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[Column] Heroes of the Storm: An Awesome, But Poorly Monetized Game
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The main issue holding the game back right now is how Blizzard has decided to monetize Heroes. The game’s monetization was something worth discussing in the past, but things were in flux, as Heroes was in technical alpha after all. Anything could change. Now that Blizzard has performed the game’s final player data wipe and give out refunds, I’m not so sure.
Read more of Michael Bitton's Heroes of the Storm: An Awesome, But Poorly Monetized Game.
Comments
So they let you play the game for free, but not entirely the way you want to. If you want to play it exactly the way you want to, you need to either grind or pay real money. That sounds about standard for the free to play model.
Blizzard is a company that is particularly adept at making money. I expect them to maximize the revenue generation in this game (as they have with their other games). From a business perspective, they are doing what their shareholders expect. The company only exists to generate ever more money for investors. From a gamer's perspective, I don't buy Blizzard games anymore. The money grabbing has gotten out of hand over there in my opinion.
That being said, if someone enjoys Heroes of the Storm, they absolutely should pay at least some amount of money into it. The amount of "free ride" entitlement these days is disgusting, and not just in the gaming industry.
I don't think he's trying to say that the game should be free and easy to obtain everything, but in its current state, I do agree the gold you get from playing is very lackluster. After level 10, the time it would take to buy a single 10,000 hero is a bit insane. Not including daily quests, if you won every single one of those matches it would take 330 wins to get that much gold. And daily quests are what, 300 gold on average once per day? Compare this to league which is 6300 ip for a newish hero, at roughly 100 ip a win/150 daily, you can see that heroes is roughly 4-5x as grindy as league of legends.
I think 100 gold a win/70 gold a loss would be way more reasonable, it would still take along time to get one of the newer hero's, but it would not be the insane grind that it is now.
I know im not factoring in game time/hero quests/runes from league etc, but I'm just trying to give a rough estimate to compare the two games.
I agree they are a little on the higher end, but a small change to the gold given for wins/losses or more rewards after account lvl 15 would help.As far as the real money costs go I see alot of people with skins/mounts ect.. maybe it's just the discounted bundles., but people don't seem to be to bothered by the costs.
The thing for me is when they open up ranked if I need to have a certain amount of heroes to play ranked I might feel the need to buy some rather than wait to earn them.
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As I said, I have no issues paying for this stuff if I like the game enough. This isn't something I wrote out of personal frustration. I own the heroes I want. It's simply an issue I recognize in the game and something I hope Blizzard addresses before the game is available to a wider audience.
MOBAs are a game where your availability of heroes is crucial. It would be like playing Street Fighter and only being able to play five or so characters on a free rotation unless you own the rest of the cast. If you're going to force people to buy or grind characters in a competitive game like this, that's fine, but it needs to be a bit more of an approachable task. Right now it's just too slow and heroes are just too costly.
The text said something about 200-800 gold per daily which would make the avg. 500 and the time it takes to get a new char 20 days. That is just doing the daily quest, no other games. If you compare that to LoL, 150 daily bonus x 20 = 3000 and you are at about half of what you need for a 6.3k champ. So in that regard HotS is faster. And the gold per game cant be much higher because a game only takes 15-20 min.
I guess it depends on how often they release new characters. Once per month seems ok imo because then it would be enough to do the daily during the week to get the new champ. Doesnt sound like much of a grind.
I play it. I enjoy it.
I spent 30 bucks on the discounted pack and ended up with 8 (I think) heroes on top of the current free rotation (4 more). Then over the next few days I bought another 4, because the game throws gold at you a bit more at lower lvls.
Perfectly acceptable.
MikeB
You have your opinion, thats fine.
I disagree that " severely limited availability due to it being in alpha" equals "being out for all intents and purposes." If the intent and purpose is right now to make as much profit as possible then why are invites still severely limited? Could it be that Blizzard isn't actually interested in profits as much as making the game fun for as most people as possible right now?
Naw, they're a big corporation and they just want to milk people of their hard earned dollars as much as possible. . .
And while yes it is on record that they plan for no more wipes, they have also been pretty adamant that there could be more wipes if needed.
TL;DR
Alpha is still Alpha, and therefore the game is subject to drastic changes. Chill dude
Well it is blizzard, which means one new hero every 2-3 years. lol
I do hope their HotS release schedule is a bit more timely than their other games.
So from what I'm reading you when you compare LOL to HOTS you get a little less than half the gold from matches, which take about a little less than half the time?
Seems to be nearly identical then. So yes, you'll play more matches, because the matches are faster so the grind seems to be longer, because a lot of people play games and are like ok, I need "X matches to get this" and 20 sure is a lot easier than 40 even if they take the same amount of time.
As others have said, if they release a new hero once a month, then your fine if you just play the game, If it is on the other hand every two weeks, you got to play more inline with it, but hell don't most people play a game like LOL if they are into it for 2-4 hrs a day minimum?
Honestly gameplay wise it felt 'meh'. Objectives were cool but they really sucked with random groups. Outside objectives it felt like a really dumbed down dota game. It puts on a rather low skill cap while emphasizing a higher amount of team cooperation to win. Over-all its pretty 'meh' and just came off as a run of the mill dota game.
The cash shop... really I think it does a great job showing how damn greedy blizzard is with its services. Blizzard nickle and dimes its players HARD in its games, Wow having one of the most horrid cash shops in the MMo world for its prices, WHILE being a subscription based game. Heroes really helps to just show how greedy they are and confident they can get suckers to pay up because "its blizzard".
Why do you guys look at cash shops as being an entirely separate mechanic from the game?
Microtransaction games are built with the cash shop as a foundation, and low rates of gold acquisition is part of the games design because there is a cash shop. If one part of the game or game mechanic drags down the entire game shouldn't it be labeled as a crappy game?
This is like walking into GameStop and complaining "well, they let me walk in for free but I was upset that I couldn't buy anything without spending money" haha ok maybe that's a bad analogy but I thought it was funny.
I disagree with Mike on this to a degree. The problem is not how they give free heroes or that there is a grind. Actually i would say it is a smarter way to do it as desire and impatience is the best way to a wallet.
Now with that said it is a fairly trivial task to adjust quest rewards should beta play show that people feel the grind is overly long. (after all it is a grind... it has to have some leg to it) Also Heroes does have another advantage over the competition right now... No legacy... DOTA2 is DOTA and it is old.... and LoL has a reputation of one of the worst communities since B-Net (and that is a wonderful bit of irony in it´s own right) and it does not matter if it is still true or not... That is what public opinion is.
This have been a good conversation
He wont be able to afford anything..shame really!
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Is this a joke? The Average American teen won't be able to afford anything? The average American teen can either a: get a job, or b: their parents will pay for it.
There is a reason why phone games are bought some much..
mmorpg junkie since 1999
One of the reasons I don't play LoL is because I either need to grind my eyes out for a new hero or pay money. Dota...I don't play that anymore(played for a little while) because theres absolutely no progression feeling like LoL has(in terms of working toward buying a new character), however, the game felt way more polished and better overall than LoL.
If these two games could meet in the middle, I'm down... I don't mind throwing money at a free game. But I don't want to pay for access to parts of it. If a particular roguey character seems to be a bit more OP than most other heroes, am I going to have to pay to be in equal footing?
Grind is good, too much is bad.
I sort of agree with the Author of the article.
This is odd. Talking about money in a game that is not even out of alpha.
And the usual " Blizzard is greedy" stuff hanging over the article.
Anyway, I'll try it but this MOBA sector is way overhyped since the Chinese got hold of Riot Games and their odd over representation on the web.
I think some games have far more potential then MOBAS in esports. I never understood why WoW's BG's for example never got a spectator mode. Way better than MOBAS or crampy Arenas or shooters to be broadcasted if Blizzard had simply invested in it.
I have no clue what people see in these fake 2D/3D platforms with engines as old as 15 years ago.
In my view e sports is still in its infancy and DOTA or MOBA or whatever is not the huge market that Riot pretends it is. I don't believe shit about those 67 million "active" players either. Accounts yes, but active ?... my ass.
this esports genre still needs a new kind of game, but sadly it will take years as I see no light at the end of the too narrow tunnel. SC2 is based on 20 year mechanics and HS is ... well ... a card game.
Don't tell me that's it apart from shooters...
Poker is still better to watch on TV ...
To just quickly comment on this one piece: eSports is anything but in its infancy. eSport infancy would be Quake 1 through Quake3Arena back in the mid to late 90s. Anyone from that time would remember the names of Tresh, Fatality, czm, aim, etc. These guys were pioneers of eSports. Fatality made truckloads of money and even won a car, back in the 90s.
Piggy backing off of what eSport entrepreneurs could learn from the 90s eSporting...we are in a good spot with it and can go even further. eSport with Mobas is great.
He also mentioned that a lot of those rewards are finite and that eventually the daily gold is the only way to earn where in league you get a the daily bonus and still earn per much infinitely so your math is kind of a moot point. This is not to say I agree with the column, just that i see his point. I haven't played the game so I can't comment on it really but I can point out that the "grindy feel" is in the eye of the beholder and if Blizzard makes the game fun then I see nothing wrong with grinding my roster up and supplementing it with a purchase now and then. I did it of LoL and Smite and have no complaints.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Please recheck your math. In League, you get around 75 IP for a win in a 40 minute game, with your daily "win of the day" giving 150 IP. So for a 6300 IP champion, if we assume someone is playing 200 minutes a day (3.33 hours) and winning half their games (about 15 IP less for a loss,) They'd get ~500 IP a day. That's about two weeks to get enough IP for a 6300 IP champion.
Going off your Heroes math, it would take about the same time (less or more though, highly dependent on how much the daily quest gives you.) In fact, assuming the daily leans towards the 800 gold reward, it could take HALF the amount of time to earn a hero in Heroes of the Storm than it does in League.
That's not to say I like the system, but it seems they're following League very closely in their monetization, while putting more weight on the dailies and slightly less on the per-match rewards.
The one plus to this, is that it encourages people to actually practice a champion they purchase with IP. In DotA you often have people trying champions they've never played before, in ranked, because they don't have to own it. That's not fun for anyone else.