Pay to win?

[Ragnarohk]

So it's been discussed before, that HS requires a hefty economic investment.

I think the new expansion might make it worse. Many Legendaries will be released, so far most of them seem incredibly good. My prediction is that Highlander decks will keep dominating and will have around 8 legendaries per deck.

Do you think the P2W situation is getting worse?

By casual play, I have enough gold to buy 40 packs. If I go for the 70€ preorder that means it's 1 Golden legendary (may be disenchanted for a better one) and atleast 3 legendaries from bad luck protection.

So that's 4 Legendaries for 70€ + months of gold saving (casual playing)

[Greeney]

It isn't pay to win, it's pay to have variety of competitive decks. We did just come off of easier systems to hit legend and have incredibly cheap and strong competitive new decks in both standard and wild thanks to some ridiculously overpowered Demon Hunter decks. If you feel it's pay to win, it's getting significantly less costly than say back during the frozen throne expansion... unless you're looking for variety.

[Aleax]

IMO the game is not pay to win if you play DH (new class) but that's it. On the other hand if you are a completionist as mentioned in the thread, well be careful for your wallet.

Do you think the P2W situation is getting worse?

Y imo except with DH. Or it will (then DH included).

[Greeney]

IMO the game is not pay to win if you play DH (new class) but that's it. On the other hand if you are a completionist as mentioned in the thread, well be careful for your wallet.


Y imo except with DH. Or it will (then DH included). But don't tell.

I mean, maybe with Highlander decks or with standard changing if you're still keeping a full collection and not disenchanting wild cards, but a ton of strong wild decks are very cheap... Secret Mage, Discard Warlock, Mech Paladin, Even Shaman, odd DH (even though you mentioned it's not P2W already), and Jade Druid (did have a couple more legendary cards, but those were handed out for free).

[windfish]

Card games are inherently designed to be pay to win. Digital games have the ability to be Free 2 Play but even with being able to build a meta deck for free, being able to pay for cards will let you keep up with the meta and climb the ladder faster.

I will say that right now if you are a new player it is much harder to get in with out spending money (best thing to do is just get good at arena and build your collection to play ranked). If you've played since the beginning (or close to it) you can disenchant rotated cards in order to build meta decks, but this has diminishing returns with each time to disenchant.

If we are to take just the slice of what standard is now without taking into account someones collection I would say it's least pay 2 win cause you can build a Demon hunter deck for very cheap. Then you can grind with that as you collect cards for other decks.

[Twoddle]

Do you think the P2W situation is getting worse?

You've got it backwards. There is no "pay-to-win situation". The game is "pay-to-win".

[XDurionX]

TCGs have always been p2w. You can easily maintain a competitive deck without paying, though. Paying will get you a lot more options.

[Amarys]

Even as a new player you can get to rank 5 and earn most of the rewards with almost any deck.

I would say HS is more pay for variety. A very casual f2p player can easily get 1-2 top decks with very little time investment but if you want more decks and also unlock all the adventures and don't wanna play daily, it's gonna cost you.

[Hellobolis]

i quit cause i had to play too much just to get one good deck, though admittedly without disenchanting all my other cards. i just do the stuff that doesn't require cards now.

[Tavin]

Either you farm/play for a few years like some of us and are caught up. Or you buy some packs/farm more to get all cards.

Why would hearthstone be pay to win? It's not like you need every card for every class to reach legend rank or whatever you refer to as "win".

[Toybox]

Having four choices instead of two at the start of Battlegrounds is absolutely huge, & put me off playing for a while.

[Mysterymask]

...man if you think Hearthstone is bad you should play ACTUAL MTG where your good decks might end up costing you a few hundred dollars

or Yugioh where the power creep is SO bad if you want a competitive deck you basically end up paying that much every few months

I mean Hearthstone is a friggin DREAM in comparision

[Ashleyxoxo]

Yes, it’s P2W.

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...man if you think Hearthstone is bad you should play ACTUAL MTG where your good decks might end up costing you a few hundred dollars

or Yugioh where the power creep is SO bad if you want a competitive deck you basically end up paying that much every few months

I mean Hearthstone is a friggin DREAM in comparision

You can trade/sell unused cards in MtG and Yugioh.

[SirBeef]

Yes, it’s P2W.

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You can trade/sell unused cards in MtG and Yugioh.

You can effectively do the same thing in HS by turning unused cards to dust to craft new ones.

[Ashleyxoxo]

You can effectively do the same thing in HS by turning unused cards to dust to craft new ones.

Let’s be serious here... the conversion cost is a total ripoff in Hearthstone.

[Mysterymask]

Yes, it’s P2W.

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You can trade/sell unused cards in MtG and Yugioh.

But you effectively get hearthstone cards for free too

I can play my friends in mtg all i want and WoTC isnt sending me a free pack

[shimerra]

Yes, it’s P2W.

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You can trade/sell unused cards in MtG and Yugioh.

Trading/selling in those games is a literal fuck fest if it happens at all. My GF is entirely free to play in HS and I'm generally able to help her make it so she has or can have 2-3 standard decks at a given moment. Although she usually finds a single deck and plays it into the ground until it rotates. And she generally leans towards the 10K dust plus decks. I myself almost always have a few decks I can float through except when I just don't have any other deck archetypes that interest me and I sit on the dust. I don't think I've even spent 100$ on HS since beta. I've spent more than that just on draft/standard tournament entry fees in a few months when I used to go to Friday night magic regularly.


Trading in magic/yugioh is generally a nightmare. Everyone always looks up the card value and trades almost entirely off that. I had a guy bitch for 30 minutes about a trade because there was a 2$ difference in the value in my friend and I's favor. It ended up getting called off because we just didn't have anything else he wanted to make up that 2$ value. I've been to multiple card shops in multiple cities and in person trading is a fucking mess unless you're friends with the person in my experience. I can't count the number of times someone tried to haggle me down because they saw a made up scratch on a card and insisted we throw in something extra for it. I have a solid group of 5-6 friends and we all played/pooled our cards together and would help trade for what we all needed. It was either that or stick to cheap decks that usually bored me. In HS I can literally dust anything I don't need for the 100% change to get a card I do need without spending a dime and just playing somewhat regularly.

Selling is almost always a huge loss. Again it's generally hard to find people who straight up buy cards from individuals and if you sell to stores/online sites you're lucky to get half the value. Maybe 75% if people are desperate and its a high value card that's hard to find. Person to person sales are again, relatively rare in my group's experience. The single time we ever got anything close to full value from a shop was when my buddy pulled a holo tezzerect(or whatever his name was) and they straight up offered us two fat packs for it or something like that.

I was super interested in a green deck some time ago. The 4 primeval titans I needed cost $60.00 a piece. 4 cards out of a 60 card deck and my tab was already at $240.00 and while I can't recall the exact deck list it wasn't the only similarly costed card. $240.00 worth of boosters and I probably would've been lucky to pull one titan. I was vastly more constrained by a lack of people of trade with/not enough money to make the decks I wanted in MTG than I ever have been by dust in HS.


I made a mono black trading post deck back when most people ran a UBW version. While it ended up being one of my favorite decks I've ever played even though it wasn't quite as good it had the fun aspect that literally no one knew what I was rolling with I was unable to drop the money to build the UBW version even if I had wanted to without blowing a hole in my bank account or trading away a large chunk of my group's collective cards hamstrining anyone's else ability to trade for what they needed. A comparable deck in hearthstone costs me exactly zero dollars if I play with any regularity and I never have to choose to settle for the cheap deck instead of the deck I really want to play.


And now that HS has made it so you cannot get a duplicate until you have every card of that rarity type it's even easier to build up a collection. There are literal boxes of magic cards worth less than 50 cents that you'd have an easier time eating over trying to sell and that's most of what you get. HS is massively easier/cheaper to maintain and play a variety of fun decks in and that's even with MTG's massive library/sheer number of cards to choose from it has over HS. So yes HS does have a bit of a pay to win element to it because there's no denying that more cards=more decks=more options. But it's perfectly and easily doable, and only gotten easier, to do quite well entirely free to play unlike any physical card game.

[deenman]

Its only p2w if you want to have everything as fast as posible,or if you wanna compete in events,then yeah you need to invest to have everything that is meta from multiple classes,but if you just wanna hit legend and have some good decks,no...not at all,you can get top ranks with basic aggro decks,hunter is cheap and strong,zoo locks,aggro priest has become pretty good,pirate warrior

[SirBeef]

Let’s be serious here... the conversion cost is a total ripoff in Hearthstone.

True but the argument that you can't sell cards in HS is false.

[Greeney]

Let’s be serious here... the conversion cost is a total ripoff in Hearthstone.

Nobody will disagree with that point besides maybe hearthstone devs.

But it's not p2w (besides maybe battlegrounds). Top players have built decks from scratch and hit legend in no time. Hell, a player named Zeddy went something like 37-1 to hit legend with a cheap demon hunter deck on a new account a couple months ago. All you need to "win" decently in hearthstone (whether that's make legend or even hit high legend) is one good deck being played by someone who is skilled enough to know how to play against the other meta decks.

Again, the only advantage you get from paying is variety. If you play standard you can make a Face Hunter and if you play wild you can make a Secret Mage. Hell, make both if you want to switch up. Both are super cheap and can get you tons of quick wins during your climb.

If you need more variety of cheap decks there's odd paladin, dh, or rogue in wild or a guardian animals druid or stealth rogue in standard.

I think those of you saying it's pay to win need to actually define what you consider to be winning in this game.