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Topic of the day : Is Hearthstone P2W ?
IceAge
Member EpicPosts: 3,200
So ..
I had this debate with one of my friends. He said the game is not P2W, even if he is paying to get arena tickets and decks. I told him that the P2W definition is ( more or less ) : If you pay real money to get rewards and advantages which a free player will not get unless he.....plays a lot, then that's P2W.
Now, does days , it seems that the fans are usually use the terms "P2AF = Pay 2 Advance Faster" . Well, that, from my point of view, is just the same thing ( undercover 
) .
Anyway, so from my point of view, Hearthstone is not a pure P2W game, but it has elements of P2W and for that can be catalogated as a P2W game.
What do you think?
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Comments
You can't actually trade cards in Hearthstone.
Paying gets you a good deck sooner. But it is by no means "win". That said, people are climbing to legendary ranks with basic card decks.
Also, Arena is just too much fun.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
This! Though I don't think you can buy specific cards in Hearthstone at all. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no way to give another player a specific card.
There will always be good and bad players. So from 2 players with the same skills , decks will make the difference. So if player A) Pays and have a nice deck and player
does not pay at all , and have an average deck , and the skills of both are the same, player A) will win .
Not saying a free player will not be able to win at all. I know I beat the shit out of many, with not paying at all , but that doesn't mean Hearths does not have P2W elements on it.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
You can sell your excess and unwanted cards in order to buy specific cards. It's not P2W if you are good at Arena.
Some people have thousands of gold and can build whatever deck they want and have no use for the gold until more cards come out. Myself I have 600, I play 2 arena decks a night and do my dailies. Can't get rid of the gold fast enough.
You've got your definitions a little mixed up.
What P2W is supposed to mean: "buying power with real money"
What most people think P2W means: "pay 2 advance faster"
Either way, Hearthstone is a CCG. CCGs, by their very nature, are all Pay 2 Win games. It's not as drastic as a game like magic, but it's still P2W.
You can't buy specific cards with gold. You have to disenchant your cards and use dust to make them. You have to disenchant 8 of the same rarity of card to get the specific card you want.
You would have to disenchant hundreds of common cards to get a legendary one.
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You can climb pretty high in ranks with a basic deck but you aren't getting to legendary rank without rarer cards.
If you can provide evidence to the contrary please do.
However most decks in high ranked constructed have a few legendaries, as well as plenty of rares. The majority of the cards won't be basic.
Here are the decks of one guy who made legendary. He says he spent $120 on the game.
http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1uiq2z/just_got_legend_rank_statsdecks_inside_ama/
All of his decks contain Sylvanas(a legendary), which seems to be a staple in many high ranked constructed decks.
You can focus on building one deck and the best decks aren't even full of legendaries. I looked up someone who managed to reach #1 NA with a deck that had:
16x Common
6x Free
4x Rare
3x Epic
1x Legendary
So he only used 6 cards that were free. The rest, he had to either grind or buy to get. Probably a combination of the two. It would probably take you months of grinding to get that deck if you weren't extremely lucky.
If you don't get that specific legendary from a deck you are going to have disenchant 4 legendaries to get it.(or 16 epics or 80 rares or 320 common cards)
Even an epic card would take you disenchanting 80 common cards to get.
The total cost of that deck is 3760 dust. That would take you disenchanting 752 cards. Obviously you are likely to get some of those commons form packs if you play.
However it is unlikely you are going to get the specific legendaries epics and rares you need for that deck. You will probably have to disenchant and use dust to get them.
http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/177190/next_generation_monetization_.php
It doesn't have anything to do with other players playing free, but only matters if it helps a player accomplish their goal. Hearthstone is a P2W game, but that doesn't have to be an entirely bad aspect. I would consider it a relatively fair payment model, but it has considerable room for improvement.
TBH, as it currently stands it is not much better than any Zynga or korean grinder that we have already seen, but a couple of quick, simple fixes to a few game mechanics and it would be pretty good. The game just lacks playability from the poorly designed MMR for casual play, and that lack of a cheaper arena option.
Good post.
Hearthstone has the wrong mechanics for the wrong market. It was supposed to be a casual softcore card game, but it is now a pay to win CCG with extreme bad seeding and it turned into a typical Blizzard hardcore game in which casual iPad players will be lost in space.
The game is rather cheap to play but to be competitive you either grond for 5 months or pay up to 50 to 200 dollars to have decent Legendary/epic cards.
Compared to Magic it is darn cheap, but for casuals it is extremely frustrating to loose against the usual,basement dwellers.
It's impossible to be pay to win. Why? Because you can and will eventually have everything that can be bought, and buyers buy the packs and don't know what cards they are going to get.
Since you can buy packs with coins, and craft the cards you want. You'll have the deck you want after playing for awhile. It's not hard to get coins. You get a least 40 coins a day plus 10 coins for 3 wins in play mode. So every other day you get a pack of cards AT LEAST.
Now, while it's not pay to win, should there be a limit to the amount of legendaries per deck? Absolutely. 2 legendary cards per deck, just like every non legendary can have two of the same card.
People crying about P2W are really crying because other players get it first. And they wanna be first, whaa! If you want to say there is an unblance of decks based on the number of legendary cards, you would be absolutely correct. But they could have gotten all their legendary cards by crafting and buying a few packs with coins over the course of a couple weeks.
Thus, your real issue is with the number of legendary cards per deck. Not whether or not it's P2W. Think about it.
A casual player would probably have to play for at least half a year to have 3 or 4 competitive decks.
No its not !
You can achieve everything without money.
Your definition is wrong, or every trading card game would be ptw.
Step in the arena and break the wall down
You will win more if you pay, as you will have better cards. So by definition it is unquestionably Pay2Win if you fork out that cash.
But if you just can't handle that it's P2W, there's Arena mode, which has no P2W elements. Unfortunately som grinding required to play this mode.
BTW
Its nothing wrong with paying for some boosters, if you like the game.
The development of this games costs a ton, so if you play the game a lot you better spend some money to reward their work !
Step in the arena and break the wall down