Do we know card reveal timing/calendar for either Core or Barrens? I'm assuming a release date of March 23rd for both. They'd usually take this week off from reveals, but they have more than twice as many cards to reveal this season. I'm hoping they do something like release a class/day for the Core set.
I was really hoping for a UI announcement at BlizzCon. Blizzard games have typically had exceptional UI, but what was wobbly with the release of Battlegrounds completely broke with the addition of Duels, achievements, and the rewards track. Mercenaries makes that Modes screen even more crowded, and do Solo Adventures and Tavern Brawl need to be so front and center? It's past time for the wooden box to be updated and redesigned.
I also want to see some better incentives to get more players participating in Arena and Duels, and I'd be fine with the retirement of Tavern Brawl. Tavern Brawl really only functions to give a boost to players with a weekly pack and a low-pressure mode to complete quests. I'd rather have those time-investment incentives put into Arena and Duels which thrive on a large player base to work. I hope the Mercenaries PvP isn't an afterthought either, which will require its own incentives to get many players participating. The new game modes (and Arena) are great. I want them properly supported.
Sounds like they basically lifted the map interface from StS, but the battle gameplay sounds completely different. Battlegrounds isn't really a card game, it's just an auto-battler where cards are the user interface for communicating stats. This sounds similar in that regard. I hope PvP isn't just an afterthought.
Will there be a page like this for the Core Set to track reveals? I know many of the cards will be old cards, but I'd love to see something like this for when they're confirmed/revealed.
While I think this will be a fun treat for awhile, won't the meta for Classic get solved and stale rather quickly? I'm happy to have the feature as they said this isn't the new game mode, but I'm much more hyped for the new Core set.
Something that I'm sure is too complicated for them to do would be to be able to have different patches matchup against each other. Allow opposing players to have different card restrictions. Basically, how do the best classic decks match-up against current Standard. Shadowstep Leeroy Rogue vs. the current aggro Rogue meta. And then pick a few other points in time when the meta and nerfs were fundamentally different from each other. How do jade decks from Year of the Kracken match-up against the top decks from Year of the Raven. It wouldn't just be wild because you wouldn't have access to all cards for deckbuilding, just those from that patch era.
At the very least I hope they start doing some kind of rotation with Wild. There are so many possibilities with restricted sets and cards even without different patch versions of cards. This would also mean they don't need to nerf or balance Wild, just rotate cards to keep it fresh.
This inspired me to writeup my deck which is very similar to the last entry for Tempo Mage. Since yesterday I've gone 17-7 and hit Diamond-5. I'm curious how it holds up on the road to Legend.
Yeah, disregard my comment above. I'm still on level 35, but I'm much closer to completing it. I thought I'd be promoted a few levels, but I guess it's very heavily weighted to the end.
The larger discussions around this topic have really clarified for me the value proposition of Hearthstone. The entire economy is based around being a CCG simulator. I remember when I discovered Hearthstone in 2014 how excited I was by its affordability compared to IRL MTG which I had abandoned over a decade earlier because of cost. There was something satisfying about opening packs and building a collection. It scratched an itch. Six years and thousands of packs later and I could care less about that simulated experience. If I'm paying $45, let alone $80, I want the full game experience. If not on release, then at least halfway through the expansion cycle. Not having a complete set of cards after paying $80 is beyond absurd.
These rewards track improvements are GOOD REFORMS to a BAD SYSTEM. Frankly, MTG was designed to be a rip-off, layered on top of a fantastic game (I can't speak to the MTG Arena economy). The rarity system of cards and incomplete collections are artifacts of a predatory model of manufactured scarcity (literal and figurative). There's no place for it anymore. I only played Runeterra for a month or so, but it seemed to be taking a good approach to limiting card collections for the sake of the meta vs. allowing F2P players to amass a full collection before the next expansion (correct me if I'm wrong). But more and more generous rewards systems simply seem to be ignoring the fact that the game doesn't need to operate via packs at all.
I also think that these rewards track reforms don't go far enough in addressing the player-base for Arena and Heroic Duels. Additional game modes have both a time and gold cost (including Battlegrounds Perks). There needs to be low barriers of entry to play for different game modes. Arena/Duels tickets, and probably generic pack tickets, need to become an official currency. Maybe reward players with a free ticket if they complete all their weekly quests. Be transparent on the XP rewards for playing in these modes. I'm just imagining a system where you knew if you paid $45 for the expansion you could be free to spend your gold on the game modes of your choice instead of miserly scrounging for 40-dust packs in the hopes of a legendary. Duels really hooked me at first, but I'm feeling too punished for a bad-run when I can't earn daily gold. I'm not sure if a 20% decrease in XP requirements really addresses that tension.
I've taken the last couple weeks to log off Hearthstone for the first time in a few years. I've been playing my back-catalog of Steam games, and it's just astounding how far $45, let alone $80 will go with other games. I agree very strongly with the recent assessments that Hearthstone is F2P, but Pay-To-Have-Fun. I'll probably check back in with Hearthstone in a couple weeks when the rewards track gets updated, but I have a hard time seeing myself going back to the level of play I've sustained over the last few years. It's not "fun" unless you invest A LOT of money AND time, and that's not fun.
I wish casual duels wasn't a thing and that the barrier of entry was lower for Arena and Duels. And Battlegrounds ($20 a season!). And, with all the talk about the Hearthstone economy, the barrier of entry should be lower for constructed as well. These modes are all at their best when more people are participating. I would describe myself as a casual whale, and I'm done paying for $50 pre-orders three times/year. I don't want to play a CCG simulator, I want to play the game with access to all the features, i.e. cards. They go to great lengths to create unique memes/cards and new modes, and then most people don't even get to enjoy them. I've been playing consistently since just before GvGs release, and I'm planning on taking a LONG break once I hit level 50 this season. Unless the economy gets revamped, including Arena and Duels, I'm probably not coming back next expansion cycle.
Yeah, I've defended the rewards track based on these calculations, and I agree that many people are over-reacting to the value they'll be receiving over the course of an expansion. It's clearly more.
However, as I approach Level 25 (with no Tavern Pass XP Boost) I'm starting to get annoyed. I love Duels and have always been an avid Arena player. These modes cost gold. If I banked 300-450 gold at the start of an expansion (after buying packs), with some careful quest management, I was usually able to play four to five Arenas/week. Now that my levels are over 3,000 experience each, I'm having days where my gold doesn't increase. That.. feels bad, even knowing these calculations. It was nice having that total tick up each day, and maybe going for an extra three wins in ranked to round off another 150. It's somewhat irrational, but the lack of rewards as I get to the higher levels doesn't feel good.
Also, I was awarded an Arena/Duels Ticket for not completing my final Arena Run, was then rewarded one at Level 15, but was only able to redeem one. Something glitched and they're not tracked properly as a currency. Considering some people lost out on a week's worth of quests it's not a huge issue, but the lack of Tickets as a real currency is becoming an issue with Arena and Duels being fun and viable game modes. Then I got a weekly quest for Battlegrounds, a mode I typically ignore, but I had a decent amount of fun. I can't imagine paying $15 every expansion to access its full features.
I remember how disappointed everyone was years ago when Tavern Brawl launched. It sort of had promise, but ended up being a very, very lame game mode. It didn't feel like they had actually developed a new way to play. With Battlegrounds and Duels, they've succeeded. Arena, Duels, and Battlegrounds are at their best when there's broad participation. The barriers to play need to come down. Daily/weekly rewards need to be increased that help drive these players to these game modes. I personally think that completing all your weekly quests should bank you an Arena/Duels ticket ON TOP OF the experience. Allow players to unlock Battlegrounds Perks if they play enough in that mode.
This expansion is unique enough that constructed has a few more weeks of creativity before the meta is solved. At that point, if it takes 5000 experience to earn 150 gold, I'm not going to play much beyond completing my quests. I might even take a loooong break. I want to play Arena and Duels, but the grind to earn entry fees is going to become too high.
Good article. I'll say this much. I do trust that the actual rewards will be greater under this system than the old. I don't think they've been straight lying. But the lack of communication and detailed math is insulting to pretty much any player base in this day and age. I know there's gambling psychology/principles behind a lot of design choices, but you simply can't hide the odds, experience rate, and rewards behind math. The community will figure it out.
And yes, the UI is atrocious. I can't stand Arena, Duels, and Battlegrounds being behind several menus while Tavern Brawl, the least interesting game mode, if it can even be called that, is featured on the main menu. Redesign the menu! Make it bigger! The Journal view is somehow even worse with the Achievements tab being the pinnacle of bad design. UI is usually Blizzard's strongest area which makes this all the more offputting.
I got the Treasure that fills your board with 1/1 copies of a minion. I copied Eys'or from my opponent and ended the turn with seven 7/7 Eys'or's and gained a bunch of experience. Still lost (the competition is fierce, isn't it?!)
I agree. I won't show all my work, but I worked out the XP math for playing ~10 hours/week and finishing all my daily and weekly quests (NOT including expansion achievement XP or bonus event XP) and it put me at Level 72. That means 7,500 gold, 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g value), 7 Current (MDF) packs (100g value), 9 Standard packs, 2 Current Legendaries, and 1 Current Epic. Let's put the Standard pack value at 50g if they're not from the current expansion, a legendary is worth 20 packs of chance or dust (2000g), and an epic is worth 5 packs of chance or dust (500g).
Now, under the old system I was earning about 450g/week (not including Arena rewards) for 17 weeks = 7,650 gold. People citing 500 gold/week are playing for more than 10 hours/week, and are underestimating their XP rewards under the new system. Plus we'd get 6 Current packs (600g) and a free Legendary (2000g) at expansion launch. So even subtracting that out I'm basically earning 7,500 gold vs. 7,650 (-150g), but I'm getting an additional legendary (2000 gold), an additional epic (500g), 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g), an extra pack (100g), and 9 extra Standard packs (~450g). People are being too dismissive of these freebies. Gold can only buy packs and tickets.
TL;DR
Old System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 10,250 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards
New System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 13,450 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards and Expansion Achievement XP.
Do we know card reveal timing/calendar for either Core or Barrens? I'm assuming a release date of March 23rd for both. They'd usually take this week off from reveals, but they have more than twice as many cards to reveal this season. I'm hoping they do something like release a class/day for the Core set.
Do we know timing on the Reveal Calendar, either for Core or Barrens?
I was really hoping for a UI announcement at BlizzCon. Blizzard games have typically had exceptional UI, but what was wobbly with the release of Battlegrounds completely broke with the addition of Duels, achievements, and the rewards track. Mercenaries makes that Modes screen even more crowded, and do Solo Adventures and Tavern Brawl need to be so front and center? It's past time for the wooden box to be updated and redesigned.
I also want to see some better incentives to get more players participating in Arena and Duels, and I'd be fine with the retirement of Tavern Brawl. Tavern Brawl really only functions to give a boost to players with a weekly pack and a low-pressure mode to complete quests. I'd rather have those time-investment incentives put into Arena and Duels which thrive on a large player base to work. I hope the Mercenaries PvP isn't an afterthought either, which will require its own incentives to get many players participating. The new game modes (and Arena) are great. I want them properly supported.
Sounds like they basically lifted the map interface from StS, but the battle gameplay sounds completely different. Battlegrounds isn't really a card game, it's just an auto-battler where cards are the user interface for communicating stats. This sounds similar in that regard. I hope PvP isn't just an afterthought.
Will there be a page like this for the Core Set to track reveals? I know many of the cards will be old cards, but I'd love to see something like this for when they're confirmed/revealed.
Hyped for the new Malygos (and the retirement of its predecessor). More of a Two-Turn-Kill card now. Amazing draw engine.
Ysera can now easily give you lethal, maybe even an OTK combo with mana discounts, plus infinite value? Super cool.
Straight Deathwing buff. Fantastic.
So far so good. Hyped for the deep dive.
While I think this will be a fun treat for awhile, won't the meta for Classic get solved and stale rather quickly? I'm happy to have the feature as they said this isn't the new game mode, but I'm much more hyped for the new Core set.
Something that I'm sure is too complicated for them to do would be to be able to have different patches matchup against each other. Allow opposing players to have different card restrictions. Basically, how do the best classic decks match-up against current Standard. Shadowstep Leeroy Rogue vs. the current aggro Rogue meta. And then pick a few other points in time when the meta and nerfs were fundamentally different from each other. How do jade decks from Year of the Kracken match-up against the top decks from Year of the Raven. It wouldn't just be wild because you wouldn't have access to all cards for deckbuilding, just those from that patch era.
At the very least I hope they start doing some kind of rotation with Wild. There are so many possibilities with restricted sets and cards even without different patch versions of cards. This would also mean they don't need to nerf or balance Wild, just rotate cards to keep it fresh.
This inspired me to writeup my deck which is very similar to the last entry for Tempo Mage. Since yesterday I've gone 17-7 and hit Diamond-5. I'm curious how it holds up on the road to Legend.
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/22671-phoenix-fireball
When does this go live? I'm holding off on starting a Duels run. Figured it would be 1pm EST but nothing yet.
Please nerf Nitroboost Poison. Thx.
Yeah, disregard my comment above. I'm still on level 35, but I'm much closer to completing it. I thought I'd be promoted a few levels, but I guess it's very heavily weighted to the end.
Hooray! I have held off dusting my Voracious Reader's since Scholomance released including a golden. Good for the meta too.
Really? This is what's been dominating the current meta.
These are decent improvements BUT...
The larger discussions around this topic have really clarified for me the value proposition of Hearthstone. The entire economy is based around being a CCG simulator. I remember when I discovered Hearthstone in 2014 how excited I was by its affordability compared to IRL MTG which I had abandoned over a decade earlier because of cost. There was something satisfying about opening packs and building a collection. It scratched an itch. Six years and thousands of packs later and I could care less about that simulated experience. If I'm paying $45, let alone $80, I want the full game experience. If not on release, then at least halfway through the expansion cycle. Not having a complete set of cards after paying $80 is beyond absurd.
These rewards track improvements are GOOD REFORMS to a BAD SYSTEM. Frankly, MTG was designed to be a rip-off, layered on top of a fantastic game (I can't speak to the MTG Arena economy). The rarity system of cards and incomplete collections are artifacts of a predatory model of manufactured scarcity (literal and figurative). There's no place for it anymore. I only played Runeterra for a month or so, but it seemed to be taking a good approach to limiting card collections for the sake of the meta vs. allowing F2P players to amass a full collection before the next expansion (correct me if I'm wrong). But more and more generous rewards systems simply seem to be ignoring the fact that the game doesn't need to operate via packs at all.
I also think that these rewards track reforms don't go far enough in addressing the player-base for Arena and Heroic Duels. Additional game modes have both a time and gold cost (including Battlegrounds Perks). There needs to be low barriers of entry to play for different game modes. Arena/Duels tickets, and probably generic pack tickets, need to become an official currency. Maybe reward players with a free ticket if they complete all their weekly quests. Be transparent on the XP rewards for playing in these modes. I'm just imagining a system where you knew if you paid $45 for the expansion you could be free to spend your gold on the game modes of your choice instead of miserly scrounging for 40-dust packs in the hopes of a legendary. Duels really hooked me at first, but I'm feeling too punished for a bad-run when I can't earn daily gold. I'm not sure if a 20% decrease in XP requirements really addresses that tension.
I've taken the last couple weeks to log off Hearthstone for the first time in a few years. I've been playing my back-catalog of Steam games, and it's just astounding how far $45, let alone $80 will go with other games. I agree very strongly with the recent assessments that Hearthstone is F2P, but Pay-To-Have-Fun. I'll probably check back in with Hearthstone in a couple weeks when the rewards track gets updated, but I have a hard time seeing myself going back to the level of play I've sustained over the last few years. It's not "fun" unless you invest A LOT of money AND time, and that's not fun.
I still like my original suggestion to nerf Twin Slice. Make Twin Slice cost-1 and give +1. Have Second Slice cost-0 and give +1.
I wish casual duels wasn't a thing and that the barrier of entry was lower for Arena and Duels. And Battlegrounds ($20 a season!). And, with all the talk about the Hearthstone economy, the barrier of entry should be lower for constructed as well. These modes are all at their best when more people are participating. I would describe myself as a casual whale, and I'm done paying for $50 pre-orders three times/year. I don't want to play a CCG simulator, I want to play the game with access to all the features, i.e. cards. They go to great lengths to create unique memes/cards and new modes, and then most people don't even get to enjoy them. I've been playing consistently since just before GvGs release, and I'm planning on taking a LONG break once I hit level 50 this season. Unless the economy gets revamped, including Arena and Duels, I'm probably not coming back next expansion cycle.
Yeah, I've defended the rewards track based on these calculations, and I agree that many people are over-reacting to the value they'll be receiving over the course of an expansion. It's clearly more.
However, as I approach Level 25 (with no Tavern Pass XP Boost) I'm starting to get annoyed. I love Duels and have always been an avid Arena player. These modes cost gold. If I banked 300-450 gold at the start of an expansion (after buying packs), with some careful quest management, I was usually able to play four to five Arenas/week. Now that my levels are over 3,000 experience each, I'm having days where my gold doesn't increase. That.. feels bad, even knowing these calculations. It was nice having that total tick up each day, and maybe going for an extra three wins in ranked to round off another 150. It's somewhat irrational, but the lack of rewards as I get to the higher levels doesn't feel good.
Also, I was awarded an Arena/Duels Ticket for not completing my final Arena Run, was then rewarded one at Level 15, but was only able to redeem one. Something glitched and they're not tracked properly as a currency. Considering some people lost out on a week's worth of quests it's not a huge issue, but the lack of Tickets as a real currency is becoming an issue with Arena and Duels being fun and viable game modes. Then I got a weekly quest for Battlegrounds, a mode I typically ignore, but I had a decent amount of fun. I can't imagine paying $15 every expansion to access its full features.
I remember how disappointed everyone was years ago when Tavern Brawl launched. It sort of had promise, but ended up being a very, very lame game mode. It didn't feel like they had actually developed a new way to play. With Battlegrounds and Duels, they've succeeded. Arena, Duels, and Battlegrounds are at their best when there's broad participation. The barriers to play need to come down. Daily/weekly rewards need to be increased that help drive these players to these game modes. I personally think that completing all your weekly quests should bank you an Arena/Duels ticket ON TOP OF the experience. Allow players to unlock Battlegrounds Perks if they play enough in that mode.
This expansion is unique enough that constructed has a few more weeks of creativity before the meta is solved. At that point, if it takes 5000 experience to earn 150 gold, I'm not going to play much beyond completing my quests. I might even take a loooong break. I want to play Arena and Duels, but the grind to earn entry fees is going to become too high.
Good article. I'll say this much. I do trust that the actual rewards will be greater under this system than the old. I don't think they've been straight lying. But the lack of communication and detailed math is insulting to pretty much any player base in this day and age. I know there's gambling psychology/principles behind a lot of design choices, but you simply can't hide the odds, experience rate, and rewards behind math. The community will figure it out.
And yes, the UI is atrocious. I can't stand Arena, Duels, and Battlegrounds being behind several menus while Tavern Brawl, the least interesting game mode, if it can even be called that, is featured on the main menu. Redesign the menu! Make it bigger! The Journal view is somehow even worse with the Achievements tab being the pinnacle of bad design. UI is usually Blizzard's strongest area which makes this all the more offputting.
I got the Treasure that fills your board with 1/1 copies of a minion. I copied Eys'or from my opponent and ended the turn with seven 7/7 Eys'or's and gained a bunch of experience. Still lost (the competition is fierce, isn't it?!)
I agree. I won't show all my work, but I worked out the XP math for playing ~10 hours/week and finishing all my daily and weekly quests (NOT including expansion achievement XP or bonus event XP) and it put me at Level 72. That means 7,500 gold, 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g value), 7 Current (MDF) packs (100g value), 9 Standard packs, 2 Current Legendaries, and 1 Current Epic. Let's put the Standard pack value at 50g if they're not from the current expansion, a legendary is worth 20 packs of chance or dust (2000g), and an epic is worth 5 packs of chance or dust (500g).
Now, under the old system I was earning about 450g/week (not including Arena rewards) for 17 weeks = 7,650 gold. People citing 500 gold/week are playing for more than 10 hours/week, and are underestimating their XP rewards under the new system. Plus we'd get 6 Current packs (600g) and a free Legendary (2000g) at expansion launch. So even subtracting that out I'm basically earning 7,500 gold vs. 7,650 (-150g), but I'm getting an additional legendary (2000 gold), an additional epic (500g), 2 Arena/Duels tickets (300g), an extra pack (100g), and 9 extra Standard packs (~450g). People are being too dismissive of these freebies. Gold can only buy packs and tickets.
TL;DR
Old System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 10,250 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards
New System @ all quests complete in 10 hours/week for 17 weeks = 13,450 gold value before special events and Arena Rewards and Expansion Achievement XP.