Hearthstone is toooo expensive!

Multiplayer Discussion
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When a new collection is released, I have fun trying to build new decks… then, after a few weeks, everybody starts building net decks that have a good win rate and the game becomes more boring (for me)… playing against all the same decks and cards over and over.

What keeps me playing is trying new cards and decks and improving on them. If this game is all about crafting a few same decks and pitting them against the same other net decks, I’m out. If that is the goal, then just release 4 decks and let players play those 4 decks… don’t waste your time creating more cards!!!

Anyways, what I am saying here is: it would be great to have access to all the cards so that players can play more different cards and decks and have the possibility to experiment also. Personally, I would release cards more often, even if it means smaller collections. So that nobody can sit on the same net deck for months!

But right now, there is no way to get all of the standard cards without paying a fortune. In my opinion, it shouldn’t cost more then 25$ to get ALL CARDS of a set. In reality it is more like 200$ plus 150 hours of play (for gold coins). It is out of price. As a comparison: a full new game is 75$… I cannot compare that to an expansion. Firaxis understand this for example and offer expansion or DLC for CIV 6 at reasonable prices. Another example: Farcry 5 new dawn: this expansion is practically a whole new game: it costs 50$ (CAN).

You cannot ask players to pay 200$ 3 times a year for expansions, it doesn’t make sens. You are not offering a new game, you are adding cards!

Also, this is not MTG, I cannot trade or resale any of the cards.

In the end, if I can get all your cards for a reasonable price, I will. Just because I will have the pleasure to experiment more and this will make me endure the net decks for a while by trying new stuff with my own decks.

In the end, you have got no money from me so far… if you would of given me a full collection at 25$ every expansion release, you would of made a lot of money with me. Just saying.

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Agree with you here that if you’re a completionist than CCGs in general, but definitely those that follow the MtG model, are quite expensive and at the detriment (potentially) of your other gaming avenues. I agree with your issue, by the way, but… I spend a lot of time tweaking my primary homebrew for the expansion/month and also enjoy the payoff once (if?) I figure it out so on the flipside I honestly only usually need 2-3 decks an expansion to play a lot in Standard. Now the issue sometimes is the meta being one I don’t want to participate in but that is an entirely different issue.

True, but you can also play from your home or hotel at anytime and don’t need to manage the card collection. In addition MtG:A (Magic Arena) is using the same format. I’ve spent $150 in the game and currently have what would be the equivalent of ~$1,000 of actual decks. Secondary market is very hit or miss in selling your cards because if you sell them after their Standard life most go down in value quickly.

My guess is to even entertain the option you’d be running the break-even models starting at $100 or maybe $75… not $25. Just being real here on that but you’d need to prove the LTV (life time value) of the game is better at a subscription price model (essentially) than the current pack model. My hunch, from how many people I know purchase the preorder, is that you’d need to at least set the break-even above $50 on the model.

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50 $/€ just feels overpriced. You can get a AAA title with that money, and they expect someone to spent it thrice per year? It sums up to 150$ which seems like a waste.

A decent 30 $/€ bundle per expansion would be more enticing. Anything over 100$ per year feels too much.

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Ok, but will it be enough to pay bills? You know, staff salary, server rent, electric power, taxes and so on…

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Well to be fair, if it was too cheap a lot of players would end up buying too many packs. I mean, 50 packs should be enough to get you most of the commons and rares, which is all you really need.

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OP is not talking about being able to play competitively. This is not about what they need, but what they would like to do in terms of varied gameplay/experimentation.

Unfortunately, trying to have everything is not a realistic goal without putting in a lot of money or have some elaborate network of Challenge a Friend quests.

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As much as I share your sentiments, that will never happen.

I have chosen to limit myself to certain archetypes I like to play and refine them in Wild. If there are future cards that enhance them, I will get them. Otherwise, I would be only shuffling in and out of tech options.

It would be neat to be able to have everything, but reality sets in.

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HS is too expensive no-doubt.
If you want to be meta, that’s the cheapest way to play, focus on one single metadeck craft it and enjoy a decent w/r, the lists are good enough to legend any of the top-10 decks.

If you want to be nonmeta, you’re looking at a whole bunch more money/dust unless you go ‘weak-zoo’ like all the Rank20WIld (Oh yea that’s right) bots every 5 minutes.

Weakzoo is cheapest way to be-competitive.
Actual zoo is probably second cheapest, and always will be good enough.
Metadecks are where the big spikes in cost come in, and they are not unpredictable, or involve super-clever navigation unless it’s a mirror or aggro aggro matchup.

Devs, whats up with 100g showing up about once every 3 years in the quest reroll? Is it really ideal to set that 100g droprate so insultingly low? I know I’ve 100g in 2015, I think this past year 2018 it showed, I mean that’s it blizz. It’s way (repeated y) abso redic too-low, what 0.01 percent probs?

What’s up with “challenge a friend” being < a pack.
Its like…super low ball to be like “yea we get 4/5’s a pack…when it would feel/sound much smoother to be like ‘challenge for a pack, not 4/5’s a pack’”

Whats up with 60g’s taking too-long to complete, while 50’gs are the better value / time. As in winning one match (the hardest 50s) is a lot faster than winning 3.

Up the 100g
change 80g to 100g
up 60’s to 80s
decrease 60’s requirements by 1.
iirc there’s “Win 2 for 50g” and “Win 1 for 50g”…what’s up what that?
You can always just add another 100g in the pool…
Any of these ideas would keep ppl logging in somewhat, speaking for myself.

Especially 4/5’s a pack.
It just screams “we’re taking that nickle, you can’t buy a 1 for 1 trade from this quest to a pack”. Its like a constant reminder revenue over fun, smoothness, incentive to log in and not play fresher games.

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This is not that expensive even for new players. You have std mode so that you don’t need to have all of the old decks. And for those of us from beta we have wild to keep playing our old cards.

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You are comparing Hearthstone to standard games that follow standard business models. Hearthstone is a CCG, you should be comparing it to games like MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh, granted there are significant differences. For the amount of resources per dollar spent, Hearthstone works out cheaper. You can get an entire expansion for under $200 and craft multiple decks. In other CCGs it is not uncommon that the same $200 will only buy you one deck.

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TL:DR - Not a bad idea, but it would never happen at only $25/expansion.

Where has Blizzard asked that players should spend $200 on an expansion? Hearthstone isn’t MTG… MTG requires players to shell out upwards of $2000 or more for certain decks. MTG is also a physical game whereas HS is a digital one. You can’t trade, sell or disenchant cards in MTG:A. Extras in MTG:A apparently go towards something called the Vault… but that is another dilema for another thread.

At this price, this would eliminate practically every bundle, and probably all other card pack sales. Why would anyone pay $50 for 50 packs (the most commonly sold pre-order bundle)? They wouldn’t. At $25, players would only buy the “All access” pass you describe. Blizzard would lose a lot of money giving away something like this at that price. It would never happen… at least not at that price.

It’s been documented/simulated statistically in several articles/reddit threads, that a player would need to open around 260-400 packs to get every single card in an expansion. Lets assume the lower number of 260 packs are required. At $1 a pack, that’s $260… for the sake of your “All Access” pass… Blizzard would price this option around there if not higher. But Lets say Blizzard really wants to push this option, so they lower the price to $200. That’s actually pretty reasonable deal, considering how many packs it would otherwise take to achieve the goal of getting every single card. The price is also high enough that it could effectively make the $50 for 50 pack pre-order bundle still look attractive a la. “Goldilocks pricing.”

I personally would never buy into an “all access” pass. Much like you, I find spending $200/expansion “doesn’t make sens[e].” Spending $200 on any video game in my opinion is completely absurd. I also like the excitement of opening packs and crafting new cards. There would be no need for any of that if I already have every card. I would also be less inclined to complete any dailies, and would probably play less of the game overall.

Such an option could potentially drive players away. Being able to buy every card, despite the price, would without a doubt brand Hearthstone as a Pay-2-Win game. Something which Blizzard has been careful to avoid.

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But right now, there is no way to get all of the standard cards without paying a fortune.

Stop right there. This is exactly where all the people who complain about CCGs being expensive mentally crap their bed. The Price Whiners - for some unknown reason - stake out the incorrect expectation that they have to get “all the Standard cards” to play a CCG.

SIMPLE FACT ONE: CCGs are games that are designed to be played with incomplete collections. Not only is it not necessary to get all the cards … players don’t even have to get most of the cards. Players can succeed in Casual and in Ranked and enjoy a HUGE amount of gameplay variety when only having a small fraction of the cards in a CCG collection.

Once a Price Whiner divests themselves of the bizarre expectation that they must have all the cards - an expectation that is mistakenly adopted because of false opinions, biases, and emotions - then they will be pleasantly surprised by the reality that they can fully enjoy the game without paying a single penny … let alone such ridiculous claptrap as “$200 per expansion”.

In my opinion, it shouldn’t cost more then 25$ to get ALL CARDS of a set.

SIMPLE FACT TWO: CCGs are their own game genre with their own pricing model.

The CCG price model that has existed for over 30 years. CCGs create large card collections. Cards in those collections are sold in Packs where players pay X amount of dollars per pack. Those packs contain a set number of random cards from the collection, which the player then uses to build decks with which to play the game. Players do not need all the cards in the collection to play the game, and (in fact) part of the appeal of CCGs lies in how players use strategy and creativity with incomplete collections.

The pricing model the OP is describing is called a “Living Card Game” (LCG). LCGs are games where players pay one price to buy all the cards a game has to offer. That is not how CCGs are priced. Any person who is goes around thinking that CCGs should be priced as LCGs is just wrong.

As a comparison: a full new game is 75$…

SIMPLE FACT THREE: CCGs are not “Vidyuh Games”.

Saying a CCG should be priced the same as Far Cry or Civ6 because they’re both played on a computer is like saying a tricycle should cost the same as Bugatti because they both have wheels.

A CCG can be played on a computer, but the computer is just a medium much like paper is a medium for a board game. The medium is irrelevant (or at best tangental) to the pricing model of a product. Just because you can buy Far Cry for 75 bucks does not make it logically follow that you “should” be able to buy Hearthstone for 25. How some people convince themselves that this bone-headed argument makes any sense is beyond me.

Also, this is not MTG, I cannot trade or resale any of the cards.

SIMPLE FACT FOUR: Digital content is worth as much - or more - than physical content.

You may not have noticed, but we live in an information world today. Digital content has as much value as physical content. The resale argument is irrelevant. The convenience, flexibility, and immediacy of digital cards makes them arguably more valuable than physical cards. If you want to play with paper cards by yourself on a bearskin with stone knives so you can get 1 cent back on your purchase then go ahead. The rest of us will play with digital cards with millions of other players on tap 24/7/365.

In the end, if I can get all your cards for a reasonable price, I will.

Here’s a suggestion. Get 85%+ of the cards in every set for FREE and only spend as much money as you want after that. The goofball expectation where you can only be satisfied if you get 100% of the cards for $25 will accomplish nothing except to leave you perpetually angry, bitter, frustrated, and dissatisfied. The sooner you dump your impossible expectation for a sane, sensible, rational approach the better off you’ll be.

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Paying $50 for an ex-pack (or $150 a year), and getting all the content in return, instead of a sad fraction of it, seems pretty sensible and reasonable to me.

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  • Opinions are not facts. You can assert all of your opinions about the “price rules” of various types of entertainment you like, but that doesn’t make them facts.

  • The value of something is determined by how much someone will pay for it. Not by some random comparison to some other similar thing.

  • Digital content versus physical content is irrelevant. It is the ownership model (where you own and can transfer ownership of a physical card) versus the rental model (where you do NOT own the digital HS card) which makes HS cards less valuable. Not the fact that they are digital.

HS cards are too expensive for many people. So they do not buy them. But they’d clearly like to buy them at a lower price point. Why shouldn’t someone state their personal preference in hope that if enough people agree, someday the pricing model might be more to their liking? And why do some people feel compelled to jump into every thread where someone does so, trying to start a pointless debate using the same old boring talking points?

No amount of comparisons with other games and made up “facts” changes the financial reality for many people who are unwilling to blow hundreds of dollars renting digital cards but might be willing to blow tens of dollars doing so.

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80g can be used for the next xpac, a classic pack gives 40 dust…

sure, for the price of a complete game, you get 1/4 of ONE xpac on hs, and there’re 3 xpacs a year

what do you know about the game? do you even play it? i don’t see you anywhere in the standings

sure, blizzard can close their servers anytime or ban your account, what will you do?

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Paying $50 for an ex-pack (or $150 a year), and getting all the content in return, instead of a sad fraction of it, seems pretty sensible and reasonable to me.

You don’t have to pay $50 per set. You don’t have to pay $5 per set. You don’t even have to pay 0.5 cents per set. You can get over 85% of the cards in every expansion for $0.00. That seems pretty sensible and reasonable to me.

Some of you are complaining that you can’t get 100% of the cards for $25 (or 50 or whatever) while at the same time stubbornly ignoring the fact that you can get more than 85% of the cards for free. You’ve adopted a bizarre “I must either have 100% of the cards for one low price or I will accept nothing at all…!” mentality that makes absolutely no sense.

The value of something is determined by how much someone will pay for it. Not by some random comparison to some other similar thing.

I absolutely agree. For example, the value of Hearthstone has been determined to be the “Booster Pack” model, which is how much people will pay for it. Hearthstone’s value is not to be determined by comparing it to random things like FarCry.

HS cards are too expensive for many people. So they do not buy them.

This is true. But the great thing about Hearthstone - and many other CCGs - is that these people don’t need to spend any money at all.

Any player can get over 85% of the cards in every set by doing nothing but saving up their quest gold between sets. Such an approach won’t give a player every card in every set, but it is more than enough cards to build multiple fully optimized meta decks along with many more “mostly”-optimized meta decks and an unlimited number of homebrews and snowflakes.

So there’s a wide range of latitude between “100%” and “Nothing” which is easily in the grasp of anyone who has a little common sense and budgeting skills. Only the people who artificially lock themselves into a ridiculous “All or nothing” approach are unhappy.

But they’d clearly like to buy them at a lower price point.

I’d buy an island in the Pacific if they had a lower price. That’s not a valid argument to lower the price of all Pacific Islands.

the financial reality for many people who are unwilling to blow hundreds of dollars renting digital cards but might be willing to blow tens of dollars doing so.

Firstly, your entire premise is bunkum. You don’t have to blow “hundreds of dollars”. You don’t even have to blow “tens of dollars”. You can fully enjoy this game to its fullest extent for free. So your entire argument is complete nonsense prima facie.

But I’ll annihiliate the dumb argument even further by pointing out that you can choose to spend tens of dollars (rather than hundreds) on the game right now. You can spend a buck if that’s all you have the budget for. Just couple that to the many freebies that Blizzard hands out and the 10,000+ gold you can save up between sets and get piles and piles of cards at whatever budget spend you wish. It is only your false opinion that you “need” 100% of the cards that drives you to the completely incorrect opinion that you must spend “hundreds of dollars”. But that incorrect opinion is provable nonsense.

what do you know about the game? do you even play it? i don’t see you anywhere in the standings

I know many things. Yes, I do play it. I don’t rank past 15 because the ROI on ranking past that point is poor. But I - for free - have obtained a massive collection of cards and can build multiple fully optimized T1 & T2 decks. I could rank to Legend if I wanted, but I have better uses for my time.

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Take “cards you can get with quested gold” then add “tens of dollars” and you end up pretty much where you started in terms of having a complete play set of the cards.

On the other hand, adding “hundreds of dollars” would actually get you close to the nearly complete play set the OP wanted.

The incremental value of spending tens of dollars is negligible. Thus the price per pack seeming too high for many people who might only want to spend that much.

On the other hand, if someone is willing to rent cards to the tune of many hundreds per year, they probably don’t care what the price is.

In any case, the main point holds. The op and MANY others want to lobby for a lower price. What exactly is the point of spamming every such thread with this “theory of CCG price model” nonsense?

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you end up pretty much where you started in terms of having a complete play set of the cards

I note that this (again) ignores the point. I can only presume that this routine practice of ignoring the point is a purposeful omission because acknowledging the point annihilates the entire argument.

That point is you don’t need a complete set of cards. Players do not deserve complete sets just because they decided to play the game. Until the Price Whiners learn to quit fixating on that ridiculous expectation, they will never be able to discuss CCG pricing rationally.

The Price Whiners keep talking about having “all the cards” as if that was a sensible baseline. It isn’t. Having a complete set of cards for a CCG is the highest achievement possible … the absolute acme … the uppermost apex of accomplishment. Yet Price Whiners believe they should have the collection of the Whaliest of Whales for 25 bucks. The premise is ridiculous on its face.

What exactly is the point of spamming every such thread with this “theory of CCG price model” nonsense?

Because what you call ‘nonsense’ are the unchangeable facts of the situation. And because the Price Whiners do not seem to be able to accept those facts, someone must patiently explain to them that their expectations are unrealistic.

CCGs are all priced to about the same level. Go to MtG, or Shadowverse, or whatever other CCG you want and try to get a “complete set” of all the cards for 25 bucks. Then report back and tell us how far you got.

Price Whiners blubber that they should get complete sets of cards for 25 bucks. But in the entire universe of CCGs there is no such animal. The price for a complete set of CCG cards is high no matter what CCG you discuss. That isn’t going to change. Having ‘all the cards’ is the ultimate achievement for a CCG player. Yet the Price Whiners blubber in these threads as if it’s totally reasonable that they should get complete sets for 25 bucks. Silliness.

So what you’re seeing in this thread is a bunch of like-minded Price Whiners throwing a group-think pity party where they agree with themselves that their unrealistic expectations should be seriously considered. They’re barking at the moon. I’m the guy who is rationally informing you that you’re barking at the moon.

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At it’s core though that kind of is the spirit of CCGs. Using the cards at your disposal to create decks to play against your friends. Sure there are professional scenes where this isn’t the case but, in essence, this was kind of the spirit of the game…

Now between the ease of information sharing (hi internet) and the quest/hook system that games use to ensure they get our daily-ish attention the ease of making at least a couple of top-tier decks has, to a degree, corrupted this ideal. I still prefer the ideal as through ingenuity sometimes great insights are found but HS has some real lack of depth in cards at times to make up for the issue.

That is the risk of digital content; however, don’t ignore the value of this (and not Magic) being digital. Ever since college I’ve written off TCGs/CCGs as being something I could/wanted to commit to. I love the genre but between the expense, waste (speaking of the worthless cards and resources to print), commitment (going to a card shop), and organization I decided that was too at odds with having a wife and family life that I wanted. The digital medium has returned to me my favorite genre of game (for better or worse) and made it one I can still participate in.

Also, while I can’t compare HS, I can compare MtG:A. I have spent $150 in MtG:A and, right now, am sitting on ~$1,000 in physical card decks I can play. You can rightly say I could sell those cards; however:

  1. You’ll sell them below market value. Many of those cards were created with “Wild cards” in MtG:A and were obviously thus not unpacked. While I haven’t tracked which I made and didn’t I woudl probably at best break-even

  2. You assume I sell at the top of the market. Most Magic cards lose their value when they rotate out and go to Modern. A few retain value but most do not and lose a decent % as rotation approaches. So if I wanted to play these cards until a rotation in, say, Friday Night Magic tournaments I would never really recoup that cost.

There is no doubt that you lose monetary value to you, the consumer, in the digital realm (this goes for music, movies, etc.) but you gain intangible value (ease of play, no physical risks such as damage, etc.). To me, personally, those break about even if not in digital’s favor 9 out of 10 times. There is a reason we all play games on a laptop/desktop/console and most of us not as much in a tabeltop or boardgame setting. Digital ads a lot of ‘spice’ and feasibility. Hell, even something like Risk I preferred to play digitally with people (and I did) because you didn’t have to set-up and put away.

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Where exactly in the OP’s request did he claim he “needed” a complete set? My reading of it was pretty much that he “wanted” a complete set. He didn’t claim that the game was “p2w”. He didn’t complain about losing all the time. In fact, I don’t see ANY “whining” in his post.

He said that he enjoys building new decks and experimenting with new and different cards. And he then explained why he uses his entertainment money on other forms of entertainment that he feels provide more value. I’d venture a guess that he doesn’t buy packs of any of the other ccgs you’re citing as properly priced either. (At least not unless he can recoup a fair bit of his money via trade/ebay.)

And as an incentive for the powers that be to listen to his request, he concluded with the fact that right now they get zero of his dollars. But at $25/set (about what it costs to get a full release of dominion cards), they’d get more than zero of his dollars.

It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. And not even remotely a “whine”. And I am roughly in the same boat. I think the price of HS packs is far too high, even when they’re on sale. So I don’t buy them (except for the starter offer). But I do enjoy the game enough that they could certainly get some of my money if they offered me more value for it.

I’m not whining. I’m not threatening to boycott the game. I, like the OP, am just letting the people that decide such things know that they currently get zero of my dollars. And they could if they so chose get greater than zero of them.

If there were enough of us, they’d make more money charging less per unit. (Basic economics). So far, they clearly don’t feel that there are enough of us and that lowering their prices (or going to a whole different model like the OP suggested), would lower their profits.

But perhaps if enough people say they’d spend a lot more total money if the prices were lower, they might change their minds. Or at least do another round of market research so they could know what to do.

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