[bluepost] Source: Rewards Track Update Coming Soon

Since the launch of the new progression system, we’ve been listening to player feedback and carefully reviewing gameplay data from the first few weeks while designing a variety of updates to meaningfully address the elements that feel too slow, not rewarding, or too difficult to complete. We’re committed to getting this right. Our intent has been, and continues to be, to provide more rewards and a better progression experience than the previous system, and we’re sorry that our initial implementation missed that mark in a few important areas.

We’re ready to detail a series of changes that we will begin releasing later this month, and we will continue working to make the system even better over time. In this update, we will be adjusting or removing quests that players have let us know are too difficult to complete, reducing the amount of XP required to complete the 50-level rewards track by nearly 20%, adding two gold rewards on the track, and redesigning the bonus levels after level 50. We’re also planning a one-time log-in reward of 5 Darkmoon Faire packs and 500 Gold beginning on December 15th, which will be available until January 18th.

We want to make it clear that we aren’t treating the new rewards and progression systems as static, unchanging game elements, but rather a system that we can continually iterate on and improve over time. More enhancements will be coming to the rewards track in the future.

Here are the changes we are making later this month, as well as a quick look into the discussions we’re having for changes that will be coming early next year.

We’re adjusting a variety of daily and weekly quests to make them easier to complete.

We now have a large amount of player feedback and data based on the first few weeks of daily and weekly quest completion, and we’re making numerous changes to improve quests overall.

• We’re removing weekly quests that require Legendary cards and Arena runs. These quests are more difficult than intended for players due to the investment necessary. Frankly, these were a mistake and we shouldn’t have included them to begin with. They’ll no longer be in the quest pool after the update. Please note that if they are among your active quests after the update, they will not be automatically removed, but you can reroll them for a different quest.

• We’re changing the weekly quest “Win 7 Games of Ranked Play Mode” to “Win 5 Games of Ranked Play Mode.” This quest, as a guaranteed weekly quest, feels like it requires too much effort to complete. Adjusting the win requirement will ensure that a larger number of players will complete this weekly quest and keep up with the rewards.

• Tavern Brawls and Battlegrounds will now contribute to quest progress. Tavern Brawls and Battlegrounds will reward progress for any daily or weekly quests that they should naturally apply to. This should allow more flexibility in how to complete quests and make the rewards more consistent with previous gold earnings. For example, you’ll now be able to complete a quest like “Play Three Games as Priest, Rogue, or Warlock” by playing Tavern Brawls, and quests that require you to play Beasts, for example, can be completed by playing Beasts in Battlegrounds.

• We’re making small tweaks to certain quests. Some quests simply aren’t working as well as we think they should or are harder to complete than intended. For example, the quest “Play 50 Corrupt Cards” had a couple of issues making it too hard to complete. Now, Corrupted cards will properly count toward progress of this quest. We’re also reducing the requirement to 30 Corrupt Cards. These changes should make completing the quest much easier.

• All 800 XP daily quests will now reward 900 XP. We want to make quests feel more rewarding, so we’re increasing XP for daily quests so you can earn to your next rewards more quickly. Our hope is to make every quest feel like it rewards you for your time appropriately, and we’ll continue to make changes as needed.

We’re reducing the amount of XP needed to reach certain levels in the rewards track.

We’ve heard your feedback: higher levels of the reward track just take too much XP to reach. We originally included event reward XP when calculating our intended cadence of rewards. We’ve rethought this and recognize that the rewards track should stand on its own and not require event XP bonuses, making rewards predictable and consistent across an expansion. We will still have in-game events, of course, but they will remain consistent with our existing approach to event rewards instead of rewarding bonus XP for the rewards track.

We’re reducing the requirements of the current rewards track by a total of 37,000 XP (nearly 20%), which will make mid-to-late levels easier to reach and adjust for the absence of XP events. After this change, you’ll see that the XP requirement for a variety of levels will be lower and progression through levels will be faster. This is one step to ensure that progress through the rewards track feels consistent and doesn’t hit unusually slow periods of progress. The upcoming changes to daily and weekly quests should also support more rapid progress through these levels.

After this change is implemented, your existing earned XP value will be retained, so upon your next login you may see additional progress through levels based on your current XP total. Please review your rewards track to see what new rewards you may be able to claim.

We’re adding more gold rewards to certain levels of the rewards track.

We’re adding 50 gold to the current rewards for levels 27 and 30. This is a simple change based on the rewards for those levels feeling especially underwhelming, and this helps us inject more gold into the rewards track to address feedback about slower gold earnings.

We’re adjusting rewards track bonus levels to provide steadier gold income.

We’re redesigning the bonus rewards after completing levels 1-50. Player feedback highlighted how these bonus levels took too much time to earn, leading to long play sessions between rewards. The maximum bonus level is now 350, up from 150, and we’re splitting the XP and rewards across these levels. Each level beginning at level 51 will now take less XP to complete and reward 50 gold. After this change, you’ll see more rapid progress through these levels, though your earnings for each level will be smaller (as the XP and rewards have been split across 200 more levels). This will help players earn gold without an unusually high level of effort. We’ll be watching closely to ensure this gets players more predictable gold earnings.

What’s next?

As we said earlier, these will not be our final changes to Hearthstone’s rewards and progression. Like with all content and systems within the game, our intent is always to release content, monitor feedback and data, and make the right choices for our players. We knew this would be a new and complex system that required iteration, and we are committed to short-term changes and a long-term vision to make this a fun and rewarding part of Hearthstone. We also want to strike a balance between making changes quickly and ensuring that we get things right, and we’re taking additional time past this point to plan the next round of updates that we would like to implement in the future.

We have some ideas about tweaking the 1-50 experience to make progression feel even better for players. We will keep working on this system to get it right, and we will share more information as we finalize our future plans. We’re thankful and fortunate to have such a passionate community, and your constructive feedback is always heard.

Ben Lee, Game Director [/bluepost]