I started playing Hearthstone right around the beginning of 2018. I first bought standard card packs with amazon coins, which is the cheapest way to do it. After a decent standard card deck cards was established I then proceeded to buy every promo event on sale. Therefore, I always bought both bundles for the expansions releases to get as many legendary cards as possible, and epics. This also involved saying up lots of gold from doing daily quests. By doing this I was able to have almost all the cards per expansion because I opened over 200 packs of cards. My ultimate goal was to reach legend. I found this goal to be very difficult. However, 3 months ago I reached legend for the first time. I decided $900 later that I would not spend another penny on this game because it cost too much. Before anyone says it’s not pay to win well your wrong. If you want to play all the decks in the meta then you need a lot of cards. By playing all the decks out there in the meta I found it a lot easier to counter decks and predict outcomes on each turn. I kinda of feel sorry for the f2p that can’t play these other decks. As a free to play player your forced to play one or two classes and focus on them for building a deck. After the debacle that happened with this expansion I am glad I didn’t spend any money. I am slowly letting go of hearthstone because it cost just too much too keep up with the meta. Also, after grinding to 3 legend 3 months in a row I am feeling burned out. Also, I don’t understand why there is 100 gold limit per day, especially since you have to pick where you want to spend the gold? Either on new solo adventure content, battlegrounds, or cards packs for ranked. The limit should be much higher or non existent.
It’s pretty cheap to keep up once you have a good collection. But, yeah, it hurts the wallet to get started in Hearthstone unless you’re willing to play bad decks.
Wanting to play all the meta decks in all the meta doesn’t mean you have to win bro. F2p decks have made legend multiple times. I spend a lot on the game too, and frankly with the new trip protec rule on all rarities it is weird to me to see people go on about the price. There’s never been a better time to to get value for your money. I don’t know why the p2w complaint threads are just as prevelant as they always were. Shows people are never going to be happy imo.
Pretty cheap when you only play one class! I own the pieces to virtually every warlock deck I have ever come across, standard or wild, meme or meta- each expansion I buy the mega bundle, and sacrifice the other classes to craft every warlock card and every useable neutral.
Of course, I work 70+ hours a week. I don’t even have the time to play all the WARLOCK decks that I want to- much less branch out into other classes XD
Anyway, if you’re the type of person who just has to craft every meta deck in every standard rotation, you’re going to be spending a lot of money. I prefer to focus on wild decks that get a couple fun new cards each expansion, rather than crafting entire decks for a four month meta.
That’s exactly not what you say to start a good discussion lol.
“Before you even think of having another opinion, you are wrong!”
Well, what can I say to this well structured statement? Enjoy being wrong. Once again another person who doesn’t know what “pay to win” means. 
Because if Hearthstone is “pay to win” so is every single collectible and competitive card game out there. Both digital and physical, like Magic the Gathering, which I think is even more expensive than Hearthstone.
Exactly. The genre is built on it.
The reason Sirius made the statement he did is because it is not exactly a debatable point. From reading his comment I got the impression that he wanted to talk about the steep cost of the game and have a discussion on what Blizzard can do to make competitive ranked play available to f2p players.
Competitive ranked Hearthstone is absolutely a pay to play game. That’s not up for discussion it’s literally their business model and no one is faulting them for it.
There are two general types of in-game purchases that all microtransaction games are based on. Buyng cosmetics and buying power.
Buying packs of a new set is buying power.
People tend to conflate the term “pay to play” with “pay to win”. There is a huge difference and the distinction is very important.
Barring rare cercumstances you will need both money and skill to be able to compete in ranked hearthstone.
The reality is that unless you get lucky and at least one of the best decks in standard is inexpensive to craft then there is very little chance of a f2p player being able to consistently compete in the higher ranks.
Spending money on packs gets you a massive leg up on f2p by letting you gain access to the new cards faster than the players who don’t buy cards. Each match you play with those new cards is a learning moment that the other player cannot have until they can craft those cards.
The second reason you really need to put money into standard is that without being able to play the top meta decks you are significantly disadvantaged in that you will not have as good of a grasp on the curve, sequencing, mulligans, and outs of your opponents deck compared to a player who is able to play that deck.
This is a serious issue for the game and it’s something I believe they really need to work on.
Hearthstone could potentially adopt a similar deck rotation to the one that League of Legends uses for their characters.
Every week they could make a top standard deck free to play.
While giving returning players a free standard deck is a great way to give people a chance to jump back in I don’t think that really solves the issue here.
Giving every player a chance to try out the top decks in standard would not only help f2p players get some test runs in with decks they aren’t familiar with and don’t know how to pilot or play against, but it would also help players decide what deck or class they are interesting of crafting into over the season.
There have been some glaring efforts on behave of blizzard to pinch cash out of their player base recently and not only is it insulting to their player base, who like myself have dedicated a lot of time and money to the game, but it’s also just a really bad idea for player retention in the long run.
For instance the new system for Battlegrounds is so appalling that I will not play the format anymore.
At least with the original way perks were set up you could buy packs with gold to unlock them. Now you have to save up and spend essentially the equivalent of an entire solo adventure’s worth of gold just for a couple months of battleground perks instead of being able to spend that gold on packs.
Being stuck with picking between 2 hero’s when players with the pass get 4 is the most absurd off balance of power I’ve ever seen in any mode of hearthstone.
That’s not a perk by any definition it’s a handicap.
Blizzard needs to remedy these poor choices they’ve been making in regards to these power imbalances between p2p and f2p.
We’ve seen games fail time and time again when developers allow players to buy too much power, and it’s never easy to see coming. It’s a slow exodus of the f2p players that eventually leaves a game filled with only the die hard veterans and the new wealthy player bases left.
Don’t make this mistake blizzard. You’re better than this.
It isn’t though. There’s tons of guides out there showcasing budget decks that can be used to reach Legend rank. So you clearly can be successful without actually having to spend cash, provided you’re willing to limit yourself to a single class/deck. So unless you’re definition of “competitive ranked Hearthstone” is ridiculously narrow, it’s hard to argue that ranked Hearthstone is a p2w game.
Pay to win doesn’t mean that you can’t win unless you pay. It only means that you are disadvantaged if you don’t pay.
In high level magic the gathering pro play the top players always talk about that if you do not have access to all of the best decks in standard to do figorous testing with you will be tremendously disadvantaged compared to the players who have.
Now that’s not to say that you can’t win without that. Yes standard hearthstone has budget decks. Yes you can win on a budget.
No one is arguing that isn’t the case, but the reality is that you will be at a significant disadvantage if you are f2p and that simply isn’t a good model for the long term growth of the game.
People need to have a way to practice with the other decks in standard and I think a free deck rotation or even an unrestricted practice mode would be a good remedy for this issue.
No it doesn’t. Under such a ridiculously broad definition, practically any game is “p2w.” You do better in Overwatch if you pay more for a faster internet connection, does that make Overwatch “pay to win”?
I don’t play Overwatch so I don’t know how the power dynamics are tuned in that game.
Internet speed is an external factor and has nothing to do with the distribution of resources and access and availability of power in a game.
Think it should be changed from p2w…to pay to have fun/increase your chance fo win
still a lot more expensive than other games 
nope, you can spend thousands on fortnite or apex, you won’t get an advantage over others
exactly
But you’re implying that the limited amount of resources from being free to play puts a roadblock on players’ ability to progress. Which is obviously false (because, again, budget decks to Legend are a thing) unless you define “progress” as being at the very top of the ranked ladder.
Paying does mean you have access to greater diversity of cards, but that, by itself, doesn’t mean you’re at an advantage. You don’t need to play a meta deck to know how they operate when there are thousands of hours of recorded gameplay available that show you how they work, and lists online that show you the most likely cards in these decks.
Would it be nice to have a free deck rotation? Sure! That’s (kind of) what Whizbang the Wonderful gave us, and a card like that should be an evergreen card in my opinion. But I don’t think that, by itself, would make f2p players more competitive. It would give them more variety of play, but “variety of play” by itself is irrelevant to the p2w/f2p argument.
lol, how is it not an advantage if you have more card/deck choices than other players?
Because having access to a Tier 3 deck is pointless if you already have all (or even just 1-2) Tier 1 decks.
That’s how things currently work though. You get more than enough free packs and resources from daily quests/events in each expac to build multiple meta decks (including top contendors of the meta).
Ways to go, didn’t even sell your house yet.
Two reasons:
- As InfinityMin says, more choices doesn’t necessarily mean better choices.
- Practice makes perfect. If you wan’t to climb, you’re better off sticking with one solid deck and learning its ins and outs thoroughly, than you are jumping around three or four tier 1 decks and never really learning how to pilot them.
In order to reach legend you certainly don’t have to play every single deck in the meta. 1 or 2 are enough.
If you want to play more, it’s your choice. You won’t get an advantage over a player who has only 1 deck though.
This.
Hearthstone has a poor pricing model, but it’s fair to an F2P player. I’ve reached legend without paying a single cent, and many others had done it too.
If you want to start grinding to legend in your very first day, sure, there is a paywall there. Even then, the paywall is pretty small.
Hearthstone is inexcusably expensive for a collector, but not for a competitive player.