Chadd "Celestalon" Nervigg took to Twitter last night to explain the Hearthstone team's thoughts on the dust refund situation with Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike. As announced last night via a known issues update, we will be getting full dust refunds for these cards soon due to a change in the team's position following community feedback. So here's what Celestalon had to say on the matter:

  • Dust refunds were originally created to make you feel safe to craft cards that might get nerfed.
  • This year's rewards tracks have all had the problem of "if you opened packs before rewards track, you might open that card".
  • Blizzard wanted to come up with a better solution then dust refunds, but hasn't found the time to do so.
  • The issue was to address the launch day problem of dust refunds. Nothing else on the rewards track had that option.
  • The though was opening a card day 1 and then using it for the expansion, getting a free golden of it towards the end, you still got value out of the card you opened.

Drek'Thar and Vanndar were clearly a unique situation which is why it took time for them to consider the steps forward. Celestalon goes on to talk about how they don't want to set a precedent for all future reward cards with the adjustment and to a degree I can agree with that. Players will always try to best optimize their freebies in a game and if game developers create systems in which players are going to have to go through a lot of trouble to get what is considered the "ideal value", maybe that wasn't a great implementation.

The faction questline was a very unique addition to Hearthstone and the first time we were able to choose our own card reward order. I personally believe the problem only occurs when we're talking about legendary cards, and although that may be the obvious take to some, it may not be to all. My issue with giving out specifically named legendary cards, rather than random ones, deeper into an expansion is that it feels  bad to open them when legendary cards are already so hard to get. Having two copies of a legendary when you're missing half the set isn't a great experience, not when there is RNG involved and your buddy managed to go through the expansion without opening the second one from packs, obtaining it from the questline.

I definitely see the initial position of the Hearthstone team though. If you open up a card that you'll get for free down the line, there's a good chance you've gotten value out of it. With how essential legendary cards are to the power of a deck, save for a few oddball decks, this isn't a great situation. I feel that if Blizzard changed what golden cards meant, so players always viewed them as a more cosmetic option, there would be a better chance players feeling less valued than others. I'm of the opinion that the newer Diamond cards accomplish this goal well and if they made it so everyone had to wait until a predetermined point in the expansion to all get their Diamond goodies, we'd all be having a different talk right now. The current version of the questline with its immediate reward upon completion is great, but the players that crush 300 games in a week are understandably going to feel like they didn't get to work towards a a cool cosmetic. I have no way of knowing if its these players alone that created that vocal minority that is ever so present in gaming these days, but as someone who does play Hearthstone less frequently, I can say that I was a bit turned off of opening card packs due to the situation which made me wonder why I even bothered to pre-order. Ultimately, I did open my packs because I assumed Blizzard would do the right thing, and I was thankfully correct.

Perhaps we need to see different kinds of rewards that don't directly influence gameplay instead. We see many golden cards nowadays that are only available through special events, like the rewards track, and are no longer all craftable. This is one step into a territory where golden cards feel more like cosmetics rather than gameplay devices, but is it right that we focus on golden legendaries so consistently as rewards? Alternate art, or perhaps special hero portraits to commemorate visiting a new location in Hearthstone would be better ways of giving out rewards deep into an expansion that require plenty of working towards. Yes, you do have a chance of things feeling bad for players that unlocked "that really sweet alternate Drek'Thar art" when they never even obtained the baseline Drek'Thar to make use of it, but at least it would be waiting there for them and I feel like they aren't missing out anyway since they haven't decided to craft that card yet. I've been a huge advocate for alternate art since Hearthstone wasn't even playable outside of Blizzard, what an excellent addition it would be to the game.

Celestalon does mention though that they do have an idea of how they can solve the overall problem for the launch day rewards, though he isn't sure when it'll be implemented. It's great to hear the bandaid solution and community awareness may not be required in the not so distant future, and I'm intrigued to find out how they end up solving this from a gameplay point of view.

What are your thoughts on the Alterac Valley golden legendary rewards? Let us know in the comments below!

Quote From Celestalon

Hey all. A thread! I wanted to take a moment to share our thoughts behind the dust refunds on Drek’thar and Vanndar. https://t.co/mtQEtl3vig (Source)

The main point of dust refunds has historically been to handle nerfs; you can safely craft a card, without fear that it’ll get nerfed and you’ll have ‘wasted’ your investment. But another situation started coming up a few expansions ago. (Source)

In Barrens, we wanted to have specific cards on the reward track. But most importantly, some were openable right away at level 1, and were valuable Legendary cards. This posed a problem. (Source)

If you opened your packs before claiming the card on the reward track, you could ‘waste’ your reward. The only immediate solution we came up with for Barrens was to do the full dust refund at launch thing. (Source)

We didn’t like it because it required people be in-the-know, and actually *reversed* the problem (it became better to open packs first). But we had no other viable option. So, that’s what we did for Barrens, despite its drawbacks. (Source)

We planned to solve it in a better way for Stormwind, but didn’t find/implement a better solution in time, so did it there too. And then again for Alterac Valley. (Source)

The point of these dust-refund-at-launch cases has always been to handle that launch day, where you could do things in the wrong order *immediately on launch*. It didn’t apply to things you get later, like cards deep on the reward track, or via achievements. (Source)

If you open a card on day 1, use it all expansion, and then near the end of the expansion reach the reward track level to get a golden version of it… Well you used it all expansion, you got reasonable value out of it; and the golden reward you got is cool as a cosmetic. (Source)

That’s the bucket that Drek/Van fell in. If you open one of them on day 1, great, you can use them starting on day 1. If you get to the end of the honor event questchain by the end of the expansion, then you’ll get the golden one too, a nice cosmetic upgrade. (Source)

Or at least, that was our thought process. In practice, Drek/Van are much more desirable than the cards at the end of the reward track have been previously. Players have understandably felt like they should ‘optimize’ this, and do the honor quests first. (Source)

Part of our hesitance in reacting to this has been not wanting to set a precedent that for every reward we make in the future, you need to be careful about the order you get them, and that they’ll all effectively come with a wildcard of a second card of their rarity too. (Source)

Our goal here isn’t to set that precedent. One might ask, “why not just be generous?” We love to be generous; the AV reward track and event are the most free stuff we’ve ever done. But we want to do it intentionally; we’d rather put that value into planned rewards. (Source)

Another reason we’re doing this now is that we finally have a plan for how to solve this problem in a solid way, in the future. No promises when we’ll get that implemented, but at least we no longer see this bandaid solution as being required forever. End 🧵! Love ya all! (Source)

@Celestalon Appreciate the insights! I'd love to hear about the whole Golden Uncraftable concept as well, seeing as they violate duplicate protection rule in spirit (mainly Rewards Track Epics) and how for some of us a golden card is literally of 0 value; yet we are being forced into them.

@Saor17614198 Sure. The point is that they’re special, they’re a status symbol, exclusive. You can still get the normal one through packs or crafting, but if you have this in golden, it means you did something special. Like a golden hero. (Source)

@Saor17614198 And if you don’t have them at all when you get the golden one, well great, that’s a nice bonus. (Source)

@Celestalon Actually, at this time point. Many hard core players have finished the honer quest and already got the golden version. They lost the chance to get the "any legendary". And the players who didn't "optimize" their order got the benefit. Is this intended to penalize HC players?

@lympanda Nope, they haven't. Check out the hotfix notes posted today; everyone gets it. (Source)

@Celestalon I think you didn't understand what I mean. Hard core players choose to finish the honor quest before opening the packs. This action avoid to get "Drek’thar and Vanndar" from packs. But now, this action became stupid as getting D & V means "any legendary" and they just avoid it.

@lympanda Oh, yes! And that's a good thing. Open your packs! Have fun! (Source)

@lympanda You might mean that people who already did the full questline effectively got a random other legendary, whereas everyone who opened their packs gets the full dust (which is better)? Yes, that's one of the downsides of this that I mentioned, but is much smaller of an impact. (Source)

@Celestalon Yes, correct. This is what I mean. The decision was made between "penalize small amount of well-planned hard code players" and "benefit non-optimized big amount of players". Bliz. just chose the latter one because of the pressure from them. Well done.

@lympanda It's also a difference of a very minor loss for the former, and a much much larger loss for the later. (Source)

@Celestalon I feel like early start of the event made a real difference here. If it all was happening on actual day 1 people wouldn't think of this reward this way, but since on day 1 there were already people finishing the Honor grind, it felt like others were "missing out".

@SnuggleKingHS Yeah, totally true. Starting a week early definitely made 'just do the whole honor questline before opening packs' more of a feasible-sounding thing. Also unplanned. (Source)

@Celestalon I love this kind of insights!! Thanks!

@nayarasylvestre I love sharing this sort of insight! Both because it's interesting, and also because when players *don't* know what they're thinking, they tend to just imagine something, and that often is something negative, when really it's nothing of the sort! (Source)