Currently, adventure wings must be purchased in order. I think this is a terrible restriction. With more adventures in the future, new players are getting screwed by this.
Some people might say it's because Blizzard is greedy and wants to take all our money, but this is a terrible business decision as it pushes potential customers away from them.
You can't expect new players to buy 2-3 adventures just to get those cards they need in their deck. It is more likely for them to spend money on individual wings over time as they aquire the cards they need to build different decks.
For example, if a new player open some packs and have a decent enough card pool to build a demon deck, they now need voidcaller from 3rd wing NAXX and imp gang boss from 2nd wing of BRM.
It is far more likely that he will buy those 2 wings than buying 5 wings(3 from Naxx+ 2 from BRM).
And your conclusion was derived from.....? Opinion? Gut feeling? Market research?
What makes you think that Blizzard will make more money selling the adventure wings separately?
Well, it's a pretty much a common sense. If you are a new player that got into the game for a few month and got some cards to build one of those decks. Would you buy 4-5 adventures or 4-5 wings? And the point is more about the barrier to entry than how much money they would make.
What are you talking about? That is already possible.
You are able to purchase individual wings, but you must do it in order. You can't just buy the 3rd wing of Naxx to get the cards, you need to buy the first 2 wings too.
I have to admit as someone playing since ages and unlocking everything on release anyways i was not aware of that fact.
Still i'm pretty sure that your premise is wrong, they certainly wouldn't make more money off selling everything seperately it would without a doubt be more customer friendly but probably not the best choice from a financial point of view, those players dedicated enough to the game to even be interested in making purchases are probably willing to buy the whole thing as well.
Also and this is a pretty minor thing but still something that needs to be considered, this system prevents super casual players from just randomly buying one of the wings and end up with cards they don't really have any use for especially with a themed adventure like BRM.
Of course this isn't Blizzards main concern and i would never argue it is but it does make sense from that point of view.
Well, maybe I worded it poorly, but the barrier to entry is raised with every expansion and adventures, and this restriction does make even more difficult for new players to get into the game. New players are likely to only have a card pool that can support only a few decks, and when they try to improve on these decks, do you really want to force them to spend 3-4 times money/time. It just pushes new players away from the game, and I think this would make them less money in general.
You want the players to feel like they are making progress when playing the game, do you really want them to grind gold/ spend money on 2 wings that they might not benefit the most from before giving them the price.
It might not seem like a big deal now, but we are only looking at the how adventures limits new players at the moment, when we add the expansions to the mess, it gets real bad.
This is a point that I've thought about before, and I have to admit I think I agree with the OP. It's hard to know for sure how it would affect sales, but my feeling on it is that what would happen is sales of individual wings would go way up while sales of the full adventure would take a small hit. The problem with the current model is that their exists a not insubstantial number of players that, either through preference or because of limited card pool, only play a specific class. Having to buy all the wings just to get the cards they want to keep playing. They have to end up buying the whole thing, which is something a lot of players don't want to do. Just look at the number of threads that pop up with people asking if they should buy naxx.
I don't think the current model is terrible, but I do think allowing people to choose which wings they buy would be better overall.
If Blizzard allowed you to buy wings in any order then everyone would wait to see what the good staple cards will be and what wings they will be in and only purchase those. In order to make as much as they do now they would have to spread the good cards through out each wing evenly and even then it would be hard to judge what exactly is good due to any meta shifting before, during, and after release.
If Blizzard allowed you to buy wings in any order then everyone would wait to see what the good staple cards will be and what wings they will be in and only purchase those. In order to make as much as they do now they would have to spread the good cards through out each wing evenly and even then it would be hard to judge what exactly is good due to any meta shifting before, during, and after release.
I would argue that they probably don't have that great of an idea which of the cards will be meta breakers and which won't. I'm sure they have some idea, and I do think they're good at balancing the cards, but knowing which cards will see play and which ones won't is another story.
As to the other point, I think you underestimate the number of people that would buy the whole thing just to have it. I know I would. Additionally, I think keeping the release schedule as they have it now with an option to unlock individual wings say a month after the final release would be a good way to address that. Also they could keep the final wing locked until all other wings are unlocked, which I think would be a fine choice.
If Blizzard allowed you to buy wings in any order then everyone would wait to see what the good staple cards will be and what wings they will be in and only purchase those. In order to make as much as they do now they would have to spread the good cards through out each wing evenly and even then it would be hard to judge what exactly is good due to any meta shifting before, during, and after release.
They kind of do that already. They spread class cards over different wings . The last 2 wings can't really be bad because then people would just not buy them anyway. Just look at how they spread the cards in BRM and you can see that they really try to put at least 1,2 playable cards in each wing.
I kind of agree with Poke, it's just a dick move to bar people from buying certain quarters of the adventure. Not saying it's good or bad business model, just that makes things tougher on the newbie F2Per. I'm an established player from the beta period who's invested the time and money to have a fat collection of cards, so for me it's no issue. But I can just imagine what the new player is going through. They couldn't compete with me using anything other than face hunter.
What about the adventure mode story? I've been manipulated into deposing Ragnaros by Nefarian, why would I want to fight Nefarian at the moment?!
If players actually want to experience the story in order, there is nothing stopping them from doing it, this just an option for players who care more about the cards.
Most of the players probably play it once/twice, get the cards never go back to it. To them, it's just kill things get cards. And the experience itself is more about puzzle solving and deck building. There is not really that much of a story to begin with.
The player make the choice between cards or the story experience. The fact is players spend far more time playing with the cards they get from the adventure mode than they would with the adventure itself. A lot of players don't even bother with heroic because getting the cards is the most of important part for them.
It's good to bring about such concern. If the wings can be bought separately, players can just buy what they need instead of a large bunch of seldom/never used card. But I think Blizzard does have other concern on this.
If the bar is too low, it might become too easy for mass production of 'ready-to-play' crash accounts. You do know that they're selling a lot of those online for arena, right? With individual purchase, it takes much less time for bots to produce crash accounts, or maybe botting for new accounts with standard face Hunter as the gold consumption goes down.
As for natural human new players, I don't think this would change much. They still need minimum necessary cards to complete the adventure anyway. As a result they won't b eager to buy adventure if they have too few cards in collection.
This always really bothered me, partly for how much harder it makes it for Free-to-Play players (even longer term ones) get certain cards they want/need, partly because both Naxx and (sorta) BRM could have both been beaten in any order back in WoW. It wouldn't be so bad but it means if you want say Zombie Chow or Mad Scientist (both very good cards practically required in their respective decks) it costs you 2800 gold, with some wings giving you nothing competitive. I'm actually fine with the final wing requiring the other four (which is how they made it sound in some of their pre-release), but every wing just stings.
Well the issue is about as these adventures increase in number right? If you need one card in wing 4 of Naxx and one in Wing 5 of BRM you're out a tone of gold/cash. Heaven help you once we're in year 5 and there's 10 adventures.
I can see the newest adventures being in wing-order (well personally I don't like it but it'd ok). Eventually, though, they can decouple the wings. By year 3, Naxx is old and there's 6 Adventures to travel through already so the idea of skipping ahead is fine. This isn't an RPG where you miss the entire story if you don't go in order.
Perhaps make it so that once you have the second adventure released in the year, the adventures of the past year decouple.
And your conclusion was derived from.....? Opinion? Gut feeling? Market research?
What makes you think that Blizzard will make more money selling the adventure wings separately?
Well, it's a pretty much a common sense. If you are a new player that got into the game for a few month and got some cards to build one of those decks. Would you buy 4-5 adventures or 4-5 wings? And the point is more about the barrier to entry than how much money they would make.
You are proposing something that is related to Blizzard's revenue, you have to look at it from a business standpoint. Or else we might as well just suggest that packs cost 5 gold and each adventure wing costs 10 gold.
Well the issue is about as these adventures increase in number right? If you need one card in wing 4 of Naxx and one in Wing 5 of BRM you're out a tone of gold/cash. Heaven help you once we're in year 5 and there's 10 adventures.
I can see the newest adventures being in wing-order (well personally I don't like it but it'd ok). Eventually, though, they can decouple the wings. By year 3, Naxx is old and there's 6 Adventures to travel through already so the idea of skipping ahead is fine. This isn't an RPG where you miss the entire story if you don't go in order.
Perhaps make it so that once you have the second adventure released in the year, the adventures of the past year decouple.
Here's a trivia for you: what is the appropriate duration and gold required for a new player to acquire ALL the adventure cards of a CCG that is 5 years old?
Answer: exactly the same amount of time and gold that cost a player playing since the beginning of the game.
I didn't get to skip wings, why should a new player get that privilage?
Well, in my opinion Naxx and BRM first of all are adventures.
I am more excited about the story and new cards for me just like a reward.
So all wings should be opened at their order one by one. It's like reading new book from first page till the end and not from the middle!
But when I buying packs of cards of course I want to receive some cards that I still didn't have in my collection. For example now I have all common classical cards and GvG, but I missing 10 rare classical and 7 rare from GvG.
Well, I can understand Blizzard that with this trick they are making money, because I need always buy new packs, earn gold, play arena etc. and this is also exciting about game!
Currently, adventure wings must be purchased in order. I think this is a terrible restriction. With more adventures in the future, new players are getting screwed by this.
Some people might say it's because Blizzard is greedy and wants to take all our money, but this is a terrible business decision as it pushes potential customers away from them.
You can't expect new players to buy 2-3 adventures just to get those cards they need in their deck. It is more likely for them to spend money on individual wings over time as they aquire the cards they need to build different decks.
For example, if a new player open some packs and have a decent enough card pool to build a demon deck, they now need voidcaller from 3rd wing NAXX and imp gang boss from 2nd wing of BRM.
It is far more likely that he will buy those 2 wings than buying 5 wings(3 from Naxx+ 2 from BRM).
um ok think of it this way it's supposed to be an adventure not just a card hunt, sure i would rather skip wing 3 because i really don't want rend blackhand but isn't the fun in fighting all the bosses and developing tactics against them? blizzard isn't gready or anything they want to create a unique hearthstone experience :)
Well the issue is about as these adventures increase in number right? If you need one card in wing 4 of Naxx and one in Wing 5 of BRM you're out a tone of gold/cash. Heaven help you once we're in year 5 and there's 10 adventures.
I can see the newest adventures being in wing-order (well personally I don't like it but it'd ok). Eventually, though, they can decouple the wings. By year 3, Naxx is old and there's 6 Adventures to travel through already so the idea of skipping ahead is fine. This isn't an RPG where you miss the entire story if you don't go in order.
Perhaps make it so that once you have the second adventure released in the year, the adventures of the past year decouple.
Here's a trivia for you: what is the appropriate duration and gold required for a new player to acquire ALL the adventure cards of a CCG that is 5 years old?
Answer: exactly the same amount of time and gold that cost a player playing since the beginning of the game.
I didn't get to skip wings, why should a new player get that privilage?
Because that same person didn't get to spend 3 months prior to the adventure opening to save up for it. Instead they have to find time to get enough gold to open up 10 adventures fully (3500 gold each if the 5 wing system is maintained) while getting the cards they need from the other expansions and the upcoming adventure that'll inevitably show up.
Now on the good side, new players won't need most of the cards (i.e. they won't need gravedigger anymore). All they need are the cards that are still in the meta. That's ok for the full expansions. If Dr. Boom remains the only GvG card we all use 5 years from now then just save up the dust for JUST him, craft him, and that's that.
The adventures though have to be opened in order. Thus if Shade and Nefarian end up in the 5 year meta then that's 7000 gold, or the equivalent of 70 packs, just for 4 cards. Cash wise that's $60 for 4 cards in the meta and a batch of undustable out-of-meta cards.
By then, I had 5 years of 'safe up 3 months then open on release day' sequences in order to get each pack. While they somehow gather up 7000 gold, I'm saving up for the next Adventure. They could do the same but then they won't have time to get the past ones.
That's when you make use of catch up mechanics. Note that other card games, like Magic, do that via limited formats. Since new players will have a hard time getting the old cards, they just have formats which ban those old cards so they can focus on the current items. HS COULD do that and ban Naxx/BRM as they get old.
But if they uncouple the wings as they get old, they won't have to. Then new players could save like I do when a new adaventure is close, then spend 2 weeks to save for a wing to get the cards they need for a past adventure. They don't need ALL of the cards: just the specific ones for the deck they need at the time.
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One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
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Currently, adventure wings must be purchased in order. I think this is a terrible restriction. With more adventures in the future, new players are getting screwed by this.
Some people might say it's because Blizzard is greedy and wants to take all our money, but this is a terrible business decision as it pushes potential customers away from them.
You can't expect new players to buy 2-3 adventures just to get those cards they need in their deck. It is more likely for them to spend money on individual wings over time as they aquire the cards they need to build different decks.
For example, if a new player open some packs and have a decent enough card pool to build a demon deck, they now need voidcaller from 3rd wing NAXX and imp gang boss from 2nd wing of BRM.
It is far more likely that he will buy those 2 wings than buying 5 wings(3 from Naxx+ 2 from BRM).
And your conclusion was derived from.....? Opinion? Gut feeling? Market research?
What makes you think that Blizzard will make more money selling the adventure wings separately?
"Put your face in the light!" - Tirion Fordring
Well, it's a pretty much a common sense. If you are a new player that got into the game for a few month and got some cards to build one of those decks. Would you buy 4-5 adventures or 4-5 wings? And the point is more about the barrier to entry than how much money they would make.
You are able to purchase individual wings, but you must do it in order. You can't just buy the 3rd wing of Naxx to get the cards, you need to buy the first 2 wings too.
Well, maybe I worded it poorly, but the barrier to entry is raised with every expansion and adventures, and this restriction does make even more difficult for new players to get into the game. New players are likely to only have a card pool that can support only a few decks, and when they try to improve on these decks, do you really want to force them to spend 3-4 times money/time. It just pushes new players away from the game, and I think this would make them less money in general.
You want the players to feel like they are making progress when playing the game, do you really want them to grind gold/ spend money on 2 wings that they might not benefit the most from before giving them the price.
It might not seem like a big deal now, but we are only looking at the how adventures limits new players at the moment, when we add the expansions to the mess, it gets real bad.
This is a point that I've thought about before, and I have to admit I think I agree with the OP. It's hard to know for sure how it would affect sales, but my feeling on it is that what would happen is sales of individual wings would go way up while sales of the full adventure would take a small hit. The problem with the current model is that their exists a not insubstantial number of players that, either through preference or because of limited card pool, only play a specific class. Having to buy all the wings just to get the cards they want to keep playing. They have to end up buying the whole thing, which is something a lot of players don't want to do. Just look at the number of threads that pop up with people asking if they should buy naxx.
I don't think the current model is terrible, but I do think allowing people to choose which wings they buy would be better overall.
Nothing doing, traveler.
If Blizzard allowed you to buy wings in any order then everyone would wait to see what the good staple cards will be and what wings they will be in and only purchase those. In order to make as much as they do now they would have to spread the good cards through out each wing evenly and even then it would be hard to judge what exactly is good due to any meta shifting before, during, and after release.
I would argue that they probably don't have that great of an idea which of the cards will be meta breakers and which won't. I'm sure they have some idea, and I do think they're good at balancing the cards, but knowing which cards will see play and which ones won't is another story.
As to the other point, I think you underestimate the number of people that would buy the whole thing just to have it. I know I would. Additionally, I think keeping the release schedule as they have it now with an option to unlock individual wings say a month after the final release would be a good way to address that. Also they could keep the final wing locked until all other wings are unlocked, which I think would be a fine choice.
Nothing doing, traveler.
They kind of do that already. They spread class cards over different wings . The last 2 wings can't really be bad because then people would just not buy them anyway. Just look at how they spread the cards in BRM and you can see that they really try to put at least 1,2 playable cards in each wing.
I kind of agree with Poke, it's just a dick move to bar people from buying certain quarters of the adventure. Not saying it's good or bad business model, just that makes things tougher on the newbie F2Per. I'm an established player from the beta period who's invested the time and money to have a fat collection of cards, so for me it's no issue. But I can just imagine what the new player is going through. They couldn't compete with me using anything other than face hunter.
What about the adventure mode story? I've been manipulated into deposing Ragnaros by Nefarian, why would I want to fight Nefarian at the moment?!
If players actually want to experience the story in order, there is nothing stopping them from doing it, this just an option for players who care more about the cards.
Most of the players probably play it once/twice, get the cards never go back to it. To them, it's just kill things get cards. And the experience itself is more about puzzle solving and deck building. There is not really that much of a story to begin with.
The player make the choice between cards or the story experience. The fact is players spend far more time playing with the cards they get from the adventure mode than they would with the adventure itself. A lot of players don't even bother with heroic because getting the cards is the most of important part for them.
It's good to bring about such concern. If the wings can be bought separately, players can just buy what they need instead of a large bunch of seldom/never used card. But I think Blizzard does have other concern on this.
If the bar is too low, it might become too easy for mass production of 'ready-to-play' crash accounts. You do know that they're selling a lot of those online for arena, right? With individual purchase, it takes much less time for bots to produce crash accounts, or maybe botting for new accounts with standard face Hunter as the gold consumption goes down.
As for natural human new players, I don't think this would change much. They still need minimum necessary cards to complete the adventure anyway. As a result they won't b eager to buy adventure if they have too few cards in collection.
This always really bothered me, partly for how much harder it makes it for Free-to-Play players (even longer term ones) get certain cards they want/need, partly because both Naxx and (sorta) BRM could have both been beaten in any order back in WoW. It wouldn't be so bad but it means if you want say Zombie Chow or Mad Scientist (both very good cards practically required in their respective decks) it costs you 2800 gold, with some wings giving you nothing competitive. I'm actually fine with the final wing requiring the other four (which is how they made it sound in some of their pre-release), but every wing just stings.
Well the issue is about as these adventures increase in number right? If you need one card in wing 4 of Naxx and one in Wing 5 of BRM you're out a tone of gold/cash. Heaven help you once we're in year 5 and there's 10 adventures.
I can see the newest adventures being in wing-order (well personally I don't like it but it'd ok). Eventually, though, they can decouple the wings. By year 3, Naxx is old and there's 6 Adventures to travel through already so the idea of skipping ahead is fine. This isn't an RPG where you miss the entire story if you don't go in order.
Perhaps make it so that once you have the second adventure released in the year, the adventures of the past year decouple.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
You are proposing something that is related to Blizzard's revenue, you have to look at it from a business standpoint. Or else we might as well just suggest that packs cost 5 gold and each adventure wing costs 10 gold.
"Put your face in the light!" - Tirion Fordring
Here's a trivia for you: what is the appropriate duration and gold required for a new player to acquire ALL the adventure cards of a CCG that is 5 years old?
Answer: exactly the same amount of time and gold that cost a player playing since the beginning of the game.
I didn't get to skip wings, why should a new player get that privilage?
"Put your face in the light!" - Tirion Fordring
Well, in my opinion Naxx and BRM first of all are adventures.
I am more excited about the story and new cards for me just like a reward.
So all wings should be opened at their order one by one. It's like reading new book from first page till the end and not from the middle!
But when I buying packs of cards of course I want to receive some cards that I still didn't have in my collection. For example now I have all common classical cards and GvG, but I missing 10 rare classical and 7 rare from GvG.
Well, I can understand Blizzard that with this trick they are making money, because I need always buy new packs, earn gold, play arena etc. and this is also exciting about game!
I saw one interesting blog about Hearthstone: https://bothgunsblazingblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/hearthstone-analysis-and-deconstruction/ and in some aspects I should agree with an author.
um ok think of it this way it's supposed to be an adventure not just a card hunt, sure i would rather skip wing 3 because i really don't want rend blackhand but isn't the fun in fighting all the bosses and developing tactics against them? blizzard isn't gready or anything they want to create a unique hearthstone experience :)
RIP yogg-saron good things don't last forever :(
Because that same person didn't get to spend 3 months prior to the adventure opening to save up for it. Instead they have to find time to get enough gold to open up 10 adventures fully (3500 gold each if the 5 wing system is maintained) while getting the cards they need from the other expansions and the upcoming adventure that'll inevitably show up.
Now on the good side, new players won't need most of the cards (i.e. they won't need gravedigger anymore). All they need are the cards that are still in the meta. That's ok for the full expansions. If Dr. Boom remains the only GvG card we all use 5 years from now then just save up the dust for JUST him, craft him, and that's that.
The adventures though have to be opened in order. Thus if Shade and Nefarian end up in the 5 year meta then that's 7000 gold, or the equivalent of 70 packs, just for 4 cards. Cash wise that's $60 for 4 cards in the meta and a batch of undustable out-of-meta cards.
By then, I had 5 years of 'safe up 3 months then open on release day' sequences in order to get each pack. While they somehow gather up 7000 gold, I'm saving up for the next Adventure. They could do the same but then they won't have time to get the past ones.
That's when you make use of catch up mechanics. Note that other card games, like Magic, do that via limited formats. Since new players will have a hard time getting the old cards, they just have formats which ban those old cards so they can focus on the current items. HS COULD do that and ban Naxx/BRM as they get old.
But if they uncouple the wings as they get old, they won't have to. Then new players could save like I do when a new adaventure is close, then spend 2 weeks to save for a wing to get the cards they need for a past adventure. They don't need ALL of the cards: just the specific ones for the deck they need at the time.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.