So with the new expansion coming, I'm sure we've all seen the threads and discussion about the real-money cost of cards. I've seen tons of people saying the game is "pay-to-win" and that the packs and preorders are too expensive. You'll see it on reviews and discussion boards alike. I actually really disagree here.
I will give my thoughts on this and I want to know what you guys think. I don't believe the game is pay to win at all. You just gotta grind...you know actually play the game. I feel like people are too impatient and want gold/packs/dust just to move along quickly. Now I'll admit, I have made a few purchases (really just some adventures), but without that, I would still be in a similar position. I've been playing off and on for about 3 years and I'm at a point where I have lots of legendaries, can craft most of what I want, and have a few golden heroes. I could have gotten just about everything I have without paying.
What do you guys think?? I think there are definitely ways to improve the speed of the game and help new players get a larger collection, however, I don't think Hearthstone is pay-to-win, it just takes time.
Another quick point is that I've been saving gold for about a month and a half. I have about 2000 gold which is 20 packs in the next expansion. It didn't take very long, I maybe play 5 games a day or less. It's fairly easy to save and get packs if you put in some work. Doing the math, say, on the low end, you get a 50-coin quest every day. One month, say 30 days, times a 50-coin quest is 1500 coins (15 packs) a month. I think that is reasonable.
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you guys think Hearthstone is pay-to-win or does it just require dedication?
2. How much gold have you guys saved for the new expansion and how difficult do you think it was? Should it be easier/harder?
I paid money when I was getting back into it. Preordered KOTFT and every expansion after that, up to Rastakhan's Rumble. I did make legend (thank god), but I still don't think it's pay to win. The correct term should be "pay to have (more) fun" haha. I would have quit way earlier if I didn't have the collection to play a bunch of different decks. I'd probably blow my brains out if I had to play nothing but zoolock for a year straight.
Just ignore the people who complain about spending money in order to have fun. I don't know why they can't see it this way, but I've given up trying to tell them that spending $100-200 on a game you will spend hundreds of hours on is worth it lol.
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Twitch name: Anatak15 NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
It's nowhere close to P2W. There are lots of really cheap decks that can easily get you to rank 5, even legend. It doesn't take a long time to get a fully functional aggro deck. If you're good in arena, grinding dust/coins/cards is really fast and easy, and enjoyable.
I think in Hearthstone you only need to pay if you need vast variation of different type of decks, but if you're fine with climbing ladder with one or two decks it's far from P2W.
1. It is definitely not pay-to-win. Play your dailies, tavern brawl every week, and you'll be fine to build one or two tier one decks. If you really want to progress however, while staying FTP, get good at Arena.
2. I have 14680 gold as of today and over 22000 dust, completely FTP. It's not difficult, just requires playing regularly and playing a good bit of Arena to get packs rather than buying packs. As long as you are reasonably good, Arena is always a more cost effective way to get packs.
Isnt Pay to Win, its Pay to Fun, because the cost of meme decks its insane, but if you just want win build some aggro shit and get legend, but thats not fun for me.
Game is not pay to win. Go watch Toast and Trump who built back to back F2P Midrange Hunter for like 1000 dust or less AND took it to legend with 1 or less legendary. I agree with OP and the posters I saw before writing this that yes you can pay to skip the grind. You can essentially give Blizzard money and say “I don’t play your game as much/didn’t play for a few years; I’d like to catch up”. There is nothing wrong with pay-walling the play experience that loyal, year to year players worked hard to accomplish. Gaming in the modern era with the internet is the problem for entitlement. If you think it’s all 10 year old boys and girls whining you’ll be disgusted to know there’s more 30-50 year old men basement dwelling and crying on the internet than youth.
I'll start off by saying I have never paid any money for Hearthstone. I used to play all the time ever since Beta with a few breaks here and there, but always getting the card backs. Recently, I took a longer break (mainly because of Magic Arena), but I've started to come back with the new expansion on the horizons. I grinded my dailies to build up gold for all of the paid adventures and have at least 2000 gold for an initial 20 packs on an expansion's release. Over time, I slowly started to get more and more gold to where now, I don't have to worry about grinding for gold for a new release.
I will admit, maybe I am the wrong person to compare to since reaching Legend has never been my goal, nor has it been to have all the current meta decks. My goal has always been to have fun and build strange decks that people might have not seen before.
The pay to win argument is old and keeps getting worse with time since more cards are being added every few months. However, I have seen people take new accounts to legend before simply by dusting all of their cards and crafting the best deck for the meta. The argument isn't necessarily that they can't win from the beginning, its more that they don't have an expansive collection from the beginning. Because most new players won't dust everything for one meta deck to climb all the way up, they will lose more often and might be one of the people saying it's "pay to win".
The best thing I can say to people that want to play with a bunch of different decks just for the experience is craft Whizbang the Wonderful. He is hands down the best card for any new player to craft because he allows you to play a random deck recipe every time you load into a match. With this, you get the experience of playing with these new cards without having to collect them, which can help you find the style of deck you really like to play.
For the people that just want to get legend, pick a meta deck and dust everything for it. Then grind your way up the leaderboard.
I think you're not totally wrong, but you just see one side of the coin. As all the games where there is an option to spend money, a F2P player needs dedication: that's normal and I think no one with a functioning brain has ever complained about it. The problems are others: first of all, most of the times you don't get rewarded enough for all your efforts. Yeah, I know, a game must reward those who win and "punish" those who lose, but you can all agree with me that the 10 gold per 3 wins ratio is really obsolete, since it was set when the game was much cheaper and less competitive (?). Sometimes, you just don't get enough incentives to grind for another hour instead of doing something else. But maybe that's just a grudge of mine. Let's continue.
I definitely think that you can win without spending money, so HS isn't literally a pay-to-win game: you can read stories of players reaching high ranks and even Legend without giving Blizz a single cent. The problem is that, rather than pay-to-win, HS is really a PAY-FOR-HAVING-FUN-WHILE-WINNING: if you invest (or waste, based on your personal choices) enough money, you get to try multiple decks and even experiment wacky combos and stuff, something that a F2P player barely can do, given that you usually get 1/5 of the epics/legendaries of each expansion. That's a reason why netdecking is so popular: you want the best deck possible with the lowest dust cost, because not everyone is able to insta-craft a full RenoLock. And that's also why Rexxar has been such a scourge in these months: throw in a bunch of Classic and Basic cards, a couple of commons, two epics and a legendary for 3000 dust cost and, if you're not dumb, a golden epic at the end of the month. I know of friends that would have loved to play that deck for fun, but how can you do it when are barely able to win a game at ranks higher than 21?
Another point: grinding is fair, but it has to be tolerable. Nowadays, it's not always it: for example, I started playing after K&C release and the first remarkable achievement I've got so far is Rank 5 last month (and I haven't crafted a single card since Doomsday day 1, which was a common card lol). Most of the times, and for a lot of time, when you start playing you literally get crapped on by experienced players who farm wins at low ranks and stuff. I don't know if you guys can relate, but the Rank 20-17 zone is a living hell: you queue into golden heroes with (presumably) full collection playing Tier 1 decks more often than at rank 13, and that's a huge problem that may kill a lot of newbies' and F2P players' motivation. Why grinding if all you can feel is frustration and you can't feel the sense of progression the Devs talk a lot about? Is it a problem that can be solved by changing the matchmaking algorithm? Maybe, but right now that's the situation. and that's why people feel like they aren't motivated to grind.
In order to answer you last question, I've hoarded 8600 gold so far and I think I'll get to 10k right when the expansion hits, but that's what makes me think: I've gained resources with a lot of dedication in order to get myself a good spot for the new exp, but someone who has wasted their gold and now may have few to zero coins can just dump 80$ in the game and not only recover his disadvantage, but also get in a better position than someone who has been grinding for the last 4 months. Do you see my point? Money digs an abyss impossible to fill between F2P and pay-to-win players.
What I'm trying to say is that it's normal that there will always be a difference between a F2P and a pay-to-win collections, but it's just that the gap is too big and it keeps increasing.
I hope you got my point. I'm opened to replies and discussions.
Blizzard give us nearly 10 free packs per month (with travenbrawls,bug fix,tournaments...) And you easily can get 14-16k gold by finishing quest it means 20-25 packs also they are giving us 3+ free packs and 1 LEGENDARY per exp
I used to never buy packs, but since Frozen Throne I have pre-ordered all of them at a minimum! And frankly I wish I had done the same with all expansions prior, and the initial release of the game. Not because I feel I need more cards to win games, but because I've gotten in a really bad habit of wanting to have all the cards! The competitionist in me has latched onto this game and urges me to fill all empty card slots in the collections page! But I often have to fight these urges as my wife doesn't want me to spend money on the game. I did well to resist the Annoy-O bundle! Not so much on the Wild bundle... which I want more of because I played so casually in the first year or two of the game being released!
This is very simple to understand but entitled kiddies never will. Here it goes:
Hearthstone is a hobby not just a game. It's a card game hobby and thanks to esports a "sport". Just like any sport or hobby you have to pay money to have the gear required to play said game or do said hobby. There will ALWAYS be someone with better gear than you and others with worse gear. In the end it's a matter of skill in how you play the game, not the gear you have.
In NO WAY is buying random card packs "paying to win". You are merely paying the necessary money to compete at a higher level. You can compete at a lower level as well. Rank is just a number. If you want to have fun, ignore the number and just play to win at your rank. If you can't climb who cares? The point of doing a Hobby or Sport is to be the best you can be with what you have AND have fun. If you have a busy life, chances are you can afford to pay. If you don't, chances are you have plenty of time to grind.
This game let's you play for free. No one is forcing you to buy cards and there are PLENTY of instances of good players winning with bad cards.
P.S. There are so many people with cards that this clearly isn't an actual thing. Almost everyone I play against has a fully decked out deck. I rarely play against anyone who has a budget deck.
How about we stop these posts entirely. This is just adding to it and no one cares what you think. No one cares that you need to share your feelings cause you are a sensitive snowflake.
I’ve paid more than most, and still lose unless I grind my face off to the point I don’t want to play anymore. However new players aren’t given nearly enough to be able to get into and enjoy the game. I think new players should get one time 50 packs from each of last years expansions when they register so they can learn to enjoy the game. After that, they have to keep up on their own.
1. Do you guys think Hearthstone is pay-to-win or does it just require dedication? No i think not there are a lot of ways that provides packs for new players and also with the new competive format SPECALIST you only need 1 deck to participate in tournament where you also can grind free packs just win 2 of your 8 matches so no i dont hink its pay to win It is pay to get faster your collection yeah sure but thats normal
2. How much gold have you guys saved for the new expansion and how difficult do you think it was? Should it be easier/harder?
Ad 1. Even if you have all possible cards, it does not guarantee you win. Ad 2. 3120 gold and counting (+ cca 8000 dust from rotation+Hof), but I will preorder (50 pack bundle) and will be saving at least 2100 for the adventure
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EU 11/2015+ , f2p 03/2021+: DK 63/ DH 205 /Dr 277 / Hu 733 / Ma 6666 / Pa 1072 / Pr 1165 / Ro 1791 / Sh 1303 / Wl 707 / Wr 664
1) You can not buy Rank1 legend, so definitely this game is not pay2win. But it is Pay 2 have fun. I'm used to preorder each expansion since Ungoro, what gives my possibility to play almost all the decks i want to tray. I would never spent so much time playing this game to grind all the meme and fun cards.
2) 6600+ gold atm. I'm saving gold form day 1 playing very very casual - mostly doing dailies and playing a game here and there. When rotation hits i will dust all my golden cards rotating to wild, adding dust from hof, and duplicates from preorder i should be at around 50-60k dust. Feeling like an old dragon sleeping on pile of gold ;)
Hey everyone.
So with the new expansion coming, I'm sure we've all seen the threads and discussion about the real-money cost of cards. I've seen tons of people saying the game is "pay-to-win" and that the packs and preorders are too expensive. You'll see it on reviews and discussion boards alike. I actually really disagree here.
I will give my thoughts on this and I want to know what you guys think. I don't believe the game is pay to win at all. You just gotta grind...you know actually play the game. I feel like people are too impatient and want gold/packs/dust just to move along quickly. Now I'll admit, I have made a few purchases (really just some adventures), but without that, I would still be in a similar position. I've been playing off and on for about 3 years and I'm at a point where I have lots of legendaries, can craft most of what I want, and have a few golden heroes. I could have gotten just about everything I have without paying.
What do you guys think?? I think there are definitely ways to improve the speed of the game and help new players get a larger collection, however, I don't think Hearthstone is pay-to-win, it just takes time.
Another quick point is that I've been saving gold for about a month and a half. I have about 2000 gold which is 20 packs in the next expansion. It didn't take very long, I maybe play 5 games a day or less. It's fairly easy to save and get packs if you put in some work. Doing the math, say, on the low end, you get a 50-coin quest every day. One month, say 30 days, times a 50-coin quest is 1500 coins (15 packs) a month. I think that is reasonable.
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you guys think Hearthstone is pay-to-win or does it just require dedication?
2. How much gold have you guys saved for the new expansion and how difficult do you think it was? Should it be easier/harder?
The man, the myth, the Legend.
(wait, I've only gotten rank 2, not legend)
1. i dont thing its pay to win i never pay anything and got legend
I paid money when I was getting back into it. Preordered KOTFT and every expansion after that, up to Rastakhan's Rumble. I did make legend (thank god), but I still don't think it's pay to win. The correct term should be "pay to have (more) fun" haha. I would have quit way earlier if I didn't have the collection to play a bunch of different decks. I'd probably blow my brains out if I had to play nothing but zoolock for a year straight.
Just ignore the people who complain about spending money in order to have fun. I don't know why they can't see it this way, but I've given up trying to tell them that spending $100-200 on a game you will spend hundreds of hours on is worth it lol.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
It has to do with the entitlement generation. I got one don’t care if it’s pay to win. It’s a game. Pay into it. You’ll be alright.
It's nowhere close to P2W. There are lots of really cheap decks that can easily get you to rank 5, even legend. It doesn't take a long time to get a fully functional aggro deck. If you're good in arena, grinding dust/coins/cards is really fast and easy, and enjoyable.
I think in Hearthstone you only need to pay if you need vast variation of different type of decks, but if you're fine with climbing ladder with one or two decks it's far from P2W.
Football and games.
You can get legend without paying. You have to pay to be able to play all meta decks, but, of course you do.
1. It is definitely not pay-to-win. Play your dailies, tavern brawl every week, and you'll be fine to build one or two tier one decks. If you really want to progress however, while staying FTP, get good at Arena.
2. I have 14680 gold as of today and over 22000 dust, completely FTP. It's not difficult, just requires playing regularly and playing a good bit of Arena to get packs rather than buying packs. As long as you are reasonably good, Arena is always a more cost effective way to get packs.
Isnt Pay to Win, its Pay to Fun, because the cost of meme decks its insane, but if you just want win build some aggro shit and get legend, but thats not fun for me.
Dr7 its back!
Game is not pay to win. Go watch Toast and Trump who built back to back F2P Midrange Hunter for like 1000 dust or less AND took it to legend with 1 or less legendary. I agree with OP and the posters I saw before writing this that yes you can pay to skip the grind. You can essentially give Blizzard money and say “I don’t play your game as much/didn’t play for a few years; I’d like to catch up”. There is nothing wrong with pay-walling the play experience that loyal, year to year players worked hard to accomplish. Gaming in the modern era with the internet is the problem for entitlement. If you think it’s all 10 year old boys and girls whining you’ll be disgusted to know there’s more 30-50 year old men basement dwelling and crying on the internet than youth.
I'll start off by saying I have never paid any money for Hearthstone. I used to play all the time ever since Beta with a few breaks here and there, but always getting the card backs. Recently, I took a longer break (mainly because of Magic Arena), but I've started to come back with the new expansion on the horizons. I grinded my dailies to build up gold for all of the paid adventures and have at least 2000 gold for an initial 20 packs on an expansion's release. Over time, I slowly started to get more and more gold to where now, I don't have to worry about grinding for gold for a new release.
I will admit, maybe I am the wrong person to compare to since reaching Legend has never been my goal, nor has it been to have all the current meta decks. My goal has always been to have fun and build strange decks that people might have not seen before.
The pay to win argument is old and keeps getting worse with time since more cards are being added every few months. However, I have seen people take new accounts to legend before simply by dusting all of their cards and crafting the best deck for the meta. The argument isn't necessarily that they can't win from the beginning, its more that they don't have an expansive collection from the beginning. Because most new players won't dust everything for one meta deck to climb all the way up, they will lose more often and might be one of the people saying it's "pay to win".
The best thing I can say to people that want to play with a bunch of different decks just for the experience is craft Whizbang the Wonderful. He is hands down the best card for any new player to craft because he allows you to play a random deck recipe every time you load into a match. With this, you get the experience of playing with these new cards without having to collect them, which can help you find the style of deck you really like to play.
For the people that just want to get legend, pick a meta deck and dust everything for it. Then grind your way up the leaderboard.
I think you're not totally wrong, but you just see one side of the coin. As all the games where there is an option to spend money, a F2P player needs dedication: that's normal and I think no one with a functioning brain has ever complained about it. The problems are others: first of all, most of the times you don't get rewarded enough for all your efforts. Yeah, I know, a game must reward those who win and "punish" those who lose, but you can all agree with me that the 10 gold per 3 wins ratio is really obsolete, since it was set when the game was much cheaper and less competitive (?). Sometimes, you just don't get enough incentives to grind for another hour instead of doing something else. But maybe that's just a grudge of mine. Let's continue.
I definitely think that you can win without spending money, so HS isn't literally a pay-to-win game: you can read stories of players reaching high ranks and even Legend without giving Blizz a single cent. The problem is that, rather than pay-to-win, HS is really a PAY-FOR-HAVING-FUN-WHILE-WINNING: if you invest (or waste, based on your personal choices) enough money, you get to try multiple decks and even experiment wacky combos and stuff, something that a F2P player barely can do, given that you usually get 1/5 of the epics/legendaries of each expansion. That's a reason why netdecking is so popular: you want the best deck possible with the lowest dust cost, because not everyone is able to insta-craft a full RenoLock. And that's also why Rexxar has been such a scourge in these months: throw in a bunch of Classic and Basic cards, a couple of commons, two epics and a legendary for 3000 dust cost and, if you're not dumb, a golden epic at the end of the month. I know of friends that would have loved to play that deck for fun, but how can you do it when are barely able to win a game at ranks higher than 21?
Another point: grinding is fair, but it has to be tolerable. Nowadays, it's not always it: for example, I started playing after K&C release and the first remarkable achievement I've got so far is Rank 5 last month (and I haven't crafted a single card since Doomsday day 1, which was a common card lol). Most of the times, and for a lot of time, when you start playing you literally get crapped on by experienced players who farm wins at low ranks and stuff. I don't know if you guys can relate, but the Rank 20-17 zone is a living hell: you queue into golden heroes with (presumably) full collection playing Tier 1 decks more often than at rank 13, and that's a huge problem that may kill a lot of newbies' and F2P players' motivation. Why grinding if all you can feel is frustration and you can't feel the sense of progression the Devs talk a lot about? Is it a problem that can be solved by changing the matchmaking algorithm? Maybe, but right now that's the situation. and that's why people feel like they aren't motivated to grind.
In order to answer you last question, I've hoarded 8600 gold so far and I think I'll get to 10k right when the expansion hits, but that's what makes me think: I've gained resources with a lot of dedication in order to get myself a good spot for the new exp, but someone who has wasted their gold and now may have few to zero coins can just dump 80$ in the game and not only recover his disadvantage, but also get in a better position than someone who has been grinding for the last 4 months. Do you see my point? Money digs an abyss impossible to fill between F2P and pay-to-win players.
What I'm trying to say is that it's normal that there will always be a difference between a F2P and a pay-to-win collections, but it's just that the gap is too big and it keeps increasing.
I hope you got my point. I'm opened to replies and discussions.
İ dont understand the hearthstone community.
Blizzard give us nearly 10 free packs per month (with travenbrawls,bug fix,tournaments...) And you easily can get 14-16k gold by finishing quest it means 20-25 packs also they are giving us 3+ free packs and 1 LEGENDARY per exp
This game is obviously not pay2win
I used to never buy packs, but since Frozen Throne I have pre-ordered all of them at a minimum! And frankly I wish I had done the same with all expansions prior, and the initial release of the game. Not because I feel I need more cards to win games, but because I've gotten in a really bad habit of wanting to have all the cards! The competitionist in me has latched onto this game and urges me to fill all empty card slots in the collections page! But I often have to fight these urges as my wife doesn't want me to spend money on the game. I did well to resist the Annoy-O bundle! Not so much on the Wild bundle... which I want more of because I played so casually in the first year or two of the game being released!
This is very simple to understand but entitled kiddies never will. Here it goes:
Hearthstone is a hobby not just a game. It's a card game hobby and thanks to esports a "sport". Just like any sport or hobby you have to pay money to have the gear required to play said game or do said hobby. There will ALWAYS be someone with better gear than you and others with worse gear. In the end it's a matter of skill in how you play the game, not the gear you have.
In NO WAY is buying random card packs "paying to win". You are merely paying the necessary money to compete at a higher level. You can compete at a lower level as well. Rank is just a number. If you want to have fun, ignore the number and just play to win at your rank. If you can't climb who cares? The point of doing a Hobby or Sport is to be the best you can be with what you have AND have fun. If you have a busy life, chances are you can afford to pay. If you don't, chances are you have plenty of time to grind.
This game let's you play for free. No one is forcing you to buy cards and there are PLENTY of instances of good players winning with bad cards.
P.S.
There are so many people with cards that this clearly isn't an actual thing. Almost everyone I play against has a fully decked out deck. I rarely play against anyone who has a budget deck.
How about we stop these posts entirely. This is just adding to it and no one cares what you think. No one cares that you need to share your feelings cause you are a sensitive snowflake.
I’ve paid more than most, and still lose unless I grind my face off to the point I don’t want to play anymore. However new players aren’t given nearly enough to be able to get into and enjoy the game. I think new players should get one time 50 packs from each of last years expansions when they register so they can learn to enjoy the game. After that, they have to keep up on their own.
"I am unfortunately, the hero of ages" -Harmony
1. Do you guys think Hearthstone is pay-to-win or does it just require dedication?
No i think not there are a lot of ways that provides packs for new players and also with the new competive format SPECALIST you only need 1 deck to participate in tournament where you also can grind free packs just win 2 of your 8 matches so no i dont hink its pay to win
It is pay to get faster your collection yeah sure but thats normal
2. How much gold have you guys saved for the new expansion and how difficult do you think it was? Should it be easier/harder?
2300 it was easy its just this month i was saving
Ad 1. Even if you have all possible cards, it does not guarantee you win.
Ad 2. 3120 gold and counting (+ cca 8000 dust from rotation+Hof), but I will preorder (50 pack bundle) and will be saving at least 2100 for the adventure
EU 11/2015+ , f2p 03/2021+: DK 63 / DH 205 /Dr 277 / Hu 733 / Ma 6666 / Pa 1072 / Pr 1165 / Ro 1791 / Sh 1303 / Wl 707 / Wr 664
1) You can not buy Rank1 legend, so definitely this game is not pay2win. But it is Pay 2 have fun. I'm used to preorder each expansion since Ungoro, what gives my possibility to play almost all the decks i want to tray. I would never spent so much time playing this game to grind all the meme and fun cards.
2) 6600+ gold atm. I'm saving gold form day 1 playing very very casual - mostly doing dailies and playing a game here and there. When rotation hits i will dust all my golden cards rotating to wild, adding dust from hof, and duplicates from preorder i should be at around 50-60k dust. Feeling like an old dragon sleeping on pile of gold ;)
Game is rng, you can pay, and still lose. More like, play to win, pay to play with variety.