Could Hearthstone Players on iOS Soon be Buying Dust Instead of Card Packs?
Note: Blizzard has not yet made an official statement on the change.
Back in June, Hearthstone players in China were no longer able to buy card packs but instead were purchasing a small amount of Arcane Dust with their money. As a bonus for their purchase, card packs were thrown into the mix as a "gift" for their dust purchase.
Why did Blizzard make this change? This is because of a change to laws in China regarding loot boxes in video games where it was required for video games to publish the odds of their drop rates.
The shop interface for Hearthstone in China.
So then, why on Azeroth are iOS players potentially buying dust soon? That's thanks to a policy change in Apple's App Store.
The Apple App Store Update on Loot Boxes
In the Apple App Store guidelines, a document which details the rules app devs must follow to get through the app approval process, there is now a section which states apps need to make note of the odds of receiving each type of item to customers.
- Apps offering “loot boxes” or other mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase must disclose the odds of receiving each type of item to customers prior to purchase.
With this addition, it looks like Hearthstone will need to go the same way as it did in China to prevent disclosure of the drop rates which would be accomplished through giving players another object and tack on card packs as a gift. The alternative would be to cut the crap and officially state card drop rates which have been well known for years at this point. On the plus side if they do try to get around it by using arcane dust and not disclosing the odds, it's a little bit more dust in everyone's pockets which will help craft the powerhouses we need for our decks.
Rarity Distribution in Card Packs Today
Card rarity distribution hasn't changed since Hearthstone launched, though players will see slightly more Legendaries now thanks to a guaranteed Legendary in your first 10 packs for each set. The following rarity distribution is from our TGT community card pack opening and is still inline with other documented, more recent pack openings.
Rarity | Normal | Golden | Total | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Legendary | 696 | 0.94% | 56 | 0.08% | 752 | 1.01% |
Epic | 3029 | 4.09% | 143 | 0.19% | 3172 | 4.28% |
Rare | 16017 | 21.61% | 934 | 1.26% | 16951 | 22.87% |
Common | 52153 | 70.36% | 1097 | 1.48% | 53250 | 71.84% |
Total | 71895 | 96.99% | 2230 | 3.01% | 74125 | 100.00% |
We've also got some totally new information from Blizzard China from in May which was posted with loot box regulations in mind.
- You'll get at least 1 rare, or better, in each pack.
- An epic will be received, on average, in 1 of every 5 packs.
- Legendaries, on average, will be received in 1 of every 20 packs.
- As players open more packs, the actual probability of opening cards with higher quality increases.
It's possible we could see the above being enough for the Apple App Store and it wouldn't require Blizzard to provide the actual drop rates which means they won't need to move forward with giving users dust for their money instead.
Quote from BlizzardAccording to the relevant national laws and regulations, "slag legend" is now the probability of taking cards to publish, as follows:
Note: "slag legend" card package a total of five cards, including four different quality.
Rare cards
Each slag card package, at least to get a rare or higher quality card.
Epic card
An average of 5 slag card card package, you can get an epic quality card.
Legend card
An average of 20 slag card card package, you can get a legendary quality card.
In addition, it should be noted that: with the number of cards to increase the number of packages, players actually get high-quality card card probability will also increase.
Loot Boxes: How Do You Feel?
It's been a very popular topic in gaming communities over the past few weeks thanks to EA and their garbage with Star Wars: Battlefront II having absurd lengths of time being required for character unlocks unless you buy loot boxes and I'd like to know how everyone else feels about loot boxes both specifically with Hearthstone and then with other titles.
And before you comment, remember that developers in large companies usually aren't the people deciding how much stuff sells for and the drop rates for these; There's a whole different team of people to thank for this. Don't be a dick to game developers and call them out personally. Attacking developers, especially when they aren't even to blame for the fiasco, pushes them away from interacting with the community and then everyone gets upset no one comes out to talk with us anymore.
Covering a number of topics on the thread. So very long post. Also this is opinion, I in no way wish anyone to feel their opinion is wrong nor do I feel I am an expert in these matters. So if this upsets you, my apologies but at least thanks for reading.
Price of a single pack of MtG cards ~$4.25 - 15 cards per pack most sets are around 250 cards. All random just like HS. Just like HS the value is stated (HS is at least 1 rare and 4 commons) 1 rare 3 uncommon 14 common in an MtG pack. In order to collect the whole set with 100% accuracy of each pack giving NO duplicates (which you can get many duplicates in one pack) it would cost $70.83 (no tax) for 17 packs.
Now being it's random in a pack let's presume at least one duplicate per pack, depending on the rarity of the duplicate it requires a varying number of additional packs.
On average it will require around 390 packs to collect a set which translates to $1657.50 (no tax). So with that in mind for a physical card game vs an electronic card game pricing seems fair.
The big difference is you can shave off a majority of your expenses on a physical card game by trading (TCG) where as an electronic card game is only collectible (CCG). Thus the cost is constant and feels like a heavier burden on the bank account.
The lootbox legal war is understandable, it is gambling by nature if not by law. If the rewards are cosmetic only it has no bearing on the validity of gameplay that should be allowed without regulation. If the rewards directly influence gameplay or quality of life in game (i.e. exp boosters, playable characters, gear, currency) then it should be regulated wether by a specific level of value per lootbox or a static value per tier of available rewards.
HS as an example would have to have it so each pack was worth say ### dust no matter the variety of cards inside (Not actual numbers only an example). This would however change the whole structure of the crafting function. This is true as well if it were to change to the sale of dust instead of packs.
The other option is to make it so every tier of card has a static drop value (in essence what Apple is asking for by wanting the numbers from lootbox companies). Legendary is at a 40 pack pity timer. Change that to 25 packs = legendary, 15 = rare etc. This may result in the duplicate rule being removed however, and double the packs needed for golden versions. This would let the customer base know exactly what to expect but still random enough for the endorphin rush. This module would still upset some people because there is still the chance that some time will be needed to collect all the cards
Another option to help the whole game would be to implement trading as well an actual release of the % chances per pack of each rarity. To make trading more viable to collections, could make it so you are unable to trade if it is your only copy of a card.
This is a very good and well thought out explanation. I personally would love to see trading come to Hearthstone. I recently picked up Magic so your insight in to the pack odds and pricing was enlightening. I'll probably stick to trading cards! Haha. As for Hearthstone I almost never buy packs with money, I just save up my gold and play Arena to earn packs. Maybe if they make some of the changes you suggested I'll buy some packs!
HS has always been too expensive, but they completely lost me when they started throwing good basic cards in the hall of fame set.
That's nothing more than a sad excuse to make the pool of good basic cards smaller, forcing you to buy more good cards from each new set. Which are also only playable in standard for 2 years.
The fact that Blizzard would rather change what they're selling rather than simply telling people what they're buying tells you everything you need to know about this.
I would love this. I have been saying this since launch. Buying cards so you can D/E Card bloat and hopefully farm the dust to make the ~20 relevant cards per expansion is very punishing.. This would be AMAZING.
This is actually saying something. It's saying that laws are trying to protect us, the consumer from bad or unfair pricing modals. That a purchaser should have guaranteed value for their purchases, or it will be considered a "gambling risk" . Offering small bit's of "dust" with packs to "go along with it" is just skirting the issue. Blizzard needs to guarantee value for the money they are taking.
"A guaranteed Legendary for every 20 packs opened" I guess is a way of doing this. I think they are afraid to say this, because people might feel it's not worth it.
If they said something like "For every 10 packs you open, we will guarantee you a legendary", I think they wouldn't be having half the issues they are having now with people feeling like they wasted their money, or got ripped off etc.
Opening a batch of shitty packs feels the same as losing everyting at the slot machine.
Of course we are. We're collecting virtual cards in a computer game. WTF?
Perhaps we could get an interview with the all-powerful 'whole different team of people' so they could explain their vision for the direction of the game to us good people paying their kids' college tuition.
i opened up 350 packs on release day and averaged a legendary every 15.36 packs. when i opened up the same amount of packs for KotfT i average a legendary every 11.23 packs and got 3 golden legendaries. I only got one golden legendary this time around. Considering 120 of those packs were free and I bought the rest with amazon coins i paid for at a 25% discount..... I had the whole set on release day for less than 200 bucks....i know it feels bad man....... don't play the game if you can't afford to and stop hating people who can. I've played the game since beta and i have never had the horrible drop rates described here and ive opened THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of packs..... stop basing your whining on 100 pack and go open 1500 and see if that is the case.
you lucky b*stard.....
I am at one in every 23 packs, based on opening 600 packs over the course of 2 years.
170 pack 7 leggendary
counting 1 in the first 10 pack
it's 6 legendaries in 160pack
:/
FeelsBadMan
It would be fine with me if we had to buy dust but I hope we can still open packs.
Thought I'd add my opinion to the discussion.
imo HS is too expensive. even if you only play 2 classes it takes the entire expansion to get all the cards for their good/fun decks due to the amount of legendaries that are required. Other games (I play Duelyst and have taken a quick look at Gwent) that are based on "being cheaper than HS" are a lot more lenient when it comes to the card crafting system.
However; changing the card pack format WILL NOT solve this issue. On average, even if it doesn't feel like it, you will still get the same amount of dust as long as you play the game long enough that you'll have bought a fair amount of packs. If anything, this will make it more tedious because, if a fully dusted pack is worth X dust and instead of packs they give you said amount of dust, you'll no longer gain the cards from the packs you'd usually keep and thus this will only make everything more expensive.
The only thing I can quickly think of that would address this issue is
I'm tired of looking at streams and seeing all these cool decks that I'll never be able to craft because I'm a free to play player that doesn't wanna invest his entire life into this game. Pls blizzard, think of this part of your playerbase too
its because the greedy blizzard is using vanilla reward systems for a fast expanding game. Not sure wth they were looking in keeping these rewards the same.
Then don't play. Or spend money. I have hearthstone fun, because I spend Hearthstone money. Otherwise, have fun watching streams.
I opened up almost 100 packs this expansion and 66% of them were "40 dust" packs... absolute waste of time and money and its pretty disgusting how pay to win/pay to have fun this game has become. I have money and would gladly buy more packs because of how most of the fun cards i really wanted to play with are epics and legendaries, but I don't want to support blizzard after what an abomination this game has become. I literally cant play the game anymore because every single good AND bad deck you can play requires like 10K dust and none of the cards overlap. It's really a joke when you compare hearthstone to blizzard's other games. Heroes of the storm probably needs more devs and is a lot more difficult to program, and I have literally spent 0$ on it and played WAY less of it than HS, and I have 2/3 of the heroes and a ton of skins and other stuff you can spend real money on. On top of every week they give you 8 random heroes that you can play for free! Same thing with WoW. The game's free in every expansion until the most recent one. Yeah you have to pay 15$ a month, but you spend 50$ on the "SPECIAL DISCOUNT" of every HS expansion and you don't even get to experience half of the expansion. Someone did the math and you need like >200$ EVERY EXPANSION to get all the cards.
you need $200 to go and eat dinner once to some of the restaurants i frequent....if the cost is too high then GO ELSEWHERE, WHINER. I know everyone should make $250 an hour but sorry kid that's not the case.
Since when do games cater to the kind of idiot who regularly pays $200 for dinner? Go away.