to you as a reward. Gold is needed every day to get into arena, to buy new packs, not only by the free to play, by everybody. If they dont want free to play players make it pay for entree and run their business like that, i would actually enter hearthstone like that, given they put a decent price on it. Stop arguing against facts with promises and hopes!