Hearthpwn

Quote from swanky_tiger86 >>

Lol, this is such a stupid topic. 

Free to play means no money spend. Literary. Period.

It has nothing to do with the experience of how it feels from being free to play or spend $10 on the welcome packs.

I stopped grinding on this game because it doesn't make sense for me to grind anymore, where I can just pick up extra work for few hours and pay for the time for grinding. I spend $50 dollars to buy the pre-bundle to catch up. Well, generally a person can grind about 50-60k each expansion, or 80k lately since Blizzard has been really generous. Does that make me f2p since I only open about 70-80 packs each expansion? I chose to spend the money instead of grinding the daily quest. 

Budget player is an acceptable  term for me, F2P is not. P2w is non-existing in this game. If I am allow to pay few dollars per game to win a match, or get a favourable rng towards me, then maybe p2w exist. I will be legend rank in no time.  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 I bought literately one pack in the Beta just to get the golden Gelbin Mekkatorque if you want to be technical yes I have paid money for the game but is it easier to explain I have purchased one pack or just say I am F2P. my experience is the exact same as any F2P player so it makes sense to just use the term. I really don't care one way or the other there certainly isn't anything wrong with paying money for Hearthstone and I don't have any so called F2P "pride" if such a thing exists. I think some people are taking this a bit to seriously lol there isn't a F2P achievement or something.

I think one issue that people don't think about is:

Once you decide to spend even a small amount of money into a game it becomes easier to do so again in the feature. It's essentially a psychological barrier that is crossed.

Companies know this! And that is exactly why companies offer seemingly irrefutable offers such as "welcome bundle". It's to familiarize people with the idea that is ok to spend some money, from time to time, regardless of the actual value, essentially slowly turning them into regular customers (sometimes without them even realizing).

If you firmly decide to stick with being f2p and assert that you aren't going to spend money no matter how good a deal you are much less likely to be slowly transformed into a regular against your initial decision.

Quote from robert_fanr >>

I think one issue that people don't think about is:

Once you decide to spend even a small amount of money into a game it becomes easier to do so again in the feature. It's essentially a psychological barrier that is crossed.

Companies know this! And that is exactly why companies offer seemingly irrefutable offers such as "welcome bundle". It's to familiarize people with the idea that is ok to spend some money, from time to time, regardless of the actual value, essentially slowly turning them into regular customers (sometimes without them even realizing).

If you firmly decide to stick with being f2p and assert that you aren't going to spend money no matter how good a deal you are much less likely to be slowly transformed into a regular against your initial decision.

 That's honestly  a matter of marketing though.  Most people who F2P stay F2P.  The average rate of "players to payers" is about 2% (that's NOT a made up number btw).  

In the end, you have a designation, a Freebie, a minnow, a dolphin, or a whale.  If you aren't paying attention to your finances you may not know what you are.  If you're 100% new to microtransations you may LOOK like a F2P player since it's new and scary and it might hurt.  Once you make your first purchase, you realize it doesn't hurt and you flip into whatever you naturally are.  

(Myself I've been Minnowing since Ragnarok's subscription system, and have a tendency to pay about 5-20 if I feel it's meaningful and I have the budget for it)

If a person is a natural F2P player, you aren't going to get them to pay. You'll just piss them off and/or make them leave.  Same for trying to make a Minnow spend more than $20 into your game.  Interestingly, same is probably true of putting a pricing cap on Whales.  Those that are Whales are either too addicted to spending to get enough of a 'kick' if you don't provide enough, or are superfans that are getting starved to not be able to dive deeper into your game.  

The successful F2P games realize that, beyond getting people to 'break that cherry', you're better off making sure your Whales and Whale while your Minnows can..uhh.. Min.  Which is why games like Fire Emblem Heros gives you Cash shop currency every day and occasional free top tier heros while also having that Merging system that literally takes thousands of dollars just to max out ONE character in a franchise who's second name is "Waifu Simulator."

(btw, those Welcome Bundles aren't just for Cherry picking.  Minnows like me don't buy into buying packs since spending $10 on a few packs means NOTHING.  I was actually desperate to find SOMETHING to buy when I had the cash when the Welcome Bundle came in.  If it weren't for that and that "$2 for an exclusive gold card" during the beta I would've stayed cashless.  Honestly would pay $2-4 for a guaranteed Gold Whizbang if it went to Standard)