Quoted for a great point. Suppose you do play Hearthstone a lot and do a lot of quests. Paying $30 or $50 doesn’t subjectively offer much more value as an incentive. So it’s easy to convince yourself to skip it. That’s what I did all last year.
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since this is a digital games …you must be talking about magic duels and MTG arena
i never heard about magic duel players being able to sell their cards when arena came out and they found out they were going to get more updates
doubt it is true
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.
The Price Whiners in this thread have framed the pricing argument on the premise of getting “all the cards”. The OP specifically said, “it shouldn’t cost more than $25 to get all the cards of a set”.
Dithering prevarication over ‘need’, ‘get’, and ‘want’ are distinctions without a difference and irrelevant to the point. The Price Whiner argument is, “This game should be priced so I can get 100% complete sets for the figure I personally have decided is fair to me rather than what the price actually is.”
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.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the theoretical $25 from the OP (and those of his ilk) is not worth chasing.
Hearthstone is a market leader using a pricing model that has 30+ years of success under its belt. It’s current pricing is proven, successful, and highly profitable. Why should they underprice their product far below market value to chase after $25 bucks from a few forum oddballs who admittedly don’t want to pay market value for the product? That would be an incredibly stupid business decision.
The Price Whiners have very foolish notions about economics and pricing and the popularity of their cornball ideas. Millions of players can currently play the game to its fullest extent for free. These players are happy, satisfied customers who can pay as much (or as little) as they want for a rich experience. The Price Whiners think millions of customers would somehow be happier having to pay $75 for the base game and $25 for every expansion. They also think Blizzard would make more money that way, despite mountains of proof to the contrary. Craziness.
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.
In the process you ignore the fact that to reach your threshold, Blizzard would be LOWERING their profits rather than increasing them, would be RAISING the costs on millions of players who happily pay nothing, and would be lowering the price of their product far below market value. Why would any business do that?
Or at least do another round of market research so they could know what to do.
There’s no need to research it. The market has already spoken loudly and clearly. The current system is fine, and the only people who don’t like it are a few outlier players who want a “subscription” model rather than the CCG model. Another fact you guys have to accept is the reality that your preference is a vast minority, and you’ll never get what you want because it’s (1) unrealistic and (2) unnecessary.
Quoted for a great point. Suppose you do play Hearthstone a lot and do a lot of quests. Paying $30 or $50 doesn’t subjectively offer much more value as an incentive. So it’s easy to convince yourself to skip it. That’s what I did all last year.
This is very true. I have never felt it necessary to pay money because I can save all the gold I need between sets and get all the cards that are needed for nothing. I choose to spend on occasion as a means of showing support. This is far more preferable to far more players than a model where they’d have to pay $60+ to install and $49.99 per expansion. Players would quit en masse if that was the deal.
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Economics and the equilibrium point
you HAVE to spend money if you want to be competitive
the maths disagree : for free, a regular player (who does his daily quests everyday) can only enjoy 1/3 of the game
of course xD
i won’t quote your entire post but it’s a good point, i don’t disagree but i don’t agree either
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Define competitive. To rank 5 I bet I could consistently be there within 3-4 months on a new account. If you say prove it… if we can put money on it I would but without financial incentive I’d rather play Magic, Poker, and other games, lol
That is fair =)
you HAVE to spend money if you want to be competitive
No you don’t. Players have repeatedly started new FTP accounts and hit Legend rank within the month. It’s been done over and over again in every meta of the game since it came out of beta. So the claim that you “have” to spend money to compete is provably false.
the maths disagree : for free, a regular player (who does his daily quests everyday) can only enjoy 1/3 of the game
For free I have obtained 85% of all the collectible cards in every expansion from Goblins & Gnomes to the present. I’ve been able to build fully optimized Tier 1 meta decks in every meta, and rank to whatever level I wanted. I can play Arenas, do Brawls, play Casual & Ranked, have all the Single Player Adventures, have multiple custom heroes, and have most of the card backs. By what “maths” are you determining that is only 33% of the game?
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“Competitive” is a state of mind. All you need to win this game is 30 cards.
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This is my finding as well. You can have the competitive cards you need for maybe 3 classes. If you also pay the $50 each ex-pack, you get the cards for maybe another 2 classes.
And even if you do all of that, you still don’t get all the cards. Riddler’s “85% of all cards” is a pointless statistic because of the much higher weighting, in terms of value and necessity, of the top ~10%, which are the legendaries and epics.
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My finding is the opposite. I have all the competitive cards needed to build every T1 deck in the current meta except the Togwaggle version of Tog/Mech Druid. There isn’t a class in the game I can’t build the T1/T2 decks for … and I did it for free.
Riddler’s “85% of all cards” is a pointless statistic because of the much higher weighting, in terms of value and necessity, of the top ~10%, which are the legendaries and epics.
It isn’t worthless because a huge chunk of that top 10% is not a “necessity” (as you falsely put it). In fact, the majority of the stuff that costs the most is a pile of meta irrelevant trash.
WORTHLESS EPICS PLAYERS CAN SKIP (16 out of 27 - 59.25%)
Gubiashi Offering, Drakkari Trickster, Ice Cream Peddler, MoshOgg Announcer, Snapjaw Shellfighter, Linecracker, Treespeaker, Stampeding Roar, Beast Within, Splitting Image, New Challenger, Aucheni Phantasm, Gurubashi Hypemon, Big Bad Voodoo, Haunting Visions, Void Contract.
WORTHLESS LEGENDARIES PLAYERS CAN SKIP (11 out of 23 - 47.8%)
Griftah, Undatakah, Wardruid Loti, Gonk, Malacross, Bwonsamdi, Talanji, Zentimo, Krag’wa, Jeklik, Hireek.
OPTIONAL IF YOU WANT TO MEME EPICS & LEGENDARIES
Oodansta (L), Hakkar(L), Halazzi (L), Imortal Prelate (E), Thekal (L), Shirvallah (L), Surrender to Madness (E), Gral the Shark (L), Soulwarden (E).
Out of the 23 Legendaries in Rastakahn’s Rumble, a full 17 (74%) are either trash or totally optional. Out of 27 Epics, a full 19 (70%) are trash or optional. This pattern pretty much holds for every expansion in the game. Huge swaths of Epics & Legendaries that the Price Whiners think they have to collect are actually a bunch of worthless junk they could totally skip.
And so the “85%” value that I use is actually a much better representation of set completion than any other measurement out there. The Price Whiners love to use total dust cost as their metric because it - like the bogus “must have 100%” attitude - allows them to feel really sorry for themselves because they don’t have a load of stuff that they don’t actually need to get if they used some critical thought for 0.1 nanoseconds.
Rumble is a largely garbage set, so using it as an example is pointless. Try using one of the more broken sets from the last block, say frozen throne. I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion, but you’ll have to twist and contort yourself a lot more to do so.
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Some of these are not worthless as you claim. I can only speak for the one’s I know of but…
Saw play in Baku Rogue before nerf
Was being experimented with in Shudderwock Shaman prior to it’s nerf. Not sure if it would have made the cut or not unlike above which was being actively used.
Umm… for now on many of these:
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Zentinmo was seeing play prior to Shudderwock Nerfs in the primary list
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Krag’wa sees play currently in a tier 3 deck and will possibly become staple in a tier 2 next year
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Undatakah is used in a tier 2 deck and has the most potential of any of these cards
You say meme on some of these? Maybe now but not since RR
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Thekal & Shirvallah were both used in a tier 2 deck prior to the Equality nerf
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Oodansta has seen usage in DR Hunter. It might not be the primary list but I wouldn’t call it meme either. It is better against certain decks and, I think, was better before the first nerf rounds
I’d be willing to bet that Rumble is the most used set next year of the three released now that Genn/Baku were HoF. Rumble has a lot of decent cards that, like most of Raven, were overshadowed.
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Not to mention that cards can only be deemed worthless after experimentation, which is not something a F2P player can do much of. The card collection size, and its implications, are the biggest difference between being F2P or not.
But then, why would anyone pay money if everything was available for free?
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Not only that but had you assumed that Blizzard was not going to do two nerfs this expansion, which was unprecedented at the time, both Shrivallah and Thekal would have been good crafts.
The were in tier 2 decks and one of which, Holy Wrath, had a chance to survive the rotation. The core of the deck, outside of Tarim, was going to remain and would have only really needed a replacement of some sort for (6-mana buff, name escapes me atm) and it would have been in decent shape.
Would it have personally been my first craft for a deck to survive rotation? No, but it would have probably been in my top-5 at that point in time.
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I did K&C just for fun.
PLAYED Epics in K&C life span: Branching Paths, To My Side, Dragons Fury, Call to Arms, Level Up, Scream, T. Acolyte, F. Strider, Evasion, Unstable Evolution, Voidlord, Cataclysm, Reckless Flurry, Cube, Spiteful, G. Archivist, A. Tyrant, Dragonhatcher, Void Ripper & Corridor Creeper.
21/27 (78%)
PLAYED Legendaries in K&C life span: Twig, Rhok, Kathrena, Aluneth, Alanna, Kingsbane, Sonya, Grumble, Skull, RIn, Zola, Togwaggle & Oakheart.
13/23 (57%)
And that before meme cards like Runespear, Lynessa & Valanyr are accounted for, iirc I think Ixlid was being used in Maly Druid for a brief period, but I am letting that one slide.
As Lykotic said/implied, we simply dont know how many of the claimed “useless” cards from RR wil be needed before it rotates next year.
E: on Lykotics advisement I moved Unstable Evo. to used as it was a T2 deck in BDP era.
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I’ll grant that usefulness to a meta sometimes waxes or wanes, and it’s not always a hard line where it’s entirely accurate to say a card is “completely useless for all time”. Given that degree of mutability, all anyone can really do is evaluate whether a card is useless right now … and by that metric I stand by the list. Like Obi-Wan said though … sometimes whether one sees a card as useless or not is dependent on a certain point of view. One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that.
However, the larger argument here is whether or not a person “needs” to collect all the cards. That’s what the Price Whiners are saying, and it’s why they prefer to use “total dust crafting cost” as their yardstick. Their position is that they “need” to buy (or craft) 100% of every single card in the meta because all those cards are an absolute necessity or they might as well not play the game at all.
The response to that point is … bologna. Many (and arguably MOST) of the Legendaries/Epics in every expansion are safe to avoid. It is not necessary for them to blow the most amount of money/gold/dust that is possible to spend in an effort to chase down every single one of these cards.
Rather - it is quite safe to just ignore the vast majority of them and instead just sit on your dust (as I do) and only craft a few of the more important ones as the meta develops. There’s no need to overspend to get the last, most expensive 15% of the cards in a set simply for the sake of having them. That’s because the vast bulk of them will either (1) never be used, or (2) will only be used in Tier 3-4 meme decks, or (3) will only rise to prominence by pure happenstance. And if #3 happens - you just craft what you need/want when the time comes. No need to pretend your dust is burning a hole in your pocket and craft them all on day 1 without knowing if they’ll ever have any value or not.
No, but it would have probably been in my top-5 at that point in time.
Which is why I have gotten into the habit of never crafting anything until at least 1 month has passed in a new meta. I used to wait for 2 weeks. Recent events have taught me to be even more circumspect. In fact, for RR I haven’t crafted a single card except for a couple Epics and 1 Legendary. And I don’t think I will. I think I’ll squat on my dust until a month after “Expansion X” in April.
Do you want me to do KFC as well? Whats bologna is using the most recent set and claiming these cards are trash when its still got over a year in standard. Use a set about to rotate and account for the entire lifespan of the set - whats useless today (To MySide, for example) might be useful tomorrow (pre-nerf Feb '19).
Do you have a crystal ball? Can you guarantee the cards you list as trash today wont see play in the next year? If not, the only FAIR analysis is to use the sets which are rotating from standard in a month or so.
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OK. Let’s do that with the oldest set that it rotating out.
IRRELEVANT OR SUBSTITUTABLE FOR ENTIRE HISTORY (24 - 48%)
Emerald Hive Queen, Gluttonous Ooze, Tortllian Primalist, Voraxx (L), Ozruk (L), Living Mana, Giant Anaconda, Jungle Giants(L), Dinomancy, Swamp King (L), Pyros (L), Primalfin, Last Kaliedosaur (L), Glimmerroot, Biteweed, Sherazin (L), Spirit Echo, Stone Sentinel, Bloodbloom, Chittering Tunneler, Lakkari Sacrifice (L), Clutchmother Zavas (L), Explore Ungoro, Sudden Genesis
LOW RELEVANCE (7 - 14%)
Tyrantus (L), Stampede, Marsh Queen (L), Dinosize, Awaken the Makers (L), Unite the Murlocs (L), King Mosh (L)
MODERATE RELEVANCE (5 - 10%)
Bright Eyed Scout, Gentle Megasaur, Bittertide Hydra, Hemet, Caverns Below
RELEVANT MOST OF THE TIME (13 - 26%)
Blazecaller, Charged Devilsaur, Primordial Drake, Spiritsinger Umbra, Elise, Primodian Glyph, Meteor, Tarim, Shadow Visions, Lyra Sunshard, Vilespine, Kalimos, Fire Plume’s Heart
For the sake of discussion I’ll just round it and call it 60% “Trash” and 40% “Not-Trash” for the JtU set when the entire history of the meta is considered. That over-simplifies it a bit, but it’s a convenient way to rough-cut and it’s not wrong.
So about 60% of the Epic/Legendary cards for JtU were either safe to ignore for the entire history of the expansion, or were so low-priority that they could be subbed out, replaced, or not included without substantively impacting any of the decks a person might have built that could have included them.
Faced with this information (which is generally applicable to all expansions), a player has a couple choices when deciding to invest in a Hearthstone Expansion.
OPTION ONE: ALL IN
A player could decide, “Well, I will never know what is going to be relevant or not, so I better just get EVERYTHING so I never have to think about it.” On the 1st day of an expansion’s release they spend $150+ dollars to get 250 packs which lets them randomly get or craft every single Epic and Legendary card in this set. This player has the ability to build any deck they want as the meta changes.
However, this flexibility comes at the expense of knowing that they are expending a huge amount of resources to obtain a set of cards that on average they know will be largely irrelevant to their decks for the 2-year period of time. It represents a huge investment for very little to zero return. He can bulid anything he wants, but he paid a large premium for that flexibility, and most of the money is wasted on cards that will never rise to relevance.
OPTION TWO: THE SMART PLANNER
This player simply buys 80 packs with free quest gold. Those 80 packs and Blizzard’s freebies give the player all the commons, all the rares, 18-20 Epics, 6-8 Legendaries, and about 3,000 dust from duplicates.
Using what cards the player has, they can build many of the decks in every meta - but not “all” of them. However, by waiting and watching the meta to make targeted crafts at relevant times, then can build a large number of the meta decks as well as any number of partly to mostly optimized decks. They are not able to build every single deck that becomes meta relevant as the meta changes, but they can build enough of them to always be able to compete and have plenty of variety. And they can do it without having to spend a penny.
Now … given these two options, why in the world would a person who is concerned about price elect to go with Option One when Option Two gives them most of what they want for nothing? The people who want to close that 20-30 card gap of 60% irrelevant Epics/Legendaries are the Whales and Pros.
Whoah there.
How many packs are you considering within these freebies that are available during expansion launch? I ask because as someone who for several expansions now has opened at LEAST 140 packs on launch day, those first 80 or so packs (in every expansion in 2018) were a very far cry from the results you’re claiming here. Heck, even at 140 packs there were still rares I didn’t have, and at 80 packs I was still only on legendary #4 (this is WITH the free one upon login) not to mention my spare dust from duplicates alone being less than 2k each time.
I’m not making the argument that the game is hostile toward free players or anything - quite the opposite in these kind of threads - but those numbers you’re presenting seem massively inflated.
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Fair enough. My recommendation had always been to wait until the first nerf wave if dust was an issue for myself or someone else. So after the Kingsbane/Shudderwock nerfs I would have been screwed out of dust had I wanted to craft either of the Paladin decks. I had the pieces but I was preoccupied with Hakkar anyways, lol.