I'm scared guys. The legend ladder is already dominated heavily by control decks like Druid, control hunter, and midrange Pali. I fear without undertaker there will be little to no incentive to tech decks anti-aggro thus causeing the meta to tilt towards super greedy control deck where matches r decided by who plays the fatest minions first.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Time is precious. Waste it wisely. Legend Seasons: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17
Everything would be OK if the game would not be advertised as free to play, which is a lie.
You can be competing without spending any gold, but you will be limited to a small amount of cards. If you grind gold to craft cards instead of buying them, it takes forever to get 4000 gold for 40 packs and even then you just get 2 legendaries and only some of the cards that you need. maybe some people out there calculated the rate of aquireing gold by doing every daily quest + reaching the daily win cap for extra gold. I am completely sure that the gold rate is designed in a way that you will never be able to get all the cards, the speed of expanions being released will be a lot faster.
I bough the entire Naxxramas for gold (without spending a penny), I also got a lot of cards for gold because I was playing a lot, reaching the daily gold cap every day for a year + finishing daily quests. I also started playing the game soon after it got released. Still, I needed to buy a lot of packs.
Now if your counter argument is that you don't need every card in the game I agree with you, but you need a lot of the cards if you plan to play tournaments where you use multiple classes and a multitude of decks, and it also helps you climb faster if you have a very big sideboard to choose from so you can tech while climbing.
If you like playing every class like me, you will need to have a big number of legendaries and even GvG cards because you will want to test decks and create custom decks.
Also cards like Dr Boom signal a trend for me that is worrysome. If you rush to legend every season, you WANT to get every top card ASAP, you can't afford to lose 1/2 seasons farming the gold for it, you want to experiment with the new toys so you don't fall behind in experience against people who spend money.
People new to the game are at a huge disadvantage, they don't have cards to work with and they also lack the experience that comes with playing with and against these cards. They are encouraged to spent a lot of money. Which is fine for me because this is a hobby and just like in any other hobby you can spend some money for it + you don't have to buy the game and it provides a lot of enjoyment so you might as well support Blizzard for their work. This is all fine, but don't try to push the slogan down our throats that this game is F2P because every game that says this will rip you off.
Tl;Dr I think that the statement that this game is free to play is only half true, free to play if you want to limit yourself to a few decks and don't wish to play tournaments (outside of Swiss format).
OP I have an honest question, when could they have done this nerf that you would not have thought it was to stimulate buying packs? I mean if they did it right after Nax then would you have said that they were doing it to screw over everyone buying Nax forcing them to keep buying classic packs? Pre-GvG would you have said it was to prep for GvG? Immediately post GvG, obviously you would have been saying the same thing as you are now. I'm just pointing out that no matter when its done a nefarious reason can be found. I think this is when it makes the most sense. Any other time and the meta was too questionable to have that upheaval. With no card releases in sight and a meta slowing down after a major card release, its pretty clear that nothing is going to knock Undertaker from its perch as one of the best cards in HS without a nerf. Any other time since it was released and we would have always had questions if the meta would have stabilized. There is a reason that Nat Pagle, Novice Engineer, and many other card nerfs are being questioned now. The meta changed to a point where they would probably be fine today in their old form. We won't ever have that question with UT.
trick question ha. they never should have done the nerf. Undertaker should have been properly designed to begin with. i can't imagine that with all their brilliance and card testing that Blizzard would have missed the "flaw" in this card's ability to grow out of control for a 1 mana drop. this is even before the GvG answers (e.g. darkbomb). i'm speculating that they designed this card to be OP and put it in the fourth wing of Nax on purpose. my earlier comment using Dr. Boom as an example goes into why I think that.
now i'm not saying that the sky is falling. in fact i think the buzzard and flare nerfs, for example, were OK but they were different. this nerf strikes me as odd and not a trend i want to see.
The nerf to Undertaker is perfectly fine. Aggro decks will still be a force to be reckon whit. Undertaker will still see plays, but will enable more counterplay then rather just being buffed straight up with a series of deathrattles. However, aggro decks will need to rethink a bit the structure of their deck given the meta.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Used to be a proud Handlock player.
Legend 17 times.
Still flirting with the ladder from times to times with Renolock.
Wow is there really a need to tie in the whole 'Hearthstone is P2W' nonsense? Hearthstone is a CCG, and compared to other card games, we're pretty fortunate to have an alternate currency to purchase packs.
Everything would be OK if the game would not be advertised as free to play, which is a lie.
Free to play. Not free to win tournaments. My sympathy for anyone who throws a temper tantrum over the latter and complains that the former is therefore "a lie" is zero.
Free to play because you don't have to buy the game, but if you read my post you will know that my point was not this. It is impossible to get every card without paying money. Initially I was against the group of people who complained that this is a P2W game, but now I see their point. READ MY WHOLE POST! I never sayd that this is not a skill game and if you pay for cards you automatically win more games, I totally disagree with this.
I got to legend first without paying, I know many people who reached legend many times before GvG without paying or having a full collection (some of them were lacking very popular value rares/legendaries that were included in every deck at that time). This is not my argument, my argument is that cards like Dr Boom and the fact that new expansions are scheduled to be released frequently makes you unable to get all you need in time without investing money. And once again, if you play every class, create new decks and like to experiment, you need to have as many cards as possible. And it is a retarded strawman argumentation that "free to win tournaments", anyone with half a brain would realise that if you are an amateur tournament player like me you need a lot of cards, not to autowin but to have a chance! I know that getting new MtG cards is more expensive and I know this is a CCG. But games like LOL and this all falsely imply that you can be on the top of the ladder every season without paying (since the game is completely free) and that is a big lie period.
Blizzard isn't going to compromise game balance or game play to make a buck. The extra money they might make from nerfing UT is not even material to Blizzard's bottom line.
Just to be fair if you were truly good enough to be the very top you could very likely just arena your way into the gold you need to make purchases and collect cards slowly albeit but within what I would consider a reasonable time. This game is like all other type of app games before it money is not required unless you do not have patience. I have spent money on this game no lie but I did buy naxx with only gold and did have a full miracle rogue and shaman deck (with alakir and doom hammers) while I was still free to play. Just eventually decided I wanted to play some control class's and didnt want to spend the time making control warrior for free.
well it's definitely profit related and a very smart move. it "balances" the game at higher levels where people have paid collections of cards, run control decks amongst others, and are tired of getting stomped by F2P undertaker huntards. at the same time it makes it harder to compete at the f2p level and makes mech decks (i.e. new shiny GvG cards) implicitly better. why did blizzard wait? because they wanted their free players in deeper before bringing out the hammer!
I made some calculations. You gain 40 gold on avarage daily by finishing quests + 100 gold from ladder grind. This means 140/day, 4200/month (not counting Arena). This is 42 packs. every 40 pack gives you 2 legendaries on avarage, and there are 80+ legendaries in the game so you need to buy more than 1600 packs (160000 gold=1142,8 days sic!) and you don't even own every legendary in the game, not to mention epics. Add the constant release of expansions to this with new legendaries, rares and epics and you get the Big Picture. Yeah, free to play... The system is conciously made like this so you will have to pay at one point if you are hardcore, Blizzard has to make profit don't they?
If it was free to play for me it means that you can get everything that a paying customer gets by investing time within a reasonable time. In this case you see that the time it takes is more than 3 years which clearly, blatantly obviously encourages you to pay. Let's not mix the fact that you don't pay a monthly fee for playing and you don't have to buy the game to start playing, this is the free to play part which is advertised and this is mistaken by a lot of people that the entire game, even the high level competition, can be afforded without money.
Free to play because you don't have to buy the game, but if you read my post you will know that my point was not this. It is impossible to get every card without paying money. Initially I was against the group of people who complained that this is a P2W game, but now I see their point. READ MY WHOLE POST! I never sayd that this is not a skill game and if you pay for cards you automatically win more games, I totally disagree with this.
I got to legend first without paying, I know many people who reached legend many times before GvG without paying or having a full collection (some of them were lacking very popular value rares/legendaries that were palyed at that time. This is not my argument, my argument is that cards like Dr Boom and the fact that new expansions are scheduled to be released frequently makes you unable to get all you need in time without investing money. And once again, if you play every class, create new decks and like to experiment, you need to have as many cards as possible. And it is a retarded strawman argumentation that "free to win tournaments", anyone with half a brain would realise that if you are an amateur tournament player like me you need a lot of cards, not to autowin but to have a chance! I know that getting new MtG cards is more expensive and I know this is a CCG. But games like LOL and this all falsely imply that you can be on the top of the ladder every season without paying (since the game is completely free) and that is a big lie period.
You missed his point while lecturing about how he should read your whole post. The point is that playing the game for free is 100% true. It in no way, shape, or form says that you can play every class in every style and be in the top of the ladder for free. That is your own projection of the F2P model. That is also completely unrealistic and if you want to complain that you had a truncated game experience then by all means go ahead. It doesnt change that Blizzard needs money to run and develop the game so they have chosen a model which gives more options to those who help fund that goal whilst simultaneously offering a free version to those that do not.
The point is that playing the game for free is 100% true. It in no way, shape, or form says that you can play every class in every style and be in the top of the ladder for free.
So you admit that you HAVE TO PAY if you want to compete. Or am I misreading your post? Free to play means nothing more than the game client is free. (+ to be fair a small fraction of the cards can be acqured without paying by spending countless hours grinding)
No, I said that if you want to have all of the options available, then you have to pay. Otherwise you get a lesser game experience. That is the point of the free to play model. If you want to play free you can but it is a truncated game experience. You can absolutely compete for free if you streamline your focus and only play 1 or 2 decks. You have rejected that and are angry about it.
Just to be fair if you were truly good enough to be the very top you could very likely just arena your way into the gold you need to make purchases and collect cards slowly albeit but within what I would consider a reasonable time. This game is like all other type of app games before it money is not required unless you do not have patience. I have spent money on this game no lie but I did buy naxx with only gold and did have a full miracle rogue and shaman deck (with alakir and doom hammers) while I was still free to play. Just eventually decided I wanted to play some control class's and didnt want to spend the time making control warrior for free.
I am good enough to make infinite arena runs, did it in the past. But I don't want to do it now because
1. Arena is boring, full of noobs, total RNG card drafts 2., Constructed is more rewarding, much harder, and I need to maintain practice 3., To win 7-12 in Arena you need to invest a ton of time that could be spent on climbing the ladder where you meet skilled opponents with real decks
When I started playing obviously I started with Arena to get cards, now I hardly ever play it. And no, you can't get enough gold to get everything "within a reasonable time" by doing infinite arena, this is an ongoing myth among new players and it is an attractive PR statement.
To answer the second part of your post, you yourself admitted that you also spent money on the game because without it you would never have created a full warrior deck in time!! We are very much alike in the rest, if you read my post you know by now that I also bought Naxx with gold, got to legend first without money and I was also F2P until a certain point (around GvG).
No, I said that if you want to have all of the options available, then you have to pay. Otherwise you get a lesser game experience. That is the point of the free to play model. If you want to play free you can but it is a truncated game experience. You can absolutely compete for free if you streamline your focus and only play 1 or 2 decks. You have rejected that and are angry about it.
Because playing 2 decks is fun isn't it? You can get legend every season with it and also play in tournaments? We are back to the point that F2P means the client is free + casuals can play the game as much as they want on their level. This is not fair, you shouldn't be forced to pay to compete. And for new players this is the least fair.
No, I said that if you want to have all of the options available, then you have to pay. Otherwise you get a lesser game experience. That is the point of the free to play model. If you want to play free you can but it is a truncated game experience. You can absolutely compete for free if you streamline your focus and only play 1 or 2 decks. You have rejected that and are angry about it.
Because playing 2 decks is fun isn't it? You can get legend every season with it and also play in tournaments? We are back to the point that F2P means the client is free + casuals can play the game as much as they want on their level. This is not fair, you shouldn't be forced to pay to compete. And for new players this is the least fair.
So let's break this down for a minute.
We agree that the game client is free and every class is playable even if not competitively.
We agree that competing on the ladder is free and easily doable.
We agree that having an alternate deck for competing on the ladder is free but requires a bit of effort (assumption on my part but I would guess from your statements that we agree it is true).
But you refuse to call the game free to play because you can't compete with every single class in the game at a whim and you can't compete in tournaments (which atm isn't even a supported game mode). I have bad news for you then. By your standards, no game will ever be free to play. Get used to it. Nobody is ever going to just give you all the tools needed to compete at every level of a game. That is a ludicrous expectation to have.
Yes, we can agree at most points. But I have my concerns:
1., Players new to the game will never have a chance against veterans unless they pay, they are so far behind in collection 2., Expansions are released so fast that no matter how hard you try to be F2P, you can't have every content 3., The tournament thing which we discussed and I accept your argument that it is not for everyone and the free to play model does not extend to it 4., Free to play indicates that all the things you can get by paying can be obtained by spending gold instead, so the two are equivalent and equally good. Turns out it is wrong, it takes many years and by the time you are finished, a lot of new cards are released 5., How much people reaches legend every season without paying? And how much time does it take? It is 100x harder than with paying.
My own experience is the most frustrating which made me realise the game's P2W nature and it is the cause this thread was born. Here is my story: I started playing the game at test season 1. I played it a lot, there were long periods where I played 12 hours a day. I was trying to get the 100 gold/day from ladder wins and also finish every daily quest on time. I played more than 10 thousand games in my gaming career (I have proof). The result? Well, I got 8/9 golden heroes and multiple legend, but WAY less cards than I expected, not even close to a full collection. That's when I started to pay, and recently I stopped playing alltogether because I got bored and there are many things in this game I don't like. With this much commitment and time investment, if this game was F2P I would already have every card I need without paying a penny. Now I am not a typical gamer, a lot more people play much less than me and I want those people to know that they are fooled by Blizzard. It is impossible to get everything a paying customer can get by just playing arena and doing quests. There are other F2P games that allow you to be evenly matched with paying customers within a reasonable time, that's what I call a fair business model. Blizzard is clearly after the money, this is among the greediest games that calls itself F2P.
Yes, we can agree at most points. But I have my concerns:
1., Players new to the game will never have a chance against veterans unless they pay, they are so far behind in collection 2., Expansions are released so fast that no matter how hard you try to be F2P, you can't have every content 3., The tournament thing which we discussed and I accept your argument that it is not for everyone and the free to play model does not extend to it 4., Free to play indicates that all the things you can get by paying can be obtained by spending gold instead, so the two are equivalent and equally good. Turns out it is wrong, it takes many years and by the time you are finished, a lot of new cards are released 5., How much people reaches legend every season without paying? And how much time does it take? It is 100x harder than with paying.
Those points are completely different discussions which have been rehashed in many other forum posts so I won't get too deep into each one and this will be my last post in this thread but here is the short note on each of those.
1. A full collection is unnecessary. Someone who joined the day GvG came out could easily have a fully built mechmage or zoo right now without much problem.
2. Again a full collection is unnecessary and part of the design of a F2P game is to have limited choices if you are F2P.
3. We agree. But I would like to point out that there are Legendary-free tournaments that people organize sometimes that are a ton of fun if youre F2P. I competed in a few before I started buying packs and was able to compete.
4. I agree with the first half of your statement but not the other half. Everything is obtainable by gold but that does not mean that you will obtain everything or that the two paths are equal. Otherwise there would be no reason for a pay option.
5. There are probably more people that reach legend every season F2P than you think. I know I heard from people in these forums who had been playing since the Alpha and had every card in the game going into GvG and hadnt missed legend a single season. I have also heard from multiple people that they had been playing for less than 2-3 weeks and were rank 3-4 completely F2P. I would assume those players were good enough to continue into legend based on that impressive feat. Its not an easy grind (and they are about to nerf one of your best cheap options in Undertaker) but to get legend you really only need to be great with one deck and play a LOT of games. That is completely doable by F2P players.
Thanks for your time that you spent on responding. You didn't convince me, I guess we can finish it here. You didn't respond to my appendix though, the painful experience I shared there is still haunting me. I am also aware of the other forum posts you refer to, I am an active member here, this doesn't mean I agree with the arguments you brought. I can't accept that you are forced to play aggro decks if you are F2P, it is dumb. I could play a zoo deck or hunter deck without any modification every season and with tryhard playing get to legend if I had the time, but that would not just kill all the fun but I would also suck with other classes and other decks because I would lack experience and practice. I would also not be any different from a bot that can do the same thing, even reach legend. And I rarely play aggro outside of tournaments because I have values and I am a control player. The only time I use aggro is at the start of the season, it makes it possible to get to rank 5 in 5 days where the game begins and I can play my "real" decks. I would make a terrorist attack on Blizzard's HQ if I was forced to stick with aggro classes LOL.
I never sayd that a full collection is necessary, instead I mentioned the many benefits of having a lot of cards (points 1-2). Having a big sideboard has obvious benefits, whether you are a free player or not.
5., Yeah, they usually grind with cheap aggro decks that exists since the very beginning of Hearthstone with little changes. No fun at all. And not even the most effective, especially in metas where everyone builds against those decks. In legend there is a lot less aggro.
I'm scared guys. The legend ladder is already dominated heavily by control decks like Druid, control hunter, and midrange Pali. I fear without undertaker there will be little to no incentive to tech decks anti-aggro thus causeing the meta to tilt towards super greedy control deck where matches r decided by who plays the fatest minions first.
Time is precious. Waste it wisely. Legend Seasons: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17
Current deck: Not playing much anymore
Highest rank: legend rank 9 Highest finish: legend rank 103 Infinite Arena Player
Everything would be OK if the game would not be advertised as free to play, which is a lie.
You can be competing without spending any gold, but you will be limited to a small amount of cards. If you grind gold to craft cards instead of buying them, it takes forever to get 4000 gold for 40 packs and even then you just get 2 legendaries and only some of the cards that you need. maybe some people out there calculated the rate of aquireing gold by doing every daily quest + reaching the daily win cap for extra gold. I am completely sure that the gold rate is designed in a way that you will never be able to get all the cards, the speed of expanions being released will be a lot faster.
I bough the entire Naxxramas for gold (without spending a penny), I also got a lot of cards for gold because I was playing a lot, reaching the daily gold cap every day for a year + finishing daily quests. I also started playing the game soon after it got released. Still, I needed to buy a lot of packs.
Now if your counter argument is that you don't need every card in the game I agree with you, but you need a lot of the cards if you plan to play tournaments where you use multiple classes and a multitude of decks, and it also helps you climb faster if you have a very big sideboard to choose from so you can tech while climbing.
If you like playing every class like me, you will need to have a big number of legendaries and even GvG cards because you will want to test decks and create custom decks.
Also cards like Dr Boom signal a trend for me that is worrysome. If you rush to legend every season, you WANT to get every top card ASAP, you can't afford to lose 1/2 seasons farming the gold for it, you want to experiment with the new toys so you don't fall behind in experience against people who spend money.
People new to the game are at a huge disadvantage, they don't have cards to work with and they also lack the experience that comes with playing with and against these cards. They are encouraged to spent a lot of money. Which is fine for me because this is a hobby and just like in any other hobby you can spend some money for it + you don't have to buy the game and it provides a lot of enjoyment so you might as well support Blizzard for their work. This is all fine, but don't try to push the slogan down our throats that this game is F2P because every game that says this will rip you off.
Tl;Dr I think that the statement that this game is free to play is only half true, free to play if you want to limit yourself to a few decks and don't wish to play tournaments (outside of Swiss format).
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
trick question ha. they never should have done the nerf. Undertaker should have been properly designed to begin with. i can't imagine that with all their brilliance and card testing that Blizzard would have missed the "flaw" in this card's ability to grow out of control for a 1 mana drop. this is even before the GvG answers (e.g. darkbomb). i'm speculating that they designed this card to be OP and put it in the fourth wing of Nax on purpose. my earlier comment using Dr. Boom as an example goes into why I think that.
now i'm not saying that the sky is falling. in fact i think the buzzard and flare nerfs, for example, were OK but they were different. this nerf strikes me as odd and not a trend i want to see.
let me change your mind...
The nerf to Undertaker is perfectly fine. Aggro decks will still be a force to be reckon whit. Undertaker will still see plays, but will enable more counterplay then rather just being buffed straight up with a series of deathrattles. However, aggro decks will need to rethink a bit the structure of their deck given the meta.
Used to be a proud Handlock player.
Legend 17 times.
Still flirting with the ladder from times to times with Renolock.
Wow is there really a need to tie in the whole 'Hearthstone is P2W' nonsense? Hearthstone is a CCG, and compared to other card games, we're pretty fortunate to have an alternate currency to purchase packs.
Free to play. Not free to win tournaments. My sympathy for anyone who throws a temper tantrum over the latter and complains that the former is therefore "a lie" is zero.
Free to play because you don't have to buy the game, but if you read my post you will know that my point was not this. It is impossible to get every card without paying money. Initially I was against the group of people who complained that this is a P2W game, but now I see their point. READ MY WHOLE POST!
I never sayd that this is not a skill game and if you pay for cards you automatically win more games, I totally disagree with this.
I got to legend first without paying, I know many people who reached legend many times before GvG without paying or having a full collection (some of them were lacking very popular value rares/legendaries that were included in every deck at that time). This is not my argument, my argument is that cards like Dr Boom and the fact that new expansions are scheduled to be released frequently makes you unable to get all you need in time without investing money. And once again, if you play every class, create new decks and like to experiment, you need to have as many cards as possible. And it is a retarded strawman argumentation that "free to win tournaments", anyone with half a brain would realise that if you are an amateur tournament player like me you need a lot of cards, not to autowin but to have a chance! I know that getting new MtG cards is more expensive and I know this is a CCG. But games like LOL and this all falsely imply that you can be on the top of the ladder every season without paying (since the game is completely free) and that is a big lie period.
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
Blizzard isn't going to compromise game balance or game play to make a buck. The extra money they might make from nerfing UT is not even material to Blizzard's bottom line.
Just to be fair if you were truly good enough to be the very top you could very likely just arena your way into the gold you need to make purchases and collect cards slowly albeit but within what I would consider a reasonable time. This game is like all other type of app games before it money is not required unless you do not have patience. I have spent money on this game no lie but I did buy naxx with only gold and did have a full miracle rogue and shaman deck (with alakir and doom hammers) while I was still free to play. Just eventually decided I wanted to play some control class's and didnt want to spend the time making control warrior for free.
Makes sense.
I made some calculations. You gain 40 gold on avarage daily by finishing quests + 100 gold from ladder grind.
This means 140/day, 4200/month (not counting Arena). This is 42 packs. every 40 pack gives you 2 legendaries on avarage, and there are 80+ legendaries in the game so you need to buy more than 1600 packs (160000 gold=1142,8 days sic!) and you don't even own every legendary in the game, not to mention epics. Add the constant release of expansions to this with new legendaries, rares and epics and you get the Big Picture. Yeah, free to play... The system is conciously made like this so you will have to pay at one point if you are hardcore, Blizzard has to make profit don't they?
If it was free to play for me it means that you can get everything that a paying customer gets by investing time within a reasonable time. In this case you see that the time it takes is more than 3 years which clearly, blatantly obviously encourages you to pay. Let's not mix the fact that you don't pay a monthly fee for playing and you don't have to buy the game to start playing, this is the free to play part which is advertised and this is mistaken by a lot of people that the entire game, even the high level competition, can be afforded without money.
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
You missed his point while lecturing about how he should read your whole post. The point is that playing the game for free is 100% true. It in no way, shape, or form says that you can play every class in every style and be in the top of the ladder for free. That is your own projection of the F2P model. That is also completely unrealistic and if you want to complain that you had a truncated game experience then by all means go ahead. It doesnt change that Blizzard needs money to run and develop the game so they have chosen a model which gives more options to those who help fund that goal whilst simultaneously offering a free version to those that do not.
So you admit that you HAVE TO PAY if you want to compete. Or am I misreading your post? Free to play means nothing more than the game client is free. (+ to be fair a small fraction of the cards can be acqured without paying by spending countless hours grinding)
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
No, I said that if you want to have all of the options available, then you have to pay. Otherwise you get a lesser game experience. That is the point of the free to play model. If you want to play free you can but it is a truncated game experience. You can absolutely compete for free if you streamline your focus and only play 1 or 2 decks. You have rejected that and are angry about it.
I am good enough to make infinite arena runs, did it in the past. But I don't want to do it now because
1. Arena is boring, full of noobs, total RNG card drafts
2., Constructed is more rewarding, much harder, and I need to maintain practice
3., To win 7-12 in Arena you need to invest a ton of time that could be spent on climbing the ladder where you meet skilled opponents with real decks
When I started playing obviously I started with Arena to get cards, now I hardly ever play it.
And no, you can't get enough gold to get everything "within a reasonable time" by doing infinite arena, this is an ongoing myth among new players and it is an attractive PR statement.
To answer the second part of your post, you yourself admitted that you also spent money on the game because without it you would never have created a full warrior deck in time!! We are very much alike in the rest, if you read my post you know by now that I also bought Naxx with gold, got to legend first without money and I was also F2P until a certain point (around GvG).
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
Because playing 2 decks is fun isn't it? You can get legend every season with it and also play in tournaments? We are back to the point that F2P means the client is free + casuals can play the game as much as they want on their level. This is not fair, you shouldn't be forced to pay to compete. And for new players this is the least fair.
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
So let's break this down for a minute.
We agree that the game client is free and every class is playable even if not competitively.
We agree that competing on the ladder is free and easily doable.
We agree that having an alternate deck for competing on the ladder is free but requires a bit of effort (assumption on my part but I would guess from your statements that we agree it is true).
But you refuse to call the game free to play because you can't compete with every single class in the game at a whim and you can't compete in tournaments (which atm isn't even a supported game mode). I have bad news for you then. By your standards, no game will ever be free to play. Get used to it. Nobody is ever going to just give you all the tools needed to compete at every level of a game. That is a ludicrous expectation to have.
Yes, we can agree at most points. But I have my concerns:
1., Players new to the game will never have a chance against veterans unless they pay, they are so far behind in collection
2., Expansions are released so fast that no matter how hard you try to be F2P, you can't have every content
3., The tournament thing which we discussed and I accept your argument that it is not for everyone and the free to play model does not extend to it
4., Free to play indicates that all the things you can get by paying can be obtained by spending gold instead, so the two are equivalent and equally good. Turns out it is wrong, it takes many years and by the time you are finished, a lot of new cards are released
5., How much people reaches legend every season without paying? And how much time does it take? It is 100x harder than with paying.
My own experience is the most frustrating which made me realise the game's P2W nature and it is the cause this thread was born.
Here is my story: I started playing the game at test season 1. I played it a lot, there were long periods where I played 12 hours a day. I was trying to get the 100 gold/day from ladder wins and also finish every daily quest on time. I played more than 10 thousand games in my gaming career (I have proof). The result? Well, I got 8/9 golden heroes and multiple legend, but WAY less cards than I expected, not even close to a full collection. That's when I started to pay, and recently I stopped playing alltogether because I got bored and there are many things in this game I don't like. With this much commitment and time investment, if this game was F2P I would already have every card I need without paying a penny. Now I am not a typical gamer, a lot more people play much less than me and I want those people to know that they are fooled by Blizzard.
It is impossible to get everything a paying customer can get by just playing arena and doing quests. There are other F2P games that allow you to be evenly matched with paying customers within a reasonable time, that's what I call a fair business model. Blizzard is clearly after the money, this is among the greediest games that calls itself F2P.
I bring life and BOOOOAHH
Those points are completely different discussions which have been rehashed in many other forum posts so I won't get too deep into each one and this will be my last post in this thread but here is the short note on each of those.
1. A full collection is unnecessary. Someone who joined the day GvG came out could easily have a fully built mechmage or zoo right now without much problem.
2. Again a full collection is unnecessary and part of the design of a F2P game is to have limited choices if you are F2P.
3. We agree. But I would like to point out that there are Legendary-free tournaments that people organize sometimes that are a ton of fun if youre F2P. I competed in a few before I started buying packs and was able to compete.
4. I agree with the first half of your statement but not the other half. Everything is obtainable by gold but that does not mean that you will obtain everything or that the two paths are equal. Otherwise there would be no reason for a pay option.
5. There are probably more people that reach legend every season F2P than you think. I know I heard from people in these forums who had been playing since the Alpha and had every card in the game going into GvG and hadnt missed legend a single season. I have also heard from multiple people that they had been playing for less than 2-3 weeks and were rank 3-4 completely F2P. I would assume those players were good enough to continue into legend based on that impressive feat. Its not an easy grind (and they are about to nerf one of your best cheap options in Undertaker) but to get legend you really only need to be great with one deck and play a LOT of games. That is completely doable by F2P players.
Thanks for your time that you spent on responding. You didn't convince me, I guess we can finish it here. You didn't respond to my appendix though, the painful experience I shared there is still haunting me. I am also aware of the other forum posts you refer to, I am an active member here, this doesn't mean I agree with the arguments you brought. I can't accept that you are forced to play aggro decks if you are F2P, it is dumb. I could play a zoo deck or hunter deck without any modification every season and with tryhard playing get to legend if I had the time, but that would not just kill all the fun but I would also suck with other classes and other decks because I would lack experience and practice. I would also not be any different from a bot that can do the same thing, even reach legend. And I rarely play aggro outside of tournaments because I have values and I am a control player. The only time I use aggro is at the start of the season, it makes it possible to get to rank 5 in 5 days where the game begins and I can play my "real" decks. I would make a terrorist attack on Blizzard's HQ if I was forced to stick with aggro classes LOL.
I never sayd that a full collection is necessary, instead I mentioned the many benefits of having a lot of cards (points 1-2). Having a big sideboard has obvious benefits, whether you are a free player or not.
5., Yeah, they usually grind with cheap aggro decks that exists since the very beginning of Hearthstone with little changes. No fun at all. And not even the most effective, especially in metas where everyone builds against those decks. In legend there is a lot less aggro.
Thanks for your posts & good night.
I bring life and BOOOOAHH