Thoughts on Hero Prices and Gold Generation

by Zenstyle - 6 years ago

There are currently three pricing tiers in Heroes of the Storm. We’ve been given no direct answers, but it feels like the lowest tier (2000 gold, 3.49 USD) is reserved for heroes that are easier to play.. and Valla the Demon Hunter, who will be awarded to those pre-ordering Diablo III’s Reaper of Souls expansion. Overlooking the issue of price for a moment, let’s look at Muradin, Jim Raynor and Malfurion. You have a Warrior, an Assassin and a Support, and all three are fairly simplistic in their design. If this tier holds, Heroes of the Storm will feature an opening pool similar to other games on the market. These heroes will offer new players some user friendly options with which to learn the game. Cherry on top, right now, two of these three heroes are considered tier 1 for their respective roles. That will likely change though, as Jim Raynor specifically seems destined for a visit from the nerf bat.

Mentioned earlier, Heroes of the Storm currently boasts three pricing tiers when it comes to purchasing heroes: 2,000 gold (3.49 USD), 5,500 gold (7.49 USD) and 10,000 gold (9.99 USD). Ignoring the fact that the USD prices have a really weird progression, the gold prices are decidedly prohibitive at the moment for a MOBA. I did not earn enough gold to purchase my first 5500 gold tier hero until level eight. This gold came largely from leveling up, along with a couple of daily quests. Those are, presently, the only sources of gold in the game. While other games allow players to accrue in-game currency per match (win or lose) Heroes of the Storm features only two paths for revenue. This is likely going to prove problematic if left unchanged as MOBAs often require certain heroes for specific team compositions. Additional hero releases will only serve to exacerbate the issue.

The fix to this might simply be joining the rest of the genre in awarding gold after matches. It’s not particularly inventive, but it has been proven to work. I’m no mathematician, but something akin to 75 gold for a win and 50 gold for a loss would definitely make grinding out heroes a bit more palatable, especially considering that players start out making a decent amount of gold while flying through the initial levels. Impatient players (or people who have better things to do than grind out a million matches to unlock a large hero pool) would still simply purchase heroes, but true F2P types would likely find the task of unlocking heroes a bit less intimidating and thus continue playing Heroes of the Storm.

If Blizzard is committed to not awarding gold with each match, it feels like the second and third tier heroes need to have their gold prices reduced, or daily quests need to have their gold amount normalized. Given the scarcity of options for accruing gold, it’s a real gut check to get the ‘Capture 10 Watch Towers’ quest which awards all of 300 gold.

There’s still a lot of time for changes to be made, but it’s something that should be considered by both Blizzard and the player base. Given current methods of gold generation, would you play Heroes of the Storm were it in full release? Would the lack of avenues to obtain gold keep you away?