DMF Poll.

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I have made a strawpoll to see what people think would be able to change hearthstone if blizzard decides on not changing the model for the battlepass. The options include:

The optional monthly membership that gives you access to the entire collection

This option has been passed around for a long time, mostly because blizzard is a company well known for a subscription based game in world of warcraft, and an argument i have genuinely not heard a strong argument against outside of the sunk cost fallacy for the putting the option into the game so late.

Doubling dust refunds

This option i feel has been needed in hearthstone for a loooooooooooong time. It feels terrible being free to play barely being able to play two classes out of the now ten and getting some shitty legendary that was already fringe but now that you have it it is completely worthless. You sell it in the shop and you get 1/4th of what it should be worth. This option would give dusting cards half their value instead of what we have now, legendaries would reward 800, epics 200, etc etc. and i think it has been needed for a long time in hearthstone just because it feels TERRIBLE uncrafting literally ANYTHING. And since there is no opportunity for getting the legendary you want other than crafting for dust. You will probably get more junk legendaries from packs before getting the ones you want, not counting the fact you might just get the same shitty ones you have been dusting over and over to get something good.(i got two Bwonsamdi, the Dead in rastakahn during the expansion, a card you could argue is still useless to this day.)

These are the two i have thought of as the best solutions, but if you have a better answer to it, feel free to pick the third option and reply below.

There are two changes I think Hearthstone should make to help players get better cards. One, adjust the dusting system to be a 1-in-3 instead of the current 1-in-4. Legendary cards craft for 900 and dust for 300, epics craft for 300 and dust for 100, rares craft for 100 and dust for 30, commons craft for 30 and dust for 10. It isn't quite as drastic as your 1-in-2 exchange rate, but I think this system is good enough.

Second, I think we should focus less on pack quantity and more on pack quality. More than half of the packs people open are simple 40 dust packs, the worst possible outcome. I think that the lowest value pack shouldn't appear nearly as often as it does, only about one every 3 packs should be 40 dust, every other pack should have at least one extra rarity or golden card. Right now, legendaries appear one in every 40, and they get more likely after 20. And epics appear every one in 10, and are more likely after 5. Instead, legendaries should come every 30, and get more likely after 10. And epics should come every 7, and get more likely after 3.

These two changes would go a long way in helping players get better cards for their collections and let you get more dust with fewer packs.

Well, we know option 1 is impossible. If I can come and go without losing any value, there's really just no longer any reason to really care or commit to hearthstone to any degree since it can be taken and dropped almost at whim. As such the playerbase numbers will fluctuate wildly, sometimes because the expansion is boring (like during the meta after Ungoro-Kobolds have rotated) or because blizz is being an arse (like the Blitzchung issue)

Changing dust value is perhaps the easiest option here, and I think it has been mooted when the survey was first leaked, since it was universally acknowledged then that such a system would have repercussions on the game's economy.

I personally think the best way is to incrementally reduce the cost of each expansion's dust crafting requirement, so a legendary from, say, AoO would be a lot cheaper than it would be during its cycle. Not only will it maintain the economy at an advantage to blizz during the expansion's cycle, it will still significantly make the game more approachable to new players, especially those wanting to have a go at wild.

I agree with @dapperdog that an advanced improvement to the dust system would be best.

I'll also add some rough numbers to what dapperdog said about the monthly membership idea. From my own experience the sum of:

• big pre-order;
• a couple of mid-expansion bundles;
• freebie packs and legendaries;
• and a fairly typical amount of gold saved up over an expansion (~8-9k, I'm not getting into a deep discussion of how much we'll get with the new system here)

is enough to get essentially all the cards in a set minus a handful of legendaries. That can come directly from the packs or dust (including a significant amount from nerfs and Hall of Fame. The latter might be an extreme source of dust income next year).

The problem is that all comes to about £100 per expansion cycle (I'm pretty sure its less, but 100 is a nice round number), so the bare minimum they would have you charge to rent cards would be about £25 a month for renting to not just be strictly better than buying cards. I'm not sure how many people would be willing to pay that every month, but you'll certainly get a lot who come back every 4 months, pay £25 to play it like a conventional game for a while, then disappear again. That'll have a potentially catastrophic effect on the playerbase.

£100 for not quite the entire set, that's crazy?!

And another thing...

Ok, so I just posted some ideas on another thread regarding the Tavern Pass, which I'l simply copy paste here under a spoiler:

The tl;dr of it is simple: remove the level cap and increased XP per level to increase the playing=reward feeling, with a better rewarding structure, pack tickets instead of locked packs to give you more options while leveling, a buttload of XP events to actually allow us to have a life outside of HS and more clarity on the XP per game side (kind of like, when defeating a Pokémon, you see how much exprience your Pokémon gains by having a cute growing blue bar under their HP). 

Also, the numbers @KANSAS used for dust ratios feel great as a balance between monetization/rewards.

Quote From dapperdog

Well, we know option 1 is impossible. If I can come and go without losing any value, there's really just no longer any reason to really care or commit to hearthstone to any degree since it can be taken and dropped almost at whim. As such the playerbase numbers will fluctuate wildly, sometimes because the expansion is boring (like during the meta after Ungoro-Kobolds have rotated) or because blizz is being an arse (like the Blitzchung issue)

Changing dust value is perhaps the easiest option here, and I think it has been mooted when the survey was first leaked, since it was universally acknowledged then that such a system would have repercussions on the game's economy.

I personally think the best way is to incrementally reduce the cost of each expansion's dust crafting requirement, so a legendary from, say, AoO would be a lot cheaper than it would be during its cycle. Not only will it maintain the economy at an advantage to blizz during the expansion's cycle, it will still significantly make the game more approachable to new players, especially those wanting to have a go at wild.

Call me old fashioned but i think games shouldn't be skinner boxes, they should be fun to play and that's why people should keep playing them. If hearthstone gets a subscription based model it will do one thing. Make people take the game less seriously. If you think the current model that forces people to be good at arena, rush down ladder with the most cancerous aggro deck and spend tons of money. is the way to go for the game's future then i don't think i should be having this conversation. F2ps worry about this game like it's their rent and they just got fired from their job. Focusing every day on how much they get and wondering if it'll last the month. That shouldn't be in the game. if you're F2p it's play aggro or GTFO. Because you ain't crafting those 8 legendaries you need to play that control deck homie.

Quote From clawz161

Quote From dapperdog

Well, we know option 1 is impossible. If I can come and go without losing any value, there's really just no longer any reason to really care or commit to hearthstone to any degree since it can be taken and dropped almost at whim. As such the playerbase numbers will fluctuate wildly, sometimes because the expansion is boring (like during the meta after Ungoro-Kobolds have rotated) or because blizz is being an arse (like the Blitzchung issue)

Changing dust value is perhaps the easiest option here, and I think it has been mooted when the survey was first leaked, since it was universally acknowledged then that such a system would have repercussions on the game's economy.

I personally think the best way is to incrementally reduce the cost of each expansion's dust crafting requirement, so a legendary from, say, AoO would be a lot cheaper than it would be during its cycle. Not only will it maintain the economy at an advantage to blizz during the expansion's cycle, it will still significantly make the game more approachable to new players, especially those wanting to have a go at wild.

Call me old fashioned but i think games shouldn't be skinner boxes, they should be fun to play and that's why people should keep playing them. If hearthstone gets a subscription based model it will do one thing. Make people take the game less seriously. If you think the current model that forces people to be good at arena, rush down ladder with the most cancerous aggro deck and spend tons of money. is the way to go for the game's future then i don't think i should be having this conversation. F2ps worry about this game like it's their rent and they just got fired from their job. Focusing every day on how much they get and wondering if it'll last the month. That shouldn't be in the game. if you're F2p it's play aggro or GTFO. Because you ain't crafting those 8 legendaries you need to play that control deck homie.

I used to be F2p for like 2 years (For the most part I still am, I only pay for the 20 bucks bundle occasionally, and I got the starter kit for 10 bucks), and I can't say I was anywhere near depraved enough as you described. I only started laddering seriously like 2 years back (ironically at a time when I have better cards), mostly spending my time in my f2p years finishing up quests and playing useless but fun decks.

Not everyone plays aggro decks because they are the fastest way to make a buck. I still regularly see face hunter right now, even when it should be theoretically no longer as rewarding as it once was under this bs system. Aggro decks are quick, easy to play, and in many ways interactive for the player who plays it (despite being cancerous to the other side). If fun is the reason why people play hearthstone, then its easy enough to describe playing aggro decks as fun for some, not for others.

Ranked will always be serious. Its inevitable since winning is for the most part fun. If the best deck is a control/midrange deck then everyone will play nothing but control/midrange (During the last phase of AoO, galakrond rogue and highlander mage were practically everywhere). No amount of rewards will ever change that.

As long as the majority of players are married to the idea of randomized packs, the game will never get any less expensive. Not in a significant way.

Here is the system that makes the most sense to me:

• Drop the free-to-play pretense. Everyone knows it's next to impossible to enjoy the game for free unless you sink most of your waking hours into it.
• Make it a subscription game, but with several tiers of service so that you can enjoy it according to the amount you are comfortable spending.
  • Basic Tier: Access to all cards of one single class, plus all neutral cards, for just a few dollars ($3 to $5 per month, maybe).
  • Multi-basic: You can pick up access to additional classes on an "a la carte" basis, but they are cheaper because you've already paid for neutrals.
  • Silver Tier: Access to all the cards in the game on a monthly basis. Maybe $20 a month or so.
  • Gold Tier: Access to all the cards in the game for the duration of the expansion (4 months) for the price of a normal AAA game ($60).
  • Platinum Tier: As Gold Tier, plus automatically receive all non-competitive cosmetic items that are released during the expansion. (Price depends on the number and value of cosmetic items included, but should be cheaper than Gold Tier plus those items purchased separately.)
• Cosmetic items are divided in to competitive (earned through wins, achievements, or other game play requirements) and non-competitive (generally purchased with gold or cash).

Honestly, the claim that the game is "free" has created far more drama than it's worth. Just drop it already.