I’d argue the signature and diamond cards are close enough to be fairly priced if the barometer is looking at other card games if not on the slightly more expensive side considering we can’t trade or sell them. There are other logistics involved in opening signature cards and how you could price them compared to how fair pull rates are compared to a game like getting signature (signed) cards in Weiss-Schwarz, but overall I would say that high rarity alt-art cards being priced at what is probably $15 seems fine. Although we don’t physically own these cards to buy, sell, or trade, we are also not spending $40-$500 on single copies of cards like we might be in other card games. There’s also no risks associated with financial losses (but there is the risk of loss of service).
That said, the hero portraits are probably the things that are priced worse than signature or diamond cards. They’re about as expensive as skins you’d buy in MOBA games. You could argue that the voice acting done on them is what drives the price up since it can’t be the artwork or the VFX (the VFX take less time than the actual artwork and other games have portrait artwork as well – one of the drawing factors of League skins, arguably). But then you look at the industry and how much VAs are paid and it’s very likely that, given the industry standard, that the VAs are probably not paid very much at all. So what’s driving the price for hero skins? It’s obvious that the driving price for skins is simply that Blizzard feels like charging these prices and there is a threshold they can maintain of low value and low cost that so far players have found agreeable.
Basically, the hero skins are probably the most overpriced things in HS but people accept it because for the most part people are willing to part with $10 to look at artwork of a character they enjoy during however many hours they play this game. So proportionally hero skins are probably the worst deal if we compare it to what other games offer. The interesting thing is that the alternate art cards are probably the most reasonable things that are priced aside from pre-order bundles which are honestly amazing value and the mini-sets and yet it’s things like signature and diamond cards that the community has an issue with for some reason.
And by “some reason” I mean it’s probably because these high rarity cards are so detached from the price of other cards that it seems outlandish that they could be priced at roughly $15 whereas skins are all more or less priced relative to each other with $5-$10 adjustments and some even being “free” with gold. It maybe seems worse when you consider that they are ALWAYS bundled with packs from the set that a player might not want if they already have most or all of the cards from that set, and so instead of paying just a flat $15 for a signature you’re paying $25-$50 for a signature and cards you might not even need. The packs bundled in do fall in line with the cost of other bundles in the store so that’s not where value is lost, it’s really just a combination stark contrast between high value cards, the fact that they are random, and packs which might not be useful for people who save gold, buy pre-order bundles, or are successful in arena regularly.
Basically, the issue isn’t that players are unwilling to spend money (there are those who are – they’re not part of the conversation), the issue is that there are no alternatives to buying signature and diamond cards without also purchasing pack bundles and that is a limiting factor for people especially when shop products might not be appropriately regionally priced (this is to prevent abuse of exchange rates). So someone might be willing to spend $15 for an alternate art of a card they really like because they play a certain deck for 1-5 hours a day but they can’t justify all the risks associated with the current purchase model. People who are fortunate enough to wave away prices and costs and diminishing returns are, like the people who are unwilling to spend any sort of money, also not part of the conversation.
Does this perspective change anything for anybody here who feels on the fence about in-game purchases for premium product?
You are trying to rationalize/normalize things that are not food/shelter/healthcare. If what they are selling does not affect the play or outcome of this entertainment product who cares?
They are exploiting people who have some collecting/hoarding problem that can’t control themselves. They just make more digital products that those people feel compelled to buy. For everyone who isn’t affected by this the value to them is zero.
I am detailing the comparative costs of like-product between various games to help give perspective on people who only play HS and have no sense of the environment on what seems like a bad deal and what isn’t.
You turned it to some pseudo-intellectual, moral dilemma about someone who can actually articulate these things is ‘the bad guy.’ Get your head checked.
What you are actually doing, is venting about how you think the cosmetics are overpriced:
But you’re being entirely dishonest about it. You’re employing an excessive word count to smokescreen how you want to vent without being called out on it:
Yea, nice exclusionary clause, man. Real cute.
Unfortunately for you however, there’s nothing in the forums CoC nor the game/service’s ToS that says I have to fall within your personal parameters just to discuss your post. You can have your opinion, but you’re still going to get feedback and there’s no guarantee it will be aligned with your feelings. As long as the feedback isn’t obviously malignant nor malicious, it’s fair game, and on that point:
Being verbose just for the sake of it is one of, if not the textbook sign of pseudo-intellectualism. It’s like you slipped and fell into a thesaurus and your thinly veiled knock on my mental state did not go unnoticed.
Blizzard made more than $1 billion revenue with Hearthstone. In terms of production quality, it’s one of the cheapest games on the market with very low maintenance costs. There wasn’t a single tech update in 11 years.
We don’t have an ingame decktracker, no profile stats (including leaderboards with a search bar), no replay mode, no tournament mode. We didn’t get a new board this expansion, customer support was diminished and the last 3 expansions were released with tons of translation issues, many still not fixed.
I buy some arena entries then and when, but that’s all that Blizzard gets. No pre-orders, no packs, no skins, no bundles.
If you want Bugthesda to care about bugs, you have to kill the entire modding community that propped up around them. They tried to assimilate that and get money for it, twice, and it nearly killed their entire company, twice. So now they just went back to not caring about it. “The modders will fix it” might as well be their corporate motto, ™’d and everything.
Similarly, what incentive does Blizzard have to do literally anything they can’t directly monetize with minimal effort?
It’s not a humanist perspective, or even a consumerist one. And I do find it morally reprehensible, truly I do. I rank it right up there with shrinkflation or surge pricing. These are concepts that shouldn’t be concepts in our lexicon.
However, much like the “28oz for the price of 32oz” gatorade I bought after grabbing a burger at Wendy’s for lunch on Friday, HS is a luxury item for me. If it came down to brass tacks I could cut it out entirely. I’d rather NOT do that, but I could if pressed.
I reserve my “call to action / rally the bases” rhetoric for things a few magnitudes more problematic, psycho/socio/economically speaking, than “hey this Ragnaros skin is kinda mid for the sticker price…”
I could write an entire essay here about art, game design & legacy, but Blizzard (or HS in particular) isn’t worth that time.
All I can say is that I am the closest I’ve ever been to quitting Hearthstone. The game once was some sort of art and very entertaining, but now it operates more in the realms of gambling and is clearly aiming for max profit / min effort.
Blizzard can do whatever they want. But I can do too, and if their products don’t match my quality standards anymore, I’ll simply move away and give my money to other companies that still have the fire and passion going, creating entertaining games that you’ll happily remember many years later.
The post is lengthy because it’s not a simple conversation. People are constantly complaining about certain prices in Hearthstone while also buying what are, in my opinion, some of the least forgiving products in terms of parity to other games. At the same time some of these prices are reasonable. I am outlining where I think the distinction is.
“Real cute” because you are butthurt? The fact is that these two groups aren’t included in the conversation either because some people are strictly f2p and have zero intention of ever spending money (some people are just miserly) and some people have zero concern for however things are priced. This post isn’t meant to reach either group because the post can’t reach either, nor will any other post. People who are on the fence on whether they need help deciding if spending their money is done for all kinds of things. Stock, gaming consoles, PCs purchases. Hell, PC parts has an entire community and content creation SPECIFICALLY about cost versus performance.
Except for the part where I made a whole post detailing the nuances of how someone may or may not justify an in-game purchase? Want to talk about pseudo-intellectualism? Check and see what a strawman fallacy is.
Your entry post was literally accusing my post of being some absolute moral hill (which is ridiculous – you wouldn’t be saying so dumb when people are doing stock analytics) OR accusing me of presuming I’m an authority who is telling people what to do. Quote in my post where I told people to spend their money (or not to). All I did was draw parity between MOBA skins (League specifically), pricing in other card games, and detailed the differences and similarities between all of these different properties. Go back to school.
Actually I would. My favorite part of Dark Knight Rises is when Bane crashes the stock trade and goes “no money to steal? Then why are you people here?”
Sure it is. “Shop pricing - Fair or Not?” Is the title. But in the body you only literally asked one single question:
This means you were literally writing a persuasive essay, with implied goal of “changing something” for “anybody here who feels on the fence about in-game purchases for premium product.”
You’re not asking for a conversation. You’re asking if your argument convinced anyone to agree with your already long established POV. It certainly didn’t convince me.
And based on your other comment this seems to be a contradiction unless you are trying to say that ANYBODY sharing ANY opinion automatically makes them an authority which, by your words, makes them immoral.
People are welcome to discuss differences of perspective, that’s why it’s a forum post and not an article in a publication. If you wanted to pull up some numbers for products to discuss pricing parity and how I could be wrong with drawing similarities then you’re welcome to do that. Like if I’m wrong tell me how I’m wrong. Saying some vague moral BS about how I’m equivalent to a racist because “only the Sith deal in absolutes” isn’t the win you think it is.
Are you arguing from the context of a morality? You seem to say you aren’t.
Are you arguing from the context of authority? You seem to say you aren’t.
Therefore, you are expressing an opinion, and I disagree with your opinion.
To this, you replied, and I quote you, in full:
Which is a throwaway sarcastic barb, so I responded in kind.
THEN you get indignant, with THIS post, quoted in full:
And that’s where the mud started being slung.
This entire fiasco is on your hands, here. You posted a diatribe, I responded “cool story but it’s just an opinion” and you got uppity with “well you’re just a party pooper fake smart.”
If you’d like to have intelligent discourse, we could try to wipe the slate and start over. If you’d instead like to continue to be extra then you’re going to get nothing but california sass thrown right back atcha.