In digital collectable card games like Hearthstone, reward tracks, boosted by battle passes, are a great way to do monetization. It’s certainly much better for players than randomized loot boxes, gacha-style pulling, and other more predatory alternatives — and it’s good that Hearthstone chose to add a reward track for its new progression system. But sadly, the implementation of that system has been done terribly.

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Players now receive less gold and fewer rewards than they did before — especially if they’re trying to play the game without dropping any real money on it. The actual progression is not satisfactory enough, with too much fluff and too little substance. And the game is dividing its playerbase more than ever before.

So just what’s wrong with Hearthstone’s new Reward Track — and how could Blizzard fix it? Let’s take a look.

Players earn less gold than before — particularly free-to-play players

This issue is pretty self-explanatory, and most Hearthstonecommunities are already having a field day with it. If you’re out of the loop, complaints about players getting less gold are loud — much louder than what would be reasonable, in fact — but I digress. Even though the complaining has been extreme — and made browsing your favorite Hearthstone communities quite annoying, in all honesty — those people aren’t wrong. Their complaints are absolutely legitimate.

So legitimate, in fact, that Blizzard has already taken notice, and addressed the issue with a hotfix to add more gold to the track. But for a large number of players, it’s still not enough. The removal of the small, but constant reward of 10 gold you’d get from winning three games and the 50 or 60 gold from daily quests are sorely missed. The experience you earn on the Rewards Track doesn’t compare.

Core is the primary card set of Hearthstone. It was first made available on March 30, 2021, along with Forged in the Barrens launch. It is the largest set in Standard format, featuring 235 cards. The purpose of the Core is to provide a modern collection of starting cards to players of all types and make Hearthstone even more approachable for newcomers. Some of the Core cards are returning from.

And the ungenerous gold dispensation isn’t the only problem with this new system — far from it.

The rewards are lackluster — and it’s hard to see them

This may sound minor, but having to click through multiple pages — 11, at present — in order to see every reward you’ll eventually get is actually an enormous psychological barrier. Experience is also shown on this rewards page, but nowhere else, so it’s unclear how much progress you’ve made towards rewards as you play. Your quests, and how much experience you can get from each, is on another screen. And finding out how much experience you can get from achievements requires you to go into yet another screen and individually click on each achievement to see if it grants experience. As you play, it’s not clear how much experience you’re earning, how close you are to the next reward, and what that reward is.

If all of this were easily visible, we would know what we’re working towards and how close we were to it — that way, players would have something obvious to be excited about. A simple scrolling bar that players could drag with their mouse (or finger) could let us quickly see upcoming rewards. A straightforward list or screen of achievements with rewards would make it easier to see what our goals should be to earn experience. Having to click multiple times and scroll through several pages? It’s a small but notable barrier that makes the system more difficult to understand.

The also has a great many reward levels — 50 at present. The downside of having so many levels is that many of them need to have rewards that are hardly exciting. Most levels reward a small amounts of gold or perhaps a pack, and you don’t get those rewards automatically: you need to constantly return to the rewards screen and click on everything you’ve earned. Earning experience from achievements is similar: once you’ve completed the achievement, you have to go to the achievement UI and click on it to get the experience it grants. In the old system, you just got gold when you earned it. Even something as simple as a “collect all rewards” button (including achievement rewards) would be much better than having to navigate through multiple panes in order to take all your loot.

The rewards themselves can be pretty lackluster as well. Beyond packs and gold, you can get a few cards, but the best rewards — new Hero skins — require you to spend an extra $20 to buy a Tavern Pass. To make the rewards (particularly the free rewards) more exciting, they should also add dust and more cards — some epics, some legendaries, some golden variations of either — to the track.

And I’ve already talked about this, but there is one thing that one of Hearthstone’s main competitors, Legends of Runeterra, does very well: having a multitude of different cosmetic rewards. Besides card backs (that you actually get a full view of while playing), in that game you can also collect emotes, pets, and even entire boards to play on. Meanwhile, Hearthstone pretty much only has card backs (that you can’t get a full view of while playing) and Hero skins as well as the brand new introduction of skins for The Coin. Seriously?

More exciting rewards would definitely make players far more compelled to keep progressing. And speaking of that…

The progression system favors Constructed play

The new system caters to Constructed players more than everyone else, such as those who mostly enjoy Battlegrounds, Duels, Arena, Tavern Brawls, or the solo adventures. Some of the quests — like “play three games with certain classes” — only apply to specific modes, and those quests much more plentiful than, say, Battlegrounds-specific quests. This ensures that Ranked players will have a leg up in progression, and players who don’t enjoy Ranked that much can feel forced to do it just to complete those quests.

Even worse: the new Tavern Pass — which boosts the XP you receive to help you progress faster in the track — is unattached to Battleground Perks, which you need to purchase separately. This means Battlegrounds players — who can complete very few quests — are even further behind.

The truth is that we shouldn’t need to purchase multiple passes. There should be a single pass that’s good for every kind of player who wants to drop real money in order to receive benefits. Players should be encouraged to play the game in all of the modes it has to offer, and that should always allow them to make progress at a reasonable pace.

The overwhelming community sentiment at the moment is that the game is being too stingy with its rewards, and forcing players to spend money if they want to keep playing as they did before. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s important to express feedback in a rational way, without attacking developers and community managers who likely have no say in these business decisions and only want to make the best game possible.

And right now, the Rewards Track just doesn’t do that. The system is more complicated and less rewarding, particularly for free-to-play players and anyone who doesn’t enjoy Constructed — and that doesn’t make for fun gameplay.

Blizzard has further addressed some of these concerns on a new blog post.

Originally posted 12/02/2020. Updated on 12/07/2020.

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Your parents may have told you to buy a home as soon as you could, because renting is only “throwing your money away.” Yet, many millennials delayed home-buying for a variety of factors, including financial concerns, student loan debt and simply not wanting to deal with the hassles of homeownership.

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A National Association of Relators study from 2019 showed that 22% of millennials delayed home buying — or even moving out of their parents’ house — due to student loan debt. Millennials still lag behind other demographics when it comes to homeownership, according to Apartment List’s 2021 Millennial Homeownership Report, released earlier this year. At age 30, 42% of millennials owned homes, compared to 48% of GenX at that age and 51% of Baby Boomers, the report found.

Looking at current homeownership, 47.9% of all millennials own homes, based on Census Bureau data. Meanwhile 69.1% of GenXers own their own homes and 78.8% of Baby Boomers own homes, the highest homeownership rate of all generations. The Silent Generation is only slightly behind, at 77.8%.

Although millennials may have fueled the latest housing boom as they fled cities for more space during the pandemic, rising home prices and a highly competitive sellers’ market are still keeping many millennials from the traditional “American dream” of homeownership.

Zillow reports show the median home value in the U.S. stands at $262,604, but they are predicting it to rise nearly 8% within the next year. Fortunately, there are many ways to build wealth beyond relying on your home equity. In fact, counting your home as an asset — rather than a liability — on your personal financial spreadsheet, can be a costly mistake.

Discover: Why Now Is the Time to Downsize Your Home

Video: 33 Home Upgrades That Cost Less Than $100 (Money Talks News)

Why Renting May Not Be a Bad Financial Choice

Older generations who embrace home ownership have often said that renting is letting someone else get rich or that you’re throwing money away with nothing to show for it. But, your home is only earning you money if it rises in value at the time you’re ready to sell. Even then, you’d have to recoup all the costs you put into it beyond the purchase price. These expenses include:

• Renovations and remodeling
• Repairs
• Landscaping and snow removal
• Homeowners insurance
• Taxes
• Interest
• Closing costs and fees

Although rents are slowly rising in major cities as the pandemic begins to wind down, with the median monthly rent in the U.S. at $1,058 according to Census Bureau Data, renting has fewer costs associated, including unexpected costs such as home repairs.

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A report from MoneyWise found that the actual rate of return on real estate between 1975 and 2009 was less than 0%. Not only did most people not make money on the sale of their home, but they lost money in the transaction. With home prices high right now, that percentage does not look better for homeowners in this decade, either.

See: What $1,000 Invested In Stocks 10 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

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On the other hand, the stock markets average return for the same time frame was 3.375%. A lot of things have changed since then, including a bull market with the Dow Jones Industrial Average at an all-time high, and the advent of retail investing apps making it easier than ever for people to invest. There are virtually no barriers to entry for investing anymore, when apps allow you to roll your spare change into an account and buy fractional shares of blue chip stocks.

In 2020, the average rate of return on S&P 500 stocks was well over 10%, according to Motley Fool. Motley Fool also published the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of multiple types of investments from 1926 through 2019. Small cap stocks have a CAGR of 11.95 while large-cap stocks have a CAGR of 10.2%. More conservative investments such as government bonds and treasury bills show a CAGR of 5.5% and 3.3%, respectively. No matter how high or low your risk tolerance, any of these investments show a better return over time than homeownership.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How to Build Wealth Without Buying a Home