The only significance that the pass gives is if Im offered 4 heroes there is a slightly better chance I wont just concede right away and try again for a better selection to choose from. It isnt gonna prevent that from happening entirely, many times I will roll 4x 1s and see the equivalent of 4 baz lich ladies to pick from. concede. Pull the lever again at the slot machine game. Thats about it. There isnt any better advantage in game itself as I can manipulate which lobby I will stay in regardless of if im offered 4 heroes or 2. if they all suck I wont be staying lol. so $20 to lower that number of auto concedes to maybe 30% less often is arguably worth it sometimes, not all times tho.
Impossible. Good joke Ravianna! 
Forsake rating, get infinite hero slots. Enjoy no damage cap chumps, RNGesus should have given me Sire. Chadgar move, zero fs given.
4 characters that can obtain a minion for 1 gold once per turn? That sounds like a strong economy honestly.
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they change her power up recently? It seems they did that to a lot of heroes lately. Jurraxis is different now, so is Galewind. I wish the game would have the popups that informed of changes to them like they do for everything else that gets changes done to them.
Since your posts suggests that you think I am just deadbeat F2P player, who is just sponging off the kindness of the game’s creators, I thought I would provide a little of my player history.
I started playing in the middle of Season 1, and I quickly started spending money on Hearthstone.
Early on, I got the idea that Arena might be the best way to farm gold in the game by going “unlimited,” since I was very experienced at drafting cards from playing a lot of MTG (I was once briefly ranked among the top 100 players in the world for Limited in MTG).
I actually dropped $100 or more into buying Arena drafts, but I was never ever able to average 7 wins. Arena purchases were probably one of my worst investments into the game, so I spent my free time mostly playing WoW and casually playing Standard.
During September 2004, they had a pirate-themed card back that I thought was cool looking and it would make great addition to pirate decks, so I got idea of creating two more Hearthstone accounts, and then a collection on all three servers (Asia, EU, NA) for each of the three Bnet accounts. You were limited to three Bnet accounts back then.
https://imgur.com/a/K18zehF
So I got the Pirates card back for all nine of my collections. Then I decided to use the gold collected from completing quests on my 8 F2P collections to get better at Arena. It seemed better plan than spending real money to get more practice at Arena. But I kept getting distracted by Standard and spent most my playtime experimenting on the Ladder.
Anyways, on my main NA account, I have spent quite a bit money on the game, which is reflected in the dust resources that I still currently have:
https://imgur.com/a/0z3xvsl
Having those 8 F2P collections kept me very in touch with both the F2P and new player experiences, which is why I used to advocate for improvements to the new player experience by recommending such things as expanded ranks for new players below Rank 20 and more “floors” for some ranks beyond just the only one that existed at Rank 20.
I have always understood the importance of a large F2P player-base to Hearthstone’s success and future.
I was the first person in the forums to recommend a one-time purchasable bundle for an extremely good value in packs in order to swing non-spending F2P players into spending money on the game. Hey, once a player made a single purchase, they were no longer a 100 percent F2P player anymore, which meant they were more likely to spend more on the game.
The devs acted on this suggestion and The Welcome Bundle was created.
Now, since I have not been happy about the gross amount of powercreep, bad balance, and broken cards constantly being added to Hearthstone, I stopped spending money on the game, and my last purchase was a $5 bundle in 2020.
Bruh. I’m not going to read your life story.
No. You are acting as if I was making some kind of ad hominem attack on you when I did nothing of the sort. I was talking about ethics, right and wrong, and I didn’t accuse you of anything. I said if this then that. I said don’t allow yourself to become something. None of this was saying anything about who you are now.
So to summarize the conversation so far…
Me: If you enjoy BGs it’s unethical to not buy the hero slots.
Zee: it’s not unethical to not buy things in a f2p game you’re enjoying.
Me: Yes it is.
Zee: (cognitive dissonance)
Care to continue?
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Am I understanding your comment correctly when you say when someone doesn’t agree with your stance on F2P that they don’t understand their own views??
No. No you’re not. And no I didn’t.
No, it’s fine. I got a chuckle from your response. 
that’s kinda what you’re saying with this comment. But all good never mind, I’m with Zee . . . no need to continue.
Google defines cognitive dissonance as
the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
That’s a pretty good definition, but I see the weaknesses in it that could be causing confusion. I’d instead use
the state of having contradictory thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral indecision and resisting belief change.
Here’s an example. Bob starts playing Hearthstone, and at first he wins a lot and enjoys winning a lot. Because of this, he forms a belief and an attitude:
- I am a skillful player.
- Playing Hearthstone is something I do.
After a while though, the matchmaking system fulfills its legitimate purpose and starts matching him against opponents who are more of a challenge, and he starts to have a winrate closer to 50/50. This new evidence challenges his preexisting belief. Like every breathing human being, Bob has confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance is the primary attack arm by which confirmation bias defends existing ideas. As a result of this, Bob develops new beliefs:
- The game is rigged to give other players wins that, as a skilled player, are rightfully mine.
- This rigging is profitable for Blizzard.
New belief #3 seems to defend his other beliefs. But there are contradictions. By now Bob has probably forgotten that he thinks he’s a good player because he won so much, but that was the original evidence behind it, and if those games were rigged then Bob has no basis to believe he has skill. This is an example of cognitive dissonance resisting belief change.
Simultaneously, Bob probably hasn’t stopped playing Hearthstone. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to continue to play a game that’s rigged by its evil corporate overlords, but the new evidence somehow hasn’t impacted habit. This is an example of cognitive dissonance creating behavioral indecision.
When I said that Zee had cognitive dissonance, what I meant was that he had mentally fabricated the situation where I attacked his character. Nothing of the sort occurred, but his confirmation bias needed something to defend his belief with so it convinced him that I said he was just some deadbeat f2p player, and then he spent an entire wall of text replying to a point that was never even made.
You said that I was accusing Zee of not understanding his own views. I mean, if we say that one of his views was “Scr0tie accused me of being a deadbeat f2p player” then okay, I guess he didn’t understand that one view. But you used the plural, views, and I think it’s fair to say that you were implying all or most of his views. So I said no.
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I agree ! the odds of rolling an s-tier hero are halved, 50% how someone thinks that not significant don’t know ?
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This is a misleading statement. It discredit the f2p base, where you disregard time is a resource being used.
If I used the same analogy, I could blame the Dev for creating an environment where players are allowed to be unethical. (By f2p marketing and design) As such my basis of misleading statement.
And back to topic… paided items in F2P game design are expected not to impact gameplay, except skins and such.
The basis of this thread(part of) is probably about that impact.
It does indeed have a cost. But it doesn’t create value. The developer doesn’t get anything from you wasting your time. It doesn’t count as reciprocation.
There is value. Otherwise, why would have the dev design HS as f2p by default?
In the case of a digital CCG, the reason would be that paid players need a diverse body of opponents. Only about 2% of f2p mobile game players spend ANY money on the game (even as little as $1) so if it was only paid players then there’d be no one to queue up against.
So in a way you’re right, they’re not just “wasting time,” they’re working for Blizzard for free in the position of entertaining the actual customers.
But this job in the future will be automated. They’re going to work on BlizzBots until they get them realistic enough that people can’t tell that they’re not humans, and then bye bye free to play options.
I guess in this specific case, fine, if you’re f2p you’re not just mooching. I concede that point. But in the more general case, where you’re not being exploited as unpaid labor, then if someone does you a favor then you should repay them.
It’s in the patch notes that they post early on the patch day. there’s sites like Hearthpwn.com that have them up in detail as well. They have been slowly redesigning the weaker heroes to be more competitive over the last few months.
In a more SPECIFIC case, the above could apply. In a more GENERAL case, I could think of philanthropic acts, foreign aids, or even simple acts of everyday kindness that was not taken into consideration.
A simple example of parents bringing up kids, where should the kid have to ‘repay’ the debt in equal? A huge debate would ensure…
I deeply respect your message of merit and acknowledgement for the dev, but debate on the application.
In the case of HS, F2P and payers each have thier own value. When we start to mix ethics into it, the discussion leads into a very dangerous (and misleading) zone.
That’s false scrotie. Its the dynamic between the f2p players and the whales. F2p players indirectly benefit the developers because they directly benefit the whales.
Whales are the ones burning all their money. But that money is only spent so they can have more fun by playing with the larger population, which happens to be f2p players. Without f2p players, the whales wouldn’t…well, whale.
This ^.
Whales revel in the fun of having access to the best resources every time a new expansion is released. It’s a dynamic time, when the meta has yet to be solved, and there are plenty resource-poor F2P fodder to pummel as the whales learn the new cards and hone their decks as they experiment with multiple classes and decks.
The presence of F2P players help to drive sales. This is why the model works. A large F2P player-base lowers queue times and they provide an audience for whales to showcase their boughten bling of shiny cards, specialty portraits and effects.
I am curious about Scr0tieMcB’s prediction about more advanced bots eventually replacing F2P players. Such a thing may happen more out of necessity due a shrinking pool of F2P players than out of desirability.
I do think many whales would lose interest in HS if they knew they were mostly playing against bots and other P2W players.
Nonhumans to pummel, who are oblivious to an opponents’ flex of bling or prestige may prove to be an experience unworthy of a whales’ precious time.