So here is just a little bit of napkin math that I found interesting today. This is not meant to be positive or negative, just some perspective on card packs that I found after opening my Rise of Shadows 50. My immediate reaction was that I felt like I had not gotten what I wanted and had way too many duplicates of commons or crummy cards. So just like everyone who opens packs basically. Then I did a little napkin math that made me think.
Personally I would love to see a max money cap on packs where once you have spent X amount than you are given all cards of a set. I know the game makes money off packs and that the thrill of opening packs (gambling) is fun. I find it fun and exciting, and the game does lose something if they don't have it. But it is gambling and it hinges upon the vulnerabilities of people to open "just one more" to maybe get that legendary, or say 5 more, because "i haven't seen a legendary in 20 packs so I know one is coming if I spend 5 more dollars". Hearthstone is actually fairly generous with gold from quests and pack rewards, where you can come close to earning a pack every day or two for just playing, and I do not in any way feel like Blizzard is truly predatory in their practice. Realistically there is a mathematical cap to money spent to unlock every card via disenchanting duplicates and crafting, (its somewhere in the range of about 250 packs bought should average enough dust/pack legendaries to have every card in a 135 card set, which is around $300)
Obligitory Caveat- RNG is going to change everyone's personal numbers but I present mine as a typical scenario based on most of my 50 card pack expansion opening experiences.
Common Rare Epic Legendary 71.62% 22.85% 4.43% 1.10%
My Results 180 Common (72%) 58 Rare (23%) 9 Epic (3%) 3 Legendary (1.2%)
Obviously this was spot on to expected values, which was already different from my perception. After opening I had all commons and nearly all rares in the set which can easily be crafted, cheaply, from duplicates. I think perception is skewed from not realizing that there are only 49 common cards in the whole set. So yes, if 70% of cards in packs are common, and they can only be 50 different flavors, they are going to add up.
My premise for the next part is that if only 2 copies are needed then, in theory, anything beyond that is waste (5 or 20 dust being more or less inconsequential when needing 400 or 1600 to craft the cards you don't have). Taking into account 2 copies of 49 common cards and 37 rare(86 total) than the average "waste" in 50 card packs is 238 (expected amount of common + rare cards) - 172 (2 x 86 cards needed to complete set) = 66 cards "wasted" 66/250 = 26%
So 26% of all the content in the packs are essentially worthless (discounting getting a gold version of the card). Someone who is much better at math than me can please correct this next part (or anything in this ramble, if my logic is flawed).
Since I now have all rares and all commons in the set that means that, based on the averages, whenever I open a pack from here until the next expansion, there is only a 5% chance of getting something I actually need (not considering that, conservatively, half of the epics/legendaries are not "good cards"). 95% of every reward I get is wasted for the better part of 3-4 months.
Assuming their math is correct and accounting for variance in golden cards etc; they average dust per card is 20ish, or 100 dust per pack on average. To acquire just the legendaries i would have to buy approx. 160 more packs. *RNG changes this, and if someone has just a little luck in can shave 30 packs off of this, but lets assume the worst case for arguments sake) 23 total legendaries in set - 3 from initial packs = 20 legendaries left. 1600 dust to craft legendaries = 15 card packs worth of dust (for simplicities sake) 1 guaranteed every 30 packs means its approx 3 legendaries per 30 packs (1 guarenteed + 2 from dust) 30 packs x 7ish = 20 to complete the set (and pray you got the epics you needed...)
You shouldn't feel like you need to, and in reality you don't need because at least some are not going to be worth it, but my point is...
TLDR
I don't think I should need to open 500 packs to complete a card set. I did not say BUY 500 because it's cut down by spending gold on packs, and crafting only the cards you actually want/need. Hardly anyone owns every card, but this is the numbers version of what that would look like..
I always like math problems, so I tried to figure out how you came to the 500 in the statement...
I don't think I should need to open 500 packs to complete a card set
Aside from that, I believe 100 dust is only the average dust per pack when you are willing to dust all cards you open. Including all legendaries, all epics. If you are trying to acquire a complete expansion set, you won't be dusting any legendaries and you'll be keeping 2 copies of each epic. When looking at 30 packs, you wouldn't get 3000 dust if you keep legendary/epic cards.
I think around 350 packs is how many packs a person with average luck and average drop rates would require for a complete expansion set.
I'm going to write something, and I don't want it to trigger anyone . . . I am writing this for the sole purpose of explaining something to people who seem intellectually curious enough to be interested . . .
Legally speaking (in the U.S.), Hearthstone card pack purchases are NOT gambling.
That statement is not an opinion, it is 100% verifiable fact. I do not claim to know whether it SHOULD be considered gambling, or whether there is a moral difference between it and gambling, but in terms of the laws of all 50 states of my country (and nearly every European country), this is not gambling.
I will explain.
Most people think of the definition of gambling as "exchanging money for the chance at multiple outcomes, some favorable and some not" or something like that. That is close, but it is missing one key element. In order for an activity to be considered gambling, some of the outcomes must result in specific and direct financial gain. In other words, if I buy a lottery ticket or bet on a roulette wheel, and the desired outcome is that I end with more money than I spent, that is gambling.
Likewise, if I buy Counter Strike loot boxes, which have items that can be sold to other accounts for real dollars, that is gambling.
Hearthstone does not have a trading mechanism, and thus they are safe from the legal restrictions on gambling. Some people would argue that by obtaining the cards you want, you are in a better situation financially because you won't need to buy additional packs. However, this is where the "specific and direct financial gain" comes in. You have to look at each transaction individually. If you buy a pack, you have irrevocably spent the money for a pack, regardless of the outcome. Whether you choose to buy another pack may be influenced by the outcome, but the decision is not mandated for you by the first pack.
Another example would be those old machines where you control a claw that descends down to grab a random prize. Because the prizes are tiny plastic trinkets with no financial value, you are not deemed to be gambling when you play those machines. You have paid for the opportunity to play the game, and there is no expectation of financial benefit.
I fully understand why people think of HS packs as gambling in terms of the psychology behind the motivation for buying additional packs. I'm not arguing with you. But, it annoys me when I see people like Jim Sterling accusing Blizzard and others of being criminal in their advertising and business plans. This is not an opinion; these statements are factually incorrect.
I would add the exception that one European country (Denmark, maybe?) has specifically passed a law to include microtransactions without monetary benefit into their gambling restrictions. That's their prerogative, but even they had to admit that under the old definition (which is the same definition still in use by the majority of the world), this is not gambling.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
I dont know man, I think, you are fine with like 200 packs for each expansion. Like having every deck that you want fine. The rest comes from the prepurchase and starting legendaries, events and daily quests throught the expansion. You get 100+packs for quests per cycle. 20 legendaries should be around 400 packs, but you usually craft some cool stuff with the duplicate dust.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that's a lot and not for everyone. But I am usually around 180 packs pro expansion and I have all legendaries and all relevant epics. Maybe I am just lucky. But I think that's working out overall. Prepurchase plus one more bundle or so...
I will post some pics here also, in case the link doesn't work. Do whatever you want with the statistics. Also, some questions:
I didn't open a single pack with more than 1 legendary card in it. Also, the most golden cards in one pack was 3 golden rares. That was also the only pack with more than 2 golden cards in it. All of the above in a pool of 7k packs. What are the odds of these happening? I think the site is poorly coded.
(A little harder would be to calculate the odds of the best dust value of a pack being 2075 dust - a golden legendary, golden common and 3 other non-golden cards - from a pool of 7k packs)
I would also like an option to buy an entire set. I think they offer that in MtG for example. Even with the improvement where you can just spam the space bar to get through it now, the card pack opening can get extremely annoying for people that just want the complete collection. Every expansion I spend like at least 30 to 60 minutes for that which could just be done with a single click if they would offer it. This is not even about getting it for cheaper. The biggest fear I have if ever my account should get hacked/banned is the time to get the cards back even if I'm willing to spend money. It would be like a day of nothing but card pack opening, disenchanting, and crafting. That's ridiculous. I probably would try to contant their support, but when buying "normally" they almost certainly wouldn't make an exception. Although it might be worth a try. Maybe you want to post that in their forums if you haven't already. But I highly doubt they would either adopt it or make exceptions.
Somone said that the ideal number of packs is around 75 if your goal is to get the commons and rares and open cards that add to your collection. After that, you will be getting diminishing returns and pretty much buy packs for dust only.
I never bother to want complete sets and rather aim for specific decks that I want to play. I have enough spectator epics and legendaries I haven't used in a deck for years already.
I always like math problems, so I tried to figure out how you came to the 500 in the statement...
I don't think I should need to open 500 packs to complete a card set
Aside from that, I believe 100 dust is only the average dust per pack when you are willing to dust all cards you open. Including all legendaries, all epics. If you are trying to acquire a complete expansion set, you won't be dusting any legendaries and you'll be keeping 2 copies of each epic. When looking at 30 packs, you wouldn't get 3000 dust if you keep legendary/epic cards.
I think around 350 packs is how many packs a person with average luck and average drop rates would require for a complete expansion set.
380 seems to be the perfect amount according to https://speedodevo.github.io/packr/ . You could probably go down to 360 minimum but less than that and you run the risk of not getting enough dust
So here is just a little bit of napkin math that I found interesting today. This is not meant to be positive or negative, just some perspective on card packs that I found after opening my Rise of Shadows 50. My immediate reaction was that I felt like I had not gotten what I wanted and had way too many duplicates of commons or crummy cards. So just like everyone who opens packs basically. Then I did a little napkin math that made me think.
Personally I would love to see a max money cap on packs where once you have spent X amount than you are given all cards of a set. I know the game makes money off packs and that the thrill of opening packs (gambling) is fun. I find it fun and exciting, and the game does lose something if they don't have it. But it is gambling and it hinges upon the vulnerabilities of people to open "just one more" to maybe get that legendary, or say 5 more, because "i haven't seen a legendary in 20 packs so I know one is coming if I spend 5 more dollars". Hearthstone is actually fairly generous with gold from quests and pack rewards, where you can come close to earning a pack every day or two for just playing, and I do not in any way feel like Blizzard is truly predatory in their practice. Realistically there is a mathematical cap to money spent to unlock every card via disenchanting duplicates and crafting, (its somewhere in the range of about 250 packs bought should average enough dust/pack legendaries to have every card in a 135 card set, which is around $300)
Obligitory Caveat- RNG is going to change everyone's personal numbers but I present mine as a typical scenario based on most of my 50 card pack expansion opening experiences.
Here are the odds of a card pack based on a bunch of studies https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics
Common Rare Epic Legendary
71.62% 22.85% 4.43% 1.10%
My Results
180 Common (72%)
58 Rare (23%)
9 Epic (3%)
3 Legendary (1.2%)
Obviously this was spot on to expected values, which was already different from my perception. After opening I had all commons and nearly all rares in the set which can easily be crafted, cheaply, from duplicates. I think perception is skewed from not realizing that there are only 49 common cards in the whole set. So yes, if 70% of cards in packs are common, and they can only be 50 different flavors, they are going to add up.
My premise for the next part is that if only 2 copies are needed then, in theory, anything beyond that is waste (5 or 20 dust being more or less inconsequential when needing 400 or 1600 to craft the cards you don't have). Taking into account 2 copies of 49 common cards and 37 rare(86 total) than the average "waste" in 50 card packs is
238 (expected amount of common + rare cards) - 172 (2 x 86 cards needed to complete set) = 66 cards "wasted"
66/250 = 26%
So 26% of all the content in the packs are essentially worthless (discounting getting a gold version of the card). Someone who is much better at math than me can please correct this next part (or anything in this ramble, if my logic is flawed).
Since I now have all rares and all commons in the set that means that, based on the averages, whenever I open a pack from here until the next expansion, there is only a 5% chance of getting something I actually need (not considering that, conservatively, half of the epics/legendaries are not "good cards"). 95% of every reward I get is wasted for the better part of 3-4 months.
Check the data here for people smarter than I https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics
Assuming their math is correct and accounting for variance in golden cards etc; they average dust per card is 20ish, or 100 dust per pack on average. To acquire just the legendaries i would have to buy approx. 160 more packs. *RNG changes this, and if someone has just a little luck in can shave 30 packs off of this, but lets assume the worst case for arguments sake)
23 total legendaries in set - 3 from initial packs = 20 legendaries left.
1600 dust to craft legendaries = 15 card packs worth of dust (for simplicities sake)
1 guaranteed every 30 packs means its approx 3 legendaries per 30 packs (1 guarenteed + 2 from dust)
30 packs x 7ish = 20 to complete the set (and pray you got the epics you needed...)
You shouldn't feel like you need to, and in reality you don't need because at least some are not going to be worth it, but my point is...
TLDR
I don't think I should need to open 500 packs to complete a card set. I did not say BUY 500 because it's cut down by spending gold on packs, and crafting only the cards you actually want/need. Hardly anyone owns every card, but this is the numbers version of what that would look like..
some food for thought
you can run test here
https://speedodevo.github.io/packr/
very fast results, and allows you to open any number of packs, you want
Edit,
opening 500 packs gives you around 98-100% collection without using any dust from disenchanting extras.
Edit2:
random test from opening 200 packs
100% commons
100% rare
31 (57,4%) epics
11 (47,8%) legendaries (without +2 form both preorders, and archmage vargoth)
6820 dust form disenchanting extras. Its not enough to craft full remaining set.
I always like math problems, so I tried to figure out how you came to the 500 in the statement...
Aside from that, I believe 100 dust is only the average dust per pack when you are willing to dust all cards you open. Including all legendaries, all epics. If you are trying to acquire a complete expansion set, you won't be dusting any legendaries and you'll be keeping 2 copies of each epic. When looking at 30 packs, you wouldn't get 3000 dust if you keep legendary/epic cards.
I think around 350 packs is how many packs a person with average luck and average drop rates would require for a complete expansion set.
I'm going to write something, and I don't want it to trigger anyone . . . I am writing this for the sole purpose of explaining something to people who seem intellectually curious enough to be interested . . .
Legally speaking (in the U.S.), Hearthstone card pack purchases are NOT gambling.
That statement is not an opinion, it is 100% verifiable fact. I do not claim to know whether it SHOULD be considered gambling, or whether there is a moral difference between it and gambling, but in terms of the laws of all 50 states of my country (and nearly every European country), this is not gambling.
I will explain.
Most people think of the definition of gambling as "exchanging money for the chance at multiple outcomes, some favorable and some not" or something like that. That is close, but it is missing one key element. In order for an activity to be considered gambling, some of the outcomes must result in specific and direct financial gain. In other words, if I buy a lottery ticket or bet on a roulette wheel, and the desired outcome is that I end with more money than I spent, that is gambling.
Likewise, if I buy Counter Strike loot boxes, which have items that can be sold to other accounts for real dollars, that is gambling.
Hearthstone does not have a trading mechanism, and thus they are safe from the legal restrictions on gambling. Some people would argue that by obtaining the cards you want, you are in a better situation financially because you won't need to buy additional packs. However, this is where the "specific and direct financial gain" comes in. You have to look at each transaction individually. If you buy a pack, you have irrevocably spent the money for a pack, regardless of the outcome. Whether you choose to buy another pack may be influenced by the outcome, but the decision is not mandated for you by the first pack.
Another example would be those old machines where you control a claw that descends down to grab a random prize. Because the prizes are tiny plastic trinkets with no financial value, you are not deemed to be gambling when you play those machines. You have paid for the opportunity to play the game, and there is no expectation of financial benefit.
I fully understand why people think of HS packs as gambling in terms of the psychology behind the motivation for buying additional packs. I'm not arguing with you. But, it annoys me when I see people like Jim Sterling accusing Blizzard and others of being criminal in their advertising and business plans. This is not an opinion; these statements are factually incorrect.
I would add the exception that one European country (Denmark, maybe?) has specifically passed a law to include microtransactions without monetary benefit into their gambling restrictions. That's their prerogative, but even they had to admit that under the old definition (which is the same definition still in use by the majority of the world), this is not gambling.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
I dont know man, I think, you are fine with like 200 packs for each expansion. Like having every deck that you want fine. The rest comes from the prepurchase and starting legendaries, events and daily quests throught the expansion. You get 100+packs for quests per cycle. 20 legendaries should be around 400 packs, but you usually craft some cool stuff with the duplicate dust.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that's a lot and not for everyone. But I am usually around 180 packs pro expansion and I have all legendaries and all relevant epics. Maybe I am just lucky. But I think that's working out overall. Prepurchase plus one more bundle or so...
Occasionally gives helpful advice.
I opened a set of 7000 Rastakhan packs in the above site. Here are the results: https://imgur.com/a/LHqoMR4
I will post some pics here also, in case the link doesn't work. Do whatever you want with the statistics. Also, some questions:
I didn't open a single pack with more than 1 legendary card in it. Also, the most golden cards in one pack was 3 golden rares. That was also the only pack with more than 2 golden cards in it. All of the above in a pool of 7k packs. What are the odds of these happening? I think the site is poorly coded.
(A little harder would be to calculate the odds of the best dust value of a pack being 2075 dust - a golden legendary, golden common and 3 other non-golden cards - from a pool of 7k packs)
I would also like an option to buy an entire set. I think they offer that in MtG for example. Even with the improvement where you can just spam the space bar to get through it now, the card pack opening can get extremely annoying for people that just want the complete collection. Every expansion I spend like at least 30 to 60 minutes for that which could just be done with a single click if they would offer it. This is not even about getting it for cheaper. The biggest fear I have if ever my account should get hacked/banned is the time to get the cards back even if I'm willing to spend money. It would be like a day of nothing but card pack opening, disenchanting, and crafting. That's ridiculous. I probably would try to contant their support, but when buying "normally" they almost certainly wouldn't make an exception. Although it might be worth a try. Maybe you want to post that in their forums if you haven't already. But I highly doubt they would either adopt it or make exceptions.
Somone said that the ideal number of packs is around 75 if your goal is to get the commons and rares and open cards that add to your collection. After that, you will be getting diminishing returns and pretty much buy packs for dust only.
I never bother to want complete sets and rather aim for specific decks that I want to play. I have enough spectator epics and legendaries I haven't used in a deck for years already.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
380 seems to be the perfect amount according to https://speedodevo.github.io/packr/ . You could probably go down to 360 minimum but less than that and you run the risk of not getting enough dust