Improving Hearthstone's Monetization

With the impending arrival of the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion for Hearthstone, the cost of Hearthstone has once again become a hot topic. Shortly before the expansion's announcement, the cost to complete a Standard collection was determined to be nearly $2,000. Between this detail and the recent discussion on loot boxes, it's surprising how little Hearthstone is crucified for how it handles microtransactions.

While it's easy to get hung up on the variant amounts of cards (or Arcane Dust) that can be earned from a card pack, the fact that collecting cards is so costly and/or time-consuming is the greater concern. This doesn't change the fact that if it were somehow achievable, I'd try to change Hearthstone's card collection model to emphasize the consistent card unlocks that adventures provide. However, adventures were dumped in favor of expansions, meaning a different approach seems more reasonable. Based on my personal philosophies regarding monetization, I have a some suggestions in mind that I think will improve Hearthstone's monetization.

My Suggestions

It's unlikely my suggestions are that original but that isn't anything new given my article history. What helps to set these suggestions apart are the paragraphs of explanation that come with each suggestion. The suggestions are as follows:

1. Increase the disenchant value of all cards to half of their Arcane Dust cost, up from 25%. (Also optionally, when cards are changed their disenchant values are not increased.)

This is a more extreme version of an existing suggestion I saw though I have to imagine someone's made this specific suggestion as well. The main reason for this suggestion is to increase the general value of packs by nearly doubling the amount of dust earned from them. Aside from making it possible to almost craft a rare card from the minimum value for a pack, which would be worth 80 dust instead of 40, the increase in value would be most impactful when players buy many packs. While all types of players directly benefit from this change, players who pre-order or otherwise buy many packs with real money benefit the most. The ultimate result of this change is that players who buy a lot feel better about their purchase and players who don't might be enticed to purchase due to the promise of greater value; I think both of these outcomes would increase and improve the consistency of income from the game for Blizzard.

The most significant benefit is that collecting entire expansions will cost about half as much, but note that doing so should still cost hundreds of dollars, which is not an amount a lot of players may be willing to spend (especially if player spending habits remotely reflect charts like the one shown in this article).

As great as this change looks, it's important to acknowledge that a major increase in value raises concerns about how Hearthstone might end up making less money since players earn more for less money spent. However, I am not concerned for a few reasons. The first reason is that there's a fairly high cost ceiling to collect everything in the game since golden cards, which cost twice as much dust to craft, exist as a cosmetic option that can (and do, judging from some well-known player's collections) appeal to whales. The second reason is that other monetization options can be added to the game as long as it's not something ridiculous like $10 hero portraits. Finally, increasing the disenchant value of cards would encourage players to use the feature more, potentially decreasing the overall dust value of their collection, which leads to the purchase of more packs. The first two reasons I'll explain in the upcoming suggestions, but the latter point is more appropriate to explain here since it relates directly to the Arcane Dust currency.

To better understand the reasoning of my final point, it's important to keep the concept of collection dust value, which is the crafting cost for all cards in a player's collection, in mind. This is an important value since crafting cards is important for deckbuilding if a player does not own a full collection. As I mentioned above, there will likely be many players who meet this criteria and will therefore find themselves having to craft cards to create decks, whether it's to have fun or to win, for both formats or for other purposes such as Tavern Brawls and AI bosses. By increasing the disenchant value of cards, such players are more likely to make liberal use of the disenchant feature and decrease their collection dust value more than prior to my proposed change, even if each individual disenchant reduces that value by less.

For example, imagine if a player wants to craft four epic cards for a Tavern Brawl deck. Under the current disenchanting system, their want to craft these cards for the optimal deck is outweighed by the punishing loss of collection dust value that amounts to 4800 lost dust. Because of how daunting this loss is, players may choose to substitute cards they own instead. Under my proposed changes, the lost dust amount decreases to 1600 but the likelihood to disenchant increases, meaning that there may be many more situations where players "lose" 1600 dust instead of 0, which results in a greater net loss of dust, which equates to a greater need for packs.

If all of this doesn't sell the idea, note that there is an optional provision that removes the 100% disenchant value from recently changed cards. The result of this is twofold. Firstly, players would be  less likely to hoard cards to benefit from increased disenchant value, meaning they are even more likely to disenchant impulsively to craft cards. Secondly, card changes can occur more frequently without impacting (or rather, not impacting) the collection dust value of players. Said card changes would also be less likely to upset players due to the increased base disenchant value of cards. With all that said, this change is optional because players may get upset if a beneficial feature is removed.

2. Encourage players to craft golden cards more.

Even without the previous suggestion, I think it's a good step to push the cosmetic side of the game which, in the case of spending in-game currency, means crafting golden cards. While golden cards can occasionally be obtained from packs and other rewards, their presence seemed relatively obscured. In the collection, a filter has to be checked off to even craft golden cards. As for other references, the most memorable one was in the League of Explorers adventure from a couple years ago, though to be fair a card that produces golden cards is being printed in the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion.

All of the above is a far cry from how prominently featured golden cards could be and there are ways to do so without having players feel like they're having the need to craft such cards excessively forced upon them. For instance, the following could be done:

• Allow players to upgrade existing cards to golden cards for the appropriate dust cost while in the crafting interface.
• Run a Tavern Brawl where, in addition to some whacky rules, cards become golden.
• Feature AI bosses that use golden cards ranging from a full deck to certain signature cards.
• Have more promotions that feature golden cards. The golden Volcanasaur giveaway is a good example of what could be done every once in awhile.

Ultimately, by featuring golden cards more, players, especially big spenders who can afford to make the expenditure, may spend some of their dust to enhance their collection in a cosmetic fashion. To do so requires many more packs since golden cards cost twice as much dust to craft compared to normal cards.

3. Add an in-game currency price to existing cosmetics and add more cosmetics in general.

This suggestion consists of two parts. The first half of the suggestion consists of adding a dust (or gold) cost to existing cosmetics such as hero portraits. Considering some of the requirements to earn portraits, the most recent of which caused a fair bit of uproar within the community, it would've been nice to have had an in-game currency cost tied to them. Doing so would've heavily dampened any controversy and allowed players to have more choice over how to unlock cosmetics especially if they missed out on them. Doing so also helps to reduce a player's in-game currency, which might result in the purchase of more packs.

The second part involves the addition of cosmetics and while I could list many ideas, one in particular comes to mind that'll hopefully elicit some discussion on other cosmetic options that could be sold to generate revenue. This particular suggestion utilizes the Beyond Legendary concept to create a higher grade of cosmetic cards called platinum cards, which serve as legendary cards with a high level of visual appeal. These cards would have a very high crafting cost (twice as much as golden cards, or 6400 dust) but would serve as the pinnacle for collectors with a lot of disposable income or time on their hands.

Final Statements

This concludes my suggestion for improving Hearthstone's monetization. If there's anything worth taking away from this article it's that I took empirical ideas that I favor such as selling cosmetics and dampening the detrimental effects of randomness and shaped them to fit the game in question. It seems a fair amount of the subreddit community is on the same page since a lot of ideas I have are based on ones I saw on r/hearthstone, so that was strongly appreciated. Hopefully this post adds to the ongoing discussion that I expect to flare up again shortly after the expansion's release but in the meantime, I have an expansion to review and the card reveals so far seem quite promising.