I think whether or not this is better for F2P players rides on how much playing is really required to hit level 150.
My other issue with it is that the system forces players to earn/open packs as they go, while being able to save far less for the next expansion’s launch. I see this is a pushing preorders on folks who could have easily saved ~10k gold and done a bulk opening on day 1 for free. Now you have to spread your collection progress across an expansion to a degree.
Not necessarily the worst thing, so long as the rewards total to more than they do now, but it’s definitely going to make some waves.
6 Likes
A battle pass would kill this game for a player like me. Requiring a grind and replacing quests. 
Let casual and poor players enjoy your game Blizzard, what’s wrong with you. You don’t need this, the system you have is good enough right now.
Agreed - I even suspect some heave rogue waves.
Getting 14 packs over 4 month will likely trigger FOMO… but maybe, juuuust maybe there’s mid-season “special offers” for those with an itchy credit card?
Honi soit qui mal y pense
On a more serious note, it really depends on the pressure you might feel with a battle pass active. HS is, after all, a self-proclaimed casual game first and foremost, not some uber-commitment time-scheduled shift system in a multiplayer game.
Personally, I play it about every other day, doing quests and trying to climb a bit on ladder - netting 4000-6000+ gold between each set and bying either small or big prepurchase. Not a whale, more like - casual Dolphin?
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Someone on reddit got the survey and posted screenshots of the progression track. Blizzard’s suggested price was $30.00 for the pass every 4 months. If they decide to go this route I’ll definitely be uninstalling.
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That would be for the “Vip Card” Battle Pass. There’s also the free one you’ll automagical aquire with day 1 of expansion (I think?). The sheet at outof.cards shows the difference resp. bonus for paid pass, though I’m not sure from where fluxflashor got the numbers for the paid pass perks listed below it:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/1715-blizzard-adding-a-battle-pass-to-hearthstone-survey-highlights-alternate-art-for-the-coin-new-hero-skins-paid-leveling-rewards
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From the article, the Paid Battlepass Track would also include the Battlegrounds perks (currently $20), so in comparison you pay $10 for 2 skins (Jaina & Rexxar), a card back and alternate Coin art (that you have to grind to unlock).
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D’oh, yeah I should have mentioned that, thanks for the clarification. The free pass doesn’t look all that great to me either though. Just a big grind.
To me nothing about this looks good.
When new expacs come out, I’ll play a lot more because everything is fresh, after a month I’m back to playing every couple of days. If they replace quests with Exp. I’d feel way behind by the time the next expac comes out. This whole thing feels like they’re pushing FOMO on the players.
I really want to know how quickly the experience is earned. That’s going to be a big deal with this, since if we accumulate a good amount of XP per match, this system lets players be a LOT more flexible with their time.
That whole “gotta log in and reroll and at least play some matches every three days” thing would be completely gone. If you have maybe one or two blocks of time to play each week, you could theoretically max out your XP during those times and not even worry about HS the entire rest of the week.
Need numbers!
1 Like
From the outof.cards article:
A rough maximum of experience earned per week is stated to be 9000. With a total XP count of 145000 being required for Level 100, a free to play pass player would have to max out their experience for 16 weeks - roughly the full 4 months.
It does not sound promising to me.
Needing to max out your XP every week is fine -IF- it doesn’t take a buttload of matches to do so.
That’s a big if.
If it’s anything like maxing out your gold… yeah. No.
4 Likes
Is that the ‘‘spell locked’’ feature shown in the roadmap this year in phase 2 ? Talk about a disappointment.
This locked feature is supposed to be a new mode, they hinted at it last season.
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So how many peeps ya think are going to be asking questions about this in the upcoming AMA? And I wonder how truthful or tight lipped Blizz will be.
from just playing you get
- 18 Packs for the Latest Expansion
- 14 Packs for a Prior Standard Expansion
- 4 Arena Tickets
- 2 Legendary Cards
- 2 Epic Cards
- A choice of a Hero Skin (unknown list)
- Expansion related Card Back
- 3990 Gold
you wont be able to build every deck day one of an expansion, but most f2p cant do that anyways.
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That’s all nice and good… if you can earn it by “just playing” a reasonable amount of time. There’s a big difference between the time you need, say, to keep up with daily quests and the time you need to max out gold earnings every day. At some point in that continuum, the amount of effort necessary to earn the free rewards becomes too much to justify it given the rewards.
4 Likes
I really hope they get hammered on this in the next AMA so that even if they don’t give a definitive answer on how many games played it takes to max out your weely XP, they at least take into consideration keeping it a moderate/low amount because of how concerned folks are.
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adding this on top of the daily quests would be good
but if they replace them it wont be you can earn way more than 3990 gold in 4 months from dailies alone
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Meanwhile the gap between F2P and Paying players widens.
18 pks instead of the 80 I can get now
14 pks of a prior expac. Why would I want that?
2 Legends that are unable to disenchant and what if I get Legends that suck? I can work around that now but not with this.
2 epics… big whoop
Hero skin and card back I don’t really care about.
3,990 gold. Yeah add the 18 pks to that and I’m still out 30 pks.
Like I said, doesn’t look good at all.
if you already just play for the basic rewards (like playing 3 games every 3 days to complete quests) you arent getting maimum rewards now and wont get maximum with battle pass. for those that play alot and reach the gold limit every day will overall get better rewards than 100 gold
What I’d like to see, and of course we never will, is progressive rewards for playing arena…even just a ranking system to arena.