The world isn't black and white. While I feel like HS is too expensive and the new reward path is disappointing, I also understand that HS was made to make money. There was so much blowback when the BG pass was released, like Blizzard was supposed to spend all that time, money and resources creating the mode without expecting any money from it. Companies don't stay in business by giving all their crap away for free.
For me, HS is in the grey zone. It's too expensive, 100% agree with that. I shouldn't have to spend $300 every year to get a couple of competitive decks. But I also think people who somehow think that Blizzard should make this a 100% F2P-friendly game are just being silly. If they were to recreate the game from scratch, sure, they could design it as true F2P with other ways to monetize. That's not going to happen though, so the game is stuck with the monetization model that it has, which is selling packs to people. So will I defend their right to charge for new game modes and to charge for packs? Absolutely. Will I defend the price-points they have chosen? Not at all.
This person gets it. Agree with all the points here.
OP you're also comparing apples and oranges. If CDPR continue to develop content for Cyberpunk for the next 5 years and release several large updated each year that significantly add to and change the game, but they do so at no extra cost, then you may have a point.
Some people will spend £600 on ten AAA games throughout the year whereas some people who exclusively play a game such as hearthstone and they may put in £600 over the year. If they get an equal playtime or even anywhere in a similar region, neither is getting 'more' value than the other. They are running at a similar £ per hour of gaming.
It all comes back to the same point, every single time. If you don't feel it's value for your money, don't pay it. If enough people feel like that, the game will stop making money and either adapts it's monetisation or crumble/stop making enough to justify its ongoing development.
Clearly they don't though. You guys can huff and puff all you like but it seems to me at least that enough people do put their money in and the game is able to continue.
Starbucks coffee is very over priced. I personally won't go there daily and spend that amount on a coffee. I just don't think it's value at all. Clearly enough people do though because Starbucks continue to operate and make money. My personal feeling on it being over priced is therefore irrelevant. If enough people thought like me, they wouldn't buy coffee from there and they may have to adjust their pricing. But we can say that about anything.
There are a ton of articles on this, what are you hoping to achieve? You make an article on an unofficial Blizzard forum and receive 20 messages of support from people who feel the same way. Whilst that's happening though there are 50 people that are in the game client and have bought packs.
I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, other than creating some echo chamber that allows you to feel better about your feelings towards the price of the game.
I agree that the cost of Hearthstone is indefensible and many people irrationally defend HS because of a sort of loyalty. That said, people who spend less than 10$ on a new expansion release contribute nothing to game development and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Most people defending blizzard only talk about the most insane demands like removing demon hunter, giving away half the cards for free etc. I know this is kind of doing the same strawman argumentation, but are there anyone who confidently argue for anything other than "It's not THAT bad"? Whether or not the new tavern pass system is better or worse than the old one is not worth discussing. The game is getting more expensive with the new mini sets, so we need to earn SIGNIFICANTLY more than before to make the game more affordable.
If we can't get all the cards from an expansion within 4 months of release without paying 100$ or more, then the new system is a failure, and the game continues to be extremely expensive.
I dont get why people want ALL the cards. Is it not enough to have 2 or 3 good decks as a f2p player?
Yes, it is. This is something I also find really strange. I was exclusively f2p for some time. I got my free packs and legendary on expansion launched and that generally directed what decks I would play. I remember getting the warrior DK and Yipp as free legendaries and so I played a lot of warrior. I wanted Jaina but didn't have the dust so I just waited. I eventually was able to craft her and other DKs I wanted but in the meantime, I built decks using the cards I got. Over time I got confident in dusting certain things which allowed me to craft other cards. I did a bit of reading and found out about hall of fame etc, I made a really nice amount of dust on rotations to hall of fame, particularly with Genn and Baku.
I've since began buying the small pre order bundle and the odd bundle they release for 20 packs and a skin or whatever but I probably buy less than half of those. Just the ones that seem good value.
It's taken some time but I'm pretty dust rich, I open around 120 packs of an expansion on launch day between the pre order and gold and craft whatever I don't get that I really want to use. I then just save my gomd for the next expansion. I might get 75% of a set now because I can save gold and I have so much in dust reserves.
For ages though I just didn't use certain cards because I didn't want to make the dust commitment. I only fairly recently crafted Alex and although I could have used her in decks prior, I just subbed her out or used other decks. I didn't expect the full experience because I'm not an unreasonable moron.
There are users on this forum and content creators who put out guides and videos of budget, competitive decks. Some cost a couple k dust and use a bunch of classic cards. What people are moaning about is they can't use all the cards and craft the multiple decks that they want but you can't have your cake and eat it.
I feel it should be cheaper but that's not the same as saying it's unviable to play as a free game, it is, I did it for months and months. I just didn't have unreasonable expectations about the experience I expected as a f2p player though.
The world isn't black and white. While I feel like HS is too expensive and the new reward path is disappointing, I also understand that HS was made to make money. There was so much blowback when the BG pass was released, like Blizzard was supposed to spend all that time, money and resources creating the mode without expecting any money from it. Companies don't stay in business by giving all their crap away for free.
For me, HS is in the grey zone. It's too expensive, 100% agree with that. I shouldn't have to spend $300 every year to get a couple of competitive decks. But I also think people who somehow think that Blizzard should make this a 100% F2P-friendly game are just being silly. If they were to recreate the game from scratch, sure, they could design it as true F2P with other ways to monetize. That's not going to happen though, so the game is stuck with the monetization model that it has, which is selling packs to people. So will I defend their right to charge for new game modes and to charge for packs? Absolutely. Will I defend the price-points they have chosen? Not at all.
This person gets it. Agree with all the points here.
OP you're also comparing apples and oranges. If CDPR continue to develop content for Cyberpunk for the next 5 years and release several large updated each year that significantly add to and change the game, but they do so at no extra cost, then you may have a point.
Some people will spend £600 on ten AAA games throughout the year whereas some people who exclusively play a game such as hearthstone and they may put in £600 over the year. If they get an equal playtime or even anywhere in a similar region, neither is getting 'more' value than the other. They are running at a similar £ per hour of gaming.
It all comes back to the same point, every single time. If you don't feel it's value for your money, don't pay it. If enough people feel like that, the game will stop making money and either adapts it's monetisation or crumble/stop making enough to justify its ongoing development.
Clearly they don't though. You guys can huff and puff all you like but it seems to me at least that enough people do put their money in and the game is able to continue.
Starbucks coffee is very over priced. I personally won't go there daily and spend that amount on a coffee. I just don't think it's value at all. Clearly enough people do though because Starbucks continue to operate and make money. My personal feeling on it being over priced is therefore irrelevant. If enough people thought like me, they wouldn't buy coffee from there and they may have to adjust their pricing. But we can say that about anything.
There are a ton of articles on this, what are you hoping to achieve? You make an article on an unofficial Blizzard forum and receive 20 messages of support from people who feel the same way. Whilst that's happening though there are 50 people that are in the game client and have bought packs.
I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, other than creating some echo chamber that allows you to feel better about your feelings towards the price of the game.
I disagree with the whole apples to oranges anology, both are games, and i would even assume that hearthstone is cheaper to produce so even less of an excuse for the price
and all I am trying to do is simple, make one more person fed up with blizzard so that eventually they will either sink or sail in a different direction... as it is now I hope hearthstone dies, but I wish it could just go back to be affordable again
Since everyone ignored it last time, I'll just repost something that seems a tiny bit relevant to the discussion.
I'm not speaking from napkin math. I'm not building a spreadsheet. I can look at my bank account and see every 4 months like clockwork since 2014, the expenditure to maintain a full collection in Hearthstone. The fact that we have a new class and thus more legendaries IS relevant. The fact that we don't have adventures and instead have a full extra expansion from packs IS relevant.
Neither of these two facts add more to the overall expense than did duplicate protection reduce it. It costs less money in 2020 to maintain a full collection than it did in 2015 or 2016. There is no estimate involved in this statement. This is pure lived experience.
I'm sorry if this fact goes against your narrative. That doesn't make it any less a fact.
And if you're going to come back with "maybe you were just incredibly unlucky before duplicate protections", sure, that's a possibility. But it would have to have happened for every single set for which it was possible to receive premature duplicates. Yes, that's a possibility, but it's a very remote one. Again, I'm not engaging in napkin math. It simply has been the case that regardless of the Demon Hunter class and new sets, the overall trend is towards having to spend LESS money to maintain a full collection.
None of that reaches the question of whether the game is still too expensive. It simply is not the case that it is more expensive today than in the past.
how much do you spend annually to maintain your complete collection?
i play since 2014 and bought max one preorder per expansion. since they have two preorders, i buy the higher one, but only 2 times a year. so all in all ~160€ a year for a game, that i play every day. i have to say the same like shadowrisen: the whole system was way worse back then. With the preorder, you got most of the time only 2-3 Legendaries, not even close all the rares. I don't have a full collection, because of that. I used to disentchant a lot of cards (especially at rotation) to play the new stuff. Now i barely disentchant and i don't use all my gold when the expansion launches. Right now i have ~20k dust if i want to and over 6k Gold ~3 weeks after the expansion hits. That would have been not possible for me a few years ago.
The tavern pass is okay, what is stupid are the quests. They are even worse as they used to be. Like play 10 gods from the new expansion?! What about people who only crafted thun? Do they know how stupid difficult it is to summon him?! Then the win 7 ranked bullshit quest. Stupid morons sitting at Blizzard. I really thought about buying a bundle, but realising what stupid decisions they do, I certainly will never consider that again.
On the subject of $500 being a stupid amount of money to spend on a game.
I spend $730 on chocolate milk per year (a $2 bottle per day).
In my problem years, I spent approximately $100,000 a year on heroin. That was while maintaining a law practice.
Given those two data points, no, a game I enjoy and spend a great deal of time playing is not something on which I'm afraid to spend less than $2 a day. But, we've already established on a previous thread that the poster who did the whole, "I thought lawyers were smart" thing is a troll thru and thru. Btw, most lawyers are grade-A morons. Only someone who has no concept of what it takes to be a divorce or DUI attorney would think it takes brains to just generically be a lawyer.
No one is ever going to successfully argue how another person should spend disposable income, however. Particularly when the amount in question is so ridiculously small. And again, if $500 is a large yearly expense for you, I'm not talking shit to you. I pity you. I hope life changes for the better soon. That's absolutely no sarcasm or puffery; I mean it.
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.
and all I am trying to do is simple, make one more person fed up with blizzard so that eventually they will either sink or sail in a different direction... as it is now I hope hearthstone dies, but I wish it could just go back to be affordable again
So basically you don't like something, so rather than just go and find something you do like you would rather try and spoil it for the people who still enjoy it?
That's extremely selfish behaviour, you have the moral compass of a spoiled 5 year old.
On the subject of $500 being a stupid amount of money to spend on a game.
I spend $730 on chocolate milk per year (a $2 bottle per day).
In my problem years, I spent approximately $100,000 a year on heroin. That was while maintaining a law practice.
Given those two data points, no, a game I enjoy and spend a great deal of time playing is not something on which I'm afraid to spend less than $2 a day. But, we've already established on a previous thread that the poster who did the whole, "I thought lawyers were smart" thing is a troll thru and thru. Btw, most lawyers are grade-A morons. Only someone who has no concept of what it takes to be a divorce or DUI attorney would think it takes brains to just generically be a lawyer.
No one is ever going to successfully argue how another person should spend disposable income, however. Particularly when the amount in question is so ridiculously small. And again, if $500 is a large yearly expense for you, I'm not talking shit to you. I pity you. I hope life changes for the better soon. That's absolutely no sarcasm or puffery; I mean it.
Even though we disagree on everything, your arguments are wonderful. Hearthstone is reasonably priced because it compares favorably to a heroin addiction. I almost spit out my coffee on that one, cheers.
As for the runeterra gameplay. I was a pretty good competitive magic player in a former lifetime. I find the ability to interact with my opponents plays and make more decisions that affect the outcome of the game to be a good thing. Though I know some will disagree with me. It can be pretty crushing to have your combo disrupted by a freeze or counterspell (deny in runeterra). But I enjoy trying to bait out the counters and playing counters of my own. I am around 10 days in and already knocking on the door to gold playing homebrews.
It really surprises me that there are still so many crybabies playing this game. How about you quit if you don't like it? No?
Ok then allow me to convince you.
First of all, I am on your side. I am not a whale. I have invested a total of 220$ in the game from closed Beta. It's not completely F2P, but certainly not a whale, not even close to the half of half of what a whale has spent from Closed Beta. I DO believe that Hearthstone IS expensive. By expensive I mean for what it has to offer. As many others I've been playing MTG for quite some time and spent lots and lots of money there. True, MTG is more expensive so I found Hearthstone to be cheaper. Instead of spending around 700-800$ annually on MTG, you can just spend 240$ and be semi-competitive. BUT, there's the downside that you don't own the cards and there is no agreement with Blizzard that will guarrantee you a refund in case the game shuts down. Whereas in MTG you can actually trade your physical cards. Therefore, Hearthstone is expensive because it is a hollow investment, meaning you only get emotional pleasure with no physical representation.
However, this doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it otherwise. The game "obliges" you to pay money to stay at least relevant, but at the same time it doesn't. There are plenty of modes you can play and plenty of things to do, but speaking for myself, I play exclusively Wild. Like you, I thought that I couldn't stay relevant on the game, because of the sheer pressure of Standard, but once I got introduced to the magic world of the Wild format, it sparked again my will to play the game. I had all the cards and didn't have to spend anything. Since not all cards can be played in Wild, you need only certain cards. Therefore, I farm gold and do big openings for the next expansion. I don't dust all the extras, since I don't have to and I've gained some good dust value from certain nerfs. All this leads me to enjoy the game, play ALL the decks I want and I've only spent throughout these years around 200$.
Therefore, you have 2 options here. Either explore Hearthstone and give it another shot, apart from Standard,(Duels, Arena, BG, Wild), or quit it. Because right now, you become toxic. We know the game is expensive. And we know that if whales stopped spending that much on the first day of the pre-order announcement ffs, we could possibly enjoy lower prices. But, crying all the time about it, isn't helping. Maybe you guys need a break from Hearthstone, see what's out there, dunno.
If you are worried about your finances in the first place, why spend them on pixels that give you temporary emotional pleasure, instead of trying to fix your bills?
Get over it. It's called free market policy and it's part of our good old capitalism, ungrateful swines. They are allowed set the price as high as they want. You are allowed NOT to buy it.
On the subject of $500 being a stupid amount of money to spend on a game.
I spend $730 on chocolate milk per year (a $2 bottle per day).
In my problem years, I spent approximately $100,000 a year on heroin. That was while maintaining a law practice.
Given those two data points, no, a game I enjoy and spend a great deal of time playing is not something on which I'm afraid to spend less than $2 a day. But, we've already established on a previous thread that the poster who did the whole, "I thought lawyers were smart" thing is a troll thru and thru. Btw, most lawyers are grade-A morons. Only someone who has no concept of what it takes to be a divorce or DUI attorney would think it takes brains to just generically be a lawyer.
No one is ever going to successfully argue how another person should spend disposable income, however. Particularly when the amount in question is so ridiculously small. And again, if $500 is a large yearly expense for you, I'm not talking shit to you. I pity you. I hope life changes for the better soon. That's absolutely no sarcasm or puffery; I mean it.
Even though we disagree on everything, your arguments are wonderful. Hearthstone is reasonably priced because it compares favorably to a heroin addiction. I almost spit out my coffee on that one, cheers.
As for the runeterra gameplay. I was a pretty good competitive magic player in a former lifetime. I find the ability to interact with my opponents plays and make more decisions that affect the outcome of the game to be a good thing. Though I know some will disagree with me. It can be pretty crushing to have your combo disrupted by a freeze or counterspell (deny in runeterra). But I enjoy trying to bait out the counters and playing counters of my own. I am around 10 days in and already knocking on the door to gold playing homebrews.
I'm sorry I didn't get my point across by including the heroin metric. It certainly had nothing to do with comparing the cost to a computer game. But, if you haven't lived it, I guess that's what it looked like I was trying to do.
My point was simply, there are lots of small things that will add up to over $500 in a year (e.g. milk), and, as a totally separate issue, I have experienced trying to keep up with a real addiction regardless of how destructive it is to my life. $100k per year is a catastrophic expense (at least for me), and yet I somehow managed to string the money together for years. The point is not that "Hearthstone compares favorably" with heroin. But, my fault. Bad writing.
I suppose that also brings up the tendencies of folks to talk about "taking advantage of addicts" with freemium monetization methods. That's the sort of thing that gets me spitting out coffee.
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.
On the subject of $500 being a stupid amount of money to spend on a game.
I spend $730 on chocolate milk per year (a $2 bottle per day).
In my problem years, I spent approximately $100,000 a year on heroin. That was while maintaining a law practice.
Given those two data points, no, a game I enjoy and spend a great deal of time playing is not something on which I'm afraid to spend less than $2 a day. But, we've already established on a previous thread that the poster who did the whole, "I thought lawyers were smart" thing is a troll thru and thru. Btw, most lawyers are grade-A morons. Only someone who has no concept of what it takes to be a divorce or DUI attorney would think it takes brains to just generically be a lawyer.
No one is ever going to successfully argue how another person should spend disposable income, however. Particularly when the amount in question is so ridiculously small. And again, if $500 is a large yearly expense for you, I'm not talking shit to you. I pity you. I hope life changes for the better soon. That's absolutely no sarcasm or puffery; I mean it.
Even though we disagree on everything, your arguments are wonderful. Hearthstone is reasonably priced because it compares favorably to a heroin addiction. I almost spit out my coffee on that one, cheers.
As for the runeterra gameplay. I was a pretty good competitive magic player in a former lifetime. I find the ability to interact with my opponents plays and make more decisions that affect the outcome of the game to be a good thing. Though I know some will disagree with me. It can be pretty crushing to have your combo disrupted by a freeze or counterspell (deny in runeterra). But I enjoy trying to bait out the counters and playing counters of my own. I am around 10 days in and already knocking on the door to gold playing homebrews.
I'm sorry I didn't get my point across by including the heroin metric. It certainly had nothing to do with comparing the cost to a computer game. But, if you haven't lived it, I guess that's what it looked like I was trying to do.
My point was simply, there are lots of small things that will add up to over $500 in a year (e.g. milk), and, as a totally separate issue, I have experienced trying to keep up with a real addiction regardless of how destructive it is to my life. $100k per year is a catastrophic expense (at least for me), and yet I somehow managed to string the money together for years. The point is not that "Hearthstone compares favorably" with heroin. But, my fault. Bad writing.
I suppose that also brings up the tendencies of folks to talk about "taking advantage of addicts" with freemium monetization methods. That's the sort of thing that gets me spitting out coffee.
So, as a heroin addict, it always amuses me when the term addiction rolls into these discussions.
Inevitably, the analogy is made to gambling addiction, since Hearthstone is modeled after a physical card game, and we often think of poker or blackjack as the avatars of gambling as a pass time. It's important to remember the difference between gambling addiction or any other lifestyle addiction and physical addiction to a chemical substance like a narcotic. While BOTH types of addiction cause the classic dopamine hits in the brains of their sufferers, the "soft addictions" or "psychological addictions" to lifestyles almost exclusively are limited to psychological side effects such as anxiety and stress effects.
Meanwhile, the physical addictions carry an extra set of side effects that go beyond the lack of enjoyment experienced and/or expected by a pattern of lifestyle behavior. Those of us who try to break physical addictions are served up a list of horrible physical symptoms that, with surprising regularity, can be life threatening.
I don't draw this distinction to turn around and say, "therefore soft addictions aren't real addictions". That's not my point. However, it is INCREDIBLY difficult for psychologists to manage to attach any meaningful criteria that differentiates an "addict" to a game like Hearthstone from a person who simply enjoys the game a lot. Both groups of people experience dopamine increases when playing the game. Both groups of people are targeted by the methods the OP speaks of, as well as basically any advertising or other effort to encourage people to play the game. Some experts have hung their hat on the negative psychological symptoms to identify an addict, but how negative does the symptom have to be? If you forget to do a week's worth of weekly quests and you commit suicide as a result, most of us would probably call that an addiction. But of course, it's rarely if ever that extreme an example.
As a person who has experienced the ups and downs of hard addiction, I am somewhat amused by the OP's question: "does the business model HAVE TO BE based on addiction?" I think, once you appreciate the fine line between addict and enthusiast, the answer is actually "yes".
I don't see how it's possible to run a marketing program that doesn't leave oneself open to accusations of "exploiting" addictive behavior, while at the same time being a successful advertising effort.
Just a thought from a person who has lived it.
EDIT: Sorry, I copied most of this from another thread about whether or not the business plan of Hearthstone must be about "exploiting' addiction. So that's the OP reference you see.
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.
Now and then I see people defending blizzard and their greedy actions and I am just not capable of understanding why...
not long ago games cost around 70 euro, what do they cost now? these "f2p" models cost often way way way more than 70 euro, that is if you are not contempt at either only playing the cheapest of cheap decks pretty much exclusively and otherwise get slapped around by players who have bought the competitive cards... many decks don't even work without legendary / epic cards and a legendary card has a cost around 25 euro and epics 6.25 euro
comparing that to Cyperpunk 2077 with a cost of around 48,97Euro (one time purchase) is it really that difficult to see that the hearthstone community is getting ripped off? 1 hearthstone deck cost 2.8x as much as the newest of the newest triple A games... and again that is just 1 deck and not even the most expensive one
Why? Because the biggest number and most vocal people crying about Blizzard greed are the F2P players that don’t spend a dime on the game in the first place. You tell the other guy to go play another game, well.....you could follow that same advice if you’re that unhappy with Blizzard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Grammar is the difference between knowing your crap, and knowing you’re crap.
So, as a heroin addict, it always amuses me when the term addiction rolls into these discussions.
Inevitably, the analogy is made to gambling addiction, since Hearthstone is modeled after a physical card game, and we often think of poker or blackjack as the avatars of gambling as a pass time. It's important to remember the difference between gambling addiction or any other lifestyle addiction and physical addiction to a chemical substance like a narcotic. While BOTH types of addiction cause the classic dopamine hits in the brains of their sufferers, the "soft addictions" or "psychological addictions" to lifestyles almost exclusively are limited to psychological side effects such as anxiety and stress effects.
Meanwhile, the physical addictions carry an extra set of side effects that go beyond the lack of enjoyment experienced and/or expected by a pattern of lifestyle behavior. Those of us who try to break physical addictions are served up a list of horrible physical symptoms that, with surprising regularity, can be life threatening.
I don't draw this distinction to turn around and say, "therefore soft addictions aren't real addictions". That's not my point. However, it is INCREDIBLY difficult for psychologists to manage to attach any meaningful criteria that differentiates an "addict" to a game like Hearthstone from a person who simply enjoys the game a lot. Both groups of people experience dopamine increases when playing the game. Both groups of people are targeted by the methods the OP speaks of, as well as basically any advertising or other effort to encourage people to play the game. Some experts have hung their hat on the negative psychological symptoms to identify an addict, but how negative does the symptom have to be? If you forget to do a week's worth of weekly quests and you commit suicide as a result, most of us would probably call that an addiction. But of course, it's rarely if ever that extreme an example.
As a person who has experienced the ups and downs of hard addiction, I am somewhat amused by the OP's question: "does the business model HAVE TO BE based on addiction?" I think, once you appreciate the fine line between addict and enthusiast, the answer is actually "yes".
I don't see how it's possible to run a marketing program that doesn't leave oneself open to accusations of "exploiting" addictive behavior, while at the same time being a successful advertising effort.
Just a thought from a person who has lived it.
So the argument is that hearthstone is not bad because it is not as addictive or as expensive as heroin? I guess the counter argument is that at least heroin isn't usually marketed to 10 year olds.
The world isn't black and white. While I feel like HS is too expensive and the new reward path is disappointing, I also understand that HS was made to make money. There was so much blowback when the BG pass was released, like Blizzard was supposed to spend all that time, money and resources creating the mode without expecting any money from it. Companies don't stay in business by giving all their crap away for free.
For me, HS is in the grey zone. It's too expensive, 100% agree with that. I shouldn't have to spend $300 every year to get a couple of competitive decks. But I also think people who somehow think that Blizzard should make this a 100% F2P-friendly game are just being silly. If they were to recreate the game from scratch, sure, they could design it as true F2P with other ways to monetize. That's not going to happen though, so the game is stuck with the monetization model that it has, which is selling packs to people. So will I defend their right to charge for new game modes and to charge for packs? Absolutely. Will I defend the price-points they have chosen? Not at all.
This person gets it. Agree with all the points here.
OP you're also comparing apples and oranges. If CDPR continue to develop content for Cyberpunk for the next 5 years and release several large updated each year that significantly add to and change the game, but they do so at no extra cost, then you may have a point.
Some people will spend £600 on ten AAA games throughout the year whereas some people who exclusively play a game such as hearthstone and they may put in £600 over the year. If they get an equal playtime or even anywhere in a similar region, neither is getting 'more' value than the other. They are running at a similar £ per hour of gaming.
It all comes back to the same point, every single time. If you don't feel it's value for your money, don't pay it. If enough people feel like that, the game will stop making money and either adapts it's monetisation or crumble/stop making enough to justify its ongoing development.
Clearly they don't though. You guys can huff and puff all you like but it seems to me at least that enough people do put their money in and the game is able to continue.
Starbucks coffee is very over priced. I personally won't go there daily and spend that amount on a coffee. I just don't think it's value at all. Clearly enough people do though because Starbucks continue to operate and make money. My personal feeling on it being over priced is therefore irrelevant. If enough people thought like me, they wouldn't buy coffee from there and they may have to adjust their pricing. But we can say that about anything.
There are a ton of articles on this, what are you hoping to achieve? You make an article on an unofficial Blizzard forum and receive 20 messages of support from people who feel the same way. Whilst that's happening though there are 50 people that are in the game client and have bought packs.
I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, other than creating some echo chamber that allows you to feel better about your feelings towards the price of the game.
I disagree with the whole apples to oranges anology, both are games, and i would even assume that hearthstone is cheaper to produce so even less of an excuse for the price
and all I am trying to do is simple, make one more person fed up with blizzard so that eventually they will either sink or sail in a different direction... as it is now I hope hearthstone dies, but I wish it could just go back to be affordable again
Well that's just sad man, it's a real shame to waste time in that sort of way. It's a trait that won't do you any good in life, I hope when you grow up a bit you grow out of it.
It is apples and oranges. They are games but completely different types and have totally different maintenance and profit strategy. Someone playing and paying I to a game like hearthstone is going to be much more invested over a long period of time. This game has come on absolutely loads since launch but that also costs money to maintain and create the next year of content.
You seem to just be pretty immature and naive to be honest.
Ok man, I was trying to have a serious conversation, but that's the second time in a row you've taken something I'm very serious about and completely misstated what I said and put words in my mouth. There is no comparison between Hearthstone and a heroin habit, and anyone who thinks there is has never been addicted to something worse than their iPhone.
I'm sorry you can't just read what I said and assume I said what I meant, but since you're having your own argument on both sides now, I can't really contribute.
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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.
So, as a heroin addict, it always amuses me when the term addiction rolls into these discussions.
Inevitably, the analogy is made to gambling addiction, since Hearthstone is modeled after a physical card game, and we often think of poker or blackjack as the avatars of gambling as a pass time. It's important to remember the difference between gambling addiction or any other lifestyle addiction and physical addiction to a chemical substance like a narcotic. While BOTH types of addiction cause the classic dopamine hits in the brains of their sufferers, the "soft addictions" or "psychological addictions" to lifestyles almost exclusively are limited to psychological side effects such as anxiety and stress effects.
Meanwhile, the physical addictions carry an extra set of side effects that go beyond the lack of enjoyment experienced and/or expected by a pattern of lifestyle behavior. Those of us who try to break physical addictions are served up a list of horrible physical symptoms that, with surprising regularity, can be life threatening.
I don't draw this distinction to turn around and say, "therefore soft addictions aren't real addictions". That's not my point. However, it is INCREDIBLY difficult for psychologists to manage to attach any meaningful criteria that differentiates an "addict" to a game like Hearthstone from a person who simply enjoys the game a lot. Both groups of people experience dopamine increases when playing the game. Both groups of people are targeted by the methods the OP speaks of, as well as basically any advertising or other effort to encourage people to play the game. Some experts have hung their hat on the negative psychological symptoms to identify an addict, but how negative does the symptom have to be? If you forget to do a week's worth of weekly quests and you commit suicide as a result, most of us would probably call that an addiction. But of course, it's rarely if ever that extreme an example.
As a person who has experienced the ups and downs of hard addiction, I am somewhat amused by the OP's question: "does the business model HAVE TO BE based on addiction?" I think, once you appreciate the fine line between addict and enthusiast, the answer is actually "yes".
I don't see how it's possible to run a marketing program that doesn't leave oneself open to accusations of "exploiting" addictive behavior, while at the same time being a successful advertising effort.
Just a thought from a person who has lived it.
So the argument is that hearthstone is not bad because it is not as addictive or as expensive as heroin? I guess the counter argument is that at least heroin isn't usually marketed to 10 year olds.
No, you've completely failed to understand the post if that's all you took from it.
You're either stupid or trolling.
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This person gets it. Agree with all the points here.
OP you're also comparing apples and oranges. If CDPR continue to develop content for Cyberpunk for the next 5 years and release several large updated each year that significantly add to and change the game, but they do so at no extra cost, then you may have a point.
Some people will spend £600 on ten AAA games throughout the year whereas some people who exclusively play a game such as hearthstone and they may put in £600 over the year. If they get an equal playtime or even anywhere in a similar region, neither is getting 'more' value than the other. They are running at a similar £ per hour of gaming.
It all comes back to the same point, every single time. If you don't feel it's value for your money, don't pay it. If enough people feel like that, the game will stop making money and either adapts it's monetisation or crumble/stop making enough to justify its ongoing development.
Clearly they don't though. You guys can huff and puff all you like but it seems to me at least that enough people do put their money in and the game is able to continue.
Starbucks coffee is very over priced. I personally won't go there daily and spend that amount on a coffee. I just don't think it's value at all. Clearly enough people do though because Starbucks continue to operate and make money. My personal feeling on it being over priced is therefore irrelevant. If enough people thought like me, they wouldn't buy coffee from there and they may have to adjust their pricing. But we can say that about anything.
There are a ton of articles on this, what are you hoping to achieve? You make an article on an unofficial Blizzard forum and receive 20 messages of support from people who feel the same way. Whilst that's happening though there are 50 people that are in the game client and have bought packs.
I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, other than creating some echo chamber that allows you to feel better about your feelings towards the price of the game.
Yes, it is. This is something I also find really strange. I was exclusively f2p for some time. I got my free packs and legendary on expansion launched and that generally directed what decks I would play. I remember getting the warrior DK and Yipp as free legendaries and so I played a lot of warrior. I wanted Jaina but didn't have the dust so I just waited. I eventually was able to craft her and other DKs I wanted but in the meantime, I built decks using the cards I got. Over time I got confident in dusting certain things which allowed me to craft other cards. I did a bit of reading and found out about hall of fame etc, I made a really nice amount of dust on rotations to hall of fame, particularly with Genn and Baku.
I've since began buying the small pre order bundle and the odd bundle they release for 20 packs and a skin or whatever but I probably buy less than half of those. Just the ones that seem good value.
It's taken some time but I'm pretty dust rich, I open around 120 packs of an expansion on launch day between the pre order and gold and craft whatever I don't get that I really want to use. I then just save my gomd for the next expansion. I might get 75% of a set now because I can save gold and I have so much in dust reserves.
For ages though I just didn't use certain cards because I didn't want to make the dust commitment. I only fairly recently crafted Alex and although I could have used her in decks prior, I just subbed her out or used other decks. I didn't expect the full experience because I'm not an unreasonable moron.
There are users on this forum and content creators who put out guides and videos of budget, competitive decks. Some cost a couple k dust and use a bunch of classic cards. What people are moaning about is they can't use all the cards and craft the multiple decks that they want but you can't have your cake and eat it.
I feel it should be cheaper but that's not the same as saying it's unviable to play as a free game, it is, I did it for months and months. I just didn't have unreasonable expectations about the experience I expected as a f2p player though.
I disagree with the whole apples to oranges anology, both are games, and i would even assume that hearthstone is cheaper to produce so even less of an excuse for the price
and all I am trying to do is simple, make one more person fed up with blizzard so that eventually they will either sink or sail in a different direction... as it is now I hope hearthstone dies, but I wish it could just go back to be affordable again
i play since 2014 and bought max one preorder per expansion. since they have two preorders, i buy the higher one, but only 2 times a year. so all in all ~160€ a year for a game, that i play every day. i have to say the same like shadowrisen: the whole system was way worse back then. With the preorder, you got most of the time only 2-3 Legendaries, not even close all the rares. I don't have a full collection, because of that. I used to disentchant a lot of cards (especially at rotation) to play the new stuff. Now i barely disentchant and i don't use all my gold when the expansion launches. Right now i have ~20k dust if i want to and over 6k Gold ~3 weeks after the expansion hits. That would have been not possible for me a few years ago.
My God, this whole thread is so "First world problem" meme.
Meanwhile people in Africa be like:
The tavern pass is okay, what is stupid are the quests. They are even worse as they used to be. Like play 10 gods from the new expansion?! What about people who only crafted thun? Do they know how stupid difficult it is to summon him?! Then the win 7 ranked bullshit quest. Stupid morons sitting at Blizzard. I really thought about buying a bundle, but realising what stupid decisions they do, I certainly will never consider that again.
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On the subject of $500 being a stupid amount of money to spend on a game.
I spend $730 on chocolate milk per year (a $2 bottle per day).
In my problem years, I spent approximately $100,000 a year on heroin. That was while maintaining a law practice.
Given those two data points, no, a game I enjoy and spend a great deal of time playing is not something on which I'm afraid to spend less than $2 a day. But, we've already established on a previous thread that the poster who did the whole, "I thought lawyers were smart" thing is a troll thru and thru. Btw, most lawyers are grade-A morons. Only someone who has no concept of what it takes to be a divorce or DUI attorney would think it takes brains to just generically be a lawyer.
No one is ever going to successfully argue how another person should spend disposable income, however. Particularly when the amount in question is so ridiculously small. And again, if $500 is a large yearly expense for you, I'm not talking shit to you. I pity you. I hope life changes for the better soon. That's absolutely no sarcasm or puffery; I mean it.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
So basically you don't like something, so rather than just go and find something you do like you would rather try and spoil it for the people who still enjoy it?
That's extremely selfish behaviour, you have the moral compass of a spoiled 5 year old.
The only cancer in Hearthstone is its community.
Even though we disagree on everything, your arguments are wonderful. Hearthstone is reasonably priced because it compares favorably to a heroin addiction. I almost spit out my coffee on that one, cheers.
As for the runeterra gameplay. I was a pretty good competitive magic player in a former lifetime. I find the ability to interact with my opponents plays and make more decisions that affect the outcome of the game to be a good thing. Though I know some will disagree with me. It can be pretty crushing to have your combo disrupted by a freeze or counterspell (deny in runeterra). But I enjoy trying to bait out the counters and playing counters of my own. I am around 10 days in and already knocking on the door to gold playing homebrews.
It really surprises me that there are still so many crybabies playing this game. How about you quit if you don't like it? No?
Ok then allow me to convince you.
First of all, I am on your side. I am not a whale. I have invested a total of 220$ in the game from closed Beta. It's not completely F2P, but certainly not a whale, not even close to the half of half of what a whale has spent from Closed Beta. I DO believe that Hearthstone IS expensive. By expensive I mean for what it has to offer. As many others I've been playing MTG for quite some time and spent lots and lots of money there. True, MTG is more expensive so I found Hearthstone to be cheaper. Instead of spending around 700-800$ annually on MTG, you can just spend 240$ and be semi-competitive. BUT, there's the downside that you don't own the cards and there is no agreement with Blizzard that will guarrantee you a refund in case the game shuts down. Whereas in MTG you can actually trade your physical cards. Therefore, Hearthstone is expensive because it is a hollow investment, meaning you only get emotional pleasure with no physical representation.
However, this doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it otherwise. The game "obliges" you to pay money to stay at least relevant, but at the same time it doesn't. There are plenty of modes you can play and plenty of things to do, but speaking for myself, I play exclusively Wild. Like you, I thought that I couldn't stay relevant on the game, because of the sheer pressure of Standard, but once I got introduced to the magic world of the Wild format, it sparked again my will to play the game. I had all the cards and didn't have to spend anything. Since not all cards can be played in Wild, you need only certain cards. Therefore, I farm gold and do big openings for the next expansion. I don't dust all the extras, since I don't have to and I've gained some good dust value from certain nerfs. All this leads me to enjoy the game, play ALL the decks I want and I've only spent throughout these years around 200$.
Therefore, you have 2 options here. Either explore Hearthstone and give it another shot, apart from Standard,(Duels, Arena, BG, Wild), or quit it. Because right now, you become toxic. We know the game is expensive. And we know that if whales stopped spending that much on the first day of the pre-order announcement ffs, we could possibly enjoy lower prices. But, crying all the time about it, isn't helping. Maybe you guys need a break from Hearthstone, see what's out there, dunno.
If you are worried about your finances in the first place, why spend them on pixels that give you temporary emotional pleasure, instead of trying to fix your bills?
Get over it. It's called free market policy and it's part of our good old capitalism, ungrateful swines. They are allowed set the price as high as they want. You are allowed NOT to buy it.
God bless y'all.
I'm sorry I didn't get my point across by including the heroin metric. It certainly had nothing to do with comparing the cost to a computer game. But, if you haven't lived it, I guess that's what it looked like I was trying to do.
My point was simply, there are lots of small things that will add up to over $500 in a year (e.g. milk), and, as a totally separate issue, I have experienced trying to keep up with a real addiction regardless of how destructive it is to my life. $100k per year is a catastrophic expense (at least for me), and yet I somehow managed to string the money together for years. The point is not that "Hearthstone compares favorably" with heroin. But, my fault. Bad writing.
I suppose that also brings up the tendencies of folks to talk about "taking advantage of addicts" with freemium monetization methods. That's the sort of thing that gets me spitting out coffee.
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.
so you don't think gambling is addictive?
So, as a heroin addict, it always amuses me when the term addiction rolls into these discussions.
Inevitably, the analogy is made to gambling addiction, since Hearthstone is modeled after a physical card game, and we often think of poker or blackjack as the avatars of gambling as a pass time. It's important to remember the difference between gambling addiction or any other lifestyle addiction and physical addiction to a chemical substance like a narcotic. While BOTH types of addiction cause the classic dopamine hits in the brains of their sufferers, the "soft addictions" or "psychological addictions" to lifestyles almost exclusively are limited to psychological side effects such as anxiety and stress effects.
Meanwhile, the physical addictions carry an extra set of side effects that go beyond the lack of enjoyment experienced and/or expected by a pattern of lifestyle behavior. Those of us who try to break physical addictions are served up a list of horrible physical symptoms that, with surprising regularity, can be life threatening.
I don't draw this distinction to turn around and say, "therefore soft addictions aren't real addictions". That's not my point. However, it is INCREDIBLY difficult for psychologists to manage to attach any meaningful criteria that differentiates an "addict" to a game like Hearthstone from a person who simply enjoys the game a lot. Both groups of people experience dopamine increases when playing the game. Both groups of people are targeted by the methods the OP speaks of, as well as basically any advertising or other effort to encourage people to play the game. Some experts have hung their hat on the negative psychological symptoms to identify an addict, but how negative does the symptom have to be? If you forget to do a week's worth of weekly quests and you commit suicide as a result, most of us would probably call that an addiction. But of course, it's rarely if ever that extreme an example.
As a person who has experienced the ups and downs of hard addiction, I am somewhat amused by the OP's question: "does the business model HAVE TO BE based on addiction?" I think, once you appreciate the fine line between addict and enthusiast, the answer is actually "yes".
I don't see how it's possible to run a marketing program that doesn't leave oneself open to accusations of "exploiting" addictive behavior, while at the same time being a successful advertising effort.
Just a thought from a person who has lived it.
EDIT: Sorry, I copied most of this from another thread about whether or not the business plan of Hearthstone must be about "exploiting' addiction. So that's the OP reference you see.
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.
"We cannot let this game die, we have already invested too much time and money into it." /thread
Why? Because the biggest number and most vocal people crying about Blizzard greed are the F2P players that don’t spend a dime on the game in the first place. You tell the other guy to go play another game, well.....you could follow that same advice if you’re that unhappy with Blizzard.
Grammar is the difference between knowing your crap, and knowing you’re crap.
A .gif is worth a thousand words.
here I can help you understand: is because we're not broke and butthurt that we can't afford to buy things. cheers! :D
So the argument is that hearthstone is not bad because it is not as addictive or as expensive as heroin? I guess the counter argument is that at least heroin isn't usually marketed to 10 year olds.
Well that's just sad man, it's a real shame to waste time in that sort of way. It's a trait that won't do you any good in life, I hope when you grow up a bit you grow out of it.
It is apples and oranges. They are games but completely different types and have totally different maintenance and profit strategy. Someone playing and paying I to a game like hearthstone is going to be much more invested over a long period of time. This game has come on absolutely loads since launch but that also costs money to maintain and create the next year of content.
You seem to just be pretty immature and naive to be honest.
@3nnu1
Ok man, I was trying to have a serious conversation, but that's the second time in a row you've taken something I'm very serious about and completely misstated what I said and put words in my mouth. There is no comparison between Hearthstone and a heroin habit, and anyone who thinks there is has never been addicted to something worse than their iPhone.
I'm sorry you can't just read what I said and assume I said what I meant, but since you're having your own argument on both sides now, I can't really contribute.
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.
No, you've completely failed to understand the post if that's all you took from it.
You're either stupid or trolling.