Hi-Rez respond to Paladins changes complaints

Yesterday Hi-Rex Studios rolled up a new beta update for Paladins which did not go down well with players. The introduction of the new Essence currency and costs of Legendary Cards caused quite a stink with players.

Hi-Rez has poured over the feedback and has posted a full list of changes they will be making to calm the situation. Legendary costs are going to be reduced and rewards are going to come faster to players. The full update reads:

LEGENDARY CARDS

We’ve heard your feedback, and are reducing the Essence cost of Legendary cards to 12,000, from the current price of 18,000.

Players that purchased cards at the old price will be refunded essence to compensate. We are hoping to have this refund go out later today US Eastern time.

In the coming updates, we will be evaluating Legendary card balance and making adjustments to bring them all in line. We appreciate your continued feedback on this system as we move towards a further balanced state!

DUPLICATES & DISENCHANTING

We will be adjusting the amount of Essence a Common Card gives when it drops a duplicate in a Radiant Chest from 60 to 250.

Note that we are also looking at additional ways to make sure players have more ways to earn gold and essence, and will continue to evaluate the pricing over time. (For example: One change we are working to implement is the ability to disenchant unwanted cards for Essence).

NEW PLAYER PROGRESSION

We are committed to ensuring new players can earn the cards they want at a very reasonable pace and get rewarded for the time they put into the game. As such, in a future patch we will begin granting 1,000 Essence for each achievement earned, and will be retroactively granting Essence for achievements earned when that change goes live. We will also be adding new achievements in a future patch for new players that provide a boost in Essence – an example might be “Build your first custom loadout” which will provide 12,000 Essence.

Additionally, we will be increasing the First Win of the Day (FWOTD) reward Gold from 300g to 450g which can be obtained 3 times daily.

Our intent with this new system is DEFINITELY not to create an impossible grind. At the same time, we do want people to feel rewarded for the time they put into the game. We are committed to finding the right balance and thank you for your patience as we tune the system!

MASTERY REWARDS FOR PRE-OB44 PLAYERS

The release of OB44 saw an update to our Mastery Rewards structure. As players master each character in the game, they now receive a Radiant Chest for the levels of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10 for each champion. This makes a BIG DIFFERENCE in terms of how quickly you can earn cards and other rewards in the game, and rewards you for playing and learning a variety of characters.

As many of you know, we began rolling out a refund to retroactively grant Radiant Chests for Mastery earned for all active players before OB44. However, this totaled almost 100,000,000 Radiant Chests!! Unfortunately, there are too many chests to give out retroactively at once for our servers to handle (when we tried this on patch day, our chest opening volume per minute went up 100x and crashed our servers!).

In order to help get players their retroactive rewards sooner, we have decided to directly give players ESSENCE for their previously earned Mastery Levels, instead of giving out chests. This will create a much lower server burden — and we have constructed in a way that is generous to players. Players who are still owed chests will be granted 2250 Essence for each chest they are still owed, plus an additional 750 Essence to each player who was currently boosted between the time OB44 launched and now.

We currently expect this refund to roll out to all players by end of day Friday US Eastern time.

Once again, I apologize for us being so slow in getting this refund out to everyone. We had not properly calculated the system impact of giving out 100,000,000 chests at once and having everyone try to roll them right away!! Lesson learned and hopefully just giving essence directly will work well for everyone!

Thanks again for your patience and support of the game. We will continue to monitor community feedback and player experience closely. Note that we are working on another big update to the game, and expect to give OB45 patch notes next week!

Hi-Rez will be holding a live Q&A later today to answer any further questions surrounding these latest changes. That will be taking place on their Paladins Twitch channel at  1:30 PM EST / 19:30 CET.