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On March 23 2015 14:10 Doc Daneeka wrote:
It's Blizzard's problem if it deteriorates the casual player base that gives them most of their money, and it's our problem if they stop supporting the game due to a lack of profit. Let's say I tell myself "Okay, they fooled me once, but I'm sick of flushing money down the toilet so buh-bye Hearthstone." The deluge of new content we've been getting will have just been a fluke if loads of people walk away from the game because it's too expensive to unlock the game's content.
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Anyone who believes this game is newbie f2p friendly (while considering time as a factor) is deluding themselves. This expansion along with GvG just only a few months ago is starting to show why it's going to be harder and harder for newbies to get into this game.
The issue isn't even entirely the price for BRM, but the first thing that any competent person is thinking is "what about adventure expansions down the line?" Are they going to continually be in the $20 - $30 / 3500 gold range. So either the newbie is going to really have to grind for it for free (which is VERY TIME CONSUMING) or pony up the cash... but as a newbie who's just getting into the game would you spend money on just part of the game knowing you will have to spend more just to keep up? You know your collection is really far from complete that you're going to have to spend money on packs which provide even more uncertainty (e.g. you could get 1 legend and mostly duplicate garbage in 50 packs, or 5 legendaries and multiple epics you need within 20 packs), to force you to spend more time and/or money (probably somewhere in the hundreds of dollar range).
I have another account (used for Fireside last year) that I play once a month strictly for the card backs, that plays a garbage outdated zoo warlock, and currently Chakki face hunter minus arcane golems and mad scientists. Mad scientists are strong as hell in huntard decks, yet I cannot get them only because I either have to pay 2800 gold or spend about $25 for just that card... think about that carefully if you are a newbie starting this game now? I disenchanted almost every card for the rares in the face hunter deck, and wow the dusting system is really inefficient... almost like making a bad trade in a real TCG just to get the card you need... again this is the dilemma for a newbie. Anyone who argues against these problems should really think thoroughly if this is how a f2p game should be operated
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honestly unless youre happy with never having a full collection and for ages playing very limited (and mostly boring) decks then you HAVE to spend money.
i bought naxx, bought a good junk of packs (think 35 in gvg alone) did quite alot of arena (100ish runs) and rarely missed a daily(ofc rerolled for amx gold). i started like 5-6 months ago and still miss 70% of important epics, almost all decent legendarys with sylvanas and geddon only useable ones i opened.
if someone starts now f2p hey would need to spend like 3 months playing with the basic cards just toi get naxx&brm which is damn boring. after that the next thing will be announced and he still has no rares,epics or legs from classic or gvg. this isnt fun. this is less then most f2p games offer in content by far.
honestly the pricing, and inability to gain gold at your on pace is among the worst i know for f2p. asian grinders 8 years ago offered more. yeah yeah compared to other tcg its not that bad but do we want to compare blizzards hearthstone really with them or other games? and in other cardgames you usually can atleast sell your shit if you decide to quit...
well ill buy brm cause i wont play evry day for hours without doing arena or opening packs for a month. ill rather just throw 20€ at it . but outside of expansions and adventures i now refuse to spend money on hearthstone.
the value for your money is just terrible (500 dust for 18€,thx rng!). And i accepted that ill never have a full collection or play flashy special decks. i just build cheap face decks for ladder and dick around with fun decks for quests.
they just need to overhaul crafting or atleast make crafting old content way cheaper plus give more options and different ways for gold.
that people mostly get gold by farming with face decks at rank 20 alone is proof that the system is stupid and bad for the game.
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On March 24 2015 05:15 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
honestly unless youre happy with never having a full collection and for ages playing very limited (and mostly boring) decks then you HAVE to spend money.
i bought naxx, bought a good junk of packs (think 35 in gvg alone) did quite alot of arena (100ish runs) and rarely missed a daily(ofc rerolled for amx gold). i started like 5-6 months ago and still miss 70% of important epics, almost all decent legendarys with sylvanas and geddon only useable ones i opened.
if someone starts now f2p hey would need to spend like 3 months playing with the basic cards just toi get naxx&brm which is damn boring. after that the next thing will be announced and he still has no rares,epics or legs from classic or gvg. this isnt fun. this is less then most f2p games offer in content by far.
honestly the pricing, and inability to gain gold at your on pace is among the worst i know for f2p. asian grinders 8 years ago offered more. yeah yeah compared to other tcg its not that bad but do we want to compare blizzards hearthstone really with them or other games? and in other cardgames you usually can atleast sell your shit if you decide to quit...
well ill buy brm cause i wont play evry day for hours without doing arena or opening packs for a month. ill rather just throw 20€ at it . but outside of expansions and adventures i now refuse to spend money on hearthstone.
the value for your money is just terrible (500 dust for 18€,thx rng!). And i accepted that ill never have a full collection or play flashy special decks. i just build cheap face decks for ladder and dick around with fun decks for quests.
they just need to overhaul crafting or atleast make crafting old content way cheaper plus give more options and different ways for gold.
that people mostly get gold by farming with face decks at rank 20 alone is proof that the system is stupid and bad for the game.
This is one of the reasons I started to really enjoy Arena, level playing field. I don't have to worry about missing cards because I spend the majority of the time having fun in Arena and just keep a few decks around to get gold for Arena runs. I've got some 4000 dust saved up again and no clue what to even spend it on because of how little I play constructed. Its a great feeling!
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I like arena. im even quite decent at it. still its hugely rng based and when your deck is shit i quickly lose interest to play.
also telling new players to go and play(grind) a "sidegamemode" for months where they cant use their shiny new cards and which isnt what they signed up for or saw in a tournament is quite a sad thing anyways.
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On March 24 2015 05:15 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
honestly unless youre happy with never having a full collection and for ages playing very limited (and mostly boring) decks then you HAVE to spend money.
If I did have a full collection, I think that would take away a lot of my incentives to actually keep on playing the game. Hearthstone is every bit as much about the journey as about the destination, if not more so.
That doesn't mean I don't think there's a problem with the acquisition rate of cards; I've been doing every single quest for over a year and I'm still missing most Legendaries plus quite a few epics, and I've spent some money on the game, though not much. If I'm still missing that much, then for new players, the amount of catch-up they need to do must be daunting, and with every new expansion and adventure mode that comes up, the gap between the older players and newbies widens.
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This game is free to play, its just not free to compete in legend. A free to play player will win about as much as a pay to play legendary player after the first day. The suckers are the ones who ponied up the $200 to shortcut the reward process and get to legend as fast as possible where they will win just as much as the guy with mostly starter cards in rank 19.
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On March 26 2015 13:06 darkcoug wrote:
This game is free to play, its just not free to compete in legend. A free to play player will win about as much as a pay to play legendary player after the first day. The suckers are the ones who ponied up the $200 to shortcut the reward process and get to legend as fast as possible where they will win just as much as the guy with mostly starter cards in rank 19.
That's the idea, but not how it works in practice. A friend of mine started playing recently, and about half the time he faced the very same decks I play against in ranks 3 through legend. There's a LOT of players out there with decks that belong in high ranks, but auto-concede half of their games in order to stay at rank 20 and crush newbies to farm gold; it makes it painfully evident how much stronger their decks are than yours, and how you can either farm gold for months to try to catch up, or pay up, or just continue getting crushed. My friend chose to quit Hearthstone instead, and I can't blame him. The game is pretty hostile to new players.
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On March 26 2015 23:38 Zato-1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2015 13:06 darkcoug wrote:
This game is free to play, its just not free to compete in legend. A free to play player will win about as much as a pay to play legendary player after the first day. The suckers are the ones who ponied up the $200 to shortcut the reward process and get to legend as fast as possible where they will win just as much as the guy with mostly starter cards in rank 19. That's the idea, but not how it works in practice. A friend of mine started playing recently, and about half the time he faced the very same decks I play against in ranks 3 through legend. There's a LOT of players out there with decks that belong in high ranks, but auto-concede half of their games in order to stay at rank 20 and crush newbies to farm gold; it makes it painfully evident how much stronger their decks are than yours, and how you can either farm gold for months to try to catch up, or pay up, or just continue getting crushed. My friend chose to quit Hearthstone instead, and I can't blame him. The game is pretty hostile to new players.
This is totally true.
But also, there are a lot of players on ladder that are like me. I've been playing since closed beta, have almost all the cards and never auto-concede, but still find it REALLY tough to maintain a rank of 10+. The combination of ladder cancer and RNG make it hard to do well. Unless you lack any kind of morals or integrity, in which case you can play MechMage or Huntard 
There is simply not enough of an economy in ranked play for a game of this nature. I don't play the game every day because I enjoy it, I play everyday to earn enough gold to play arena, to earn enough gold to maximise my economy and finish my collection.
For a game where constructed play is supposed to be the focus, there needs to be a HUGE investment into ranked play to make it more rewarding. A combination of achievements, a proper ladder system and better rewards would go a long way.
Personally though, I don't care about new players, and I'm really hoping Blizzard don't either. Their focus should be on the dedicated play base.
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On March 26 2015 23:58 Hearken wrote:
Personally though, I don't care about new players, and I'm really hoping Blizzard don't either. Their focus should be on the dedicated play base.
Fortunately I'm pretty sure Blizzard knows better. As a game design dev, I can assure you there is no such thing as a 100% player retention rate, even among dedicated players (which should be obvious if you think about it). A game that doesn't attract new players has no way to create new dedicated players, and is inevitably doomed to die.
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On March 26 2015 23:58 Hearken wrote:
Personally though, I don't care about new players, and I'm really hoping Blizzard don't either. Their focus should be on the dedicated play base.
The Hearthstone devs do claim to care about new players, and have said the following on the topic of them:
On January 14, 2015 Ben Brode wrote:
One thing we're aware of is new players could find the game harder to get into, and harder to learn, the more cards we add. We have ideas to solve those problems, but I think we're a little bit far off from those problems today.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/hearthstone-s-designer-on-nerfs-gnomes-and-what-s-/1100-6424567/
User Question
Getting any of my friends who would be new players to play this game is near impossible at this point with how expensive Hearthstone is for new players to compete. They all go through the same process: begin playing the game through the tutorials, try each class, play the arena a few times, do a few days worth of quests, open a couple packs, and then realize that doing play mode they get absolutely crushed by seas of legendaries they don’t have, then quit. The more cards that are introduced into the game with the steep cost of the game makes the game more and more difficult for new players to get into. Are there going to be any significant ways for new players to catch up? Is there any possibility of a static cost for the game like buying all of the classic cards and naxx cards for $50?
On December 15, 2014 Ben Brode's answer to the above question:
Howdy! I super appreciate that you guys are looking out for new players. It’s really important to us that Hearthstone is approachable and accessible. We’re on the same page here.
We do have some problems with Matchmaking. We had taken steps to make sure brand new players were not matched against players who had already built massive collections, but we recently found some issues there and have been working to make it better.
We are going to continue to monitor the new player experience, and I do think we’ll need to do things to make it better over time, especially as we continue to release new content.
User Question
There needs to be a game mode where you are matched against a deck with a similar dust value. The matchmaking at the moment is just non existent.
On December 15, 2014 Yong Woo's answer to the above question:
We are always thinking ways to improve the match making system. But we don’t think that power level of a deck is directly proportional its dust value.
http://hearthstone.blizzpro.com/2014/12/15/hearthstone-developer-ama-recap/
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They should match people according to the dust value of their COLLECTION and not specific decks. So hardcore and buyers will get matched together, new players will get matched together etc.
so matchmaking function should have dust value of collection and total time played as variables to be more fair.
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Any sort of matchmaking based on dust values is frankly a terrible idea. Just like 2 similarly powerful decks could cost very different amounts of dust, and 2 decks that cost the same amount of dust could be very different in power level, the same is true of collections. If you have a free player who built up a massive collection by playing constantly, and playing well, particularly in arena, and then someone who quickly built the same collection value by buying 200 packs, what makes you think that's any sort of appropriate matchmaking? The person who spent money is going to get crushed, simply because their game sense is nonexistent or shit, next to a player that got where they are by playing all the time. Also 2 people could incidentally have collections of comparable value, yet one person can't built any good decks like the other person can. All dust is not equal.
There's not going to be a perfect matchmaking system out there, but suggesting something based on dust creates one much worse than what we have right now.
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EPT
