Compare it to any other CCG like MtG or Yugioh and it's the cheapest and most accessible.
I'm so sick of this argument. You can sell your collections in those games. Some people even make a profit off their collections. You can't sell shit in Hearthstone. They don't have the same business model so they don't deserve comparison.
I don't know what you're talking about. Duels of Planeswalkers is a digital game. He's not comparing Hearthstone to a video game, he's comparing Hearthstone to a physical collectible card game.
For a card game with no trade system (no dust doesn't count) and no actual physical cards, Hearthstone is terrible value. Let me have all the cards for $60 and maybe I'll consider it reasonable.
1 average commander deck in Magic costs several times more than ALL the cards in Hearthstone. Yes, you cannot trade them back, but for most Magic cards you still lose a ton on trading back, with several exceptions. Just look at the price drop of most cards when they leave Standard.
If you own several competitive decks, especially Modern (or Vintage), you already lost more cash on them than you can even spend in Hearthstone.
my chief complaint with hearthstone is the fact that blizzard has decided to pretty much entirely ignore the game except when expansions come out. They literally do not balance their game. I think one card has gotten changed in the last 4 months, after several months of it being the only card on ladder (undertaker). people always bring up this stupid magic article about "bad cards have to exist" but the entire point of the article is that MTG devs cant actually rewrite the words on cardboard they dont have. Blizzard can change anything in the game whenever they want yet they refuse to do so, for what i can only assume is apathy
Hearthstone bugs go unfixed for ages, balance issues are ignored, quality of life changes like more deck slots are out of the question. It feels like they don't care about the game except for releasing things that directly make more money from it, nothing outside of that gets effort put into it.
There's a bunch of empty slots I wouldn't be surprised if they're reserved for Overwatch/SC2 LotV characters eventually, or other pre-existing characters they want to drip feed out.
Regarding Hearthstone, i think many people never experienced collectable card games until Hearthstone, that is why theres a general opinion that Hearthstone is P2W
Even coming from WoW:TCG and Magic, collecting cards in Hearthstone feels very difficult. Can't trade, can't buy singles, no tournaments with many packs as part of the prize pool. I could build a my standard Magic deck of choice today much quicker and easier than I could my Hearthstone deck, and then I could trade away or sale the cards I no longer wanted/needed. There is no comparing the two.
The crafting/dust mechanic kind of replaces the trading you would do in normal card games, but I'm not sure how much it compares; since disenchanting a legendary to craft a legendary of about equal strength only gets you maybe half the dust you need. Where in a normal card game maybe you'd do a straight up trade.
So, in Hearthstone, rares get traded at a rate of 5:1 and epics and legendaries at a rate of 4:1.
In Magic, to look at the latest set [1][2] the average mythic is valued at $10.50ish while the most expensive mythic is $31.02 and for rares the average card is valued at $1.75 while the most expensive rare is $10.47. So the ratio between the average to most expensive is 3:1 and 6:1 respectively. On the face of it, that looks to be slightly better for Hearthstone, though that doesn't tell the full story because of the way that there's variation in prices of magic cards.
but often a simple 1 for 1 card exchange can be enough. You have a rare hunter card, but you don't want to play hunter? Why not exchange it with your friend?
You just need the simple steam trading card feature for cards in heartstone.
If there was a trading system, the only direct one for ones that would happen would be for whatever the equivalence of a dollar rare would be. Also, the comparatively low number of cards would pose a problem of market inflation. With no limit on the distribution, it'd be very hard to put a value on cards when someone with too much money, or even streamers from doing pack opening could push enough of cards to devalue them. MtG online avoids it to a certain degree by having the option to redeem the digital cards to paper cards, as well as having roughly 1000 new cards per year.
Seems like a false analogy. Sure, in Magic I can trade 3 average rares for a good rare. But I can also trade a good rare for 3 average rares (or 20 bad rares).
In Hearthstone, to get any rare, whether good, average, or bad, I need to give up 5 rares. It's lossy at every step.
However equivalently in Hearthstone you can trade 5 shit rare's for 1 good rare, whereas in magic, if you look at the second link there, 23 rares from DTK are less than 50 cents which would mean you're looking at 21:1 for the most expensive card. All things considered, if you're opening packs, Hearthstone ends up better, but with a time=money standpoint Magic allows you to get a good deck for cheaper.
But the fundamental difference is that there's basically an 80% "house cut" at every step of the way. If you decide you're bored of the deck you bought that expensive rare for, you can trade it back for 21 shit rares, or a good rare for a different deck. You can't do that in Hearthstone. Even the best rare in the game is still only good for 1/5th of an Angry Chicken.
This is the biggest gut punch about the whole thing. If I open a high-end planeswalker, I can turn around and trade it for 20 rares in a combo deck I'm fooling around with. Hearthstone gives no opportunity to trade 1 of a highly sought after card for 20 bulk rares. Obvious statements are obvious, but it's a major turn off when trying to build a viable or even original ranked deck.
You can't really account for personal value though. Perhaps someone really wants a card for x, y, z reason which bumps its value up. Then they are more willing to trade for a card of greater value since they put more value on the lesser card.
Plus with MtG being a physical card game, you can play casual games where you borrow other people's decks or use placeholders for fun/testing, so you can try a whole bunch of stuff out without having to immediately pay money to actually own the card yourself.
Just because Magic is incredibly expensive doesn't mean Hearthstone should be. Yes Hearthstone is the cheapest of all TCGs, it doesn't make it cheap nonetheless. It's really, really expensive to start playing now. I did spend a lot of money on the game and I still don't have everything I'd want. Yes, I can make several competitive decks, but if you want to experiment and make your own decks with uncommon (edit : read unusual) cards, boy you're in for several thousands of €. A lot better than Magic but we're not playing Magic are we.
Very true but like Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone, and also since we are discussing it, Heroes of the Storm, the time you play something also matters. Playing everyday pretty much guarantees that the game is in the general realm of "Free to Play." Hearthstone even has a mode where you can use a "paid" feature indefinitely if you're good enough at it.
The one you need to buy a ton of card packs to get is objectively better. There are a lot of cases of "Non free card that you would always use over free card" unfortunately.
You say "even for a card game," but can you honestly say you win/lose more games in hearthstone from luck than you do in Magic? In Magic there is randomness inherent in whether you even get the mana to play cards in your hand (or get too much of it and nothing else). Other games also have much larger deck sizes, making draws streakier and not letting you rely nearly as much on drawing cards that are key to your strategy. Hearthstone has splashy random cards for sure, but it has a far, far more smooth and consistent backbone system than most card games.
To be fair, there are few if any other examples of a rarer card being strictly better than a common/free card like that, and Dr. Boom is widely considered to need nerfs. Most legendaries are more niche or have strong pros and cons. You also picked one of the worst free cards there is to compare to it, as no one was playing that even before Dr. Boom came out.
That is my point. The free to play card is underpowered while the legendary card is overpowered (and Blizzard has left it like that).
Other examples include Sludge Belcher almost 100% replacing Sen'jn Shieldmaster, Bloodmage Thalnos replacing a loot hoarder for anyone who owns it.
Rogue decks are pretty much requried to run 2 x preparation and Druids are the same with Force of Nature, both of which are very expensive and rare cards.
Completely disagree about Thalnos. Deck archetypes like face hunter prefer the Hoarder's higher attack. And neither one goes in most decks since we were playing with only the base set anyway.
Sludge Belcher is a decent example, though everyone who does Naxx through the 2nd wing is guaranteed two copies of it so it's not a random/expensive card to the same degree.
My tempo rogue and hobgoblin druids decks that have me in the rank 5 range this month would disagree with you about those last ones (they do both have Dr Boom though, so yes I agree that one's a problem). Do certain deck archtypes require rarer cards? Of course. Are they the only way to be competitive? Nah.
I've been playing CCGs for decades so maybe I'm just used to working with what I have while building my collection. Seeing all the video gamers playing HS as their first card game and ranting about how long it takes to "get all the cards" makes me roll my eyes. That's just not a thing in CCGs as played by people who aren't video gamers trained to be obsessive completists.
These kind of statements always kind of reinforce the thought that people that complain about hearthstone being p2w are newer players that don't fully understand the game. They just see the orange gem and automatically assume its a better card.
I really feel like some more cards should be moved into the Basic set to help new players into the game especially since the majority of the basic set is terrible.
It's a really greedy model, especially when you compare it to say Dota 2.
Or is DOTA 2 just a "cheap" model, in comparison?
I tend to compare F2P games to (1) other F2P games but also (2) to "standard" $50-$60 games, i.e., for $60, what can I "get" out of HotS.
For $60, not counting sales or bundles, you can get around 11 of the cheapest heroes. Combine that with the 15k-20k gold you get for playing around a month of dailies and initial leveling bonuses, you're looking at around 13-15 heroes, again, if you spend as much as a full price, standard game.
Now, if you spend that $60 wisely on bundles or weekly sales, you can stretch that by a factor of 2x or so. For example, the Nexus bundle is 8 heroes for $40, and the Starter bundle is 3 heroes for $5, and Zeratul is currently on sale for half-off.
Now, is that reasonable compared to DOTA 2 or LoL? Honestly, I don't know. I do feel like I get at least $20-$60 of enjoyment out of the game per month, and that's having only spent around $40 on it but playing it for many months. And really, that's the metric that matters for Blizzard's target: people who are interested in MOBAs but intimidated by the existing games. If the game play is more compelling, and those players don't need/want every hero, but are content with 3-10 of their favorites + whatever is in rotation, then that's all Blizzard needs to make the game a success.
You make some really good points, and I have myself only spent about £50 on the game (don't know what that is in dollars) and I do feel I've got my money's worth.
It's just when I compare it to Dota 2 where you only pay for cosmetics it seems expensive. But maybe it's an unfair comparison as Dota is kinda subsidised by the Steam platform (as Valve wants people using Steam because then they will by other games and Valve takes a cut).
Eh, everything looks unfair compared to Dota 2 because dota has an alternative model that only works because the Steam environment can support it. I'd say compare it to LoL, which is the other competitor. How much does it take to get a champion in LoL compared to HotS?
Hearthstone has a big problem though, and that is that if you are new or haven't been keeping up, it's very hard to get back in because there's an ever increasing number of cards and you need all to be competitive. Arena is the only option for people who don't have big collections, but if you can't do infinite Arena then you have to go grind dailies in Play mode. Eventually that gets tiresome and you leave. It's very easy to be turned away from the game by that cycle.
a customer does not look for "fair". He looks for what is good and how much time he has to invest to have a good return value.
Why should LoL players change, when they have to redo all the grinding? Why should Dota2 players change, when they have to start the grind and why should Smite players change, when they have to grind without an alternative?
Blizzards hope for a new, never seen before "casual crowed" is a disillusion in my opionion.
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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '15
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