Hearthpwn

again, this is not wow. this is and was never meant to be played the same way. it is a free to play game with in game currency. it isnt meant to be played for hours on end for free. you are not paying $60 for the game and then a sub every month. how reasonable is it to expect that a free game with no advertisements and no way to produce revenue should provide you with hours upon hours of competitive playtime? if i was running a business in a capitalist world and was ultimately responsible for the investment made by shareholders i would be crazy to do anything different. 

using the numbers you have provided to you not think that 14 hours a week of questing and then another 4-5 hours of arena from gold made through playing is enough for free? i wish wore free things in the world would occupy my time for almost 20 hours a week. 

also, there is always just playing with what you have..... play the game because you enjoy it not because you are getting something from it. you just complained that in WotLK you had nothing to do. with what you have said in your post i can make the assumption that you have no interest in doing something when you get nothing in return. if I am correct, if progression is made faster and you collect every card in the game even faster than what you can do now then where does that leave you? will you continue playing and then complain that just like in WotLK there is nothing to do? will you try and make a fully golden collection? if that is so, when will you start complaining that it takes too long to make a golden deck?

for people who want a sense of progression the free play with the occasional arena buy in is great. you will have that sense of progression and improvement for a long time. if on the other hand you play the game for the sake of playing it, you will:

1) play for free regardless of if you are getting anything because you enjoy the game

2) you will buy things with RL money because you are extremely serious about it. 

you cant in one paragraph say the progression is too slow and then in the next complain that you disliked a game because you ran out of progression. there is an adage which comes to mind: "you cant have your cake and eat it too."

This is my opinion. A combo, of a set price that everyone had to pay to buy this game app say $20 then move the rewards to 5gold per win. Thats 20 wins per card pack. ( Thats if you win 20 straight and even then most will be cards not wanted or duplicates) Still a grind for the people that dont want to pay more for card packs or arena but more incentive to play. The people wanting to pay to get card packs or arena faster can still do so, (Blizz still gets a piece of that money cake) and at the end of the day everyone's happier cuz you still have a choice for a decent grind for free or pay blizz to speed it up 

I know I've rehashed this argument several times, but I agree under the basic principle that I want this game to succeed and in order to succeed it has to be rewarding to those who don't spend a whole lot of money in it. To put this into perspective here's something to consider. Hardcore gamers don't just appear out of thin air. They are made. Jay Wilson had an excellent quote for this.

Hardcore games for everyone is what Blizzard does.
- Jay Wilson

Hardcore players are casual players who took the next step. What do you call a professional? A hobbyist that didn't quit. You want to bring in as many new people into the genre as you can. I completely understand that the point of a company is to make money, but seeing as how I've spent $150 thus far and am not even close to completing a collection leads me to wonder how long it will take for a more casual gamer to get enough cards to complete a set. The game has to be appealing to everyone. Those who are going to be the top tiered are going to be amazing players. Skill in this game will almost always certainly trump those who just threw together a bunch of really awesome non synergistic cards. As for the pricing model, do you consider this a TCG pricing model? Or a PC game pricing model? What's irritating for the most part about the "Freemium" or "Free to Play" model is that it costs the player WAY MORE than if the game was sold at a static price. Thus far, I've opened over 120 Expert Packs. You're going to get A LOT of duplicates. So far, I have about 2/3 of the possible cards I could collect, and about 2400 dust. I have enough to craft about 2 Epics and a Legendary. Now, that's very cheap for a TCG, but very expensive for a computer game. However, I'm not advocating that you should be able to grind out all of the cards in a few months, or even a year without having to pay anything. But, at the current rate, you won't hook enough people to build a sizable playerbase to create a new generation of Hardcore players. One doesn't have to look much further than Diablo III to see why a very low reward system is not healthy for an online gaming community. Players need to feel rewarded in order to keep interest in the game. If you want more revenue a year down the road, you bring in new players and or release expansions and add extra cards every once in a while. You don't try to milk the initial crowd for as much as you can before you even have a chance to build your playerbase. Those who would spend money on this game are going to spend money, and those who wouldn't normally aren't going to spend money just because the game "forces" them to. You have to entice the player to want to buy more cards. In my opinion, you should not expect more than $60 on average for every player you have playing. The more "casuals" this game can bring in the better. I didn't start my WoW career right out of the gate saying that I was going to be the best of the best. I started out slowly, leveled a character to 60 then 70, ran some dungeons every once in a while. The thrill of working with other players as a team eventually led me to raiding, then on to hardcore raiding somewhere down the line. If the game right off the bat decided I wasn't worth anything and forced me to progress at such an extremely slow rate I would have given up and quit. Right now, it feels as though you will never make any progress unless you spend money. Realistically, it should feel as though you're making progress, but if you want to speed it up you can spend money. You will get more people spending money if you count on hundreds spending around $30 - $60 over the year vs just a few who will drop $100 - $300 at first release, then get bored and never play again. Being able to collect cards without spending money was one of the reasons I was giving this game so much praise, but now I feel as though I should have waited to see what the reward model looked like before saying such things.

Well, right now this game is yet an experience for Blizzard.

And they let clear that they wanted to attract new players, lots of new players, making the game easy to learn (intuitive), free and available for Ipad.

But this makes us confused about: is this a game that i can be really engaged, dedicate my time playing? Will there be rewards if i enjoy it and want to get better in it?

Will it be another Ipad app where a lot of people download it, spend some money and then the game is gone (every ipad app has it cycle)or will it be a stable game, with expansions, more strategies to learn, more tournament options (maybe become a real MtG alternative)?

I said already, right now the game is just the Arena, and this makes it not so fun to play, although the game is amazing and well done and fun to play.

And please dont force Blizz to give Gold per Loss, cuz that will only end in millions of games getting Coneded after 2 turns or right at the beginning due to pure maths (1 Gold every 30 Second > 3 Gold every 10 Min)

Well that's easy set limits on how you can get gold through a loss.

 you just complained that in WotLK you had nothing to do. with what you have said in your post i can make the assumption that you have no interest in doing something when you get nothing in return. if I am correct, if progression is made faster and you collect every card in the game even faster than what you can do now then where does that leave you? 

Umm you may have to re-read his post as it seems like you misread it. He never said there was nothing to do in WotLK. He said everything was repetitive and tedious for what seemed like little to no rewards. Also,all you have done is gone to the extremes if you want to play that game then fine.

      I am creating a F2P MMO with a maximum level of 80. I am having a tough time deciding how often non paying customers should level up. In one idea if they were to play 8 hours a day for a year they would gain 3 levels. (Look at how much free gameplay they get. They get a  LOT!!!) In the other instance they get to reach level 80 in 30 days of grinding. (Look at how fast they get to level!!!!)

     The trick is finding a nice middle ground. You keep saying hearthstone the game isn't supposed to be compared to WoW and in that I agree with you. Likewise however I wouldn't compare this game to MTG as you are apt to do. Here is something I thought would be cute to add in order to capitalize on my point.

This is hearthstone. There are many like it, but this one is ours.

Our game is our best friend. It is our lives. We must master it as we must master our lives.

Our game, without us, is useless. Without our game, we are useless. I must play the game true. I must play better than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must beat him before he beats me.

- My hearthstone creed

      Point being that hearthstone is its own game and doesn't need to be compared to other games. It is its own game. I also think there should be balanced between how fast you progress through the game while keeping the game long lasting. You want the free playing customers to get a sense of progression to keep them playing but not too fast where they have no need to buy boosters, but not so slow as they get uninterested. People tend to like to support the games they enjoy.

Happy gaming!!!

I agree with what you are all saying in terms of progression and rewards if this was a sub game or had a price to purchase with expansions later on (which I think is a discussion best left to another thread). However, this is not the case. The 'freemium' structure has been finalized. There will be no purchase price. Whether there will be some soft of subscription service later on, again, is a discussion best left to another thread. 

As a FREE game I in no way expect to have more than 1.5-2 hours on average a day of free play time. That is reasonable. That amount will lead to me making enough of a time investment in it which will lead to me wanting more. That is the point of freemium pricing structure. Arguing that you are hooked so you want even more free playtime with progression is like the adage that the first taste is always free (referring to some sort of addictive substance provided by a less than reputable individual). Well what you guys are asking is for that drug dealer to spot you even more for free forever. If you want the game to succeed. if you want there to be followups and expansions than it is necessary that you pay for the game. The majority of people will download the game, screw around a bit, and be done. If you are posting on a forum about a game which isn't even released yet than there is a good chance you aren't in that group. Take care of blizzard and they will take care of you. 

When GW was released and there were a bunch of free MMO's released after WoW became popular there were cries to make it free to play or to drastically reduce its sub price. If that had happened would we have one of the longest running MMO's of all time and the most popular MMO of all time by far still going strong? we wouldn't because it would not be a long term sustainable business model. 

First off, I want to say how nice it's been to have a discussion here that doesn't include people jumping in shouting "ffs you've got beta dont be ungrateful, give it to me" every 30 seconds (and the other threads here seem nicely free of that too). In no way at all am I referring to the official forums and I am never EVER sarcastic.

Secondly, you make some very good points Margucci, and I could follow up on a few things, but I get the impression that we'll be up for some blue comments later on when they sit down with their morning coffee.

It has been mentioned that the main gold income should come from dailies, and I saw it mentioned somewhere that not all of the dailies have been released yet, and the daily system may not be completed. If that's so, then the dailies might be more lucrative an income that people are expecting for one thing. Another is that the Blues might make a comment on the "1 gold per win" thing later on, and I'm tempted to save any further ranting until I've seen their reaction the weekend's feedback. If there's one thing that seems to stand out overall it's the gold per win - whether it's in favour of it or against it - so I can see an official comment popping up somewhere with more information on it.

That makes a lot of sense. We should hopefully have a lot of questions answered soon. Damn eastern time zone. The blue's aren't even awake yet. 

Quote from Margucci »

That makes a lot of sense. We should hopefully have a lot of questions answered soon. Damn eastern time zone. The blue's aren't even awake yet. 

Try being Australian. Being 11pm now, I have to wait until tomorrow to see any blue posts :P

Quote from Siaer »

Quote from Margucci »

That makes a lot of sense. We should hopefully have a lot of questions answered soon. Damn eastern time zone. The blue's aren't even awake yet. 

Try being Australian. Being 11pm now, I have to wait until tomorrow to see any blue posts :P

That's not too bad as you (probably should) be sleeping for most of the time until they pop up.

Here in the UK, most blues don't pop up until around mid-afternoon at the earliest, but usually the evening and forum chat picks up most when I should be heading to bed! There are times like this that I feel like changing my body clock by a few hours so that I can get the most out of both communities!

Quote from splashaku »

Anyone else tired of face/play Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Mogu'shan Warden, Tauren Warrior ? And if you don't use them, you lose.

...

Is this relevant to the topic discussion? please open a new thread for this T_T

Im sure the 1gold per win is temporary, although it is disheartening to see this blizz team going in a p2w direction when they were talking about how this was something they were doing for the community more so than from a business perspective. I remember reading a couple weeks ago that the team was hovering around 1 dollar per pack--> now its up to 1.50 (2,99 for 2) at the first option.

I think the system should be set to 10 wins for a booster pack, and if they think that is too much then make it a lesser booster pack only containing 3 cards.

Quote from DrOwnage »

Im sure the 1gold per win is temporary, although it is disheartening to see this blizz team going in a p2w direction when they were talking about how this was something they were doing for the community more so than from a business perspective. I remember reading a couple weeks ago that the team was hovering around 1 dollar per pack--> now its up to 1.50 (2,99 for 2) at the first option.

I don't really think this makes it "going in a pay to win" direction, but it does make it really annoying to do without paying.

That said - I'm all for being able to spend real person money within the context of a game like this in order to advance faster, but 1g per win is pretty absurd.  I think it's a little too early to be crying the sky is falling though; this could totally be a just-for-beta thing.  I don't think we've seen any blue posts on it, have we?

i am actually quite surprised at the number of higher than common cards which have been in booster packs. on average from what i have seen in 40 packs you will get around:

- 2 Legendary cards

- 10-12 epic cards

- 50-55 blue cards

- the rest (131-138) are common. 

that isnt too bad. maybe they were planning the $1 per pack with lower average quality of the cards? either way from what i have seen after you take out duplicates from 40 packs worth of disenchanting you are looking at 1300-1600 dust for crafting. that is a lot of potential cards that can be crafted. 

You should definitely gain more gold per game, especially for winning a game. Otherwise playing without spending real money is almost impossibly hard even with the quests factored in. I assume this will be changed before release but we shall see. 

Beta is just that and I am sure with proper feed back that will be changed. 

It's understandable that they don't want gold to be too easy to obtain, but that being said, I think 1 gold per win is too low and will be changed before the official launch (hopefully).

I think there is too much "i am too poor to pay" in this thread.
Yes its a free game, but progression speed is dependent on how much you are willing to pay.

$0 (slow) - $50 (faster than slow) - $100 (faster than $10)... etc and everything in between.

On topic the rewards for winning 1 gold enough? The question should be asked "how much gold should be given with no investment by the customer".
They cant make it too high to remove incentive of buying packs otherwise the game will lose value and without an income how can further investment be profitable for the company providing the service?

So whats the magic number? I think Blizz is playing it smart and making rewards low to start with to figure out a ceiling a good player could earn in a day/week/month and then they'll adjust based on that maximum payout.

the9tail nice try but you're either really rich or more likely a blizzard employee :D (jk ofc)