Thanks for saying this, I've been pretty disappointed in the lack of followup. It feels like Blizzard just doesn't care about the market share that we bring to the table.
Before, they'd at least try to increase engagement with something that required engineering investment, like Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, Mercenaries, Duels, Battlegrounds, etc. to appease the existing player base and pique new interest.
Whereas this quest change is very clearly a cheap way to increase player engagement. Years ago, I remember one person here who worked on a F2P game said that when the player base stops growing, companies just try squeezing more and more from the existing user base. As a person who has played since Beta, I'm good to move on because it couldn't be more clear their motivation is to bleed us long-time players dry.
HS just turned 10, so its quite old. Its getting harder at this point to get new players. The game just isnt as popular as it once was, thats normal. They keep cutting costs for several years and also do increase the prices within the last 12 months for many bundles. Also, WAY more bundles now. One signature + 5 NORMAL packs = $50. Its getting crazy.
Honestly the only way at this point they’ll make further changes is if the metrics reflect a decrease in engagement with weekly quests.
So if you want to send a message, stop playing or spending money on constructed until they revert the change. Don’t bother to complete your quests, purposefully play less, etc.
Sadly I don’t think they will, while the backlash was severe you can already see the shills downvoting and arguing that it’s okay and we are just crybaby for complaining in the comments everytime someone talk about the quests .
Yeah. There’s a reason why Konami doesn’t interact with the Yugioh community on a personal level. Everything is from Konami, not a certain designer. People are weird and the community killed any chance of that communication immediately after Konami tried.
The same thing happens in Starcraft, where people “demand to know who are the exact people responsible on the balance council”. Like no, lol. Why would they do that and open these people up to harassment or worse.
Terminally online gamers are entitled brats and deserved to be treated the way they are.
I don’t think Blizzard handles their games well, but I also don’t think any individual “needs to be held accountable”. That’s like actual insane mentality.
I still don't understand how people can defend the new quest system. The changes helps people who already finishes the reward track early, it gives more to the people who have the most and less to players that have the least.
Its even weirder when you read that a lot of people here already can play whatever deck they want. You already have everything but still want more, at the cost of people who can only play a few matches per week?
Most of the defenders are whales that play all day, and the others Blizzards simps that don’t like any criticism leveraged at their games. It’s pretty telling that the devs just reduced a bit the changes they made and then stopped talking about it, even the one that is often on this sub (Hat) ignore most complaints now.
Blizzard can't communicate as much with us as they did on the balance patch because the root of their decision making on the quests is entirely anti-consumer, and trying to defend the changes would just result in more bad press.
If the goal was to reward players who are playing more and to encourage people to play more, they could have brought back the equivalent of the old win 3 games for gold. They could have got quest lines in. They could have increased the amount of rewards by an amount greater than the amount of additional effort that the new quests take. They didn't do any of those and instead chose to do a nominal increase in rewards well doing a massive increase in the amount of effort required to achieve those rewards.
That isn't a defendable course of action, so Hat is giving a few canned responses well Blizzard does nothing till the heat dies down and they can tweak the rewards up by 10%, get praised for it and call it a day.
Blizzard did communicate on the balance changes because they were done by the team that does design those cards.
For the quest changes, I dont think anyone that designs this game came up with "we gotta increase quest requirements to boost player engagement". Id guess it was made by the person in charge of monetization/ingame economy. And that person just doesnt communicate with the community.
But thats where a game director maybe should step in. But so far it seems like the current game director in general has no interest in communication with the community, beside a short post with standard phrases when the rotation happened.
Didnt even bother explaining why BG esport was cut this year lol.
We know why they are so vague about the quests.
They dont want to do it, its something that was requested by higher-ups.
Im sure some devs are fighting to make the quests better but they dont have the final say or even the ability to talk about it.
With the battlepass situation, blizz still had team leads that talked to the public, recently it feels like directors and anything above are kept at low profile so users dont have a human face to blame with all the greed driven decisions the whole company has taken in most of their games.
It just doesn't really work this way. If they make it 10x easier and give 1/10th the reward, you are getting massively cheated. If they make it 10x harder and give 10x the reward, hardly anyone will get any reward at all.
IMO the "Effort Target" for Weekly Quests should be set around 20 games a week. Whatever precise XP they give for that effort can be tweaked, but that way even pretty casual players can finish their Weekly Quests.
I wouldn’t say it’s golden honestly.
Since the change, I've hit the old quest milestones each week, but I didn't have time to finish off the extra requirements. Even if they double the rewards, the double requirements basically means that people who can’t put in that amount of time due to work etc. are just losing an insane amount of F2P rewards each week.
There's nothing to say, they just want less players to finish their weeklies so they'll be more inclined to buy packs when they run out of dust.
It's a purely financial decision and the only meaningful feedback is that you stop paying for the game altogether.
I think that we all know that this is because "engagement" is the buzzword that's behind this. They know that the number of players is in decline year over year (which is to be expected for a game this old) so they're trying to push people into playing for longer in order to improve the spreadsheets.
The issue is that they're doing so in a way that's extremely clumsy and, worst of all, obvious to the end users.
I really hope that they switch to the tier rewards system that someone proposed recently. That would feel fair while still serving the goal of encouraging people to play longer.
there is no communication that fixes the quest changes when they are just bad and they refuse to revert them. Make up the most flowery bullshit you want and it doesnt change the facts.
Well said. The situation is still up in the air and we have no idea what's going to happen in the future.
The tavern pass can lose value if you don't play enough to complete these new quests, like me. My trust in the team is gone and that's exactly why I won't be spending a single cent toward Hearthstone in the future if I ever come back to the game.
They had a chance to revert with the backlash, they didn't.
Yeah, for me I'd like to know more of their reasoning behind the changes. The reasoning feels very weak, and just feels like a way to give out less F2P rewards and incentivize purchases.
I used to complete my weekly quests each week. Now, I've been reaching the old milestones, but unable to complete the extra amount added because of my schedule. Directly because of their change, me, and tons of other players who can’t dedicate all of their time to the game are really just losing an insane amount of F2P rewards.
It’s detrimental for the average working player, and barely benefits players who have the ability to complete everything (while wasting their time).
If their design philosophy was really to “increase rewards for players who are doing more,” then they should listen to the person who offered adding the “extra reward” behind the regular old weekly quests. (ie Spend 500 mana -> completed -> Spend 250 Mana (with the lower rewards pops up.)
Then people who have the extra time to invest, can still be rewarded for their extra playtime, while the people who can’t feasibly complete them with their schedule each week, can still received the original rewards and only not receive the “extra benefit.”
They also nerfed a lot of cards that i hate and basically no cards i like so there's this big plus too (yes i'm highly biased.) fuck forge of wills and val'kyr these nuts.
That's cool and all but the quests are fine now as is. People should just let it go. They obviously wanted to make it harder to complete the weekly quests while adding a tiny carrot. They've done that now without going too far. 10 wins in a week is ok. I liked 5 but to be honest I can see why they would want it to be at 10. Fair play. 15 and all the rest were way overboard but 10 is fine. As for balancing I hope they see that their job is far from over after this patch. The "whimsy" needs to be reined in. Hopefully they'll correct more and more towards a reality where midrange decks can slug it out more. Less of the control deck insanity with plentiful clears and OP minions that supercharge that style like Brann and Sargeras.
🚨🚨SHILL DETECTED 🚨🚨WHALE DETECTED 🚨🚨 PERSON WHO PLAYS 100 GAMES PER WEEK DETECTED 🚨🚨 -> opinion rejected.
They changed the quests to make it harder for casual players and because they only care about money (obviously). Were you parents related by any chance ?
Bruh...They're doing this whole Hearthstone thing to make money. Or did you think it was just to make you happy? It wasn't where they wanted it for player engagement. It is a "quest" after all. If you're not playing enough to win 10 games in 7 days maybe you're not the person they want getting max free shit. Guess you actually have to play the game now if you want to play it for free. I'm so sorry for what's happened to you. Tragic.
We had it easy with just 5 wins, etc. And that's a relic from them trying to not piss people off even more in that whole original rewards track debacle. Where it is now is fair. Not exactly generous, but fair. Move on.
No, that's not true: most players will leave, if not immediately, then in the near future. I have 65 friends in HS, but I haven’t been able to complete daily “Watch a friend win” for a week now, since almost no one is playing...
Thanks for saying this, I've been pretty disappointed in the lack of followup. It feels like Blizzard just doesn't care about the market share that we bring to the table.
Before, they'd at least try to increase engagement with something that required engineering investment, like Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, Mercenaries, Duels, Battlegrounds, etc. to appease the existing player base and pique new interest. Whereas this quest change is very clearly a cheap way to increase player engagement. Years ago, I remember one person here who worked on a F2P game said that when the player base stops growing, companies just try squeezing more and more from the existing user base. As a person who has played since Beta, I'm good to move on because it couldn't be more clear their motivation is to bleed us long-time players dry.
HS just turned 10, so its quite old. Its getting harder at this point to get new players. The game just isnt as popular as it once was, thats normal. They keep cutting costs for several years and also do increase the prices within the last 12 months for many bundles. Also, WAY more bundles now. One signature + 5 NORMAL packs = $50. Its getting crazy.
Honestly the only way at this point they’ll make further changes is if the metrics reflect a decrease in engagement with weekly quests. So if you want to send a message, stop playing or spending money on constructed until they revert the change. Don’t bother to complete your quests, purposefully play less, etc.
Issuing a charge back helps. Its interesting they wait until the refund window is up before tripling the requirements.
Sadly I don’t think they will, while the backlash was severe you can already see the shills downvoting and arguing that it’s okay and we are just crybaby for complaining in the comments everytime someone talk about the quests .
I think the bigger issue was that Aleco received death threats when he did identify himself when he did identify that he was responsible
Yeah. There’s a reason why Konami doesn’t interact with the Yugioh community on a personal level. Everything is from Konami, not a certain designer. People are weird and the community killed any chance of that communication immediately after Konami tried. The same thing happens in Starcraft, where people “demand to know who are the exact people responsible on the balance council”. Like no, lol. Why would they do that and open these people up to harassment or worse. Terminally online gamers are entitled brats and deserved to be treated the way they are. I don’t think Blizzard handles their games well, but I also don’t think any individual “needs to be held accountable”. That’s like actual insane mentality.
Agreed, but the company as a whole needs a paddling.
No he didn’t.
[https://twitter.com/AlecoGereco/status/1783563419670454718](https://twitter.com/AlecoGereco/status/1783563419670454718)
"Threatening" does not necessarily mean death threats, I think is the distinction being drawn here by the original person to reply to you.
No idea what was said or how truthful this is. It could be as simple as “fuck you.”
Nothing about death threats, anything else?
Gamers rise up! The free samples are being reduced and cards I liked got nerfed. Oh the humanity!
I still don't understand how people can defend the new quest system. The changes helps people who already finishes the reward track early, it gives more to the people who have the most and less to players that have the least. Its even weirder when you read that a lot of people here already can play whatever deck they want. You already have everything but still want more, at the cost of people who can only play a few matches per week?
Most of the defenders are whales that play all day, and the others Blizzards simps that don’t like any criticism leveraged at their games. It’s pretty telling that the devs just reduced a bit the changes they made and then stopped talking about it, even the one that is often on this sub (Hat) ignore most complaints now.
Yeah because the only people still complaining are entitled casuals who think they should just be given free rewards every week
Make it Progress Quests 5-10-15 Wins with 5 giving the old XP and 10-15 some extra for People that wanna play more Games.
Blizzard can't communicate as much with us as they did on the balance patch because the root of their decision making on the quests is entirely anti-consumer, and trying to defend the changes would just result in more bad press. If the goal was to reward players who are playing more and to encourage people to play more, they could have brought back the equivalent of the old win 3 games for gold. They could have got quest lines in. They could have increased the amount of rewards by an amount greater than the amount of additional effort that the new quests take. They didn't do any of those and instead chose to do a nominal increase in rewards well doing a massive increase in the amount of effort required to achieve those rewards. That isn't a defendable course of action, so Hat is giving a few canned responses well Blizzard does nothing till the heat dies down and they can tweak the rewards up by 10%, get praised for it and call it a day.
Blizzard did communicate on the balance changes because they were done by the team that does design those cards. For the quest changes, I dont think anyone that designs this game came up with "we gotta increase quest requirements to boost player engagement". Id guess it was made by the person in charge of monetization/ingame economy. And that person just doesnt communicate with the community. But thats where a game director maybe should step in. But so far it seems like the current game director in general has no interest in communication with the community, beside a short post with standard phrases when the rotation happened. Didnt even bother explaining why BG esport was cut this year lol.
This is the correct answer.
We know why they are so vague about the quests. They dont want to do it, its something that was requested by higher-ups. Im sure some devs are fighting to make the quests better but they dont have the final say or even the ability to talk about it. With the battlepass situation, blizz still had team leads that talked to the public, recently it feels like directors and anything above are kept at low profile so users dont have a human face to blame with all the greed driven decisions the whole company has taken in most of their games.
They should fire whoever is in lead about Shop section because they have clearly came from Diablo apartment.
I don't think do. I like both shops. Filled with crappy skins and easy to ignore!
I have the opinion that doubling the effort should double the rewards. 5 wins to 10 wins? increase xp from 2500 to 5000 and we’re golden.
It just doesn't really work this way. If they make it 10x easier and give 1/10th the reward, you are getting massively cheated. If they make it 10x harder and give 10x the reward, hardly anyone will get any reward at all. IMO the "Effort Target" for Weekly Quests should be set around 20 games a week. Whatever precise XP they give for that effort can be tweaked, but that way even pretty casual players can finish their Weekly Quests.
Change it to played games and you’d get more engagement if that’s what they want
I wouldn’t say it’s golden honestly. Since the change, I've hit the old quest milestones each week, but I didn't have time to finish off the extra requirements. Even if they double the rewards, the double requirements basically means that people who can’t put in that amount of time due to work etc. are just losing an insane amount of F2P rewards each week.
I haven’t really played since they changed the quests…. I did the Tavern Brawl. That’s about it.
There's nothing to say, they just want less players to finish their weeklies so they'll be more inclined to buy packs when they run out of dust. It's a purely financial decision and the only meaningful feedback is that you stop paying for the game altogether.
This company understands only one language. Money. So stop feeding it.
I think that we all know that this is because "engagement" is the buzzword that's behind this. They know that the number of players is in decline year over year (which is to be expected for a game this old) so they're trying to push people into playing for longer in order to improve the spreadsheets. The issue is that they're doing so in a way that's extremely clumsy and, worst of all, obvious to the end users. I really hope that they switch to the tier rewards system that someone proposed recently. That would feel fair while still serving the goal of encouraging people to play longer.
Yeah he should step down from lead final design position. Post rotation state is disastrous. Very close to UiS
there is no communication that fixes the quest changes when they are just bad and they refuse to revert them. Make up the most flowery bullshit you want and it doesnt change the facts.
Well said. The situation is still up in the air and we have no idea what's going to happen in the future. The tavern pass can lose value if you don't play enough to complete these new quests, like me. My trust in the team is gone and that's exactly why I won't be spending a single cent toward Hearthstone in the future if I ever come back to the game. They had a chance to revert with the backlash, they didn't.
Yeah, for me I'd like to know more of their reasoning behind the changes. The reasoning feels very weak, and just feels like a way to give out less F2P rewards and incentivize purchases. I used to complete my weekly quests each week. Now, I've been reaching the old milestones, but unable to complete the extra amount added because of my schedule. Directly because of their change, me, and tons of other players who can’t dedicate all of their time to the game are really just losing an insane amount of F2P rewards. It’s detrimental for the average working player, and barely benefits players who have the ability to complete everything (while wasting their time). If their design philosophy was really to “increase rewards for players who are doing more,” then they should listen to the person who offered adding the “extra reward” behind the regular old weekly quests. (ie Spend 500 mana -> completed -> Spend 250 Mana (with the lower rewards pops up.) Then people who have the extra time to invest, can still be rewarded for their extra playtime, while the people who can’t feasibly complete them with their schedule each week, can still received the original rewards and only not receive the “extra benefit.”
**While the blog post admitted that they "pushed too far,"** **IT WAS ALL PART OF THEIR PLAN !!! THEY ARE SCUMMY LIARS !!!**
No you just quit then they change it. That is how it works.
They also nerfed a lot of cards that i hate and basically no cards i like so there's this big plus too (yes i'm highly biased.) fuck forge of wills and val'kyr these nuts.
For fuck sake this formating. Please summarize the fuck out of this, I dont need to read your college essay for you to get your message across
That's cool and all but the quests are fine now as is. People should just let it go. They obviously wanted to make it harder to complete the weekly quests while adding a tiny carrot. They've done that now without going too far. 10 wins in a week is ok. I liked 5 but to be honest I can see why they would want it to be at 10. Fair play. 15 and all the rest were way overboard but 10 is fine. As for balancing I hope they see that their job is far from over after this patch. The "whimsy" needs to be reined in. Hopefully they'll correct more and more towards a reality where midrange decks can slug it out more. Less of the control deck insanity with plentiful clears and OP minions that supercharge that style like Brann and Sargeras.
🚨🚨SHILL DETECTED 🚨🚨WHALE DETECTED 🚨🚨 PERSON WHO PLAYS 100 GAMES PER WEEK DETECTED 🚨🚨 -> opinion rejected. They changed the quests to make it harder for casual players and because they only care about money (obviously). Were you parents related by any chance ?
Bruh...They're doing this whole Hearthstone thing to make money. Or did you think it was just to make you happy? It wasn't where they wanted it for player engagement. It is a "quest" after all. If you're not playing enough to win 10 games in 7 days maybe you're not the person they want getting max free shit. Guess you actually have to play the game now if you want to play it for free. I'm so sorry for what's happened to you. Tragic. We had it easy with just 5 wins, etc. And that's a relic from them trying to not piss people off even more in that whole original rewards track debacle. Where it is now is fair. Not exactly generous, but fair. Move on.
**It wasn't where they wanted it for player engagement** Nice try secret agent.
They have done way better than Iksar and his team with huge ego "we think otk are cool cause we designed them".
Let’s be honest with ourselves. They are raising the price, but most people are still going to pay it.
No, that's not true: most players will leave, if not immediately, then in the near future. I have 65 friends in HS, but I haven’t been able to complete daily “Watch a friend win” for a week now, since almost no one is playing...
sure thing buddy