how certain functions of the game works, e.g.
the rewards track
exp accumulation
daily quests
Going deeper, aspect where such function can be re-designed to reduce fatigue (burnout) from players and makes the game more interesting.
Any personal views/ideas to share?
Are you saying you would like the old system back? I know i would 100% not like that system to return and very much enjoy the ease of which i can utilize the new systems.
Nope. Progress is achieved looking forward.
How much more do you want? You can already be FTP by just buying a pass each expansion and playing the game.
Yes:: dev reevaluate! Long time 5 dollar!
So youâre not free to play 
But you can actually be free to play without it. You just have to accept that you wonât be able to play every single competitive deck and youâll have to sacrifice some classes, at least at the start
You didnât catch the point.
Games needs to âcatch upâ with the time as it ages.
How else did the New pass changed, from the pass at launch, from the previous no pass? if we donât improve?
Can you give some of your ideas? How exactly do you think it should be reworked?
Have a free card rotation (like League does with their free champ rotation)
Have Legendary Wildcards that can âDiscoverâ a Legendary minion of your choice.
This would help F2P/returning players get more value out of their fewer legendary openings. Itâs easier than ever to collect a majority of legendaries each set for those who buy a pre-order/Tavern Pass but that opportunity isnât available to everyone.
Nowadays it feels like you need many specific legendaries or youâre missing out.
Eg: With my collection I am missing only 2 TITANS cards. And one of them is Odyn. Didnât open it, didnât craft it, probably should have but you donât play Control Warrior without it. Instead I crafted Amitus and The Primus lol while trying out some other decks.
I shouldnât have to feel like I need to craft all the remaining legendaries from a set just because thatâs how I rolled in those packs, some cards I rarely play, like Flame Behemoth and Kologarn
I donât have any original ideas.
Using HS as example, the legendary duplicate protection was one of such improvements.
I seen other games consistently make such improvements. (Avoids reference other games due to CoC)
I believe anniversary events is a good avenue to explore, where currently it feels lacklustre.
I mean, maybe itâs freemium but im sometimes tavern pass f2p as well. The economy boost isnât honestly too major over f2p.
(Maybe instead of every 3-5 f2p legends you'd have without it, you'd have 1-2 random ones and 10 skins instead.)
I mostly buy it for the skins tbh if itâs a good series.
( And sometimes, maybe 1 sometimes usable legendary. (Ex: Korrak vs Alganon) )
But i mean, thereâs a core fundamental issue with dust/gold economy for f2p. Even though itâs certainly better than itâs been, hearthstone feels the most fun when you can experiment, play different decks, or have 2-3 options to que with. It keeps things more fresh than spamming 1 deck over and over for 1000 games imho.
Problem is, you donât really ever have the dust to ever do that (sustainably f2p) in standard.
While playing standard, it can be so easy to sink 2k-8k dust into a budget list thatâs dead before you even see a return⌠it can get pricy to keep up with standard. Most people only can afford to play maybe 1-2 good tier decks in standard at a time.
For instance, if we assume the average player might reach level 100-140 on the reward track off quests alone. That might be 5000-6500 gold.
Lets modestly say that the f2p wants 40 50-70 packs to get a basic common/rare collection, and 2k for a miniset. Thatâs -7k-9k gold right there on a⌠5k-6.5k budget.
That is now negative -2k of resources. Okay, lets just snap our fingers and say due to magic, you maybe end up, with 1000-1500 spare dust. Maybe from ranked rewards or dust nerfs.
Now Consider how many decks can commonly cost anywhere between 5-8k on the mid end, 8-16k on the high end, and 18k-28k dust on the âDEAR GOD why is renathal/pally making every deck 20-28k dust!â eras or / 8-12+ legendary metas.
Since a average quest only f2p might only get like 1.5k dust per 4 months outside of nerfs⌠You can imagine how infeasible paying 12,800 dust to craft 8 legendaries to play one of those old 20k dust pally/hunter decks coulda been.
So the costs in standard could easily lock people in standard to playing their one and only deck. And when you can only play one deck, you might get a skewed view of rock being op because it beats you 80% of the time, and paper being okay since you can only play scissors.
Many standard players are sometimes known to resort dust all cards from other classes, or from wild, and lock themselves into one deck/mode.
Then when their one class is bad, or 2 years have passed, they might end up locking themselves hostage to a class/format they loved before, but now no longer enjoy.
I do feel the modern revised reward system is, in terms of gold, probably gold for gold better for most than the old one. But itâs no denying that the game, has gotten much more expensive.
Going from 9 classes with 1 legend, to 11 classes, with 2 legends, with often so many being powerful to the point some decks run 5-8 (8k-13k dust worth)⌠Doesnât do much good for the already strained f2p economy.
The game is getting more expensive, not the rewards. And i do feel like the natural income stream runs out a bit after quests.
Your time playing/afking hearthstone after quests is only worth 10 cents a hr, even in most other games, f2p might still offer 1-3$ a hr in ingame purchasing power like osrs bonds/etc. But itâd still be meager to a 15-40$ a hr job. Where that 10 cents a hr, might be a fraction or less than half of what youâd earn in a minute at even the lowest paying job.
Thing is though. Canât you but help wonder if itâs by design? Most other games, spending 20-60$ on a game you own for life would be plenty, heck even a lot of triple AAAs might go for 2.5$-20$. Iâve seen Rdr2 and witcher and portal 2 and l4d2 even go on sale for 99 cents to 7.5$. Meanwhile even modest tavern pass purchases even skipping 1-3 expacs, can still add up to 20$->80$. Even if youâre only purchasing a third of them.
Closing notes
o Modern rewards are better than the past, but the game is more expensive too.
o The average f2p, getting 100-140 levels off quests alone, might only have 5k-6.5k spare gold to spend.
- Miniset takes 2k, 40 packs for a basic common/rare collection takes 4k. That might leave you negative -1k to +1.5k dust to craft with.
- If a deck costs 5-10k to craft. But a average f2p might only get 1.5k extra dust per expac (if any)⌠You might have to spend 6-12 months collecting the 5k-10k extra dust. To craft a deck that lasts a single month.
- Hearthstone is most fun when you can play multiple decks. But itâs just not always sustainable (in standard). And maybe itâs by design to make you spend $$$ to shell out.
o Ideas like loaner decks every 3 months (undustable or not), or wildcards (Pick your legendaries/epic of choice) could sound fun.
o But Itâs a fair question of whether or not modern actibliz$ even would want to give us anything though. Ow1 had consumer friendly practices. Ow2 took it away.
Tl;dr: We do get more stuff from the new system than the old. But itâs still drip fed.
Thing is⌠you have to be quite careful with the stuff you give out for free, people get spoiled very easily and demand more and more. I don´t play HS for long (only since Sunken City) so I don´t know how it was before, but I think those special events like we have now are fairly new (since Nathria maybe)? And as a F2P myself I love that kind of events - you have to put some effort to get some fair prizes like free packs and hero skins. An it seems they do that more often now - we have one right now, before not long time ago it was for Twist and before was event for new expansion. It is like three free events in two monts, seems decent to me.
Yeah i get long winded sometimes, but the game does seem more rewarding. Itâs just like super easy to see how you could get sucked into spending thousands of dollars on a mobile game here and there when 20-69.99$ all at once might give you sticker shock.
I even had to correct some calculations since i found out f2ps might even go negative in some areas. I thought 40 packs was a complete rare collection.
Turns out it might actually be 50-70⌠Which might put a 6.5k gold/expac f2p in 2000 gold of negative debt if they just want a basic common rare+miniset collection⌠oops.
It really does highlight how dependent we are upon dust nerfs and packs/ranked rewards for dust economy to function. Since literally without them, you literally go 2000 gold short of being able to collect even all pauper rares, get much dust to craft with, or a lot.
Iâm thankful to sit on a hoard and know how to fling my resources. And the new events are nice. But it really does highlight how mobile games could easily bait you into spending 100$s without even noticing it. A few dollars at a time.
That where everyoneâs opinions matters.
Some may feel adequate, while some feels lacking.
Before I left the game, I felt the reward is adequate if not more. But, the process to acquire them are quite tedious or ârestrictiveâ (e.g. play certain cards, modes, etc that is not your liking)
The part I felt Dev has done well is consistently create new contents, but lacking in improving the other parts e.g. QoL. (or slow to implement)
E.g. the mass pack opening function implementing after how many years from launch?
QoL has no immediate revenue attached to it thatâs why it is last in the development process. The first thing any exec asks whenever you propose a change is âHow is this making us any moneyâ. I say that not to defend Blizzard and their milking and diming just to state the obvious corporate policy.
So yeah, that is why it took ages to implement 9 more deck slots yet we get a new skin and a new Diamond/signature every other week.
One thing i would really like is to have a revision on ladder rewards on the high side.
Particularly about the packs and cards given.
People getting to legend really not need âeven more cardsâ, they need a trophy reward.
It would be really better if people got a signature legendary on the legend chest even if at cost of cutting most other prizes.
Itâs kinda past time to stop the participation prizes politics on ladder.
And the way this makes money for blizzard is by getting more engagement.
Honestly yeah, the mix of more cards to play with, (undustable or not), and the balance of f2p vs p2p is a tricky one.
I think everyone, all for one, especially consumers all benefit from better f2p practices. But itâs a bit paradoxial since sometimes it can seem like f2p or companies interests can at times align for profit, yet be completely divergent.
Take that unity scandal where they wanted to charge like 20 cents a install for instance. It doesnât sound like much, but something that sounded good to unity (make more money), sounded terrible to nearly every game developer who were worried they might become like 100k a year in debt, for releasing a game made for free.
And might even drive developers to deleting successful games, because the unity fee of 100,000$s-500,000$s would exceed the 0$->70,000$ of revenue.
Hearthstone definitely seems more fun/fresh when you can afford to play or rotate 2-3 decks, (even meta/diverse/good at it or not). But we saw ow2 remove ow1âs user friendlier practices, even removing previously hated 1$ lootboxes with dupe protection to sell the same skins that used to be free for 20$.
Even twist, a mode lots of people asked about for years, runs into massive problems about people complaining about how nobody can afford to spend 100-800$s on a mode thatâll rotate in a month, and only let them ladder half the time.
Some people were saying that we coulda seen more deck diversity by giving people free packs for the sets, or having a twist core set of most of the commons/rares/X for people to use. But profit was sometimes listed as a reason against for anonymous blizz claimers on reddit. (bunk or not), we did see twist struggle to have problems with monetization. And although we canât really know or check claims. Does someone saying akin to âBobby isnât gonna pay me or approve me to suggest giving things away for free! My boss doesnât want cheaper packs, we have to hit revenue goals!â
We canât really know, but i do kinda feel like the day we shifted from having blizz make games mindlessly addictive and fun, to sometimes feeling like second jobs you had to pay to work at. Was a day we kinda shifted from mindlessly addictive fun to sometimes chore in WoW though.
And Blizz shifted from a game company, by gamers, for Fun, TO a for profit company. With games as just the product that made money, fun sometimes as a afterthought and sc3 scrapped and games like wow/diablo/ow2 turned into money farming mode kinda seemed bleh.
Still though, i mean every single golden hook needs a catch. Hearthstone hasnât been the worst blizzard franchise about it, it can still easily get prohibitively expensive, (200$ for a 28k dust renathal/ pally deck anyone?).
But i mean, i donât exactly imagine the hearthstone devs logging in. Twirling around a evil mustache⌠and going. âToday⌠I will give away 2 free event packs⌠and do balance changes⌠With my evil 4d chess plan to create future gambling addicts⌠MWUHAHAHA!â XD.
Still, could be awesome to see more cards given out, disenchantable or not. Loaner decks, Wildcards. Maybe like a mtg drafting style system where you could literally enter with 5 packs. Build a 15 card deck picking and passing cards along. And add 5 more cards each win with a card buffer.
Drafting has worked before in other games and itâs like a good way to balance a natural trading/hoarding system. You could alternate between collecting all the most valuable cards (epics, rares, etc), or just what you wanted.
It didnât technically create more value, but it solved 2 problems at once, letting people pick a balance of getting cards they wanted, while being able to build a powerful deck you wanted and earning more cards and stomping epic collectors. Win win for everyone, kinda like psuedo pack trading too. Or at least, a âget what you want from a pack of 15â kinda deal.
QoL affects attraction/retention rates of player indirectly.
HS burnout happens eventually, and QoL, etc can balance out the effect.
As such, if the Dev are overly focus on contents, the game can feel somewhat âstagnantâ.
Views?
This is one of the aspect I like to discuss.
Solution isnât simply giving a card or 2,or some token rewards.
E.g. Battleground was an indirect dev where players can take a break from the usual constructed. It inject some freshness into HS.
Before poster mistaken me jumping from game modes to QoL haphazardly, I like to refer the topic towards a more open ended discussion on where that freshness can come from.
I donât know that this is always true.
Lessons forgotten are lessons unlearned.
I am aware that QoL is important to a degree in the playerâs enjoyment of the game. But what I am saying is it is low priority for the product creator because of the indirectness.
And as to giving away cards: since 2016 the amount of new cards we get every year has almost doubled so even tho the current rewards track is better to whatever came before the overall situation of a F2P player is worse, especially if they are a casual player.
New content is a way to freshen the playerâs experience but more cards equals more expensive game so itâs a double edged sword.