The Hearthstone battle pass fix proposed by Blizzard is being deployed as a hotfix, but it doesn't address the Tavern Pass' biggest issues, and fans are reacting on social media to express their displeasure with the changes. Hearthstone is currently in the midst of its first full week with Madness at the Darkmoon Faire available, and while the set has introduced many exciting changes and powerful cards into the mix, it's been largely overshadowed by prevalent issues with the Hearthstone Tavern Pass system.
For those unfamiliar, Tavern Pass is the Hearthstone battle pass equivalent, offering players a reward system and progression tracker similar to live service games like Apex Legends. The Tavern Pass replaced Hearthstone's previous quest system and was intended to provide players with more gold (the game's free resource) and extra packs, giving fans incentive to grind out daily play to achieve better rewards. Players ran the numbers, however, and discovered that the Hearthstone Tavern Pass actually effectively rewarded less to most players, and would introduce an incredible pressure on players to grind for hours each day to reach the end of it before a new season began and reset the entire process.
Blizzard acknowledged these issues earlier in the week and has now listed the changes coming to the Hearthstone battle pass system in a Blizzard forum post, and players aren't happy. The proposed changes to the Hearthstone battle pass system address one minor issue in terms of rewards for progression, upping the amount players earn by a fairly significant amount - three changes represent an entire pack's worth extra, while two are equivalent to two extra packs. However, they're buried towards the end of the progression for each season, and don't address the bigger issue players have continued to identify: the progression system itself is way too much of a grind, and needs overhauls to XP earning processes to function better.
One doesn't need to scroll down very far into the post to begin finding players angrily expressing their frustration with the system, and players on the game's Reddit page are venting in a similar way. Beyond the XP grind, players have also touched on how expensive it is to maintain competitive or invested in Hearthstone, something that's been ignored by Blizzard for the most part.
It's a shame that so much of Madness at the Darkmoon Faire's release has been about the Hearthstone battle pass system, because the expansion as a whole is very good. Beyond the card additions, Hearthstone Duels is an exciting new way to play the game and one that fans have thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, it appears based on the community's response that the way the game's monetization and progression currently stands isn't acceptable. While the hotfix is a start, it's clearly not going to be enough, and it will be interesting to see how Blizzard responds.