Hearthstone's Divisive New Monetisation

Hearthstone Battlegrounds and pay-to-win accusations

The value proposition of Hearthstone's battle pass (called the Tavern Pass) used to be pretty good. With some planning, you could acquire enough of the new expansion's cards to make multiple viable decks, as well as pick up two additional premium content packs.

These were the Battlegrounds Perks, which gave you extra hero choices in the Battlegrounds auto-battler mode, along with in-game emotes and post-match stats. Secondly, you could also afford the expansion's mini set, a set of specific cards from the expansion unlockable in one bundle. In a game characterised by random drops from loot box-style card packs, the guarantee that you will get a specific card, particularly the epic and legendary rarity cards that decks are built around, is extremely valuable.

While it's still going to be possible to pick up the mini sets with in-game gold, the option to purchase the Battleground Perks (now part of the expanded Battlegrounds Pass) without spending money upfront has been removed.

This has been the most controversial of the changes, with many in the community saying this makes Battlegrounds a pay-to-win mode now.

Here's what that means in practice. At first glance, it wouldn't seem to be possible to pay to win. All players are pulling from the same pool of cards each game, unlike traditional Hearthstone where you can pay for more card packs for the chance to get better cards and more options. The issue comes with the choice of heroes.

Players without the perks get a choice of two of the Battlegrounds heroes, with the perks you get a choice of four. The Heartstone devs have made it clear their intention is to balance the game so that all heroes are equally competitively viable. Quote:

"We’re committed to maintaining hero and gameplay balance so that regardless of which heroes you choose from, you know your chance for the crown is based primarily on player skill"

However, right now the reality is that some heroes have much stronger abilities. Take a look at this tier list for some idea of the range of hero abilities and their usefulness. Two additional hero choices per game mean two extra chances to get one of the stronger heroes in the meta. This was less of a problem when the perks could be bought with in-game currency. Dedicated players could collect enough free rewards to get the perks each Battlegrounds season. Now the only way to gain this competitive advantage is to pay for it.

Alongside the monetisation changes, Blizzard are also introducing a new quests mechanic for Battlegrounds. Completing in-game challenges will reward players with powerful permanent upgrades. We will see how this change affects balance and gameplay once the new patch goes live. Hopefully, they've learned some lessons from the Battlegrounds Buddy system; which was quietly abandoned after playing havoc with the balance of the game mode.

Premium Currency Confusion

The second controversial new change, which will have a wider effect because it affects traditional Hearthstone players as well as Battlegrounds players, is the new premium currency. Many in-game items that could previously be bought directly with money can now only be bought with this currency, which can only be acquired in fixed bundles for real-world money. Other mobile-centric games such as Brawl Stars include some premium currency on their battle pass reward track, but not Hearthstone.

Hearthstone Features Lead Chadd Nervig tried to reassure players in this tweet thread. Their main points were that the upfront cost of the in-game items isn't changing, as well as the bundles are set to the cost of popular items, such as the Battlegrounds Pass, to minimise excess currency. Well if their intention was to reduce the amount of leftover currency you had left, you would have just made everything purchasable with money too!

There has to be some other reason at play here, and sadly it's probably the same reason that many mobile games have a premium currency. The bundles you buy the premium currency in are larger than the cost of a small in-game item, meaning you have to spend more than the value of the item in order to acquire it. For players making multiple purchases, this may not be an issue. However if you ever end up with leftover currency after buying everything you want, all you've done is turn that amount of money into something that can only be spent on future Hearthstone items (if it is spent at all). Blizzard pockets the money whether you are able to actually spend it or not.

This is clearly an anti-consumer move on Blizzard's part, as it adds new inefficiencies to the buying process that only seem to benefit Blizzard at the expense of the players. It remains to be seen if Blizzard will make any changes to this system to limit its adverse effects. Making any amount of Runestones refundable for their real-world value would go a long way towards this, but as this would be an unprecedented move in the world of premium currencies, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Thanks for reading The Scrapyard Esports and Gaming Blog! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.