Hearthstone is a free to play game, but as with all other games with that tag, there are lots of microtransactions planted into the game as well. I believe it’s time to get a raise to counteract this hurdle.
Surprisingly, gold, the in-game currency, can only be earned through playing the game. This differs from most other free to play games where you can buy the main currency and a second, rarer currency for real-world money. Gold is used to buy packs to earn cards and pay runs of arena.
The game also has a secondary currency of enchantment dust, which is used to craft cards. You get from an end of season’s reward chest, the end of an arena run, or disenchanting other cards.
The disenchant to crafting ratios are absurd, however. You get only get 5 dust for dusting a common versus crafting a common card for 40 dust. Rares are 20:100, epics are 100:400, and legendaries are 400:1600 dust. It’s even worse for the purely cosmetic golden cards, being 50:400, 100:800, 400:1600, and 1600:3200, in order of increasing rarities. These prices would’ve been fine if it was 2014, when the game came out, but now with the demand of so many epics and legendaries in meta decks, these prices are monstrous, especially for the amount of dust newer players start with.
There are three ways to supplement this issue: increase gold gained from daily quests, reduce crafting prices, or increase dust gained from disenchanting.
Increasing gold has its benefits as you can buy more packs and buy more arena tickets to get more cards. This effect has already happened and has seen success in the form of the Midsummer Fire Festival. This event gained a lot of traction because it not only helped hype the next expansion, but it helped people gain more gold to buy more packs for that expansion.
Changing the dust numbers is a topic discussed much on the subreddit. The idea is that it can supply the dust needed to craft the cards that people really want: epics and legendaries. It also helps newer players get these cards and help them create decks to get them to rank up and be more competitive.
In a real world scenario, an increase would cause an inflation and devalue the currency. However, this didn’t happen because pack and arena ticket prices won’t change as well as the fact that players cannot trade currencies or cards. So, it’s more akin to getting a raise for a job. You can use your increased wage from quests can help you get your essentials, in this case in the form of cards in your collection.
The most plausible concept is making the Midsummer Fire Festival effect of double gold from daily quests permanent. I say this because they made the Friendly Feud event permanent after its positive feedback, so it’s likely that this event could be made to just be a part of the game as well.
However, there is a large possibility that Blizzard doesn’t do any of these suggestions. This is because Hearthstone’s main profits are from people buying packs, especially for the 50 pack preorder before an expansion drops. Blizzard is still a business that needs to make a profit, after all. But to keep Hearthstone’s community from leaving the game, they will need to make concessions and help keep them coming back.
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