It’s been calculated that a new player needs to open about 200 packs to be able to have enough dust for crafting a competitive class deck in Standard.
That’s not a cheap price for entry.
Plus, new players will try out before paying big money. They will be discouraged by the rank system and lack of guidance in the game.
Pretty much why the game is not adding new players faster than losing them.
By whom? According to what reasoning?
I don’t think this is the main reason this game is not picked up by new players, but it is a contributor.
I think if you ask a random player what do they think of
Team 5 puts in a reasonable amount of effort into balancing the game.
Playing Hearthstone can be a form of skill expression.
Both will come back with answers in the negative the majority of time.
These are probably two of the most important questions to answer in the positive if you want to attract new players that will sink in a large amount of time or resources into mastering a new game.
So it just won’t happen when these type of players ask around and all they hear is how Hearthstone is all RNG with little thought put into balance.
It isn’t adding because it’s a card game.
Like…
Any New player really gives a damm about what is the meta ?
Also let’s not forget that no player is doing anything “from scratch”.
Like seriously…
Giving a slighty suboptimal metadeck for free , give a decent amount of packs during the tutorial…
And you dare to call someone who got all that as “from the scratch”?
New players not stay in the game because it isn’t fun. It’s that simple.
And it isn’t fun because blizzard insists that decks with little to no learning curve are good for new players.
They aren’t. They make new players get bored that is sincerely a far worse sensation than lose non stop.
Start deleting stuff like dragon golem(yes , i said delete) and be careful to never print stuff with so little learning curve again that things will get better over time.
With duplicate protection and all the sales that have appeared, along with the superior rewards track I am sorry but you are just cheap. The game is fine price wise.
I mean you’re not wrong, it IS expensive. With that said, you’d be surprised how much cheaper HS is than basically every other card (at least ones that are alive), by comparison.
I will say your metric is a bit off though since those packs will have the majority of cards you need to build at least a single deck, so it’s not like you need to convert the average dust of 200 packs to build a deck. $200 in packs is basically equivalent to getting 2 large pre-order bundles and 1 regular bundle for a new expansion, and if you used that conversion for say, 3 different expansions, you’d definitely have more than 1 deck (you can basically get 90% of an expansion’s collection through a large bundle).
Combine that with reward tracks and you can get anywhere from 50-100 packs over the course (depending on completion and if you are on the free reward track or not). All of this said, assuming you spent $200 on bundles and completed either reward track, you’ll be at a good place playing competitively while having dust to craft just from duplicates, not including any cards you choose to dust after.
Compare that with Lorcana and you’ll be amazed that a Hades – Infernal Schemer was a $30 card (non-foil). Maleficent was a $40 card (non-foil), YGO is having HUGGGGGGGE issues with pricing right now as deck CORES are reaching up to the $800 mark (so not including staples, extra deck, or secondary/ tertiary engines, or side deck cards), and MTG is pricing itself out of everything that isn’t a part of core releases with side-sets having $15-$30 packs that nobody is buying.
That’s not to say these other games don’t have their problems, they’re in fact much worse and are suffering for it, but even comparing it to games historically and the pricing of where card games as a genre have been, Hearthstone is pretty lenient. It’s crazy to think that diamond cards are the big ticket items and they usually are priced at around $15-$20; meanwhile, S:P Little Night is encroaching $140.
My point is that card games are expensive. They are WAYYYYYYY more expensive than basically any other game just at a playable level, not regarding any collecting. Yeah other hobbies can get there too but you consider the R&D and testing that go into card games and compare that to fully developed video games costing $60-$70 and you start to realize they’re all hugely overpriced. Spending $140 for a box of cards when I could pick up BG3 AND Spider-Man 2? Yeah within that frame of reference of course card games are scams.
Hmm.
I think technically I mostly disagree with this. I think that most players benefit pretty hard from a low skill floor deck that’ll let them have a reasonable winrate as they see more and more of other decks.
However, I think the real concept to understand here is player agency. Some players react very negatively to the feeling that their way is forced. I’m willing to bet that the very first time that you personally played the Stanley Parable you went straight to the employee lounge. Well, as an alternative for those types you want some deck that’s both very cheap on Dust and unusually skill intensive to pilot. Something that specifically plans for the minority of players who despise the main choice offered to them.
In all honesty, what most players want is … surprisingly irrelevant. I’ve read some interviews with the Baldur’s Gate 3 devs and one of their most fascinating obsessions is finding the weird paths that less than 1% of players will find and fully fleshing out the consequences of those niche choices. The point of that isn’t just mindlessly catering to the majority, but catering a little to the majority and then also the largest group that wasn’t catered to in the first move, then the largest group that wasn’t catered to in the second move, and so on, until 100% are catered to.
So the low learning curve deck isn’t actually a problem. It’s good for many and, let’s be real, you ENJOY being offered it because you WANT to reject it. It feels good to reject it. But if that deck isn’t for you then there needs to be an option that is.
Look…
There is a difference between popular and create a shadow over players experience.
Many players basically get stuck when they start to progress in the game exactly because they played that type of deck.
1.The person wanting to explore don’t find anyone playing different stuff because those decks infest lower ranks being forced to play against those nonstop at low rank ranked.
2.The player who you said that “benefits” eventually gonna hit a wall that it will not be able to pass because a deck babysitted him to a rank where he just isn’t part as a player.
3.The game looks extra boring for who is looking from the outside.
Basically those decks deal with a problem creating multiple new ones.
Also i feel like i’m being slighty misunderstood:
There is plenty of room between dragon druid and garrote rogue.
Hearthstone not needs to turn into rocket science but the actual near 0 learning curve of certain decks is bad for everyone.
Even the ones they’re supposed to help if you look for the long run.
then explain how i can build meta decks without having spent 200
ive only spent 20 on the last 2 expansions(reward tracks)
I think this is all just not true tbh. I dunno who measured that or how long ago but new players can craft a competitive deck basically from the start with zero money spent, just playing a few hours. And now they have catch-up packs, which give you 50 cards per pack. I think they give away a couple of those for free from the start nowadays. You craft treant druid and you are good to go, in less than a day you can probably craft another meta deck easily.
Price that time at $15/hr and then I think you have a fair cost estimate. Time isn’t free.
Bruh games aren’t jobs. Taking a time is money view for a passtime is silly.
Consumer =/= supplier.
I think that most players including me have forgot that this is a collectable card game. Sometimes we just cant have it ALL
Scrotie, stop that stupid argument. By that logic YOU should be paid when going to the cinema not other way around. This is most idiotic argument you can make about activities which are supposed to entertain you. If you start to evaluate the time spent on said activity like you do it is time to leave it for good…
A better analogy would be: imagine that in order to see the movie you wanted to see at the cinema, you first had to watch a movie that you had no interest whatsoever in seeing. Would you still pay the same price for a ticket?
The quality of the time before you have the necessary components for your deck is not the same as the quality of the time after you have those components. Although I imagine that it’s possible that one might enjoy the former anyway, for a lot of people it’s just a grind.
I imagine that some people also enjoy the work that makes them money.
I can hack that technocratic mind of yours on this concept very easily.
Think of it as training lessons: you train you mind inside card games.
So it’s either balanced or it depends on if you pay lesson fees.
To be honest, back when I started, HS was the most fun for me specifically because it was interesting to build the collection - I needed to grind, I needed to think about the game, about decks I want to play and I can play, I was limited usually to 1-2classes during the first year (mage and rogue), I was super excited when I got rare/epic I wanted/needed, not even talking about legendaries, because I knew I could not get it otherwise and I was upset when I got some mediocre one.
Now, even as F2P, I can play any deck I want, I use mass opening without even looking at cards and I check it after I open everything, because it does not matter - I have more dust “than I can use” and only cards I am going through are legendaries, because I have all common and rares and 400 dust for epic does not matter to me anymore.
So yeah, while I did not have meta decks, it was fun constructing decks I could have and tinkering with them (elemental mage) and when I met somebody who had much stronger collection I envied them and I wanted to get there as well.
So yeah, for me it was the most fun part - maybe because there were not those lists of meta decks (or I was not searching for them).
I thought Blizzard gave a meta deck to all new player.
And with the reward of the game, you can play optimal deck for 2/3 class as a new player.
What is expensive is having access to any standard deck for any of the 11 classes.
You don’t buy power in hearthstone, you buy deck diversity.
hhmm you are probably lying usually when people talk about the cost mention duplicate protection the tutorial rewards and the free deck
since nothing about all that was mentioned i cant trust what its written on the OP