Right, because there’s clearly nothing worrying about Blizzard shifting the game model into one that’s more profit focused than it has ever been in the past right?
The fact of the matter is, this adventure is far more unfriendly towards free to play players than literally any content in the game in the past has been. Previous adventures have all either been free, or they had a reward that was objectively worth the gold invested to buy them (the adventure exclusive cards).
You may not care about the fact that free to play players now have to actively sabotage themselves if they want to enjoy a part of the game’s content (which, by the way, has never been the case in the past), but that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to care.
Your math is wrong. The 1600 gold lost is the difference between the cost of the solo account and the value of the card packs within (2800-1500) so those are not even in the calculation.
So what you are getting for that 1600 gold is actually:
new adventure to play
Two card backs
A golden classic pack
The Shadow Cloak, which lets you play around with a full golden deck.
Odds are if you have been around a while that golden classic pack is generally going to be “meh” at four commons and a rare (50*4+100 or 300 dust) Sure you might get lucky but I wouldn’t count on it. I don’t care about the “shiny” of a card only its functionality.
On the other hand, that would also mean missing out on potentially 16 RoS packs isn’t that big of a deal either. Someone who’s been around probably has enough gold (and dust) to get themselves quite a few RoS cards already.
For newer players the adventure is not a very appealing buy if they’re strictly aiming to build their collection up, but then flip side of this means the gap between new players and long time players is reduced. If new player doesn’t buy while the old timers do, that means the new players are catching up in collection faster. Oh and of course the first 3 free packs also helps the new player more than long time player.
So the positive side of the pricing scheme is that this adventurer helps new players. For new player, it’s 3 free packs, and it won’t kill you if you don’t buy the rest.
Not really. The average value of a pack is 105 dust, which means you’re losing 1680 by buying the adventure, minus whatever you get in the golden pack.
The problem with that is that the legendary that you get for finishing - Zayle, Shadow Cloak - is targeted precisely at new players. The decks are just good enough that they’ll be better than anything someone that has only been playing for a few months can make, but at the same time bad enough that they’ll lose to any netdeck. So a new player either has to miss the adventure and miss out on a legendary that would keep them competitive against other new players that do buy the adventure, or they can buy the adventure and be temporarily more competitive at their rank, but delay the time before they’re able to make a collection that’s competitive with other players even further, because they’re getting less packs than they should be.
Again, all of this could be fixed by making the legendary disenchantable. This would let new players get it, use it while it’s good enough for their rank, then disenchant it to make a better deck down the line. It also brings the adventure more in line with what the cost for value received should be for players buying with gold and gives some value for people buying with money.
What’s even the point of making the legendary impossible to disenchant, other than intentionally lowering the value of the rewards you get? Zayle will additionally only get more useless over time, when he’s moved into wild and is still only limited to an arbitrary set of cards from an arbitrary collection of expansions.
Sadly that’s not the case. New players that don’t buy the adventure won’t be competitive against others at their rank that do buy it - and get Zayle in the process - and those that do buy it will take longer to be competitive with older players.
So, in summary…
It’s a bad deal for new players whether or not they buy the adventure
It’s a bad deal for old free to play players if they buy the adventure
It’s a good deal for players purchasing the adventure with money
Not really to your not really, 1680 is enough to craft just one legendary + change. If there is one legendary you really wanted to craft (maybe because it’s a key legendary to a netdeck), players who have been around should have crafted it already.
Normal Zayle may be targeted at new players, but finishing Heist gives you GOLDEN Zayle. Golden, as in like the very opposite of being for new players.
New players can craft regular Zayle from dust… though new players wouldn’t have much dust anyway. So really, I’d argue Zayle and Wizzbang are actually NOT targeted at new players period. New players are better off experimenting with whatever cards they got to get a feel of the game (and don’t be afraid to use deck helper), or focus entirely on crafting a single netdeck and master it.
No, it is the case, because I never said new players would become competitive. I said they’re being helped. And they are. That is the case.
Best adventure was Frozen Throne, it was FREE folks, Blizzard is charging us for something that they gave us for free in the past and you fanboys are just claping and throwing money without think about it. At least give us new cards in the wings if it goona cost 700 gold like old adventures. Its a gold sink.
Honestly, that would just be worse. As a f2p player, I have the option to not buy the adventure. Imagine if they remove evil miscreant from ROS packs and give it out as the rewards of the fifth wing. I will be very sad
Since when is a legendary not much?? On average you get 60 gold per day for doing your daily quest. The conversion rate of gold to dust once you have most of the cards is about 1:1 What that means in practice is that when you have most of the cards for an expansion you still need to do about 30 quests to get enough dust for a legendary. A free to play player will have most of the cards (effectively meaning all the commons and a majority of the rares) from an expansion about 2 months in, so they can basically expect enough dust to make 2-3 legendaries per expansion… unless they buy this adventure, in which case they’ll have enough for 1-2. And that’s if they never miss a single quest
In what world is this insignificant??? It’s a difference of -50 to -100% in terms of legendaries you can make without having to disenchant your cards.
I’m sorry, but that’s just silly. What are you even talking about? Why would Zayle being golden mean it’s less intended for new players?? That’s just about the weirdest argument I’ve heard all month. What matters for new players is how much a card costs for them to get, and how impactful it is without requiring (many) other cards. Yeah, sure, crafting golden cards is not a good idea for new players. BECAUSE GOLDEN CARDS NORMALLY COST TWICE AS MUCH. But that’s not the case here. Golden Zayle and regular Zayle effectively cost the same amount of dust, so again, why is regular Zayle better for new players than golden Zayle is?? I swear, some people need to take a logic class.
You don’t need to say it because it’s common sense. Hearthstone is a competitive game. The objective of every match is winning against your opponent. Making them more competitive (whether it’s by increasing their card collection, teaching them about the game or giving them a deck directly) IS helping them.
THAT is the actual case.
That bothers me too, I’m all for giving companies some slack when it comes to the way they make money from their products, but in this case they’re literally just charging us for content we’ve gotten for free every time for the past year, and it’s far from being the best version of the content we’ve received so far (or at least far from being the most original and creative, since “best” is more subjective).
The best adventures were Curse of Naxxramas, Blackrock Mountain , The League of Explorers, and One Night in Karazhan.
They originally cost gold as well as money
You knew exactly what cards you were getting.
Completing each wing got you a specific (generally good) legendary
On the developer side it was far easier to design a set in terms of balance as there were few total cards.
Fewer total cards meant you got a legendary every 15 or so cards (ie equivalent to 3 packs)
Before anyone talks about how the current sets have more cards I’d rather have 10 troy pounds of gold then 100 avoirdupois pounds of crap with 1 troy pound of gold buried in it.
personally I just dont understand why it cost anything. there not any real reason for a sane person to spend real money for it, its doesn’t make any sense. You get 60 gold per day for free, let not talk about how easy you can get those dailies completed (trade with friend, play against yourself), I mean I just don’t get it.
Why should I farm and “grind” for something that has NO VALUE
for those who say, it is “good” value, how can you put “good” value on something that has no value to start with?
Blizzard is just prying on your impatience and moneying it with pay to skip.
Don’t spend real money for free stuff
Erm… I didn’t say that? This is the second time you either misinterpret what I said or are putting words in my mouth.
I said for someone who’s been around, they should have already obtained the important legendaries they wanted already, be it from lucky opening packs or using their stock of gold/dust. Ergo, this 1680 dust/1 legendary would have gone towards a less important legendary, and thus it’s not that “big of a deal” if they don’t get that less important legendary
In the real world.
In the real world, pity timers exist. Pity timer means you get a legendary within 10 packs, then from there around every 20 packs. Using your 60 gold per day (which isn’t the only source of income, more on that below) and an expansion being ~120 days, that’s 7200 gold or 72 packs. With pity timer alone that’s 4 legendaries.
In the real world, people can get lucky, but I’ll leave that out.
In the real world, everybody gets free legendaries (vargoth, a random one or two when expansion is released), so you’re now at least 6
In the real world, you have income beyond dailies
Challenge a Friend quest from other people can go on top of your own dailies
Tavern brawl is a free pack a week. Whenever they do heroic brawl you usually get at least one pack + a bit more dust/gold, if you’re particularly good on the free run you can make more than that.
There’s occasionally Choose your Champion or other events (like, say, Heist giving out 3 free packs from first wing) for a few more packs.
That should push you to 7 legendaries before considering crafting, so it’s not 50%-100%, more like 12-15%
Is 15% significant? It… actually depends. Are you missing a Dr Boom or a Glass Knight? Leeroy or Cho? In the real world, it’s not the quantity of cards you have, but the quality as well.
And in the real world, non-legendary cards matter too. A deck with 1 good legendary but 29 other crap cards isn’t better than a deck with 30 decent non-legendary cards. So this further makes the “15%” a useless metric to use to measure significance.
In the real world, not all competitive decks require the same number of legendaries. If you’re free to play and are unlucky with what legendaries you get from packs, the realistic thing to do is to go after the cheaper decks you can build, not yearn and kill yourself over the ones you can’t.
And that’s a general good rule in the real world, not just in HS or other F2P games: love what you have, not what you want.
If you don’t even understand what I’m talking about, it’s rather premature for you to dismiss it as silly.
Golden cards are more expensive for little reason other than cosmetic bling. Ergo it’s meant for players who really have more money than sense, not new players trying to maximize efficiency.
…yeah, and golden Z costs more than regular Z. Golden Z requires you give up 1680 dust give or take. Regular is 1600 flat.
And you also have to clear the solo content for golden, which you can’t even do today, as you have to wait for the rest of the chapters to open. You could go get regular Z right now.
No, that’s just factually wrong. Golden Z costs more.
LOL. I’ll let other observers be the judge on who need what class.
I don’t “need” to say anything at all, but I want to, so I will. Oh, and common sense actually isn’t that common, so it’s actually helpful to say some common sense things out loud, for the benefit of those who really honestly didn’t know better.
I do find it amusing that I’m trying to be helpful, and you’re telling me to not do it… in a thread where you’re complaining about how people aren’t being helped by the latest adventure.
I agree with you, old adventures were awesome, but I’m comparing with what we are getting now, dalaran heist its like a worst frozen throne adventure, and its not for FREE like frozen throne adventure was. Besides I did not compare it with old adventures because they were considered an expansion, but anyway, old adventures were incredibles.
Your post appears to be based on the premise that when you buy the adventure, you pay for the packs. That premise is wrong.
When you buy the adventure, you pay for the content. The packs you get are a nice bonus, but not the main item you are buying. Compare it to a car dealer offering a free set of sports tires with a new Volvo. If you buy that Volvo just to get those tires for your own car (because you like Renault way more than Volvo), then you’re better off not buying the Volvo at all and just buy a set of tires at list price.
I don’t know if you already played the game in the time of the old adventures (Naxxramans, Blackrock Mountain, League of Explorers, and Karazhan). Those also were paid, and also had rewards that on a gold per card basis were overpriced - but they were not obtainable in any other way, so every player who wanted to include staple cards such as Sludge Belcher in their deck was forced to buy the adventure and play it. Many people hated that and asked for other ways to obtain those cards.
This adventure is fully optional. You can still craft or otherwise obtain all cards that you want to include in your decks if you choose not to buy it.
You can of course still make a point for the adventure being too expensive. But if you do, then you need to compare the price to the amount of content you get, not to the rewards.
If that’s the case, why are you getting the number of packs you’d expect if you buy them with money? You get 15 packs in the adventure, and it costs 19.99$. You know how much 15 packs normally costs? Yep, 19.99$. The point is, there’s a big disparity between the money cost and the gold cost. I get that that’s by design, to encourage players to spend their money on the game, but the difference is a way too high.
If 15 packs costs 20$ and 15 packs costs 1500 gold, we can approximate the value of gold at 75 gold per 1$, because that’s the normal conversion rate right? Well, with that in mind, the adventure should either cost 1500 gold to be in line with the money price, or it should cost 37$ for the value you get for money to be equivalent to the gold value.
Now, like I said, I get that they’re trying to add an incentive for players to purchase with money and that’s why the gold price is higher, but the difference shouldn’t be that high in my opinion. You effectively pay twice as much if you buy with gold, that’s not a normal disparity.
And that’s not even mentioning that hearthstone is already VERY expensive if you purchase packs with money. If you buy packs as 15 at a time, each pack costs 1,3$, which at an average dust value of 105 dust per pack means a legendary costs over 20 dollars.
So if you’re not getting much when spending money, and getting just half as much when spending gold, that’s pretty obviously not a good deal in my book.
I played the game since beta and own all the adventures. Here’s a really important fact though. The price of old adventures you mention is the same as the price of Dalran Heist is - 700 gold per wing. So lets look at the actual value you get per gold.
Curse of Naxxramas has 4 wings at 700 gold per wing and the total dust value of it’s cards is 3140 dust, which means you’re getting 1,12 dust per gold spent
Blackrock Mountain is the most expensive of the old adventures, as it has 5 wings at 700 gold each and also gives you 3140 dust of value, which means you’re getting 0,9 dust per gold spent.
League of Explorers is the cheapest old adventure, with 3170 dust value for it’s 4 wings, which means you get 1,13 dust per gold spent.
One Night in Karazhan has 5 wings, but the first one is free, and the total value you get from it is 2980 dust, or 1,06 dust per gold spent.
If you noticed, all the numbers are exactly in line with the value you get for buying normal packs. Like mentioned earlier, the average dust value of a pack is 105 dust, so the rate is 1,05 dust per gold spent. In other words, all the old adventures actually give you more value than you’d get by using your gold on packs, and that’s ignoring the fact that you can also get duplicates, which you can’t in adventures.
Now let’s look at Dalaran Heist.
Dalaran Heist costs 2800 dust for it’s 4 purchasable wings, and gives you 15 packs + 1 golden pack in terms of rewards that can be converted to dust. Technically 3 of those packs shouldn’t really be counted, because you get them either way, so they shouldn’t be counted in the value of the 4 wings you have to purchase, but let’s be generous and count them anyways. So the value we get for spending 2800 gold on the adventure is around 1875 dust. That’s a conversion rate of 0,66 dust per gold spent.
Do you see a pattern emerging yet? Once again we’re only getting half as much for the gold we spent as we got at any time in the past. Do you still think the expansion is not VASTLY overpriced?
The old adventures had a similar amount of content - a bit less in some regards, and a bit more in others. If you consider that Dalaran Heist mostly reuses the same mechanics as Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt, I’d imagine the original adventures required more development and had a higher production cost, but of course that’s just speculation on my part. I also consider the “fun” aspect of the old adventures to be higher. They had an actual storyline, where Dalaran Heist it more of a roguelike - it has a vague outline of a story, but sacrifices most of the plot for replayability. Which is better depends on who you ask, some players will prefer the first and others will prefer the latter. At the end of the day I reckon the value of the gameplay content is relatively even, but the actual currency rewards are far from even.
Let me know what you think, I appreciated your points and I’d love to hear if I changed your mind at all.
It’s a test. If no one buys the product, they will sweeten the deal next time by increasing the reward value. If everyone buys the product, they will keep the current reward structure. Simpe as that. Anything else is just empty talk.
If you want to do math, do it right.
The first wing is free. You pay either 4 x 700 gold, or $19.99 for the remaining wings. (And you can in fact mix - I just checked and if I were to buy the adventure now my price is reduced to €14.99, which I’m pretty sure means it’d be $14.99 for you). So the price you pay (in gold, money, or a mix) is for 4 wings, which grant 12 packs.
That being said - I am what some people call a “dirty freeloader”, or as I call it an F2P player. So my view on the price of this adventure is entirely based on paying 700 gold (which could be seven packs) for content that has a reward of three packs.
As to the gold vs money - this starts with a choice on what price to use. When I go to the shop to buy packs with money, I can get them for $1.49 each (2 packs for €2.99), for $1.17 each (60 packs for €69.99), and some options in between. Which one do you use for comparison? When buying 2 packs, 3$ is 200 gold, so that’s 67 gold per dollar. When buying 60 packs, 60$ is 6000 gold, or 100 gold per dollar. And in the Arena (150 gold or $1.99), we get 75 gold per dollar.
For the adventure, we pay per wing either 700 gold or 5$; this is 140 gold per dollar. So you are right that no matter how you look at it, we do get a vary bad gold vs dollar ratio for this adventure (as well as for the original old adventures, that also were 700 gold per wing and IIRC were $20 total or so total).
You are probably right that this is Blizzard saying “please use money to buy this and use your gold elsewhere, as we invested a lot of money to develop this and our developers want their wages paid in dollars, not gold”.
So to wrap up my reaction to the first part of your post: yes I agree that the gold vs dollar (or euro) ratio for adventures is way worse than for other things you can buy with either, and if I were paying HS content with a mixture of gold and real money I would defnitely use the real money here and save the gold for other areas. This does tie in with my recollection of 700 gold being a lot for the wings in the original adventures.
(Quoting just this part because it’s an excellent summary of the point you make in the second part of your post)
If I were looking at buying Dalaran Heist from the perspective of “how many packs do I get for my investment”, then yes I would call it overpriced. But I already said that in my first post. And I also said that this it the wrong premise.
I am an F2P player. I need to make sure to squeeze every possible ounce of value out of all the gold and dust I collect. Heck, I even set up a spreadsheet to go through all the scenarios so I could maximize my benefit from the recent Hall of Fame rotation - that’s how stingy I am.
And yet I do not for a single second regret the investment of 700 gold in the first wing, and I will also buy all others (though I may need more time to save up for the last one; currently sitting on 1620 gold).
You made a lengthy comparison for rewards vs inventments between all of the old adventures and Dalaran Heist. I will make a slightly shorter comparison, for content vs investment, based on just one adventure. (The most recent one).
One Night in Karazhan - 5 wings, first is free, others cost 4 x 700 gold, for 2800 gold total.
For this investment, you get access to: (1) 12 boss fights at normal difficulty level (not counting the boss fight of the free wing since you get that anyway); (2) 9 class challenges; and (3) 12 boss fights at heroic difficulty (again not counting the free first win, though I don’t recall if you could access that without buying other wings first).
That’s a total of 33 different fights. And while you can re-play them, they do not change unless you pick a different deck yourself. So while you have fun for a few days, eventually you’ll get bored.
Compare this to Dalaran Heist. Based on what we have seen so far, I assume that eventually each of the 5 wings can be played with each of the 9 classes, at both normal and heroic difficulty. That alone is already 5 x 9 x 2 = 90 different challenges (and each of them consists of 8 encounters). But each class has three different hero powers and four different starting decks. If you just want to finish each encounter once with each hero power (picking the best deck for it), you already need to win 270 challenges. Or 360 if you want to do it with each starting deck. And if you want to win each wing, at each difficulty level, with each possible combination of class, starting deck and hero power (which woud require you to set up your own tracking), then you get to play 5 (wings) x 2 (levels) x 9 (classes) x 4 (decks) x 3 (hero powers) = 1080 runs of 8 encounters each.
And even if you finish all that, you still have more replay value in this adventure than in any of the other ones, because of all the areas where you choose between random rewards. (Though if you finish all 1080 runs in one go you’ll probably never want to see this game mode again )
Oh, and then there is also the anomaly mode that I currently can’t access yet but that I have seen on Twitch and looks very promising.
Long story short - even though I will start the next expansion with far less packs than I would like to, I do not regret sinking 2800 gold in this adventure. I have already had several hours of fun and I will get many, many more.
As you see, in my entire response above I do not once mention the rewards. They are no factor in my decision to buy this adventure. After the first (free) wing, the content had convinced me to buy the second. And the content there has made me decided that I will definitely buy all others too.
Getting those pack rewards is of course very nice and does sweeten the deal!
If you consider the random rewards and random bosses to constitute “infinite variation”, then you are right because both are infinite. But if you look at wings, starting decks, starting hero powers, and anomaly mode, then you’ll see that Dalaran Heist offers a lot more. In Dungeon Run, you start with one of nine classes that have a fixed deck and hero power. In Monster Hunt, it’s 5 (4 normal plus final challenge). Rumble Run has 27 (9 classes with 3 shrines each).
Dalaran Heist … as shown above, you have 1080 different starting positions.
I personally think that the majority of the cost is in developing the character of the bosses, designing their hero power and deck, and then playtesting and tweaking the difficulty level to ensure the game is balanced.
Plus the art (graphics, sounds) of the bosses, and their unique cards.
Given the sheer number of different new bosses I have already seen, I do not doubt that this adventure has had the highest production cost of all solo content so far.
(But of course, like you, I too am only speculating)
This is a very important paragraph in your reply and one I can 100% agree with.
Value of packs can be calculated. But as I already stated before, if you just look at value of packs you should never buy Dalaran Heist, or any other of the paid solo content. Just take the 3 packs of the first wing and be done with it. Regardless of whether you pay with gold or with money, you’ll always get more packs for your money or gold by just buying them directly.
I look at the value of the game modes I unlock. And that is where it gets personal. I care much more about replayability than I care about story line. Others (like you if I read between the lines correctly) value a story line higher. Yet others do not want to bother with solo content at all, they just want to challenge themselves in PvP gameplay.
At the end of the day, everyone decides how much they want to spend for what content. I know people who pay sometimes in excess of 100 Euros to go to a football (soccer in case you’re from the USA ) match that I would not want to see on telly if you paid me to. But I myself have paid similar amounts for theatre tickets for shows that those friends would not want to be found dead in. And when in the theatre, I saw other people on seats that I knew to cost several hundred Euros - a price I would never pay for a single night of joy.
What I’m trying to say is - botht he definition and the value of fun is different for everyone. Football is not fun for me, theatre is. But while theatre is enough fun for me to (occasionally) pay up to a hundred Euros for a single night out, it is not enough fun for me to pay twice or quadruple that amount and yet others do pay that.
For those who do not at all enjoy the type of solo content that Dalaran Heist offers, the choice is simple. Just don’t pay it, and don’t play it. Or at least force yourself to play the first 5 bosses of the first wing, collect the three packs, and then move on.
For those who, like me, really enjoy this format, 700 gold (or € 5.00) per wing is a solid investment that will give you hours upon hours upon hours of varied and fun gameplay,
And for those who, like you, somewhat like the format but care more about a good storyline and less about replayability (perhaps because you still consider the games too repetitive) … well, that’s where the choice gets harder.
I think my last paragraphs above summarize my point. And you did change my mind somewhat. In other discussions I have already pointed out the first two types of people above (don’t like soloplay = don’t buy; like soloplay = buy). I have now added the third because you made me see that there are people who do like the mode but do not want to replay it as often as I do. And who are more thrilled by an exciting storyline, which is indeed more shallow in this mode.
Thanks for an excellent reply to my post. I enjoyed reading your points of view and responding to them and I am looking forward to your reaction!
Yes. Blizzard are definitely getting greedier over the years. Sadly it was their own fault though for joining activision and pushing themselves into trying to go mainstream rather than how they got popular… making niche titles that kicked ss and made a ton of sales because of the quality of the game itself.
They are now looking for a model of u sustainable growth, hence why they’re now transitioning into the mobile market which im sure analysts have shown them makes way more money for way less cost.
I doubt well ever see them release another Warcraft 3 masterpiece. I’m talking about a new fully featured title. Excellent story. World full of detail. Great deep and hard to master Mechanics. Free map editor. Etc.
I’m out for diablo immortal and if d4 looks as cartoony like d3 then I promise I’m out for that too because Ill know exactly what time it is
