It's such a cop out to keep saying "Many of the best decks in the world don't have a legendary!" Stop pretending there is this huge selection of scrappy decks that are constructed without legendaries and work well. You are talking about zoo and hunter. The only reason those decks don't use legendaries is because the vast majority of devastating legendaries are high mana, and other then thalnos, the low mana legendaries are lack luster. There simply is no room in their decks for high mana cards. Stop pretending someone made a choice not to use them. If there were a stable of great low mana legendaries I GUARANTEE you they would be in those decks but they don't exist.
So what is it then? Are you mad you can't make top tier without Legends? Or are you mad that you have a harder path to a complete collection? Most people are seeing the latter. Please make up your mind already.
Is F2P a harder slog to a complete collection? Sure. Is it fair? Absolutely. You guys are getting a free to play game. With free rewards for playing that will ultimately get you a complete collection over time. You are using server space and bandwidth and not paying a single dime for it. That right there is where your sense of entitlement should stop. You are getting a service that is being provided to you off the dollars of other folks, who are not paying to WIN, but are paying to COLLECT. A complete collection does make you a better player. If every single player decided to stop buying packs with real money, and play the free aspect of this game exclusively, Hearthstone would cease to exist. Period. Any example listed as to how it can be done alternately is moot. This is how Blizzard decided to make their money. Take it or leave it. The free time you spend playing their product for free is irrelevant to them.
It's such a cop out to keep saying "Many of the best decks in the world don't have a legendary!" Stop pretending there is this huge selection of scrappy decks that are constructed without legendaries and work well. You are talking about zoo and hunter. The only reason those decks don't use legendaries is because the vast majority of devastating legendaries are high mana, and other then thalnos, the low mana legendaries are lack luster. There simply is no room in their decks for high mana cards. Stop pretending someone made a choice not to use them. If there were a stable of great low mana legendaries I GUARANTEE you they would be in those decks but they don't exist.
A complete collection does make you a better player.
I remember when I first started playing this game, I was thinking "It's not that great. It's just like Magic, except I don't have to spend any money." A few seconds later, I realized that I DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANY MONEY and can still be quite competitive. I'm surprised at how long this thread has been going haha. It's quite amusing.
Basically, I just think the time invested to get good cards is not a big deal. If you want to spend all the money, great. If not, it's still great haha. This argument is so pointless from both sides.
In all do respect to the argument at hand its frankly not fair for you to come off saying "I just think the time invested to get good cards is not a big deal".
I take nothing away from your subjective nature and how you allocate your time. That may in fact be a true statement and it if it is, good for you. But lets just be clear and (no pun intended) put all our cards on the table.
The average joe gamer who plays for an hour a day, does his daily then plays a few ranked games can expect to earn about 50 gold a day. In two days time, he will have approximately enough to purchase a pack. A pack, by blizzards own admission, has a 1/20 chance of hitting a legendary.
So using this metric it would take about a month and a half of never missing a single day to receive a legendary. Now there are a couple other variables to mention. There are many legendaries that are generally considered worthless(van cleef, greenskin, choi, nat pagle, tink, etc.) so if you hit one of those, which is likely, you are looking at 3 months(1/4 of a year) of straight non stop daily playing to potentially achieve ONE SINGLE USABLE legendary(again no promises).
This is the point where people like to steer the conversation and tell you to play zoo or hunter agro, they will tell you legendaries aren't important and you dont need them. All that is fine and accurate but if you want to truly play the game to its full potential and have as much fun(again subjective) as someone who pays money then you are going to be waiting a long long time, years in some cases.
Look there is a reason people spend money on packs and cross their fingers that there is a legendary, and when it hits they are excited. Those are the best and most fun cards, they make for incredible synergized decks. There is no denying that, nobody is spending money just to spend money... we want the big guns.
The best way anyone has described this game is that the game is truly Free to Play until you actually realize that it is pay 2 win(which is fine, but dont deny it).
Lastly, it takes A LOT of money even if you are paying to get a collection of the staple legendaries(Baine, rag, ysera, tyrion, leeroy, alex, black knight, sylvania). It's not just a matter of pay2win, its GAUGE THE CUSTOMER to win. Its a game, Blizzard deserves to receive profit and revenue, but at some point its excessive and oversteps what is fair and frankly right for the consumer.
Remember this is the same company who's greed got in the way of game design and pretty much tanked one of their 3 major tent pole franchises(talking about diablo and the auction house)... they literally had to have the CEO post a response about how sorry and wrong they were. This type of stuff is in their blood. Just Giving these guys $50 is not nearly enough to play their game at full potential as a casual average gamer and that's a sad state of affairs as it relates to gaming in general as we move on from here.
Well, the "average Joe Gamer" who only plays a half hour a day probably doesn't expect the best cards in the game right away. I was one of these players, in fact, and I can certify that as much as I would've enjoyed opening a Ragnaros on my first pack, it certainly wouldn't have shot me up to Legend. I rather enjoy slowly earning cards and building better decks.
Anyway, if you want to argue that buying decks gives you more options, that's fine. But you're not "paying to win." Not when many of the best decks in the world, like midrange hunter and zoo, are run without a single epic or legendary. You're paying to have a broader array of options. The top players around now regularly get to legend with "free to play" decks, just to prove that it's possible, so don't try to argue that you're stuck at rank 8 because you don't have a Black Knight or whatever.
And here's the thing: if you actually ARE good enough at the game to get to the ranks where you actually need a full stable of legendaries to compete, you can probably "go infinite" in arena, so you can easily earn a pack every 5 games or so (combining arena awards with quests). Do that for a couple hours a day, and you've got 100 packs in a month, and you've still committed less time to the game than any "hardcore" WoW player.
It's such a cop out to keep saying "Many of the best decks in the world don't have a legendary!" Stop pretending there is this huge selection of scrappy decks that are constructed without legendaries and work well. You are talking about zoo and hunter. The only reason those decks don't use legendaries is because the vast majority of devastating legendaries are high mana, and other then thalnos, the low mana legendaries are lack luster. There simply is no room in their decks for high mana cards. Stop pretending someone made a choice not to use them. If there were a stable of great low mana legendaries I GUARANTEE you they would be in those decks but they don't exist.
I remember when I first started playing this game, I was thinking "It's not that great. It's just like Magic, except I don't have to spend any money." A few seconds later, I realized that I DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANY MONEY and can still be quite competitive. I'm surprised at how long this thread has been going haha. It's quite amusing.
Basically, I just think the time invested to get good cards is not a big deal. If you want to spend all the money, great. If not, it's still great haha. This argument is so pointless from both sides.
In all do respect to the argument at hand its frankly not fair for you to come off saying "I just think the time invested to get good cards is not a big deal".
I take nothing away from your subjective nature and how you allocate your time. That may in fact be a true statement and it if it is, good for you. But lets just be clear and (no pun intended) put all our cards on the table.
The average joe gamer who plays for an hour a day, does his daily then plays a few ranked games can expect to earn about 50 gold a day. In two days time, he will have approximately enough to purchase a pack. A pack, by blizzards own admission, has a 1/20 chance of hitting a legendary.
So using this metric it would take about a month and a half of never missing a single day to receive a legendary. Now there are a couple other variables to mention. There are many legendaries that are generally considered worthless(van cleef, greenskin, choi, nat pagle, tink, etc.) so if you hit one of those, which is likely, you are looking at 3 months(1/4 of a year) of straight non stop daily playing to potentially achieve ONE SINGLE USABLE legendary(again no promises).
This is the point where people like to steer the conversation and tell you to play zoo or hunter agro, they will tell you legendaries aren't important and you dont need them. All that is fine and accurate but if you want to truly play the game to its full potential and have as much fun(again subjective) as someone who pays money then you are going to be waiting a long long time, years in some cases.
Look there is a reason people spend money on packs and cross their fingers that there is a legendary, and when it hits they are excited. Those are the best and most fun cards, they make for incredible synergized decks. There is no denying that, nobody is spending money just to spend money... we want the big guns.
The best way anyone has described this game is that the game is truly Free to Play until you actually realize that it is pay 2 win(which is fine, but dont deny it).
Lastly, it takes A LOT of money even if you are paying to get a collection of the staple legendaries(Baine, rag, ysera, tyrion, leeroy, alex, black knight, sylvania). It's not just a matter of pay2win, its GAUGE THE CUSTOMER to win. Its a game, Blizzard deserves to receive profit and revenue, but at some point its excessive and oversteps what is fair and frankly right for the consumer.
Remember this is the same company who's greed got in the way of game design and pretty much tanked one of their 3 major tent pole franchises(talking about diablo and the auction house)... they literally had to have the CEO post a response about how sorry and wrong they were. This type of stuff is in their blood. Just Giving these guys $50 is not nearly enough to play their game at full potential as a casual average gamer and that's a sad state of affairs as it relates to gaming in general as we move on from here.
So according to you someone who plays only 1 hour a day should have access to a complete collection faster? What about the people who DO put time in? they'd be able to play their way to a complete collection in no time, for free. What then of Blizzard's investment if they can get everything in the game for free so easily? Why on earth would anyone buy packs then?
There needs to be a middle ground between unobtainable and too easy, and the current balance in the game is the middle ground Blizzard chose. Seeing how little (comparatively) people complain about the aquisition rates I'm going to assume Blizzard is happy with the way things are right now.
You are free to disagree with this of course, but you are kinda making yourself sound like you want everything in the game, for free, and RIGHT NOW, without putting in any effort.
Before I respond I have played to 1000+ wins, I wouldn't call that no effort and wanting something "right now".
You would describe playing EVERY SINGLE DAY, for a MONTH AND A HALF and receiving ONE legendary as gaining cards in "no time". That is 50+ hours for one card that has a very high likelihood of being unusefull.
Control decks are currently running 3 and 4 of the best legendaries(black knight,rag,baine,sylvia) along with faceless and other epics. It would take you over a YEAR of playing DAILY for a minimum of an hour(360+ hours) to come even close to having the potential to acquire a deck like that.
What percentage of the population of this game do you think is going to wade through p2w decks for 360+ hours. I bet Blizzard did that math and it is not higher then 1%. As someone else put it, its F2P until you realize its P2W.
"What then of blizzards investment if they can get everything in the game for free so easily"
....what world do you live in where a full year of your life playing a minimum of one hour a day lets you POSSIBLY(if you are lucky) achieve parity in a so called f2p game as being easily attainable?
Here is a CRAZY idea though. Why not have the option to put a small banner on the side or bottom of the screen that displays ads? That way people could ACTUALLY play for free and, as the previous poster mention, poor blizzard could keep their families fed.
speaking of free to play, i just drew a bloodmage thalnos in my 2nd daily pack. lol. of course i DE'd him and crafted TBK as i already had a thalnos. anyhow i think we can agree everything is obtainable over time and that's... really all that needs to be said :D glhf it's just a game.
Why do you always leave out the most glaring variable? Amount of Time.
What you are saying is no different then the following statement: You can work minimum wage and afford a Ferrari.
...Don't worry that it will take 35 years.
You conveniently fail to mention the hundreds of hours you need to play and win to meet the current average of 1 legendary per 20 decks. If that 1 legendary is a bum card(as the majority are) you just increased the time needed to play exponentially.
But congrats on the Thalnos pick, now sit back for the next 80 straight games and wait for your single next pack of commons that dust for about 40. Something tells me we won't be seeing you post about that though.
odd numbers you have there. is that what it's like for you? i usually get a pack every couple of days. terrible analogy with minimum wage and the ferrari, packs don't cost a lot. couple dailies and a couple matches then BOOM got a pack.
Yes, and that pack has a 1/20 chance of a legendary. If you are talking about a regular player getting a pack every couple of days like you mentioned then you are on track for 1 legendary every MONTH AND A HALF. Playing every single day for an hour.
If that legendary happens to be one of the many useless legendaries(Greenskin, van cleef, einhorn,mukla, lorwalker, millhouse, nat pagle, tinkmaster, etc) then you are looking at 3 months or ONE FOURTH OF A YEAR to get a single good legendary playing DAILY.
This is your scenario and that of a casual player, not an arena warrior, not someone who has days to grind... someone who checks in and does his dailies and plays for a healthy hour every single day while buying packs when available.
If you can't see the complete nonsense in that scenario I don't know what to tell you.
speaking of free to play, i just drew a bloodmage thalnos in my 2nd daily pack. lol. of course i DE'd him and crafted TBK as i already had a thalnos. anyhow i think we can agree everything is obtainable over time and that's... really all that needs to be said :D glhf it's just a game.
You're just lucky. I agree that everything is obtainable over time, but in order to get at least 50% of the legendaries through F2P then it would takes hundreds of hours - or, if you just do dailies, at least a year. They make it so ridiculously hard to get legendaries through gold farming that you're practically required to pay if you want an above-average deck at a reasonable time.
As I stated, people could always get a real job or do something IRL to earn money for packs if they want to win that badly. "F2P" players need to realize that the folks that "P2W" are the reason they have a free game to play in the first place. If every single player in HS ceased to ever purchase real money packs from Blizzard.......well Hearthstone would cease to be as well. This is a business for them. They have bills and mouths to feed the same as other people. Or would you rather the game be riddled with advertising?
I try to remember that there are a lot of young folks here that might not know a thing or two about the world, but this is basic economics folks. If it don't make dollars, then it don't make sense (to Blizzard).
Why do you assume this is the only way for them to make money? That creating a system that advantages those who pay versus those who don't is the only solution.
That is why I have made repeated references to various alternative business models within this very thread.
I have made comparisons to Dota NOT based upon gameplay but based upon the comparative nature of the free to play economic model. Dota lets everyone play the game on an equal basis(an allegory being all cards are available in hearthstone), then charges money for cosmetics.
I took it a step farther to appease some of the diahards on this board and said Blizzard should CHARGE $35 to play the game AND STILL have a cosmetic marketplace on top of it selling cardbacks/gameboards/voice packs etc. The response to that suggestions were simply insults. I was told that nobody would play anymore because collecting cards is what this game is all about, when I offered the rebuttal that there is a huge chunk of people who already have everything unlocked and still play I was met with more insults.
The fact of the matter is that Blizzard would rather make a ton of money creating a micro transaction pay 2 win game model as opposed to a lot of money with a balanced and fair play model. That is their choice and as economics go it is the right choice because they are making HUNDREDS of dollars off single individuals. That doesn't make what they doing anything less then Pay 2 win unfortunately for the consumer base.
Let's say you got time to play ~1hr of Hearthstone each day you can easily make 50 gold in that hour from your daily quest. (not counting the quests that give you more gold). That means you can afford a pack roughly every two days and an arena run (recommended) every three days.
Thanks for your post, its rare to get someone who just states their opinion and doesn't resort to personal attacks on this board. I obviously disagree with your synapse that this is a sensible way to gain equality against someone who has paid money.
Specifically one thing I would like to address is that I believe your calculations are slightly eschew as it relates to gold earned. If you are spending the 50 gold accumulated every 2 days on a pack then you are not going to have the 150 gold on the third day to make the arena run, which really throws the rest of your calculations out of whack.
Instead of the approx. 45 hours to dust a single legendary it is more like 80. This has been talked about earlier in this very thread as well.
80 hours of straight gameplay for one single legendary and you are dusting all the rest of the other cards along the way. At that point it is so time prohibitive that the option to earn gold as a means of parity mine as well not be a factor. Very few people are going to be grinding hundreds and hundreds of hours doing that. That leaves them with the dilemma of either being disadvantaged against a constructed deck synergized with powerful legendaries or "pay to win", which is what this thread was all about.
speaking of free to play, i just drew a bloodmage thalnos in my 2nd daily pack. lol. of course i DE'd him and crafted TBK as i already had a thalnos. anyhow i think we can agree everything is obtainable over time and that's... really all that needs to be said :D glhf it's just a game.
You're just lucky. I agree that everything is obtainable over time, but in order to get at least 50% of the legendaries through F2P then it would takes hundreds of hours - or, if you just do dailies, at least a year. They make it so ridiculously hard to get legendaries through gold farming that you're practically required to pay if you want an above-average deck at a reasonable time.
Sshhhhh, they dont like to talk about the amount of time involved because it destroys their argument for a f2p game. They just want you to know that it is possible and not to worry about the fine print.
speaking of free to play, i just drew a bloodmage thalnos in my 2nd daily pack. lol. of course i DE'd him and crafted TBK as i already had a thalnos. anyhow i think we can agree everything is obtainable over time and that's... really all that needs to be said :D glhf it's just a game.
Why do you always leave out the most glaring variable? Amount of Time.
What you are saying is no different then the following statement: You can work minimum wage and afford a Ferrari.
...Don't worry that it will take 35 years.
You conveniently fail to mention the hundreds of hours you need to play and win to meet the current average of 1 legendary per 20 decks. If that 1 legendary is a bum card(as the majority are) you just increased the time needed to play exponentially.
But congrats on the Thalnos pick, now sit back for the next 80 straight games and wait for your single next pack of commons that dust for about 40. Something tells me we won't be seeing you post about that though.
Why don't you explain to me then why everyone who is playing Rank 5 and below including legends that has every card unlocked(or at least the ones they want and use) and have no interest at all or need for new cards is still playing and playing a higher rate then a casual player would?
By your logic everyone who has unlocked every card should be done with the game then by now right? Yet that is not even remotely the case.
You asked why nobody responded to this comment of yours. It's mostly because you're once again creating your own facts to further your weak case.
"Everyone who is ranked 5 and below has every card unlocked." Hyperbole much?
Maybe some of these rank 5 people play for free and they've disenchanted almost everything to create their one favourite deck. More than a few people have climbed to legendary off brand new accounts, without spending a dime, and they did it within a week.
To answer your other question. I have nearly every card in the collection. I lack only two legendaries (Millhouse Manastorm and Tinkmaster Overspark). I have two of every non-legendary. I bought 120 packs early on, but haven't spent a dime since January. I continue to play because there will be more cards to collect. I like collecting. I also continue to play because the game is fun as hell and it continues to remain challenging.
Like I said previously. This game is not pay-to-win, it is only pay-to-get-a-headstart.
It's hyperbole to say there is a large group of people who have been playing for over 8 months and have spent a fair chunk of change have every card in the game? really? That is a far fetched exaggerated statement?
Lets talk about just these people instead of your usual tactic of trying to find a crack in the semantics of the claim(YOU CANT SAY EVERYONE!!! AND YOU CANT ASSUME!!!!).
Why are they still playing if the only motivation for this game is to open new packs? This thread has claimed the game would die within a month without the motivation of opening new packs because this is a collectible card game. You could NEVER charge a base fee of $35 for a 2d electronic card game that is played on an ipad, a game blizzard invested so little money into stealing pretty much every aspect from previous successful games. They are doing it again with their lame attempt at a copycat moba because startcraft 2 is dying and they are losing their e-sports street cred. Just like hearthstone, they skin it with warcraft and call it a day.
But I digress, the people who own every card still pour hundreds of hours into this game because of ranked. Ranked is the backbone of this game, not opening micro transacted digital cards. Ranked is why they log back in, not useless cards they already own which can never be traded or sold and are worthless the moment you uninstall the game.
Its kinda like saying if you have legendaries you must be like rank 5 and higher. Its simply silly to think. I have a few legendaries and still struggle to rank up. Legendaries dont WIN you the game they help but I have been beaten down by no legendarie decks, simply because the person I was playing - plays better then I do. So I find this topic silly. Getting every card in the game for $35 is ridiculous and NO decent TCG game is like that. If you don't like having to put a bit of money in then don't and go play something else. If you are really dedicated to the game you dont need money but if you cant be as dedicated as someone like trump then spend a bit of money.
While I do agree that this game is F2P and you can get decent decks after a certain amount of time, I do not agree with people saying that Legendaries do not WIN you games at all. Having a staple Legendary is a huge boost to your win rate. In fact, some decks solely rely on that single Legendary as a main win condition (Leeroy - Miracle Rouge). Without them, your win condition is cut-off by a lot. So many times I've seen the game seem to be out of reach for a player but with a topdecked Legendary, he could turn the game around and win in the end. If you have Legendaries and still lose then that's your problem but in the hand of good players they are just devastating.
Didn't you know? If there is just ONE DOCUMENTED EXAMPLE of someone with a base deck beating someone with legendaries the theory ILLEGITIMATE AND INVALID.
Did you know that you can go to youtube RIGHT NOW and see a knife juggler EASILY counter Leeroy??? It's on youtube. Again, it can be done. So you are WRONG and none of what you said has any validity.
Personally I do think Hearthstone is pay to win, and why shouldn't it be?
I have dropped around £200-£300 into this game since the open beta. I am, and will continue to support this game by doing so. Especially if the new up and comming expansion pack is good.
I think the people who pay are actually being treated unfairly as we should have a bigger advantage against people who play ftp decks like zoo.
You are the first honest person to actually respond to this thread in a frank and straightforward manner. I do realize that I am basically in a den of lions talking about what's wrong with lions, this being on "HearthPwn" and all, an ultra niche hardcore minority of the overall consumer base.
I hope you realize that the 6-8 people who continually try to pound this thread into the dirt would never agree with the sentiments you just expressed. No matter how blatantly true, they will NEVER EVER admit to what you just said. Which blows my mind.
Thank you. All you needed to say.
It's such a cop out to keep saying "Many of the best decks in the world don't have a legendary!" Stop pretending there is this huge selection of scrappy decks that are constructed without legendaries and work well. You are talking about zoo and hunter. The only reason those decks don't use legendaries is because the vast majority of devastating legendaries are high mana, and other then thalnos, the low mana legendaries are lack luster. There simply is no room in their decks for high mana cards. Stop pretending someone made a choice not to use them. If there were a stable of great low mana legendaries I GUARANTEE you they would be in those decks but they don't exist.
In all do respect to the argument at hand its frankly not fair for you to come off saying "I just think the time invested to get good cards is not a big deal".
I take nothing away from your subjective nature and how you allocate your time. That may in fact be a true statement and it if it is, good for you. But lets just be clear and (no pun intended) put all our cards on the table.
The average joe gamer who plays for an hour a day, does his daily then plays a few ranked games can expect to earn about 50 gold a day. In two days time, he will have approximately enough to purchase a pack. A pack, by blizzards own admission, has a 1/20 chance of hitting a legendary.
So using this metric it would take about a month and a half of never missing a single day to receive a legendary. Now there are a couple other variables to mention. There are many legendaries that are generally considered worthless(van cleef, greenskin, choi, nat pagle, tink, etc.) so if you hit one of those, which is likely, you are looking at 3 months(1/4 of a year) of straight non stop daily playing to potentially achieve ONE SINGLE USABLE legendary(again no promises).
This is the point where people like to steer the conversation and tell you to play zoo or hunter agro, they will tell you legendaries aren't important and you dont need them. All that is fine and accurate but if you want to truly play the game to its full potential and have as much fun(again subjective) as someone who pays money then you are going to be waiting a long long time, years in some cases.
Look there is a reason people spend money on packs and cross their fingers that there is a legendary, and when it hits they are excited. Those are the best and most fun cards, they make for incredible synergized decks. There is no denying that, nobody is spending money just to spend money... we want the big guns.
The best way anyone has described this game is that the game is truly Free to Play until you actually realize that it is pay 2 win(which is fine, but dont deny it).
Lastly, it takes A LOT of money even if you are paying to get a collection of the staple legendaries(Baine, rag, ysera, tyrion, leeroy, alex, black knight, sylvania). It's not just a matter of pay2win, its GAUGE THE CUSTOMER to win. Its a game, Blizzard deserves to receive profit and revenue, but at some point its excessive and oversteps what is fair and frankly right for the consumer.
Remember this is the same company who's greed got in the way of game design and pretty much tanked one of their 3 major tent pole franchises(talking about diablo and the auction house)... they literally had to have the CEO post a response about how sorry and wrong they were. This type of stuff is in their blood. Just Giving these guys $50 is not nearly enough to play their game at full potential as a casual average gamer and that's a sad state of affairs as it relates to gaming in general as we move on from here.
Sorry if I offended you in anyway that was not my intention when I created this this thread.
Before I respond I have played to 1000+ wins, I wouldn't call that no effort and wanting something "right now".
You would describe playing EVERY SINGLE DAY, for a MONTH AND A HALF and receiving ONE legendary as gaining cards in "no time". That is 50+ hours for one card that has a very high likelihood of being unusefull.
Control decks are currently running 3 and 4 of the best legendaries(black knight,rag,baine,sylvia) along with faceless and other epics. It would take you over a YEAR of playing DAILY for a minimum of an hour(360+ hours) to come even close to having the potential to acquire a deck like that.
What percentage of the population of this game do you think is going to wade through p2w decks for 360+ hours. I bet Blizzard did that math and it is not higher then 1%. As someone else put it, its F2P until you realize its P2W.
"What then of blizzards investment if they can get everything in the game for free so easily"
....what world do you live in where a full year of your life playing a minimum of one hour a day lets you POSSIBLY(if you are lucky) achieve parity in a so called f2p game as being easily attainable?
Here is a CRAZY idea though. Why not have the option to put a small banner on the side or bottom of the screen that displays ads? That way people could ACTUALLY play for free and, as the previous poster mention, poor blizzard could keep their families fed.
Yes, and that pack has a 1/20 chance of a legendary. If you are talking about a regular player getting a pack every couple of days like you mentioned then you are on track for 1 legendary every MONTH AND A HALF. Playing every single day for an hour.
If that legendary happens to be one of the many useless legendaries(Greenskin, van cleef, einhorn,mukla, lorwalker, millhouse, nat pagle, tinkmaster, etc) then you are looking at 3 months or ONE FOURTH OF A YEAR to get a single good legendary playing DAILY.
This is your scenario and that of a casual player, not an arena warrior, not someone who has days to grind... someone who checks in and does his dailies and plays for a healthy hour every single day while buying packs when available.
If you can't see the complete nonsense in that scenario I don't know what to tell you.
Why do you assume this is the only way for them to make money? That creating a system that advantages those who pay versus those who don't is the only solution.
That is why I have made repeated references to various alternative business models within this very thread.
I have made comparisons to Dota NOT based upon gameplay but based upon the comparative nature of the free to play economic model. Dota lets everyone play the game on an equal basis(an allegory being all cards are available in hearthstone), then charges money for cosmetics.
I took it a step farther to appease some of the diahards on this board and said Blizzard should CHARGE $35 to play the game AND STILL have a cosmetic marketplace on top of it selling cardbacks/gameboards/voice packs etc. The response to that suggestions were simply insults. I was told that nobody would play anymore because collecting cards is what this game is all about, when I offered the rebuttal that there is a huge chunk of people who already have everything unlocked and still play I was met with more insults.
The fact of the matter is that Blizzard would rather make a ton of money creating a micro transaction pay 2 win game model as opposed to a lot of money with a balanced and fair play model. That is their choice and as economics go it is the right choice because they are making HUNDREDS of dollars off single individuals. That doesn't make what they doing anything less then Pay 2 win unfortunately for the consumer base.
Thanks for your post, its rare to get someone who just states their opinion and doesn't resort to personal attacks on this board. I obviously disagree with your synapse that this is a sensible way to gain equality against someone who has paid money.
Specifically one thing I would like to address is that I believe your calculations are slightly eschew as it relates to gold earned. If you are spending the 50 gold accumulated every 2 days on a pack then you are not going to have the 150 gold on the third day to make the arena run, which really throws the rest of your calculations out of whack.
Instead of the approx. 45 hours to dust a single legendary it is more like 80. This has been talked about earlier in this very thread as well.
80 hours of straight gameplay for one single legendary and you are dusting all the rest of the other cards along the way. At that point it is so time prohibitive that the option to earn gold as a means of parity mine as well not be a factor. Very few people are going to be grinding hundreds and hundreds of hours doing that. That leaves them with the dilemma of either being disadvantaged against a constructed deck synergized with powerful legendaries or "pay to win", which is what this thread was all about.
Sshhhhh, they dont like to talk about the amount of time involved because it destroys their argument for a f2p game. They just want you to know that it is possible and not to worry about the fine print.
I recieved 3 legendaries all were trash and useless(nat pagle, Greenskin, and vancleef). I have zero because they were dusted.
To be even more accurate I have zero because I uninstalled the game.
Why do you always leave out the most glaring variable? Amount of Time.
What you are saying is no different then the following statement: You can work minimum wage and afford a Ferrari.
...Don't worry that it will take 35 years.
You conveniently fail to mention the hundreds of hours you need to play and win to meet the current average of 1 legendary per 20 decks. If that 1 legendary is a bum card(as the majority are) you just increased the time needed to play exponentially.
But congrats on the Thalnos pick, now sit back for the next 80 straight games and wait for your single next pack of commons that dust for about 40. Something tells me we won't be seeing you post about that though.
Hoped you enjoyed your time with netdeck zoo and huntard.
It's hyperbole to say there is a large group of people who have been playing for over 8 months and have spent a fair chunk of change have every card in the game? really? That is a far fetched exaggerated statement?
Lets talk about just these people instead of your usual tactic of trying to find a crack in the semantics of the claim(YOU CANT SAY EVERYONE!!! AND YOU CANT ASSUME!!!!).
Why are they still playing if the only motivation for this game is to open new packs? This thread has claimed the game would die within a month without the motivation of opening new packs because this is a collectible card game. You could NEVER charge a base fee of $35 for a 2d electronic card game that is played on an ipad, a game blizzard invested so little money into stealing pretty much every aspect from previous successful games. They are doing it again with their lame attempt at a copycat moba because startcraft 2 is dying and they are losing their e-sports street cred. Just like hearthstone, they skin it with warcraft and call it a day.
But I digress, the people who own every card still pour hundreds of hours into this game because of ranked. Ranked is the backbone of this game, not opening micro transacted digital cards. Ranked is why they log back in, not useless cards they already own which can never be traded or sold and are worthless the moment you uninstall the game.
Didn't you know? If there is just ONE DOCUMENTED EXAMPLE of someone with a base deck beating someone with legendaries the theory ILLEGITIMATE AND INVALID.
Did you know that you can go to youtube RIGHT NOW and see a knife juggler EASILY counter Leeroy??? It's on youtube. Again, it can be done. So you are WRONG and none of what you said has any validity.
*sarcasm*
You are the first honest person to actually respond to this thread in a frank and straightforward manner. I do realize that I am basically in a den of lions talking about what's wrong with lions, this being on "HearthPwn" and all, an ultra niche hardcore minority of the overall consumer base.
I hope you realize that the 6-8 people who continually try to pound this thread into the dirt would never agree with the sentiments you just expressed. No matter how blatantly true, they will NEVER EVER admit to what you just said. Which blows my mind.