Because I enjoy the game to the point I don’t need to spend money on it?
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this thread got way too much popularity then it should have
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By the time new players master the heroes they own they’ll have plenty of gold to buy more and continue the cycle.
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its philosophy for ranked is you should not play untill you have 2-3 characters you are confident with in each role, and preferably with a few other characters you are at least decent at. i started when i had: etc main tank, stitches off tank, artanis off tank, falstad aa/mage, genji finisher/kill chase/dive, morales healer/aa helper, kharazim, dive healer/dps with supportive help,abathur support /specialist, sylvanas push power.
And those where just my main picks, i had several other options as well. you dont need every character, having 2-3 heroes and each role should be enough, especially if you dont choose all top tiers/pick/ban heroes (even if you have 4 different dps if its raynor azmodan genji fenix, raynor azmodan genji and fenix could all be banned or locked before your pick)
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I started playing seriously (I picked it up for Oni Genji back in the day) when 2.0 came out and have almost all the heroes. The bundle helped, yes, but it’s VERY easy to grind coins and I’ve bought maybe two heroes with gems. It’s so easy to grind the heroes in this game lmao it shouldn’t even be a complaint.
Dota 2 is not only EXTREMELY boring to me but they arbitrarily barred me from playing certain heroes when I tried to glean enjoyment out of it yesterday. I still don’t know why. Which is more annoying than the heroes being behind a paywall
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the drafting structure works well if you have an actual team to work with. But since anyone can be in in TL you’re just going to get some troll who is going to instalock some dumb dps that they think they are the best with and have to work around with that.
At least with hero league you have a chance to build a good team before the troll gets his pick.
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doesnt seem to be my experience. ppl seem to know that they need to pick the ‘OP meta’ heroes first and then go from there. the difference is that there is no ‘first pick’ slot in TL where there is in HL. so if the last guy in HL wants maybe KT he is pretty much SoL. in TL though anyone can pick first.
Have got about 6 characters that are not yet unlocked and I believe I haven’t bought a single one for real money.
Anyone jumping into ranked games without having enough gold earned through games to get about 15-20 heroes is going there too early and is likely going to suck at all but a select few heroes. You’d be lucky to be good at 2 heroes before hitting around lvl 10 with them.
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Posts like this make me miss the downvote button.
That’s not what p2w means. This game is not p2w. This is probably one of the most generous f2p games out there.
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This game is bad. Dota 2 is another level of garbage, and it recently introduced LFG as a P2W feature. So if you wanted to queue for solo ranked mode you are at a disadvantage to solo players who paid for the ability to strategize beforehand. There is nothing redeemable about that game, and it is slowly dying if you’d like to go off of steamcharts statistics. Please do not advertise it here.
Actually, the only reason you need a set amount of heroes is to prevent the possibility of ever having a game, where you have nobody you can pick. This actually happened in the extremely early stages of the games development, which prompted them to put a minimum heroes owned to play anything that has a draft mode. When it was 2 bans per side, you needed 15 heroes. This was so if by some unlucky lotto of a chance, every single person in your game picked ONLY the heroes you owned, and all the bans were the other heroes you owned, you would LITERALLY be left with nobody to pick. When they increased the bans, they also increased the minimum heroes required to compensate for that. There is no actual official reason blaming skill for this mechanism, although it is HIGHLY suggested that this is also a good starting point.
So I just got my account on the Asia server to level 116, and I have 16 heroes at level 5. I literally just got ETC to 5 which has unlocked ranked mode for me.
It took about a month of mostly casual play. And honestly, I could have done it quicker if I had played Team Ranked more. I only started doing that about two weeks ago once I figured out that it gives significantly more experience.
Edit: I should mention that I spent zero dollars on my Asia server account. I just utilized the free stim packs from doing the tutorial and then went to work.
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People are still calling HotS P2W? I feel like people don’t really understand pay to win anymore.
Pay to win is when you buy a $5 Enhancement Rune so you can empower your weapon without risking that it breaks, just so you can keep up with everyone else’s equipment. Pay to win is buying extra lives for 50 cents so you can get a higher score in glorified bejeweled. Pay to win is shoving a hundred bucks to get rid of build timers so you can have the biggest clan/country/dungeon immediately so you can be stronger in PvP.
HotS is what we refer to as paying for a shortcut. You use money to buy things that you would probably get anyways later on. Now, this system can be ridiculous if grinds or time gates are so long as to be crippling, but HotS is very reasonable about this; by the time you even master a character, you’ll probably be able to afford another. Once you’re in-game, your character is as good as anyone else using your character, and no money will ensure you win harder.
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With exception of some mounting options and skins, there is a reason they are banned in pro events. That said they will only make a slight difference at the very high end of play, which >>99% of players will never achieve, and even then it will be very small. Also most of these are shard purchases.
For QM its true (after all, you are depending on randomness for balance anyway), for draft modes its not. In a draft you need more heroes than the minimum of 16, and it should be mostly meta heroes.
When you are missing a hero in a draft that would have been optimal, you are influencing your win chances. At which point, if you had paid, would have caused a pay to win scenario.
Ofcourse, ranked takes this further by requiring you to level the hero, and you could say ‘You wouldnt have been able to play this hero in ranked anyway’. But this could have been done while the hero was f2p. So you truly are missing out on heroes. And this can backfire.
So yes, its still pay to win. Not for everyone as its mode dependant, but its still there.
You’re not describing pay-to-win, you’re arguing circles on semantics to try to get scenarios to seem like pay-to-win.
Pay-to-win works in games where there is direct quantifiable power that can be attained my spending money on the game. The cycle of progression has events that ‘reward’ players for time/effort, but the rewards will be limited and in relation to scores generated by other players, and for a limited duration of time, so the capacity to ‘compete’ with future events is either directly dependent on rising ranks early, or being able to spend money to curb the power difference.
Then then comes with later events dependent on previous results to not only get a bonus in newer content, but some of the previous items likely have a solid amount of power in their use (compared to options done just to ‘keep up’) at which point the cycle of relative power is based on tiers of who is willing to keep spending, occasionally spend, made an initial purchase (package deal) and those not spending at all with large relevance to power relative to the amount spent on the game, with some exception being a new spike of spending on particular times for power creep as the content cycles will push bigger numbers and higher ‘difficulties’ to create content walls.
While the entirely of the cast for HoTS is for ‘free’, the lack of direct power alongside the spiral of power creep particular to new content pretty much shuts down the idea of ‘pay to win’ as there are not content or event walls that force a player to attain the newest content in order to ‘keep up’ with their collection as a means of having direct advantages in the game.
The idea of having “mostly meta heroes” and “chance to win” are idealized scenarios of trying to paint a direct quantifiable amount of ‘power’ in the game by having "optimal’ choices. The problem with that, is that’s its pretty much only a theory. Non-meta heroes ‘come out of nowhere’ often enough to point out that the ‘meta’ isn’t a set establishment of power of heroes directly, but rather on the expectations people put on why certain heroes, or counters, are picked: its expectations of choices, not direct power – though yes, some heroes do have balance shifts, but the opportunity of that balance is neither tied to getting the hero recently, nor making a distinction on having bout it with gems vs gold (and ya know, not needing 10 copies to get a significant power boost)
The strongest correlation of a hero isn’t on the side of the collection, but on the experience and skill of the person. The best “chance” at winning is people playing heroes that actually know, rather than always sticking to the ‘meta’ as you so demand.
Its circular reasoning to try to project meanings you want to suit the argument you want to make, rather than using terms as they are ‘designed’ for suiting the label.
if you are so convinced of your ‘pay 2 win’ idea for hots, then it likely indicates you lack the experience and ‘skill’ to otherwise make a difference and are essentially looking for something else to blame.
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oh yes of course, ik thats the reason for the limit, i just mean there is not much of a reason to play ranked as soon as you can, i mean, whats the point if you only understand around 20 heroes and dont fully understand the main mechanics of the game? no reason to play a competitive mode without actually understanding the game, i just left my comment in responce to his second paragraph.
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If you want to see P2W, try starting Hearthstone as a new player today.
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PAY TO WIN: You spend real money to get a bonus that you only can get with real cash and no other way, EXAMPLE: Hero Dmg. Pay $5 and for the next 60mins your hero does 50% more dmg with all attacks.
That is pay to win.
Heroes is PAY TO ADVANCE, as in, you can spend x amount of time to get to Y or you can spend x amount of cash to get to Y.
But the bottom line is this: You only can play 1 hero at a time.
So, this game is NOT pay to win.
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Pay to win is when you gain advantages when paying which those who dont very often cant.
Instant unlocking of new content which has gameplay advantages falls under this. Thats why in many competetive games newly released items are excluded from their competetive modes until players had a decent chance to unlock them.
You could say that in hots this is done using gold, but there are plenty that arent capable of gathering that 15k between hero releases because they dont play enough, or they reroll loot chests too often. This makes it an unreliable system, although for most players its not an issue, as those who care about winning already collect the gold. At this point its still not a problem.
Even if that advantage is only 1%, it still matters regarding the pay to win part, although most players at that point dont care. But we have very often seen that heroes suddenly get a boost that brings them above a 55% win rate. At which point having the hero becomes a requirement.
And thats why its a problem in this game. Even if this only happens once a month, it could still be a 35k gold requirement. And this is quite high for many players.
Thats why its pay to win.
I do agree that the hots model is a quite decent one on that by making the problem nearly non existant for the more dedicated players, but that doesnt mean it isnt pay to win.
This is also a problem in nearly any F2P game since after all, they need to get some incentive to get people to pay for something sometimes.
Skill can compensate a lot, but why accept the 52% win rate, when you also could get 56% if you had the newer content? You still lose 3% if you didnt, if you paid, you paid for 1 win in 25 games. Even though in both cases you actualy would still have been fine.
Hence pay to win.
If someone can only play hots 1h a week, they are forced to pay for the hero, and they have no other way because they cant get more time.
Or what about being able to get those 60min of 50% more damage boosts, which you can unlock only once every 10000 hours. Its still obtainable…
Its not that simple.