Dealing with Sunk Cost Effect in HS

How do you guys feel when you need/want to leave HS (for whatever reason) but already spent 'that' much (value is relative right) money in the game?

My work is taking so much time and yet i 'kinda' feel forced to keep playing HS so i'm not feeling my money and time spent is wasted.

I know it's irrational but damn it's hard to fight against.

Mind sharing your perspective, senpai?

Here's a useful extension to your options: leave until you get an urge to play again. Your account and collection aren't going to disappear, so stopping playing doesn't waste previous investment (even ignoring the sunk cost fallacy).

It may be that you are happy to never come back, when the sunk cost fallacy will tell you that is fine, or you do come back and nothing was lost anyway. Either way, taking a break from HS is not a commitment to leave forever, so you don't need to feel like it is.

Even when hearthstone was at its lowest and I wasn't feeling it I still finish up my quests. Takes about half hour to finish 3 quests, assuming youre okay with taking deliberate losses.

I get what you're saying, but the real question is how long a break are you planning? The sunken cost effect is perhaps only really relevant to those planning and failing to take breaks the size of an expansion, which is roughly 3 months. If you mean youre getting that feeling that you need to play hearthstone everyday to maximize value, you can easily just stop for 2 days and come back the third day, finish up your quests, and lose no value at all.

Quote From AngryShuckie

Here's a useful extension to your options: leave until you get an urge to play again. Your account and collection aren't going to disappear, so stopping playing doesn't waste previous investment (even ignoring the sunk cost fallacy).

It may be that you are happy to never come back, when the sunk cost fallacy will tell you that is fine, or you do come back and nothing was lost anyway. Either way, taking a break from HS is not a commitment to leave forever, so you don't need to feel like it is.

Ah yes, i can see it now, thank you

Quote From sinti

What Shuckie said. Also you can look at it this way: did the money/time spent provide for an entertainment for the time being? If so, then just accept that and see it as an investment into your hobby. Some ppl spend more money on a single night out than it costs to buy a preorder for an expansion for example.

Just see it as money/time spent on having fun, dont feel obligated to stay with something you dont have time for just cause you invested into it. You eventually stop partying as well (or as often), once you dont have time for that anymore either :)

Yea it's actually just like any other entertainment where you pay up front, right. Thanks for your insight!

Yeah i probably will play every other third day just to clear quest like you said, thank you good mate!

Quote From Pezman

If you're not playing to have fun, you probably shouldn't be playing. If you're concerned about losing your investment, that feeling will only get worse the longer you play and invest more money into it. Just quit now and like Shuckie and Sinti said, you paid for all the fun you had, so it wasn't money wasted. Maybe after a break you'll want to come back and feel a fresh interest. But either way, stop playing if it doesn't make you happy.

Sometimes i forget that the first priority is to have fun, lol. Thanks for reminding me!!

Sometimes you have to just take the plunge and stop 'cold turkey', finding other fun games or hobbies to occupy the time you spent on HS. I haven't quit HS, but I did quit WoW, one of the games I loved playing, despite having played it for 10 years, almost 300 mounts at the time (including multiple TCG mounts, some retired mounts, RBG mounts, and many 1% drop dungeon/raid mounts). Not to mention all of the other achs, pets, transmog, etc.

It can be hard to walk away from any game after spending a lot of money/time/effort put into it. Just got to have other fun and enjoyable things to do in its place if/when you want to come back.

Quote From LyraSilvertongue

Sometimes you have to just take the plunge and stop 'cold turkey', finding other fun games or hobbies to occupy the time you spent on HS. I haven't quit HS, but I did quit WoW, one of the games I loved playing, despite having played it for 10 years, almost 300 mounts at the time (including multiple TCG mounts, some retired mounts, RBG mounts, and many 1% drop dungeon/raid mounts). Not to mention all of the other achs, pets, transmog, etc.

It can be hard to walk away from any game after spending a lot of money/time/effort put into it. Just got to have other fun and enjoyable things to do in its place if/when you want to come back.

Whoa yeah coming from WoW like that really put it into perspective. Thank you, Lyra!

Embrace Wild, where your investments are way more valuable, and where staying up-to-date with the meta is easier, hence making consistency of playtime less meaningful.

That is,  you can easily leave Wild for a while, knowing you won't be too far behind when you come back - easing your staying away from the game, and eventually easing your way out.

PS: a good job grants you a good money income, with which you can buy way more packs than quests can grant. So your job is actually boosting your capability to stay up-to-date, with a much lesser effort.Assuming ofc you still like the game.

Quote From RavenSunHS

Embrace Wild, where your investments are way more valuable, and where staying up-to-date with the meta is easier, hence making consistency of playtime less meaningful.

That is,  you can easily leave Wild for a while, knowing you won't be too far behind when you come back - easing your staying away from the game, and eventually easing your way out.

PS: a good job grants you a good money income, with which you can buy way more packs than quests can grant. So your job is actually boosting your capability to stay up-to-date, with a much lesser effort.Assuming ofc you still like the game.

Coming from the Wild man himself!! Thanks, Raven. Appreciate your suggestion. I'll try some cheap and fun wild deck.

Quote From Echo

I have an incredibly addictive personality and so when it comes to quitting things I've sunk time into, I struggle a lot. With card games, I tend to have periods where I am really into them, followed by periods of burnout, only to eventually get back into them the next time something major comes to them. This pattern has happened to me for both Hearthstone and MTG for about 7-8 years. The way I see it unless something major happens that redefines the entire game and makes everything you have obsolete, you can take breaks and when you do finally come back it'll only take a week or two to catch up with possibly months of 'missed content'.  Granted it helps that I've gotten enough of a fleshed-out collection, but even when I was just starting off, it never felt like there was some new massive change that got rid of all my previous grinding.

As for a game that I did leave 100%, I used to be huge on Destiny 2, played it pretty much daily for several hours for about an entire year. I was so into that I ended up writing a 28-page Google doc all about one of the weapon types. Eventually, though it just gets to the point where it felt more like a chore to play every day and so I just dropped it. At first, I constantly wanted to go back to the game but after like a week or two, I didn't feel like I needed to keep up with any of it anymore. 

If you need help dropping Hearthstone, I'd recommend trying to pick something else up in the meantime that doesn't use daily login/play rewards, like playing a singleplayer campaign, watching a show, or picking up a new book.

Thanks for sharing, Echo! Yea i kinda feel you, man. You know, now i'm reading some books as replacement and it is working well for me.

Quote From Vandaren

Yeah i probably will play every other third day just to clear quest like you said, thank you good mate!

For me, letting go of that urgency to clear quests was a huge milestone.  I know it feels a bit like leaving money on the proverbial table, but look at it this way: quests only grant you gold, and gold is only good for buying packs and arena tokens.  If you're not really interested in crafting new decks or doing arena runs, then packs and tokens should have minimal value to you--therefore it should be totally rationale to prefer to spend 30 minutes doing something that might actually have a small improvement on your life (e.g., sleep an extra 30 min / watch a TV show / surf internet / chat with friends / etc) rather than perform a task which will only have insignificant benefit.

Good luck!

Quote From OldManSanns

Quote From Vandaren

Yeah i probably will play every other third day just to clear quest like you said, thank you good mate!

For me, letting go of that urgency to clear quests was a huge milestone.  I know it feels a bit like leaving money on the proverbial table, but look at it this way: quests only grant you gold, and gold is only good for buying packs and arena tokens.  If you're not really interested in crafting new decks or doing arena runs, then packs and tokens should have minimal value to you--therefore it should be totally rationale to prefer to spend 30 minutes doing something that might actually have a small improvement on your life (e.g., sleep an extra 30 min / watch a TV show / surf internet / chat with friends / etc) rather than perform a task which will only have insignificant benefit.

Good luck!

Yes, i feel obliged to do quest and ofc its just feeling, right. But when we put rationale in it like you said then we can see things clearly. Gotta fight the feeling then.

Thx, Sanns!!