I have an ongoing discussion with my 'friend', let's call him Mike. Mike does not like Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, almost to the point of seemingly hating it and the 'business-model' he believes the game is subject to. I, on the other hand, really enjoy Hearthstone(HS). I spend a fair amount of time playing it, traversing community- and fansites for new decks, opinions on changes in the meta game and balance changes, new player-developed concepts(that has varying quality, not all are born to be game designers), and I often have a HS stream running in the background when I write papers, do chores, or just when I want to relax. I've also spent around €50 on in-game purchases in the 10 months I've played the game. The point is: I have spent quite a lot of time(and some money) on the game and Mike does not seem to understand why and is often very vocal about it and trying to get me to stop spending my time on it.
Mike's problem with HS is that he believes it is a Pay 2 Win(P2W) game. As he says:"You can just dump a ton of money into buying packs, get all the best cards and faceroll your way to the top". There is some truth to that, of course some cards are 'better' than others by the very nature of a tiered rarity system, but they are not inherently better in the sense that a Legendary card just beats the Common version every time, be it regarding manacost, stats, and so on. It should be noted that the cards are not designed like that either, the top-tier cards aren't just beefed up versions of the free ones, it all depends on the situation. In some games you do need that top-tier Legendary Ragnaros and others you simply need the basic Wolfrider to burn the remainder of your opponents health pool. Also, if the most expensive/rare cards were always the best, then the top of the ladder system would only consist of decks with 30 Legendary cards and nothing else. But it's not. At some point the expensive cards can only get you so far and the strange concept of skill have to take over and carry you the rest of the way. But for crushing newbies at the bottom of the ladder, a balanced deck with a healthy dose of 'expensive' cards will do just fine most of the time.
My response to Mike, when he says HS is P2W, is often that he is completely disregarding the multiple times that some of the top HS players have made Free 2 Play-accounts and made it to the top of the ladder(or near the top at least) without spending a single cent, they just spent time(and are often also exceptionally skilled). I'm not completely in disagreement with him though, there is an advantage to be had for having a collection of higher quality cards, but the keyword here is 'advantage'. HS is a Pay 4 Advantage(P4A) game. You just have the advantage of having the chance of drawing/playing higher quality cards than your opponent, and even this advantage might not be enough, since the higher quality card might not suit the situation. The skill lies in creating situations in the game, where every card you draw and play is getting you further ahead of your opponent, the luck comes from drawing the exact cards that makes this possible. Further down this road is a discussion about game design and luck vs. skill-ratios and what that means for a game, but that's for another day.
Mike often counter-argues that people spending time on getting better cards is the same as spending money since time is money. Yes, time is money in almost every aspects of our lives. You're selling your time to a company for money and if you're sufficiently skilled at something your time is probably worth more than someone else's time and thus the company will pay you more for your time.
It seems that a player can dump a lot of money into the game and get better cards, but they will not carry the player all the way to the top, in the same sense that not dumping the money into the game stonewalls the player from getting to the top. HS is not a P2W game, the closest thing is P4A.
It is important to make these distinctions when looking at games when one considers how in-game purchases seem to gain way recently. From my experience is is mostly seen in mobile games(paying for power-ups, skipping levels, removing ads, or unlocking chapters), but there is clearly a trend from the developers that 'allows' players to win for spending money, but it is not the same as paying(whether with time or hard currency) to have that edge that gives players access to compete at the highest levels. When you go up far enough you will see this edge in every type of competative play, and see players that are willing to either spend time(which also equals money) to gain this edge on their opponents. It is accepted that this is how competative games work in the upper echelons, but that does not mean that it is a requirement for playing the game, any game, to begin with. At some point a player does reach a level, where every single thing counts. Be it a few less grams of weight on your bike, a few thousand more DPS, a slightly more accurate mouse, a GPU that provides a few more FPS, or a slightly lower ping.
All this is of course completely disregarding the notion of that some people simply enjoy playing the game for the sake of the game.
Please leave a comment if you have an argument to why you think I'm an idiot.
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