What payment system should hots have gone with

General Discussion
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I think we can all agree the lootboxes were a bad move. It made it very enticing to play the game, but less so to put money into it. Its easy to get enough shards to get a legendary skin and you often get a large amount from lootboxes over time. I will never pay for a lootbox because I want to know what I’m getting. Im not a betting man and 5$ isn’t worth the risk of rolling a bunch of commons/getting a hero I already have.

The gold system seems fair to me. You get enough to earn heroes over time. Eventually the currency becomes mostly useless and a nice reserve to buy new heroes with. It doesn’t amount to too many shards and encourages you to play a good amount of games to earn.

gems? Why did we need a third currency that can also be earned in game at a relatively fair rate. Again it encourages play but is it really that much more alluring than just giving dollar amounts?

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I prefer the old system where you whip out your credit card and support a company directly with a few bucks here and there as a thanks for providing free entertainment to you.

But I understand why they scrapped it, when you muddy the waters with gems, shards etc., it’s easier to make the player lose control of how much they’re spending. It’s psychologically easier for a player to spend 700 gems than 8 dollars

(and almost all microtransaction games use such virtual currency models now - you buy gems, ingame coins or whatever, rather than directly giving the company money).

I don’t think they will ever revert it (nor will any game company go back to that ancient model anymore), but it was simple and easy. Pay for cosmetic, exp bonus or hero, you get it, done.

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The LoL system literally works

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Some has said the prices of skins were too much, so I think it may have been better if cosmetics where segmented into parts and effects; boxes have parts of a tint and whole sale has all the pieces of that tint. Then players could match a hair color with a different body, or include a voice-effect or spell particle from one akin to another as customize their pieces to make their own skin.

Which is pretty much what DotA 2 has done and there’s other bits from that I think HotS could/should have done, but that night have been to distasteful or whatever.

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the old system, or if not that a pay to play game (maybe $30~$40)

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Here there is a large issue:
If they had added the cosmetic overhaul they did with 2.0, WITHOUT loot boxes, it would have been problematic.

Pre-2.0, most stuff in the store was insanely overpriced, given most people (based on my experience) didn’t want 3 tints of a skin.

I think I bought some bundle at “70% off” (aka a more or less fair price) and one Kerrigan skin pack (which I regretting the next day). Maybe 30 bucks totals.

Stuff was super overpriced.

Not sure where we would have gone without the 2.0 loot chests.

I’ve spent hundreds of dollar on the game since 2.0, although to be fair, almost all of that was on buying year long boosts/stimpacks. Not direct items/chests.

The point of these currencies is to separate the psychological impact of spending money.

I probably jumbled the goal, blame me not being able to fall asleep and being tired Af

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Any system where you CAN buy stuff.

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I think loot boxes are fine as a level up reward. However!

I would make it so that skins are pretty much a paid-only thing, outside of the 3-4 basic tints that heroes come with. At the very least, restrict event skins to gems only.

Having loot boxes with a random drop chance for skins is fine, but the shard system is far too generous with how little it takes to get a new skin. Especially with the lower amount of content we now get.

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That would be bad. The purpose of events is to keep your players playing your game as long as possible. People play during events for the chance at opening one of the featured skins.

If those are all pay walled. Events will no longer matter to most players.

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Hmm, you are right on that one. Though I do still think it is far too easy to earn skins.

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Made a system like Overwatch, you paid once for the game and then you can earn all by paying or by lootboxes. Money isn’t the problem, they need to attrack more players, cause even if you put pay skins who is going to pay for it if no one wants to play your game?

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Event skins;
Legendary skins:
Paid only until 3rd event they’re in. (2 year delay).

Epic skins:
Paid only until 2nd event they’re in (1 year delay).

Rare skins:
Available at time of events

Non-event skins:
Approx 8/4/2/1 month delay between being able to purchase, and being able to craft with shards for legendary/epic/rare/common items.

Also have golden (or some theme like the celestial mounts) versions of skins which always are only pay to use.

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It IS. And since heroes are not released as often anymore, no one will ever need to buy one since we’ll all have the gold by the time they’re released.

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This is from another post where I talk about this:

I surely love this post, let’s get serious. I saw these days a lot of people saying that they are willing to pay for skins, and that they paid for skins before 2.0 update.

Now, let’s think, as a player that beging to play this game in 2015 if my mind doesn’t fool me, I used to play a lot of games every week since the last two years, cause the lack of, lets call it, “new things”, make the game a little boring for me (Still playing but not so many as before).

Well, knowing that, maybe you’ll understand something when I can say (100% sure) that by those days before 2.0, it was very strange to saw someone with a “payonly” skin, even with a master skin that was “free” by that time for the cost of 10.000 gold (this could sound like not much gold now but believe me that years before, gold was something that you think twice before spending it, more if you didn’t have a lot of heroes). That’s why I’m surprised of all the people saying that they used to pay for skins before 2.0, were where you all the time?

So I think that Blizzard wasn’t earning so much money this way, thats why they change the way of getting skins and addapt to a system that we can see today in a lot of other games, even in Blizzard games like Overwatch.

Other thing I just realised is that these day a lot of f2p games use the “loot box” system to earn skins and stuff in game and not spending money, so, if this system is used by so many games I don’t think is as unprofitable as some say, cause maybe one company is wrong but, many more, i don’t think so.

Now in other words, I began to play recently to a game of steam called Battlerite: Royale (I know it’s based on Battlerite) and it’s a game where you can earn all stuff of the game just by playing (you can earn lootboxes for level up and for win matches, even more than in HotS), and I don’t think that the studio of the game is losing money this way cause they are keeping the game alive and fresh, maybe not much as we want, but much more as HotS.

Let’s be realistic, what this game needs is more advertising, through advertising as such and esports, I’m not a fan of esports but I still know that is something that brings life to a game community and brings new players to the game, and it has been shown that these new players are the ones who spend the most money in a game. And not only advertising, they need to fix his damn game, it’s been years since people complain about MMR and still the same as always.

You can keep repeating that the game need pay skins like before, but what the game truly needs is to Blizzard sit down and fix his messes and care about the game once again.

PS: I played today like 4 o 5 matches, in every match at least 1/2 players had booster pack, so I think people still paying in this game. Like I said a lot of times I spend more money after 2.0 (in boosters) than before and I know I’m not the only one.

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The old system was a good system. There wasnt any actual issues with it. The problem started when Blizzard tried to milk the system and ppl just were not having it. Before 2.0 I was buying skins and mounts. After 2.0 the game was flooded with random stupidity just to fill lootboxes and “lower” the odds of you obtaining expensive skins and heroes, not to mention they sold everything seperately and just added a bunch of “new” colors to increase the quantity of skins and mounts. This to me is just extremely lazy. When I bought my candy muradin, I didn’t feel bad about it because I got all 3 skins. Now, if you want to buy it, it’s the same price but for one. How does that make sense? It’s no wonder ppl don’t buy in to this game, especially when you can get it a for free pretty easily. Let’s not forget “pro” skins used to be a thing too.

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“Give us our ego back” - The Post

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[Album] imgur.com

My Battlenet transaction history is 95 pages long.

I may or may not have dumped several thousand dollars into this game since 2014.

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That is alot of money but if you can afford it its not an issue. People dump more money than that on purses/cars (not as in we need this but lets deck it out in paint)/pools.

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Every other month or so I used to buy $100 worth of gems, I also owned ALL paid content prior to HOTS 2.0 because I’d buy it whenever it went on the weekly rotation.

It’s not like I’d spend money I didn’t have or anything, but I justified it as this was really the only game I played so it ate like 90% of my monthly gaming budget.

I stopped spending so much in the last 2 years, but I’ve spent several thousand dollars on this game alone.

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Then they should have went to upgrading their payment system instead of doing an overhaul.

Keep the prices on each item being overpriced and all, do not move to the gems tactic, upgrade it by adding lootboxes and shard drops.

At least this way it would have kept people paying immediatly for a skin they likely want to get and prices would much clearer for certain bundles in the shop especially in event based.