Hearthpwn

"Well maybe new players should just expect to suck if they don't want to spend money."

This is the most toxic way of thinking, and is the quickest way to kill the game. If new players are constantly getting destroyed by extremely powerful decks that will take them months to obtain, they're not gonna keep playing. Hell, I have a fairly hefty collection and I usually end up just not playing for days on end. You can't just say "Well they don't want to pay money so they'll have a substandard experience" because then we'll never get any new players, which will lead to this game dying a slow and painful death. 

There definitely needs to be some fixes. Other games are just way more generous than Hearthstone is. I've been playing Eternal for a week and I have more legendaries and cards in that game than I recieved in my first year playing Hearthstone. Shadowverse gives you like a 100 packs when you start just as a backlog of all the free packs they've given out. These games' packs are also filled with more cards than Hearthstone's measly 5.

However, more important than generosity these games are fairly balanced. Cheap aggro decks can perform well, expensive control decks can do well, cheap and expensive combo can work, cheap and expensive midrange is fun. Games that have healthy metas where there are a large number of good decks but no absurd decks are great for new players. If Hearthstone's meta was good enough that you could throw the three legendaries a new player might have into a deck and perform reasonably well the current reward system would be fine.

This leads to two possible fixes:

- Give far more rewards for playing than 1/10 of a pack every 3 wins + meh quests.

- On the next rotation have a metagame that isn't just a crazy aggro deck vs a crazy control deck. 

We do definitely need fixes though. As it stands I literally can't recommend my friend's play Hearthstone, but I'm more than happy to tell them to play other card games.

Quote from DJSoren >>

"Well maybe new players should just expect to suck if they don't want to spend money."

This is the most toxic way of thinking, and is the quickest way to kill the game. If new players are constantly getting destroyed by extremely powerful decks that will take them months to obtain, they're not gonna keep playing. Hell, I have a fairly hefty collection and I usually end up just not playing for days on end. You can't just say "Well they don't want to pay money so they'll have a substandard experience" because then we'll never get any new players, which will lead to this game dying a slow and painful death. 

There definitely needs to be some fixes. Other games are just way more generous than Hearthstone is. I've been playing Eternal for a week and I have more legendaries and cards in that game than I recieved in my first year playing Hearthstone. Shadowverse gives you like a 100 packs when you start just as a backlog of all the free packs they've given out. These games' packs are also filled with more cards than Hearthstone's measly 5.

However, more important than generosity these games are fairly balanced. Cheap aggro decks can perform well, expensive control decks can do well, cheap and expensive combo can work, cheap and expensive midrange is fun. Games that have healthy metas where there are a large number of good decks but no absurd decks are great for new players. If Hearthstone's meta was good enough that you could throw the three legendaries a new player might have into a deck and perform reasonably well the current reward system would be fine.

This leads to two possible fixes:

- Give far more rewards for playing than 1/10 of a pack every 3 wins + meh quests.

- On the next rotation have a metagame that isn't just a crazy aggro deck vs a crazy control deck. 

We do definitely need fixes though. As it stands I literally can't recommend my friend's play Hearthstone, but I'm more than happy to tell them to play other card games.

Quote from DJSoren >>

This is the most toxic way of thinking, and is the quickest way to kill the game. If new players are constantly getting destroyed by extremely powerful decks that will take them months to obtain, they're not gonna keep playing. Hell, I have a fairly hefty collection and I usually end up just not playing for days on end. You can't just say "Well they don't want to pay money so they'll have a substandard experience" because then we'll never get any new players, which will lead to this game dying a slow and painful death. 

Quote from banstylejbo >>

These threads always boil down to the same thing. If you aren't willing to or can't spend any money then don't expect to have all the options those who spend money do.

Blizzard gives away free packs for Tavern Brawl, has run more events lately which give you free gold/dust/packs, gives out free packs for picking your champion for HCT, gave away a free legendary in the solo content for Frozen Throne, made the change so you are guaranteed a legendary in your first 10 packs of an expansion, and changed it so you don't get duplicate legendaries. I'd say overall they're fairly generous, even to those who don't spend a dime. Sure, we'd all love to get more free stuff, but to say the game is all the sudden getting more expensive isn't really true at all.

Can't imagine what a terrible experience it is to be a f2p, who wants to experiment with decks. When I tried Jade Druid recently I quickly found out that with time deck building in HS became very problematic. You have to play the perfect list or your deck loses 30-50% of it's theoretical strength. Before it wasn't like that. You could replace a few cards that you don't have and still have viable results. Now it's all about synergy that Blizzard forces you to play. If you are f2p - craft Patches and go face, because THAT'S THE SYNERGY YOU CAN AFFORD, SON. 

I have been playing since beta, and while i have most playable cards, it is true that the game is getting extremely expensive. They removed adventures which was a much cheaper way to get cards than packs because for 3500 gold which you can farm in 3 months you were guaranteed to get all the cards. In expansions 35 packs is nowhere near enough to get even the cards needed to compete.

Blizzard said they axed adventures to shake up the meta more, but that is a lie. If you go back and examine things closely, adventures and expansions had almost the same number of PLAYABLE cards, the only difference is that expansions had more meme and filler cards.

On top of this, they nearly doubled the number of legendaries they print and more importantly they changed the ratio of meme/filler to playable legendaries so that you are less likely to open something usefull which forces you to craft the good stuff if you want to compete.

To quote Firebat: "i play this game all day every day, i don't do anything else, and i still don't have all the cards i want to play. I even disenchanted all my golden cards."

Prepurchase (50 packs) should allow you to have at least 2 available classes just after opening. If you want to play more, you have to spend more money. Other than that, stick with what you can afford and stop whining about your lack of cash. Not even once Ive cried about not having money for this game until ive started to earn more. Until you cant afford to play more classes, just enjoy what you have or try doing some arena runs. 

About the number of legendaries in decks. Some legendaries can be easily replaced without losing almost no power in a deck.

What has really playing all the day have to do with number of packs you acquire? 3 wins = 10 gold. Having 60% WR

Having 60% WR you win 6 times every 10 games. Say game lasts 6 minutes on average (but it depends on what class youre playing so average can mean nothing here). So in 1 hour you get what? 20 gold? 

Now, streamers play 8 hours a day on average. 8 x 20 = 160 gold/day. And this is like the most you can get because its not like they play 8 hours straight, game after game. Meta has shifted a bit more to control so matches last longer. I would say average streamer makes 100 gold/day just from playing. After 1 month you get no more than 30 packs, prolly much less say 20 because not everyone plays every day.

After 2 months of expansion you get 40 packs just from winning matches considering you have 60% WR which is pretty damn high and correct if you only play best decks. But most steamers tend to play some weaker/meme decks aswell.  So the number goes prolly from 40 to 30 packs / 2 months just from winning matches.

My point was here that the difference between amount of gold an average player gets, isnt much different from what streamers achieve and more important if you want to have all the cards you want to play (meme cards, interesting cards but too weak for meta) its clear to me that you have to get much more packs than what you can buy for earned gold.

Quote from TallAr92 >>

What has playing all the day have to do with number of gold you acquire? 3 wins = 10 gold. Having 60% WR

Having 60% WR you win 6 times every 10 games. Say game lasts 6 minutes on average (but it depends on what class youre playing so average can mean nothing here). So in 1 hour you get what? 20 gold? 

Now, streamers play 8 hours a day on average. 8 x 20 = 160 gold/day. And this is like the most you can get because its not like they play 8 hours straight, game after game. Meta has shifted a bit more to control so matches last longer. I would say average streamer makes 100 gold/day just from playing. After 1 month you get no more than 30 packs, prolly much less say 20 because not everyone plays every day.

After 2 months of expansion you get 40 packs just from winning matches considering you have 60% WR which is pretty damn high and correct if you only play best decks. But most steamers tend to play some weaker/meme decks aswell.  So the number goes prolly from 40 to 30 packs / 2 months just from winning matches.

My point was here that the difference between amount of gold an average player gets, isnt much different from what streamers achieve and more important if you want to have all the cards you want to play (meme cards, interesting cards but too weak for meta) its clear to me that you have to get much more packs than what you can buy for earned gold.

 

2,5+ years player here. I must agree with everyone, the game has become too expensive for f2p, even with disenchanting golden cards, grinding to 100 gold every day and getting a golden epic every month, you simply can't keep up if you don't pay up. Not only that you can't keep up, because you need very good cards to be able to rank to more than R10, but you can't craft anything you wan't to have fun with, because all the meme cards are now epic. It's got a horrible mobile pay2win model hidden behind a desktop version and full-on cosmetic makeup. It feels very unrewarding to play. It's like digging a hole with you bare hands on the sun the whole day just to find a penny.

I ran away to Eternal, get a pack for every first ranked/casual win of the day and i feel happy and satisfied, you get a nice collection pretty quickly and don't feel pressured to grind half a month to get a legendary you want. I took the Hearthstone model for granted (it's my first CCG ever), and only now i see how greedy and horrible it is.

Quote from richard1234567891011 >>

I agree, the game is very expensive. It is becoming very expensive for:

1) As you said decks are running more legendaries than before

2) Blizzard has doubled the number of class legendaries (before there was 1 legendary for class/expansion, now 2)

3) Blizzad is also printing bad legendaries (another cost, because if there are less legendary and are all good everything you find is ok, if there are bad legendaries your chance to find a bad one is higher so you will have to craft the good one) 

4) There are no events in order to find free gold/dust

5) Yes the nerfs are another cost (but I am fine with this cost, Nerf are required and good for the game when required but I hate Blizzard's nerfs that destroy only cards but this is another thing). 

Due to these reasons the game is much more expensive than before. 

9/10 people here start with "i only buy the pre order packs"

How the fuck is that f2p by any means?F2p means you dont even give a dime to the game.One of you big talkers should make an account and not spend anything,see how much time you need to catch up,not that you ever will..

And im not a f2p player,im just mad of all peoples ignorance,if you have played for a year or more before and also buy pre orders,then you cant say you are f2p.

There is no problem with the game.

If you don't like how they run their company, you can use your one and only power as a consumer: Quit. Stop spending money.

Well MTGO decks cost around $150-$300 ... yet you complain cause you can't make a descent deck for $50?

For $50 you can make a STRONG Mage deck on Hearthstone (if you disenchant the other drops you don't need).

CCG and TCG games are expensive, they always were. 

Legendaries were always extremely expensive to craft, but prior to MSG there weren't many legendaries per set that you really needed to play a particular archetype at its full potential. I don't think that Team 5 is deliberately designing more powerful legendaries to make more money: I think a lot of these cards are legendary because the one-per-deck restriction is tied to the rarity. However, if the number of essential legendaries per set increases without it becoming cheaper to acquire them, that does leave players with fewer archetypes that they feel they can play.

In my opinion the main problem is not that F2P isn't generous enough (although I'd like to see it a bit more generous), but that spending a bit of money doesn't get you much. I used to buy the adventures with real money, since I felt I got good value for that money in solo missions and cards. With packs, how much value you get from them depends a lot on luck, and the average case isn't all that great. A pre-order costs twice as much as an adventure did and will give you only a fraction of the epic and legendary cards released. And the value for money for buying packs outside of the pre-orders is even worse.

Quote from DimiMit >>

Edit : Also add to the fact the amount of gold/dust i "wasted" on rotated adventures and packs. That really hurt.

I stopped playing hearthstone for this reason for the same price i can play paper magic and have cards that are worth money with resale value.  I now only play a little at the beginning of every new xpac and strictly f2p.

Quote from Wizav >>

Well MTGO decks cost around $150-$300 ... yet you complain cause you can't make a descent deck for $50?

For $50 you can make a STRONG Mage deck on Hearthstone (if you disenchant the other drops you don't need).

CCG and TCG games are expensive, they always were. 

 

 

Quote from TwoDoorsThePlebLord >>

Use your own damn brain you don't have to net deck everything. Even if you are netdecking try to change atleast something. Don't be THAT guy. 

Quote from robert_fanr >>

So we all know Blizzard wants to make money and that's fine . But this state of the game is getting ridiculous .

It seems the way team 5 balances cards and creates new expansions is intended only to make f2p players quit .

How are we suppose to continue playing this game when today's aggro decks include up to 6 legendary minions (Asmo rogue) ??! The only remotely accessible kinda competitive deck is face hunter and that gets boring really fast . All the other decks, even aggro require a lot of epic / legendary stuff .

I think something should be done in this regard but not sure what . What do you guys think ?

I'm confused as to what the problem is. Like, unless you're totally new to the game, you have a workable collection. And at this point in Hearthstone's lifecycle, there aren't many totally new players left to cater to. I haven't spent a dollar and don't intend to, and I can frequently get rank 5 playing < an hour a day.