Hearthpwn

It's a predatory system, plain and simple. It's a system meant to trick you into buying more and more gems/tokens or what ever you want to call runestones. So in that sense it is a form of stealing. It's just not illegal because as you pointed out, it is in fact a choice to buy or not buy. But it doesn't mean it isn't wrong. 

It's dirty and it really is a form of stealing. It's just only legal because of lazy and greedy courts that allow these kind of loopholes to exist. 

There'll always be the gullible and desperate who'll be into buying what ever is put in front of them, that's just not me. If more players thought with their brains then they'd realize how terrible this system is and how it's designed to drain your accounts as quick as possible. 

And it's no coincidence that Blizzard is implementing this system board wide across all games. It's disgusting. 

Quote from LordCheesus >>

It's a predatory system, plain and simple. It's a system meant to trick you into buying more and more gems/tokens or what ever you want to call runestones. So in that sense it is a form of stealing. It's just not illegal because as you pointed out, it is in fact a choice to buy or not buy. But it doesn't mean it isn't wrong. 

It's dirty and it really is a form of stealing. It's just only legal because of lazy and greedy courts that allow these kind of loopholes to exist. 

There'll always be the gullible and desperate who'll be into buying what ever is put in front of them, that's just not me. If more players thought with their brains then they'd realize how terrible this system is and how it's designed to drain your accounts as quick as possible. 

And it's no coincidence that Blizzard is implementing this system board wide across all games. It's disgusting. 

 Ummmm no. Its not a predatory system. The game is free to play. Players have a choice to spend money, or play a lot and earn in game gold to buy things. You dont have to spend anything as f2p players. Blizzard isnt tricking anyone into spending cash. Its a choice. Blizzard isnt taking money from people without their consent. You are just wrong.

Quote from Rainwulf >>

It makes a difference if you bought stuff with amazoncoins. You always get more coins as you paid money for. F.e. you get 10k coins which is worth 100€ ingame stuff and you just pay 82€. 

Now you are forced to buy the miniset for gold or buy runestones. This means you have to pay exactly the amount of money to get the same amount of runestones. 

So you are getting less by buying runestones than amazoncoins. 

How is this an issue with HS or the runestones?

Amazon coins have always been a discount, so you ended up with excess.

Runestones correspond to the usual bundle prices but by introducing them as intermediate currency, they are able to introduce smaller purchases without having to pay the associated processing fees if those purchases were offered as direct buys.

Those smaller purchases naturally don't have matching bundles.

Quote from LordCheesus >>

It's a predatory system, plain and simple.

 The only thing "plain and simple" is that you and lots of others who agree with you obviously have ZERO clue what the word/term Predatory means, in regards to anything. If you want something predatory, go look at student loans. THAT'S predatory. 

Quote from LordCheesus >>

It's a predatory system, plain and simple. It's a system meant to trick you into buying more and more gems/tokens or what ever you want to call runestones. So in that sense it is a form of stealing. It's just not illegal because as you pointed out, it is in fact a choice to buy or not buy. But it doesn't mean it isn't wrong. 

It's dirty and it really is a form of stealing. It's just only legal because of lazy and greedy courts that allow these kind of loopholes to exist. 

There'll always be the gullible and desperate who'll be into buying what ever is put in front of them, that's just not me. If more players thought with their brains then they'd realize how terrible this system is and how it's designed to drain your accounts as quick as possible. 

And it's no coincidence that Blizzard is implementing this system board wide across all games. It's disgusting. 

Yes. I agree, I also want to add another issue, the surplus.  

Blizzard somehow justified the introduction of the Runestones with this sentence: "With Runestones we’ll be able to offer additional smaller-scale items, such as the individual Battlegrounds Hero Skins offered in the shop with this patch."

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/9457-announcing-runestones-with-usage-and-frequent

This is anyway an obviously crap excuse, because if they wanted to sell small scale items they were simply able to sell them in game, so easy. What instead you will end up with a currency in the middle is to stack surplus that you are not able to use it. So, it is even more scummy and sneaky.  Anyway, nothing surprise me from Blizzard any more, I know that they are a bad company (they are not making a great game since years, and they want to only monetize their mediocrity; without talking about their scandals and all the crappy things). I enjoy just reading their stuff to see the mess they make. Blizzard is hilarious. 

Quote from LordCheesus >>

It's a predatory system, plain and simple. It's a system meant to trick you into buying more and more gems/tokens or what ever you want to call runestones. So in that sense it is a form of stealing. It's just not illegal because as you pointed out, it is in fact a choice to buy or not buy. But it doesn't mean it isn't wrong. 

It's dirty and it really is a form of stealing. It's just only legal because of lazy and greedy courts that allow these kind of loopholes to exist. 

There'll always be the gullible and desperate who'll be into buying what ever is put in front of them, that's just not me. If more players thought with their brains then they'd realize how terrible this system is and how it's designed to drain your accounts as quick as possible. 

And it's no coincidence that Blizzard is implementing this system board wide across all games. It's disgusting. 

 I always said that videogames in general need more regulation about financial transactions ingame.
But game industry is more clean than drugs or porn, wich means easy money from children and manchilds, which means more taxes which they will not avoid to pay due the incrimination of being a tax avoider (which is considered worse than killing someone in some parts of the world)
Clean money but dirty practices that can be disguised as ur option.

Quote from Dieseloctane >>

Quote from LordCheesus >>

It's a predatory system, plain and simple.

 The only thing "plain and simple" is that you and lots of others who agree with you obviously have ZERO clue what the word/term Predatory means, in regards to anything. If you want something predatory, go look at student loans. THAT'S predatory. 

 Student loans will make you become something (unless u want to blame the country, politians and lots of other unrelated stuff  for your loss into become anything in your life);
A children's game will not get u anywhere in life, specially if u have to spend almost a student loan to have a complete collection of any , ANY expansion (yes expansion not game).
So yes, it's a predatory system, like a club where u have to pay to be a loser like them.

Quote from Joshbuckler >>

A complete expansion costs what, 200? 300 dollars? If you want to get all the cards day 1. 

I'm from Scotland where we don't pay tuition fees and I came out of university after 3 years with student debts about 100 times more than that. 

I've bought 1 pre-order per year since Ashes of Outland and I've ended up with all the legendaries for most of the sets. At least 2 of the 3 sets each year.  I buy the tavern pass each expansion and dust my wild cards each rotation so Hearthstone costs me something like $100 a year.

I still hate Hearthstone monetisation but what you're saying is just nonsense. 

You're also confusing what you do for a job (which you expect to get paid for) and what you do for fun (which you have to pay for). Paying for Hearthstone cards is a waste of money in the same way that eating at a restaurant is a waste of money when you could just cook at home. You do it because you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it enough to be worth the money it costs you should stop doing it. If you go to a restaurant and you don't like the food you should stop eating there.  

It's strange to have to explain this.  You say it's a children's game but I feel like even children would understand this distinction. 

 Yes, the example of the university is very bad. These things are also related to people's cultural things and how the country uses public expenses (if pays the universities or not). I am not from Scotland, but tuition fee in my country, it is also free if you are below a certain revenue per year or if you are higher, you will pay based on echelons of income of your parents. Nearly nobody in my country has student loans. 

Back in topic, how crazy is 200/300 for the expansions? It is the cost of around 4 to 6 Triple A games in a year. And what is the development cost of Blizzard? Nearly 0. Just some drawings, some voice actors and some programmers. Compare this to the cost of developing a Triple A game. This is to answer those who say that this game is not an armed robbery.

Not to defend the big corporation, but there are a couple of reasons for these currencies that aren't related to "stealing" from players by leaving you with a couple of dollars worth of premium currency after you make a purchase.  They're about reducing transaction costs by reducing the number of interactions with financial services providers players make while purchasing small in-game products.

Credit card transaction fees eat up a lot of the revenue for small purchases like $1.50 BG skins.  A lot of small stores will not accept credit cards for transactions below a certain threshold, while bigger stores just jack up prices on smaller items to cover credit card costs.  Spending $100 on a bundle of currency once and then buying things with that currency a little at a time winds up being much more profitable for Blizzard just because they don't have to process a credit card transaction for every purchase of a couple of dollars worth of packs or skins or whatever.The second reason is to duck the commissions on various mobile app stores, which can reach 30%.  If Blizzard can convince mobile players to download HS PC and make their transactions through the PC game instead of mobile versions, it can make a LOT more money selling the same stuff to the same players for the same price.  

What is missing from this, and why the anger is justified, is that there is no incentive for the players.  If they gave us $10 or $15 in free currency for every $100 we spend on Runestones (without jacking up prices on us), that would go a long way toward calming the community down.  As it is, there is no incentive to buy big bundles rather than paying as we go, and there is no incentive to make purchases through HS PC rather than the mobile app, so there is no mechanism for Blizzard to capture many of the best efficiencies of premium currencies.

I think the main issue that others have touched on is the fact that Blizzard has not really given any incentive for players to prefer runestones over cash transactions. They avoided discount bundling of the runestones, which I appreciate, but there's no indication that it will continue this way. I don't want to be pushed to buy large bundles unless runestones get some kind of an upgrade, so hopefully the pricing will not change.

However, offering small purchases is not enough to make me feel good about buying runestones. At the very minimum, they need more utility to feel like I'm not being ripped off. Sure, I can sometimes buy an amount of runestones that perfectly matches up with something I want, but what about the times that I can't?

I don't want my money to sit in their wallets doing absolutely nothing for me, and that's essentially what happens when you have left-over balance. You then feel compelled to buy more just so you can spend the ones you already have, so the whole system is really designed to cause players to make sub-optimal choices with their purchases. It was already like this to a certain degree (for example, offering cheaper limited time bundles is predatory and capitalizes on FOMO).

They are a business and I don't mind them trying to make money, but it feels bad for them to suddenly increase the amount that I need to spend for the exact same thing and then try to tell me it's for my own good. I get that it's not a huge change, but that is intentional on their part. If they were this dishonest about the system from the very beginning and not giving me clear reasons to support it, I have absolutely no doubts that it's just a matter of time before things take a turn for the worse again. 

All they would have to do to make me happy at the current pricing is have runestones convert into dust at a rate of 1 runestone = 1 arcane dust. I don't think that's a lot to ask at all.