I really hope they don't just increase the chest cap or make ALL the rewards retroactive. If they increase the number of loot boxes in anyway it would mean dumping a lot of stuff in the market, thus lowering its value. Since I've played since alpha, I would actually really hate to get retroactive rewards as all the XP I earned was after 2.0's release. This would mean opening a lot (a lot) of loot boxes. And something that people are not considering is ... Opening Loot boxes is a chore. In fact, I am already dreading the idea of having to open 61 loot boxes at once. Worse, the loot boxes wouldn't be HERO-SPECIFIC, it means that you'd likely be "winning" a lot of crap that's not even for heroes you play. Heck I am already pretty sick of the idea of opening the 61 loot boxes I would get on the currently Blizzard-explained system.
And it's not even a thing they need to do. 2.0 should be a system that encourages NEW gameplay sesions and NEW profit for blizzard. Dumping loot boxes to old players accomplishes the opposite of this. Specially because so many of those old players already have many skins. What nobody (not even you) wants here is to reach a point in which players have nothing to grind for.
The vet reward currently proposed by blizzard are flawed. But I think the solution is not to dump more loot boxes onto us, but to make the whole thing fairer. For a lot of people this might mean less loot boxes. But if done correctly, it will mean a better experience for everyone. Let me explain. First it's very important to read the dev post on this because many people complaining about this have not done their research and are tackling the wrong issues.
The veteran player compensation shouldn't be based entirely on account level
This is the main problem with the proposed approach, a player with 10 level 2 heroes will get the same rewards as a player with two level 20 heroes. And worse, since the player with level 20 heroes will be missing out on HERO-SPECIFIC loot boxes, it means they will get the wrong rewards. The key things to consider here are the following:
This is what every player gets in 2.0 for getting levels with a hero. The issue for Veteran players here is that the first 10 levels on a hero are much, much easier to get than the following levels. This means that if you are already level 10 on a hero, you are basically missing out on the chance of your first chest being easy to get. This is way for each level 10+ hero, each veteran player should get a Hero-specific chest. This compensates for missing out on that one-time level boost. Note that these old players already earned more gold than 1000 while leveling up their heroes, so gold is not necessary to adjust.
You owe me 1000 Gems, blizzard
The account level rewards are another big deal. Look at this:
I think that the major one here is the level 5 reward. No matter how many chests they dump at you, you will never get a chance to get those 1000 gems. The 7 day stimpack at level 10 is not a big deal though. Because through the game's history old players have likely received plenty of free stim packs that new players have not received. This is why I think you should get 1000 gems if your account level is 5+
** Level up rewards ** Then there's the account level up rewards. Note that the system is intended to be so that it will not be much harder for you to level up than a new player. In fact, a new player might find themselves having issues finding gold to buy new heroes. So these account-level up rewards are not that important.
There is the slight detail that if the heroes you play are already level 12, it will take you much longer to earn account levels than a new player. But even if you had level 12+ for all heroes, blizzard will always be adding new heroes to the game. Which means that you will always have the chance to earn 7 quick account levels every 3 weeks by trying a new hero. So the effect is not as ugly as it seems.
Either way, old players are being put at a disadvantage. But once again, hero levels are more important to decide this than account levels. If you have 20 level 3 heroes, the impact this will have on you is null. But if you have 6 level 10 heroes, the impact is pretty big. This is why I think the retroactive account rewards should be for hero levels and not account levels.
My proposal is this: Calculate a veteran value: For each level 8+ hero you own, add min(hero level, 11) to your veteran value and use this value as if it was the account level used to get these rewards retroactively;
- Every 5 Levels: 1 Rare Loot Chest
- Every 25 Levels: 150 Gems + 1 Epic Loot Chest
For example, imageine you had this distribution of heroes: * Level 15: 1 hero * Level 12: 1 * Level 10: 4 * Level 9: 6 * Level 8: 5 * Levels 1-7: 14
All your heroes with level <8 are ignored. in the formula, and all heroes with level 11+ are considered as having level 11. So you get 11+11+410+96+8*5 as your veteran value = 156. The results are:
In addition, you get the specific hero rewards for the 6 level 10+ heroes. That would be 6 Hero Specific Loot chests. And also the 1000 gems for level 5. So you'd be getting 43 chests. This might as well be less than the amount of chests under blizzard's proposed rule, but the chests are better quality, including sine hero-specific ones. AND also you get 1900 gems.