So during the April 22 Dev Q&A session, the developers confirmed that there are no plans for a “No Extra Epics” rule, similar to the “No Duplicate Legendary” rule, on the horizon.
This is understandable given that (1) the monetization strategy is to sell card packs, and a no extra Epics rule would necessarily sell less packs; and (2) the justification for the No Duplicate Legendary rule was that opening a new legendary should be exciting and special, which is less applicable to Epic cards. Blizzard is a for profit company and I can respect how they choose to go about monetizing their product.
But what about a “No Extra Golden” rule instead? I don’t think it would undermine pack sales and would reinforce how special golden cards are. Moreover, it would build goodwill with the community, similar to the No Duplicate Legends rule, which I remain grateful for.
I envision the application of the “No Extra Golden” rule in two tiers: (1) New golden cards would be for an incomplete playsets, (2) else if all cards for a rarity are present, then it would be for an incomplete golden playset of the same rarity.
This would have little to no economic impact on the business model, since the most common benefit would be for completing common and rare collections. However, it would make opening golden cards more special. Golden commons and rares would very frequently help pull the last remaining missing cards of those rarities from a set. Golden epics would be guaranteed to be new. Opening a golden card would warrant the Innkeeper’s excited exclamations.
The other beneficiary would be for whales trying to go for full (golden) collections. They would have to spend far less to achieve their goal, but morally I think milking whales is one of the less defendable monetization strategies of the freemium model. Lowering the cost to completion may also incentivize dolphins to turn into whales if achieving a full golden collection is reduced. Flattening the distribution of whales would probably be a good thing in general.
Lastly, it may incentivize players to keep golden cards, rather than trade them for dust, causing the initiative to potentially pay for itself.
2 Likes
A no-epic-dup is as necessary as the leg one: it is out of question that for a committed player during the 4 months of an exp, epics drop on an average of 9 days (450golds from quests + some from playing) and it absolutely should be a rewarding and fun experience.
Let me tell you of my 17 copies of 3 different epics during the boom exp. I quitted afterwards.
1 Like
-
The second reply in this thread is probably your alt. Come on dude, it wouldn’t be surprising.
-
Why do you hate Dust? Pulling an extra epic, or pulling something Golden= dust in the bank, meaning you go and craft the card you really want.
In summary, ahhhhh I disagree. I disagree entirely. I’m being nice about how I’m saying this too…
I don’t hate dust. My recommendation if implemented would actually increase the dust value of packs for the playerbase as a whole. I think that it is objectively better for players to have a rule in place to protect players from pulling extra cards than not having one.
Given that the disenchantment to crafting ratio ranges from 2:1 to 10:1, disenchanting cards and crafting cards is far less efficient than pulling the card from a pack.
The simplest case is with the No Duplicate Legendary rule Blizzard implemented when the Frozen Throne came out. Some guy did a Monte Carlo Simulation, and his conclusions suggests that you need on average 30 packs less from an expansion to complete the set, and you would end up getting about 5 extra legendaries. So you’re better off having the No Duplicate Legendary rule in the long run because you won’t be disenchanting and crafting legendaries (basically a loss of 1200 dust every time). Each pack you open is worth more dust on average with the rule in place than without.
Preventing Golden cards from being extra copies of commons and rares makes pulling the one you want just a little easier. It really sucks to craft common or rare cards, and my recommendation would alleviate the need (if you open more than 100 or so packs anyways).
It does make the decision to disenchant a little bit tougher, in the same way the No Duplicate Legendary rule did as well. Golden cards wouldn’t be auto-disenchant, but if they plug a hole in a collection, then the player still has the option to disenchant it if they want. They never lose that option. They just need to decide how important it is to have a play set of that golden card, and if they don’t need it then they can disenchant as if the rule wasn’t there in the first place.
In summary, I’m confused as to why you think my recommendation could in any way be harmful to the playerbase.
i think bliz should have done the epic thing. they didnt say why they wont but its because theyre dumb and greedy. your idea is next best thing. i fully support it but blizzard wont do it because they are still dumb and unreasonably greedy
1 Like
I think there’s different departments and specializations within the Hearthstone team, and it’s the financial analysts who run the cost-benefit analysis of card acquisition rules, rather than a developer or card designer.
I respect that Hearthstone is a for profit venture, and that pack sales support the talented artists, card designers, programmers and all the other staff who help create the game we all enjoy. So I can understand how the finance guys may be wary of making changes to their monetization strategy that would necessarily reduce pack sales.
I’m proposing the Extra Golden protection rule as a more modest change which would partially help the players make progress on their collections and not upset sales of card packs.
they are supposed to make money out of the game …