Hearthpwn

With the advent of the Grand Tournament releasing and future card expansions releasing. As a free to play player it's becoming evident that it will be harder and harder to get a good collection of cards definitely from the old set since you usually want to priority getting the most current available cards. 

What do people think of old packs (GvG and classic becoming cheaper in cost? (both gold or irl $)?

Quote from Azerathifys jump

With the advent of the Grand Tournament releasing and future card expansions releasing. As a free to play player it's becoming evident that it will be harder and harder to get a good collection of cards definitely from the old set since you usually want to priority getting the most current available cards. 

 

What do people think of old packs (GvG and classic becoming cheaper in cost? (both gold or irl $)?

They've already stated that this won't be the case I believe.  I think that the whole brawl pack thing was to help newer players gain packs and I'm sure there will be another arena promotion upon release to help get packs to F2P players.  Blizzard does have to make money in the end though. 

Not happening.

It will always be the same. F2P players will just have to grind their life out of every gold if they want to purchase more packs.

IMO, I think Hearthstone is already kind enough compare to other "F2P" games. 

what you suggested was unfair to old players. 

The difficulty to collect 30 cards to build a deck would be the same. F2P should not be even thinking about a full collection.

Would it hurt some of you f2p people to throw some money into the game? 

Quote from up_dog69 jump

Would it hurt some of you f2p people to throw some money into the game? 

It would hurt the game if i threw coins at it.

Quote from up_dog69 jump

Would it hurt some of you f2p people to throw some money into the game? 

Not everyone has the same economic status you know,

Some people can't spare money on games that's why the choose to go free to play. And Blizzard punishes them for that.

I'm currently just finished my honours degree with two kids, a car, and renting a house all while looking for a job and can still afford to buy *some* packs per week if I choose to. If you can't even afford 5-9 euro for a few packs at the end of the week as a little treat for yourself you need to stop worrying about what blizzard can give you for more free and get your shit together.

Guys, stop with the silly F2P debates.

1. companies are finding that they earn more money going F2P than they do making everyone pay.  That's WITH over 50% of the population never paying and most of the rest spending far less than a regular game.  THe idea of most players not paying is a design feature, not a 'despite'.  There's no real interest to make those people pay.  

2. I don't know how the economic situation is in other countries, but well over half of the US can't afford $5 a month to put into cards.  That's WITH working for the day.  The country isn't really worker friendly.  

As far as the topic, cheaper decks don't make it 'unfair' for older players.  We've been able to enjoy getting the decks over time for over a year.  We've gotten bonuses like the first wing of naxx free and discounts on purchased packs that new players won't get.  We had a much easier meta and a MUCH easier arena due to poor playing.  The prices of old content is always discounted.  If that's not acceptable then wait until after it's discounted, then go play.  Myself, I'm not sure I'm willing to have waited 2 years for a slightly cheaper classic deck.

That said, there's not much reason to push out a cheaper set.  The problem is crafting.  Firstly, you have the option of gathering cards from one set then dusting it and crafting the cards from classic that you need.  Also helps that a lot of the old cards aren't necessary nowadays.  Cards like harvest golem, murloc cards, Ciarne, and Baron Geddon have been pushed out of the meta.  Meanwhile, you get cases like warlock which still has decks with Jaraxxus but also have decks with Mal'ganis but no Jaraxxus.  Thus you can go for whatever combination of sets that you want.  You DON'T need all of hte cards of classic, GvG, Naxx, BRM, and Tourny just to compete.  

Lastly, if you make one set type cheaper, you either have to downgrade the dust cost of all of hte cards in the set or else you made a VERY nasty exploit where you mass buy the cheaper deck to collect dust for the more expensive set.  Now THAT would punish both older players since it'll mess up all of their current cards.

blizzard is looking into the catch-up systems.  They seem to believe that giving more ways of getting packs is a better solution.  I believe that's a good idea, though I still think they should make arena be set to choosing the deck you want.

I will not happen any time soon. A price drop would be a huge slap in the face to the people who've already invested into the game and it would send a message that you should NOT buy a lot of packs because they could always on discount later. Besides that, sales are higher than ever so there's no incentive for Blizzard to be lowering prices right now. This game is only becoming more and more popular. If anything the price would go up before going down.

Quote from Senchae jump

I'm currently just finished my honours degree with two kids, a car, and renting a house all while looking for a job and can still afford to buy *some* packs per week if I choose to. If you can't even afford 5-9 euro for a few packs at the end of the week as a little treat for yourself you need to stop worrying about what blizzard can give you for more free and get your shit together.

^

Quote from iandakar jump

Guys, stop with the silly F2P debates.

1. companies are finding that they earn more money going F2P than they do making everyone pay.  That's WITH over 50% of the population never paying and most of the rest spending far less than a regular game.  THe idea of most players not paying is a design feature, not a 'despite'.  There's no real interest to make those people pay.  

2. I don't know how the economic situation is in other countries, but well over half of the US can't afford $5 a month to put into cards.  That's WITH working for the day.  The country isn't really worker friendly.  

 

Holy shit someone in this thread with an actual working brain. Congrats and well said

Quote from Senchae jump

I'm currently just finished my honours degree with two kids, a car, and renting a house all while looking for a job and can still afford to buy *some* packs per week if I choose to. If you can't even afford 5-9 euro for a few packs at the end of the week as a little treat for yourself you need to stop worrying about what blizzard can give you for more free and get your shit together.

I guess that's why you are renting a house instead of owning one, HS packs.

Totally impossible unless they rework dust for those packs since old players would simply buy old, cheaper packs to stockpile dust. If they reworked dust, even newer players get shafted since they will not be able craft cards as well as before. 

The he only halfway decent solution would be to discount both gold and dust costs for earlier sets, but that poses it's own problem as many of the 'power' cards still come from the classic set and are still in highh demand. 

The only way I see blizz ever doing something like this is way down the road where the first few sets have been power creeped so badly that the cards have no place in any competitive deck and are only attractive to the collector. At that point blizz would probably discount the cards, only in cash, not gold, to sell more packs from sets that would otherwise go unsold. 

Even this I would say is highly unlikely though. The reason why other card companies do this kind of discounting is because of excess product. As a digital card game, HS will never have this problem. 

Quote from ambershee jumpCheck your privilege.

So let's reign in the lecturing from a point of supposed moral superiority, yeah?

Sorry.   Don't buy it.  If you cannot afford a few bucks a week for a game... then get off.  Spend that time looking for a better job or building your skills so that you can.

And no, I am not "checking my privilege" for anyone.  Keep up or eat my dust.

Quote from CasmX jump

I've been F2P since the beginning. While I don't have a complete collection, I have a solid one that is easily capable of holding it's own at the competitive level. Within the first few months of playing in a new meta (ie: when new cards are introduced), it's easy to figure out what cards are useful and which ones aren't. It didn't take long after GvG came out to realize that Dr. Boom was going to end up being useful in most decks and was the only GvG legend I bothered to craft. And now, I have 2 copies of every common and rare in the game, 2 copies of every epic quality card that's worth owning as well as at least 1 copy of most (if not every) other epic and a nice fistful of legendaries (from the core game and every xpac) that generally don't see play. IE: Troggzor, Mukla, Foe Reaper, etc.

I'm currently sitting on about 11,000 dust and 6,500 gold. When the new xpac comes out, I'll likely run some arenas, probably buy a few packs outright with gold, sit on my dust for a few months and see which cards rise to the top. Once I have a pretty solid idea of whats useful, what's fun, what's gimmicky and what's useless, I'll make the decision if anything needs to be crafted to remain competitive and craft those cards. If I feel I can remain competitive without crafting and continue to build on my collection simply through card packs, that's what I'll do.

Even for people that haven't been here since the beginning, it's really not that difficult to obtain a collection that allows a player to become and remain competitive. You just need the right 30 cards to build that one deck that can climb the ladder. Once you got said deck, anyone can begin building their collection, no price adjustment required.

Care to share the amount of time played you had to achieve that kind of collection as f2p player? I am just curious.

I'm just tired of the "whoa is me" attitude of some f2p players. A couple of reasons why?

1.  The game is still fun even now on a fp2 account. I have all the cards and adventures on 1 server, the good ones and adventures on another server and have just started messing around on the third as f2p.  I can assure you the game is just as good with a limited amount of cards. Also makes you a better player I believe. Rank 15 (with no cards) > Rank 5 (with all the cards).

2.  The game needs new cards on a regular basis. If there was only an expansion once every 2 years, everyone would stop playing. The meta would become so stale, everyone including f2p would be playing the same 5 decks. 

3.  Blizzard could have gone down the subscription path, which would have been much worse for players with no spare cash for even a few packs a week. 

4. Life isn't fair. Some are luckier than others. Some have made better choices than others. "It's the way she goes" 

I do have one question though. Where are these people earning $60 a week getting pc's that can run Hearthstone and internet from?

 

I don't see them ever changing the price of the older packs, but I do want to see them introducing more ways to obtain them wihtout buying them outright. The Pokemon Online TCG (terrible as it is) does a pretty good job of this, allowing you to earn boosters and cards in a large number of way:
PvP rewards give you the ability to earn certain sets of cards each month as well as alongside booster packs.
You can earn a fair few booster packs by beating the AI in the 'trainer challenges'.
You earn a booster pack when you reach X wins with a preconstructed deck - notably you can purchase entire preconstructed decks of 60 cards for less than the cost of 6x10 card boosters, which is a good entry mechanic for new players.
You get one booster pack every 5 days just for logging in.
You can win booster packs by playing in knock-out tournaments.

I think that's a very good idea, giving new players some affordable pre-constructed deck for a given class seems like the way to go. Since 30 cards is approximately 6 packs. It could be 5$ for a pre-constructed deck of 30 cards.