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.
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?
Since you can't count, it seems likely that your basic arithmetic is suspect too. I spend far less than $1350 per year, and I have every card in both Standard and Wild.
You should probably avoid using the "M" word. People in glass houses ... you know.
So I ask you kindly to share following informations with us: 1. How much real money do you spend each year on the Hearthstone? 2. How many packs do you buy for gold each expansion? 3. How much dust do you spend on creating missing cards each expansion (how many cards do you usually lack up to 135)?
I also recommend you an interesting video:
1. About $500
2. About 50 when the expansion first hits, and about 120 more during the expansion.
3. About 3200 (two legendaries) dust. I never craft the common or rare cards, and try as hard as possible to craft epics. I don't have to have the entire set on day 1. I will get there by the end of the expansion.
People have to understand that blizzard is a company though. They employ a lot of people and they need to make money. They probably started doing that and making epics and legendaries more powerful as the expacs went on solely to make money. If anyone remembers back in the day, it was actually a meme how bad most legendaries and epics were. In the classic set, only a couple still see play, and it's loaded with worthless cards like Cho, Millhouse, and The Beast. It's no coincedence that they upped the power level of legendaries over the years. People are way too harsh on blizz for wanting to make money though. Remember the days when it cost 50$ (in 1990s money) to buy an N64 game? Games have way higher quality now, and are a lot cheaper. Look at games like Subnautica. That game cost 19.99$ and it would've been the greatest and most played game ever if it came out in 1999. The video game industry is struggling now because of things like piracy, and companies need to make money.
Sorry, but that is huge BS. To get full expansion you need to spend $450-500 on packs (135 virtual cards!). That is the equivalent of a new PS4 Pro! To get 4 full expansions per year, you have to spend $1800-2000. A normal game, with a budget usually exceeding $300 million, costs $60. Poor Blizzard indeed...
There are only THREE expansions per year. Learn to count before you whine.
Sure, my bad and that completely changes the perspective! Instead of $1800-2000 you have to spend "only" $1350-1500. So it turns out that everything is fine, Blizzard is great and there is basically no problem, right? Why would you pay $60 for, I don't know, game like Cyberpunk 2077 or God of War, if you can have 135 virtual cards (half of which are rubbish) for $500? Only moron would do that!
Since you can't count, it seems likely that your basic arithmetic is suspect too. I spend far less than $1350 per year, and I have every card in both Standard and Wild.
You should probably avoid using the "M" word. People in glass houses ... you know.
People have to understand that blizzard is a company though. They employ a lot of people and they need to make money. They probably started doing that and making epics and legendaries more powerful as the expacs went on solely to make money. If anyone remembers back in the day, it was actually a meme how bad most legendaries and epics were. In the classic set, only a couple still see play, and it's loaded with worthless cards like Cho, Millhouse, and The Beast. It's no coincedence that they upped the power level of legendaries over the years. People are way too harsh on blizz for wanting to make money though. Remember the days when it cost 50$ (in 1990s money) to buy an N64 game? Games have way higher quality now, and are a lot cheaper. Look at games like Subnautica. That game cost 19.99$ and it would've been the greatest and most played game ever if it came out in 1999. The video game industry is struggling now because of things like piracy, and companies need to make money.
Sorry, but that is huge BS. To get full expansion you need to spend $450-500 on packs (135 virtual cards!). That is the equivalent of a new PS4 Pro! To get 4 full expansions per year, you have to spend $1800-2000. A normal game, with a budget usually exceeding $300 million, costs $60. Poor Blizzard indeed...
There are only THREE expansions per year. Learn to count before you whine.
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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?
1. About $500
2. About 50 when the expansion first hits, and about 120 more during the expansion.
3. About 3200 (two legendaries) dust. I never craft the common or rare cards, and try as hard as possible to craft epics. I don't have to have the entire set on day 1. I will get there by the end of the expansion.
Since you can't count, it seems likely that your basic arithmetic is suspect too. I spend far less than $1350 per year, and I have every card in both Standard and Wild.
You should probably avoid using the "M" word. People in glass houses ... you know.
There are only THREE expansions per year. Learn to count before you whine.