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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a pattern here: 'Highly talented company makes highly praised product but eventually realizes there is much more money in exploitative products instead'. Valve made the amazing Half-Life series, then later seems to have come to the conclusion that their return on investment is just much higher if they focus on multiplayer games with loot boxes (plus selling other people's games and taking a cut). Blizzard went through a similar transformation from e.g. Warcraft 3 to World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone (these days WoW is probably even the less exploitative of the bunch). Facebook went from being 'the place to hear about what my friends are up to', to just trying to show me as targeted ads as possible. I don't blame them, per se - these companies are just following the economic reality, but I just wish being exploitative wasn't so damn profitable.

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I would easily argue Blizzard has the most generous/least exploitative loot box models. Cosmetic only with a fairly regular/healthy rate of freebies, not to mention the currency you get that lets you acquire the ones you actually want without relentlessly "rolling". Heroes of the Storm steps it up even further with a reroll mechanic you can use for disappointing boxes. Compared to the others in the industry, Blizzard is downright pleasant.

HotS and Overwatch really aren't exploitative sure, but Hearthstone is incredibly exploitative. Unless you are so good you can go "infinite" in arena (always make your gold entry fee back and then some, on average), you have to buy packs for every expansion that comes out. Or you have to play with lower-tier cards, which some people do successfully, but to get the most out of the game or be "competitive" they will need the best cards eventually.

Out of the 3 games, I probably played Overwatch the most, followed closely by Hearthstone, but the amount of money I invested in Hearthstone is easily 3-4x the initial price I paid for OW. I got fed up of the "pay or fall behind" nature of Hearthstone and stopped playing a long time ago though.

That is very much the nature of a CGC though. Hearthstone seems less exploitative than Magic the Gathering, Pokemon TCG or Yu-Gi-Oh because you can trade in unwanted card and those have been around for a long time.

Also in MTG there's a lot of people who will happily play unrestricted games for fun. Unless you're after playing at tournaments you can ignore editions and new releases. (Or just pick what's interesting to you in them)

Hearthstone is digital. Biiiiiiiig difference.

Hearthstone should be compared with other computer games, not with MTG & co.

MTGO then?

I've played digital card games that sold digital card packs for real money like ten plus years ago. Decipher did the Star Trek CCG online the same way.

I always thought a much more modern scenario would've been if they put like a code or something on physical packs so you could buy them once and have the same cards in both digital and physical form.

The initial investment in MTG is higher, since you start with zero cards, but there is an independent market where you can purchase almost any card directly. I personally prefer this over the gambling and crafting mechanic in HS.

Yeah, I think of Hearthstone as a game with a $150 per year subscription and evaluate if I want to keep playing it based on that - which currently I do, but I can definitely see how many people wouldn't (and if I hadn't been playing since the beginning, it would cost more to stay competitive now)

Yeah I reached the point where I decided it wasn't worth it. Towards the end of my degree, I was just playing far less because of bigger workload and the times I played were mostly on my phone while waiting on my own for something. I continue to have less free time now that my degree is finished, and now I kill time with free phone games. Maybe one day I'll get back into it, if I haven't fallen too far behind.

That's actually untrue for Hearthstone.

You can be perfectly competitive without playing arena or buying packs. I haven't paid a cent for the past 2 years and can play all the competitive decks I want in every meta. Blizzard has been very good with bumping up the rewards you get from playing normally.

I stopped playing 2 years ago so that's likely it, for the first 2 years of hearthstone from closed beta to when I stopped the rewards were lacking. When I had time to play a lot in early student years, I could play some expansions without paying a thing but getting busier in later student years I fell behind too quickly.

Yeah, it was a pain in the early days but I feel like Blizzard has recognised that and are actively taking steps to improve things.

For Blizzard, you forgot about Diablo 3, which was designed to push people toward the (real-money) auction house (a good write-up here:http://www.sullla.com/D3/unsatisfying.html).

But I agree that, right now, they are not the worst offender, at least with Overwatch (I haven't played Hearstone and I haven't played enough of HotS to reach the lootboxes).

Addenda, from Diablo III's wikipedia page:

" In March 2013, former Diablo III game director Jay Wilson stated that he felt the existence of the auction houses "really hurt" the game. "

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