Full Hearthstone History of Economy in One Picture! How much does a complete collection cost?
Since the release of Hearthstone, players have been arguing about the cost of the game. These debates still occur today.
We decided to recreate the entire financial situation and show you the evolution of the economy of the game. We conducted a large-scale study. We tried to determine the most important factors that have an impact on the cost of the game for each player, then we did the calculations.
For visualization on the chart, let's use the icons of two players. This is Squire and Tirion. They are the same skill level and play the same amount of time, but one of them is a Free 2 play player, and the second invests regularly into the game because his main goal is to obtain the full collection. Thus, Squire will receive only free game resources. Tirion will get free game resources and spend real money for the complete collection.
- Rewards for completing the training mode, and for hidden quests.
- Revard for 6 victories everyday.
- Gold for daily quest (takes into account changes).
- Card pack for Tavern Brawl every week (from 2015).
- Chest with reward for 5th rank every month (from 2015).
- 3 invitations from friends to the friendly quest (Play a Friend!) every month (from 2016).
- Dust for cards which are shipped to the Hall of Fame (from 2017).
*For convenience we converted all thise awards into packs. (1 pack = 100 gold = 100 dust)
*We understand that this framework is very sketchy, and it does not take into account a lot of factors. For example, Arena rewards, additional game bonuses and promotions, as well as discounts on packs during events. But in spite of this, we did our best to look at the past as well as we could.
Results on the image - https://imgur.com/gallery/Quc0WKW
Video version with more detail - https://youtu.be/aZHma6JkJtI
We can come to several conclusions.
The first conclusion: Hearthstone is a very expensive card game. You can play it absolutely free, but you must be stubborn, and use your resources correctly. Without investing real money, you will hardly be able to collect the entire collection of cards, but this is not necessary for a successful game.
The second conclusion: Hearthstone was the most expensive in 2014.
Conclusion three: Hearthstone was the cheapest in 2015.
conclusion four: Hearthstone is becoming more loyal to the players who have been playing for a long time. We get more resources, even more than we give in these statistics, as we have large and small events, bonus rewards, promotions, and gifts before the release of new expansions that aren't taken into consideration here.
Conclusion five: A new player that started playing from the start of 2018, needed to pay about $ 1138 to collect all cards from the standard format.
Conclusion six: Hearthstone is very unfriendly to new players. Since the launch of the game, for new players, the game has only become more expensive. This needs to be changed more radically. New players should receive many more bonuses and many more free packs.
Conclusion seven: Developers have experimented with the economic system of the game, but it seems they have found the perfect solution for themselves. If you play and you want the entire collection of cards of the current year, you have to pay $ 480.
Conclusion eight: For all this time, in order to have a complete collection of cards, it would be necessary to spend $ 2,300.
Conclusion nine: In 2014, in order to collect a complete classic set, it was necessary to purchase approximately 470-490 packs (provided that you disenchanted all the extra copies and gold cards, then craft missing cards from dust).
In 2018 to collect a complete classic set, it was necessary to purchase approximately 390 packs.
Conclusion ten: In 2018, for the period between the expansion (4 months), each player received the amount of free resources equivalent to 133 packs. This amount is enough for a comfortable game!