I always wonder why people complain about 2 legendaries per class. Sure, it makes owning the whole expansion more expensive but as many have pointed out, you do not need all cards to play a decent deck. A deck is made of 30 cards and that's all you need to play.
In the past when each class only had one legendary per expansion, it was very sad for the class lovers when the legendary was a flop.
Now there are 2 legendaries, at least one will be useful. In fact, it creates more deck variety. Quest Paladin makes use of the quest, while murloc Paladin uses Finley, although it is simply treated as a murloc.
Also, each deck makes use of only 1-3 new legendary cards from the latest expansion. Unless you are a brand new player, you should have most of the cards from previous expansions
Owning the whole expansion has not become much more expensive. We have 2 more legendaries in modern sets compared to older ones (23 instead of 21). 3200 dust more, but it's not a massive amount.
But the introduction of 2 class legendaries meant that legendaries could be more powerful and support specific playstyles better. While there are still expansions with rather weak legendaries like Witchwood or Rastakhan, it's not uncommon that there are about 10 strong, important legendaries in a modern expansion, while older sets had about 5 that were good and maybe a few more that were just ok or interesting. And nowadays, you craft more legendaries for specific classes, if not decks.
I agree that this made the game more interesting. I prefer classes using their class cards instead of all using the same neutrals. But if you want to have all the good cards from an expansion, whether it makes sense or not, it became more expensive.
From a free-to-play perspective, none of that should matter at all. You should not expect to be able to participate equally in all aspects of the game if you are not paying, and you absolutely should not expect to have access to exclusive cosmetic items.
Single-player content is completely optional, so again, there's nothing wrong with asking people to pay for it.
I didn't mention these as examples for how the game is becoming less fair, but for how Blizzard's increasing its efforts to monetize the game. Bad structuring of the paragraph on my part.
it is either disingenuous or truly ignorant to compare adventures such as Naxxramus to full expansions like Saviors of Uldum. I have trouble believing you actually can't see the difference.
I can certainly understand why you personally might prefer the Naxx type of content delivery, but at the time there were many players complaining that the best cards were uncraftable and locked behind a pay wall. It seems Blizzard simply cannot win.
I do see a difference between an adventure and an expansion. I even pointed out why some might prefer expansions over adventures. Not sure what you are confused about.
Anyway, my point was that 2800/3500 gold or 25$ for all new cards in a 4 month period is a lot more accomodating to someone's attempts to keep up/expand his collection than an expansion every 4 months where you can (and likely will) spend 80$ and more without getting close to all the (good) cards. And I think, not having this "break" anymore is too much for many players, while from the business perspective, adventures were not hurting Blizzard either.
Again, I am aware some people felt unhappy about the structuring of adventures as well; how you could only purchase cards in order and not have the option to craft only those that you wanted, but I mostly disagree with these people. Both, because I think an expansion is a lot harder to catch up on than an adventure, and because I think that what you can legimitately criticise about adventures could have also been adressed without giving up the idea entirely.
The most recent Activision/Blizzard earnings statement indicated a quarter-over-quarter increase in MAUs for Hearthstone, Are you accusing them of lying to their investors? That's a pretty serious charge.
I said "generally", as in "with exceptions". Look at the 2018 annual report, and you'll see that Blizzard had 42 million MAUs in September 2017, and they kept declining to 35 Million in December 2018. It directly points out (on page 33): "The year-over-year decrease in Blizzard's average MAUs is due to lower MAUs for Hearthstone and Overwatch".
I'm not remembering the recent quarter report, so I'll trust you that it showed an increase again, and that is worth mentioning. However, I'd wait until the end of the year to see if that trend continues, since it might be due to the new expansion and effects you already described (the Standard rotation that brought so many changes). You can also look at the 2017 report, and you'll see that they had 42 million in September 2016, 41 after that, 46 million in June 2017, and then it dropped again to 42 the following quarter; although that's for the entire Blizzard branch, not only Hearthstone. However, the report does point out that Hearthstone was one of the factors why revenue increased in 2016 compared to 2015, AND why it decreased in 2017 compared to 2016. Maybe they'll be again at a stable 40+ million by the end of this year, but we have to see.
Besides, I don't think a Hearthstone developer would ask the public what would make players return to the game if things were looking all that great to them.
Again with the full collection thing? Do you understand that that is not even a remote consideration for most people? You do not need a complete collection to enjoy the game. You don't even need it to be competitive. One pre-order plus accumulated gold and dust is more than enough to get you what you need. Obviously, the more you buy, the wider your options will be, but you don't actually need that much just to play the game.
What's your point? I agree that nobdoy needs a full collection. Technically, you don't need anything "just to play the game". But I understand if someone wants a full collection, or at least wants to have more options available. And I think someone who spends 100$ every 4 months on the game should get more out of that than 5-8 legendaries out of 23 and maybe 3000 dust in extra cards, and is still expected to play the game frequently.
Do you have any idea how much it would cost you to have a complete collection in Magic: Arena? It's a lot more than Hearthstone, I assure you. Anyone who has ever played any collectable card game can tell you how expensive (and unnecessary) it is to be a completionist.
No, I don't. Does it matter? Is there a minimum price point of a full collection in a digital card game? You can say that Hearthstone is looking better in this specific regard than its competitors, but you don't make an argument for why a high price point for completionists is a tradition worth keeping. I mean, pointing out how others or even all others do it worse is not really a good defense here. Actually, I think that's a good reason for Hearthsthone to do something different. If people like to collect things and cardgames have been historically bad for them, why not have Hearthstone be a cardgame that allows you to be a completionist relatively easily? Now you could say it already is, but only insofar as you don't need to spend quite as much as in other card games. It's still a lot of money.
The business model has been very consistent. if you personally aren't happy with it, you are welcome to spend less, or even nothing at all. But don't fall into the trap of believing your personal experience or opinion reflects that of a majority of users. It's human nature to think that way, but it's very often a huge mistake.
If you are personally happy with it, you are free to keep your spending habits as well. But you can't truly believe that nobody or only a very small fraction of players has a problem with Hearhtstone's pricing. You are active enough on this board to know better how frequent that complaint is, and even though you do your best to tell them at all times how wrong they are, you can't pretend that they don't exist.
Sure, this is not representative, and it's probably not a majority even. However, I think there is more of a point in changing things than in keeping things as they are.
And I actually do believe that changing things would be better for the game. Yes, I lack the inside knowledge to say so with much confidence, but, no offense, I don't think you speak from professional experience either when you effectively say that Hearthstone is in the best state it can be. Or at least that's what it sounds like to me when you try to argue against any sentiments that the game might be a bit too expensive and demanding.
Free players are not customers. If you think they are -- if you base your arguments on the premise that they are -- you can never be taken seriously in this discussion.
Uhm... no, F2P players are still players, even if you don't like them. Maybe you want to argue with the word "customer", but effectively they will be considered "customers" as well. Customer service won't investigate if you've spend any money on the game before they get back to your request. If you participate in a survey, they won't check how much money they can expect from you before considering your answers. Dean Ayala won't do a background check before reading your comment on Reddit. And if you want to suggest that F2P players are irrelevant to the game's success, or any F2P game's success, and thus should not be considered at all in any aspect of game development, I couldn't disagree more with you.
But that's not the point here anyway. As I said, there are different ways to run a F2P model, and while Hearthstone isn't the worst, I struggle counting it as one of the best. Their current model is a cause of frustration to some, and I think it's unnecessary and worth changing.
Feel free to tell me I'm talking out of my ass (because I am), but I think it would benefit the game long-term if it was a bit more accessible overall. You can give reasons why it doesn't need to, or even why it shouldn't be, but saying "you think X so you can't be taken seriously" is pretty childish. I entirely disagree with your rather aggressive diction, something far more disqualifying to me than any specific statement you have made, but I still try to respect what you say, even though I fully expect that we will never agree on a single point, and I even expect you have some other quasi-insulting reply ready like "You must be truly imbecilic for believing something I say you must believe due to what you just said". I don't like you, but I won't tell you that you have to agree with me on something or else I wouldn't consider your points.
I skimmed your post, but it was much too long to read in it's entirety.
When you grow up, you can run your own company the way you see fit. HS belongs to Blizzard. They get to run it the way they see fit. They don't have to listen to anyone, not even "geniuses" like yourself.
See how simple it is to explain something in two sentences?
And when you grow up, maybe you learn how to read more than a paragraph and how a discussion works.
Since this thread has developed in the same direction as every other discussion on this topic, I felt like making a short comment on why the usual defense of "Blizzard wants to make money" and anything that goes in a similar direction is, in my humble opinion, not contributing anything.
First of all, Hearthstone doesn't have the worst F2P or lootbox system. Not by a long shot. That much needs to be said. There are games that charge for more matches or in-game actions per day or lock substantial parts (like player classes) of the game behind paywalls. You can spend hundreds of dollars on FIFA and still not get what you want with nothing like Dust or pity timers that will eventually ensure you can get any lootbox item you want. Compared to the worst offenders, Hearthstone has a relatively fair system.
However, there are also plenty of F2P model games that have been successful for several years without pushing their players into spending hundreds of dollars per year. There are games that value the time a player invests just as much as the money a player invests. They make it their goal to not be exploitative and unfair. Hearthstone, on the other hand, did get undeniably more expensive over the years and has become much more aggressive with monetization: Bigger bundles, more frequent bundles, more (exclusive) stuff contained in bundles, additional single-player content for money along with bonuses for pre-orders and so on. And from a F2P perspective, it has become less fair.
Believe it or not, Hearthstone managed to "survive" the 3 years (2014-2016), in which Adventures were sold as expansions: You could spend 2800/3500 gold to get ALL the new cards, and you did not have to craft any of them, and all the gold and dust you had saved up could be spend on older expansions that you still needed cards from. In those years, Hearthstone has been growing, and became more and more popular, and still made a lot of money. It's not insignificantly the reason why so many people played it for so long, and play it to this day.
While this was still not perfect, perhaps not even really "fair", it sounds like paradise compared to nowadays. There are good reasons why you would prefer expansions over adventures, like a bigger impact on the meta, more cards to try out, better instant access and giving players more freedom what cards to purchase, but it stands that the shift to 3 expansions per year has made Hearthstone a very expensive game and did not help that whole "fairness" aspect at all. And while some of it is justified as the development cost for Hearthstone has also gone up, starting with a much bigger team working on the game nowadays, many players became increasingly frustrated with it and that deserves attention.
Earlier this year, Blizzard made a survey, some of the questions specifically asking if people found Hearthstone too expensive to be competitive or to have fun. Mike Donais asked players on Reddit what they (Team5) could do to make Hearthstone more interesting again. It is obvious that Team5 and Blizzard become aware that players are getting frustrated and leaving. The MAU (monthly active users) numbers are generally declining, and that's not where the game is supposed to go.
Yes, Blizzard is a company and they want to make money. They are still making insane amounts as we are debating. However, you can always ask HOW a company wants to make money. And at this point, even Blizzard realizes that they might have to reconsider their priorities.
Besides, it's not just about F2P either. I think people who spend a reasonable amount of money on the game are still getting screwed. A 50$ "pre-order" is a little more than a starter kit. 100$ per expansion is perhaps enough to get the essential, the good cards, but not enough to get the full expansion. And these kind of investments don't even save you from grinding gold, they don't compensate for playing the game less frequently, they are expected on top of playing the game almost every day.
Feel free to talk about free market etc., but if you care about the game, you have to concern yourself not just with how much money Acitivision Blizzard is making, and that players are free to not purchase a product they don't like, but also with how popular the game is, how its popularity is decreasing, and how the game's frustrating reward system is not helping the game in the long run, as frustrated players leave, new players have a rough start and won't stay, and paying customers feeling like their money wasn't well spent.
You can run a F2P business model and care about your product and customers, or you can run a F2P model like an avaricious slimeball who just wants to make more money and doesn't care about anything else. if you care about the game, don't shut these discussions down with arguments that even the developers wouldn't bring up; not because it might cause bad press, but because they don't just care about money either, and seeing players unhappy, both free and paying, is a problem to them as well. They know that without players, their game goes down the drain.
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Owning the whole expansion has not become much more expensive. We have 2 more legendaries in modern sets compared to older ones (23 instead of 21). 3200 dust more, but it's not a massive amount.
But the introduction of 2 class legendaries meant that legendaries could be more powerful and support specific playstyles better. While there are still expansions with rather weak legendaries like Witchwood or Rastakhan, it's not uncommon that there are about 10 strong, important legendaries in a modern expansion, while older sets had about 5 that were good and maybe a few more that were just ok or interesting. And nowadays, you craft more legendaries for specific classes, if not decks.
I agree that this made the game more interesting. I prefer classes using their class cards instead of all using the same neutrals. But if you want to have all the good cards from an expansion, whether it makes sense or not, it became more expensive.
I didn't mention these as examples for how the game is becoming less fair, but for how Blizzard's increasing its efforts to monetize the game. Bad structuring of the paragraph on my part.
I do see a difference between an adventure and an expansion. I even pointed out why some might prefer expansions over adventures. Not sure what you are confused about.
Anyway, my point was that 2800/3500 gold or 25$ for all new cards in a 4 month period is a lot more accomodating to someone's attempts to keep up/expand his collection than an expansion every 4 months where you can (and likely will) spend 80$ and more without getting close to all the (good) cards. And I think, not having this "break" anymore is too much for many players, while from the business perspective, adventures were not hurting Blizzard either.
Again, I am aware some people felt unhappy about the structuring of adventures as well; how you could only purchase cards in order and not have the option to craft only those that you wanted, but I mostly disagree with these people. Both, because I think an expansion is a lot harder to catch up on than an adventure, and because I think that what you can legimitately criticise about adventures could have also been adressed without giving up the idea entirely.
I said "generally", as in "with exceptions". Look at the 2018 annual report, and you'll see that Blizzard had 42 million MAUs in September 2017, and they kept declining to 35 Million in December 2018. It directly points out (on page 33): "The year-over-year decrease in Blizzard's average MAUs is due to lower MAUs for Hearthstone and Overwatch".
I'm not remembering the recent quarter report, so I'll trust you that it showed an increase again, and that is worth mentioning. However, I'd wait until the end of the year to see if that trend continues, since it might be due to the new expansion and effects you already described (the Standard rotation that brought so many changes). You can also look at the 2017 report, and you'll see that they had 42 million in September 2016, 41 after that, 46 million in June 2017, and then it dropped again to 42 the following quarter; although that's for the entire Blizzard branch, not only Hearthstone. However, the report does point out that Hearthstone was one of the factors why revenue increased in 2016 compared to 2015, AND why it decreased in 2017 compared to 2016. Maybe they'll be again at a stable 40+ million by the end of this year, but we have to see.
Besides, I don't think a Hearthstone developer would ask the public what would make players return to the game if things were looking all that great to them.
What's your point? I agree that nobdoy needs a full collection. Technically, you don't need anything "just to play the game". But I understand if someone wants a full collection, or at least wants to have more options available. And I think someone who spends 100$ every 4 months on the game should get more out of that than 5-8 legendaries out of 23 and maybe 3000 dust in extra cards, and is still expected to play the game frequently.
No, I don't. Does it matter? Is there a minimum price point of a full collection in a digital card game? You can say that Hearthstone is looking better in this specific regard than its competitors, but you don't make an argument for why a high price point for completionists is a tradition worth keeping. I mean, pointing out how others or even all others do it worse is not really a good defense here. Actually, I think that's a good reason for Hearthsthone to do something different. If people like to collect things and cardgames have been historically bad for them, why not have Hearthstone be a cardgame that allows you to be a completionist relatively easily? Now you could say it already is, but only insofar as you don't need to spend quite as much as in other card games. It's still a lot of money.
If you are personally happy with it, you are free to keep your spending habits as well. But you can't truly believe that nobody or only a very small fraction of players has a problem with Hearhtstone's pricing. You are active enough on this board to know better how frequent that complaint is, and even though you do your best to tell them at all times how wrong they are, you can't pretend that they don't exist.
Sure, this is not representative, and it's probably not a majority even. However, I think there is more of a point in changing things than in keeping things as they are.
And I actually do believe that changing things would be better for the game. Yes, I lack the inside knowledge to say so with much confidence, but, no offense, I don't think you speak from professional experience either when you effectively say that Hearthstone is in the best state it can be. Or at least that's what it sounds like to me when you try to argue against any sentiments that the game might be a bit too expensive and demanding.
Uhm... no, F2P players are still players, even if you don't like them. Maybe you want to argue with the word "customer", but effectively they will be considered "customers" as well. Customer service won't investigate if you've spend any money on the game before they get back to your request. If you participate in a survey, they won't check how much money they can expect from you before considering your answers. Dean Ayala won't do a background check before reading your comment on Reddit. And if you want to suggest that F2P players are irrelevant to the game's success, or any F2P game's success, and thus should not be considered at all in any aspect of game development, I couldn't disagree more with you.
But that's not the point here anyway. As I said, there are different ways to run a F2P model, and while Hearthstone isn't the worst, I struggle counting it as one of the best. Their current model is a cause of frustration to some, and I think it's unnecessary and worth changing.
Feel free to tell me I'm talking out of my ass (because I am), but I think it would benefit the game long-term if it was a bit more accessible overall. You can give reasons why it doesn't need to, or even why it shouldn't be, but saying "you think X so you can't be taken seriously" is pretty childish. I entirely disagree with your rather aggressive diction, something far more disqualifying to me than any specific statement you have made, but I still try to respect what you say, even though I fully expect that we will never agree on a single point, and I even expect you have some other quasi-insulting reply ready like "You must be truly imbecilic for believing something I say you must believe due to what you just said". I don't like you, but I won't tell you that you have to agree with me on something or else I wouldn't consider your points.
And when you grow up, maybe you learn how to read more than a paragraph and how a discussion works.
Since this thread has developed in the same direction as every other discussion on this topic, I felt like making a short comment on why the usual defense of "Blizzard wants to make money" and anything that goes in a similar direction is, in my humble opinion, not contributing anything.
First of all, Hearthstone doesn't have the worst F2P or lootbox system. Not by a long shot. That much needs to be said. There are games that charge for more matches or in-game actions per day or lock substantial parts (like player classes) of the game behind paywalls. You can spend hundreds of dollars on FIFA and still not get what you want with nothing like Dust or pity timers that will eventually ensure you can get any lootbox item you want. Compared to the worst offenders, Hearthstone has a relatively fair system.
However, there are also plenty of F2P model games that have been successful for several years without pushing their players into spending hundreds of dollars per year. There are games that value the time a player invests just as much as the money a player invests. They make it their goal to not be exploitative and unfair. Hearthstone, on the other hand, did get undeniably more expensive over the years and has become much more aggressive with monetization: Bigger bundles, more frequent bundles, more (exclusive) stuff contained in bundles, additional single-player content for money along with bonuses for pre-orders and so on. And from a F2P perspective, it has become less fair.
Believe it or not, Hearthstone managed to "survive" the 3 years (2014-2016), in which Adventures were sold as expansions: You could spend 2800/3500 gold to get ALL the new cards, and you did not have to craft any of them, and all the gold and dust you had saved up could be spend on older expansions that you still needed cards from. In those years, Hearthstone has been growing, and became more and more popular, and still made a lot of money. It's not insignificantly the reason why so many people played it for so long, and play it to this day.
While this was still not perfect, perhaps not even really "fair", it sounds like paradise compared to nowadays. There are good reasons why you would prefer expansions over adventures, like a bigger impact on the meta, more cards to try out, better instant access and giving players more freedom what cards to purchase, but it stands that the shift to 3 expansions per year has made Hearthstone a very expensive game and did not help that whole "fairness" aspect at all. And while some of it is justified as the development cost for Hearthstone has also gone up, starting with a much bigger team working on the game nowadays, many players became increasingly frustrated with it and that deserves attention.
Earlier this year, Blizzard made a survey, some of the questions specifically asking if people found Hearthstone too expensive to be competitive or to have fun. Mike Donais asked players on Reddit what they (Team5) could do to make Hearthstone more interesting again. It is obvious that Team5 and Blizzard become aware that players are getting frustrated and leaving. The MAU (monthly active users) numbers are generally declining, and that's not where the game is supposed to go.
Yes, Blizzard is a company and they want to make money. They are still making insane amounts as we are debating. However, you can always ask HOW a company wants to make money. And at this point, even Blizzard realizes that they might have to reconsider their priorities.
Besides, it's not just about F2P either. I think people who spend a reasonable amount of money on the game are still getting screwed. A 50$ "pre-order" is a little more than a starter kit. 100$ per expansion is perhaps enough to get the essential, the good cards, but not enough to get the full expansion. And these kind of investments don't even save you from grinding gold, they don't compensate for playing the game less frequently, they are expected on top of playing the game almost every day.
Feel free to talk about free market etc., but if you care about the game, you have to concern yourself not just with how much money Acitivision Blizzard is making, and that players are free to not purchase a product they don't like, but also with how popular the game is, how its popularity is decreasing, and how the game's frustrating reward system is not helping the game in the long run, as frustrated players leave, new players have a rough start and won't stay, and paying customers feeling like their money wasn't well spent.
You can run a F2P business model and care about your product and customers, or you can run a F2P model like an avaricious slimeball who just wants to make more money and doesn't care about anything else. if you care about the game, don't shut these discussions down with arguments that even the developers wouldn't bring up; not because it might cause bad press, but because they don't just care about money either, and seeing players unhappy, both free and paying, is a problem to them as well. They know that without players, their game goes down the drain.