This game is pay-to-win

[blazegamma]

already played this free on Kongregate. The cashwall is massive and you will get shat on, believe me.

[Smalls]

I've played this game also on Kongregate and the prices are ridiculous. 4 copies of 1 legendary card to make a quad from the emporium can cost up to $100. You must spend $ to even have access to the emporium and to have access to all 4 items available you will have to spend thousands of $$$$$. They also allow the purchase of refills with real $ for "competitive" events so if you've played well and have a good ranking someone can just open their wallet and buy their way ahead of you. The cards are split into a standard (f2p) set and a premium (p2w) set with the premium set being much stronger, this completely destroys the balance between f2p and p2w that a game like Hearthstone does so well. The powercreep is also terrible so if you spend $ on cards they will usually be overpowered within a few months. To anyone planning on trying this game, be very wary spending your $ here.

[kovalide]

So basically you are mad that people can pay to beat you? Dude, in this game you are really happy when you can get epic cards which is the main cards you will have in your deck. The give epic packs as rewards in the game and as f2p players, when you have played a bit, it is usually really easy to pick them up several times a month. You don't need to be p2w to have fun in this game and this game is only unbalanced in the top 1000 to 2000 decks, which are mainly composed of long time players and pure f2p (which are called whales). Once at this point, you can bet it will become difficult, but it takes several months of play to even think of reaching that point if you don't pay :) You have plenty of time to enjoy the game and if you dislike it when you reach that point, you can simply stop playing or you can spend. The game really is f2p friendly so no worries. You can complete all missions as a f2p and no part of the game is closed from players who are f2p. The emporium is basically a vip section for p2w, you don't need it to play. We are far from hearthstone missions which take 2 days to complete. You will be left breathless by the numbers of things to do and they just added pvp too! You will need at least 4 months to complete every mission and they add a new one every month for a special event. LOADS OF FUN AWAIT YOU. Don't be alarmed by people, but i don't recommend to spend unless you really want to beat everyone. :)

[kovalide]

Oh and each month you can get reward cards that are basically p2w cards with a different name. They are so strong that they allow you to compete with p2w if you don't want to spend. All the more reason to stay in the game longer when you hit the p2w decks. It only gets better with time! I should also mention that some of the top 50 decks of this game are entirely f2p. Because when you get your hands on tons of legendary cards and the mythics, you can rival anyone mostly. Don't be scared to play this game. :)

[sketchterner]

Yeah, this game isn't bad and it's already has some good player community.
Yes, if you want to be a top player, p2w aspect is significant. But almost not affect on newbies. Besides, majority of players in this game are free-to-play, so it's not that hard to be in top 600-1000 on individual events after a few months of play.
Game is developing constantly. New cards, skills, forum contests, sometimes new events. And, unlike some other games, Spellstone is not require a lot of time to play, autoplay helps greatly.

[Smalls]

I'm not mad that someone can pay to beat me since I allow it by refusing to buy event refills because I think it's a terrible practice to sell refills for real money in events that are supposed to be competitive. You can have fun playing the game as a f2p player but that's not who my post was aimed at, it's aimed at anyone thinking about spending money in this game. I bought in (stupidly) before I had a complete understanding of everything, if I had waited until I did I would never have spent a $ on this game. Spellstone has turned me off from even wanting to try f2p games anymore and I definitely will never play another game by these developers. I'm not saying don't try this game because you can enjoy the game as a f2p player but just make sure that you know what this game really is before spending $$$$.

[blazegamma]

The thing is when you're doing daily pvp related fights or join a guild to to do guild battles or have those events where you have to beat these event mobs, being free to play will get you next to nothing as the cards they use for those will beat the living crap out of your free cards, no questions asked.

[gorespine]

I'm bounty rank 16, been playing a while and stopped for a couple months. My advice is if you are going to be 100% free to play you better do these 2 things.

-Play everyday multiple times a day
-Join a guild in the top 200 (100 when you get higher bounty rank and better cards.)

Your going to need all the rewards you get from events. It's easy and fun to start, but after a while you'll see how much p2w actually affects you. Not just in PVP but PvE as well.

[VolOpt]

Whelp added to Wish List and Followed. Read this and Un-Wishlisted and Un-Followed. That was fast.

I don't mind things taking time especially with a TCG but the whole paying real money to be able to recharge competative events....... that's just pretty (expletive deleted)

[Dr.maniac]

I wish more games went the fariea route and let you pay a flat fee for all the cards. I love the genre but just don't have the patients/wallet for new entries to nickle and dime me.

[itbeyaboi]

To be honest, Spellstone is by far one of the worst card games I have ever played based on core mechanics, the whole p2w fiasco is just the icing on the cake! (If you haven't already guessed, this is gonna be long.)

First off, the battle system: Spellstone's battle system is a half-assed, flawed system without a question. When a minion attacks a minion, instead of taking damage equal to the defending monster's attack, it literally just says f**k it and lets you attack without taking any damage in return. I can see where the devs were going with this, because if you were going up against powerful cards, you'd just lose a monster instantly, but that's where the problem lies. If you have strong enough cards, (and god forbid they have armor) you will literally be untouchable pretty much for the entire battle. Also, the wait times for each card is absurd! I could be waiting 3 turns for a minion with 3/7 in stats to get going while the opponent just has to wait 2 turns to get a minion with 4/12 in stats with way better effects to get going. If you ever go up against someone in a duel, the winner won't be based on skill, but by who has the bigger bank account.

Secondly, the upgrade/crafting/dust mechanic. Let's compare this to Hearthstone for a second: When you open a pack in Hearthstone for 100 gold, you get 5 cards, 1 guaranteed to be a rare quality. Each common card disenchants for 5 dust, and each rare disenchants for 20. By one pack alone, you can literally almost craft two new cards of your choosing. Now back to Spellstone. For the same amount of gold, you can only buy one card that is most likely to be common quality, and the only way to buy better packs is to use real money to buy special currency. Now, as far as I know, upgrading costs increase from 5-15-30 and so on, and disenchanting one common card will get you 1 dust... Unless it has been upgraded, in which case you basically get a refund on your dust. Upgrading cards in Spellstone is nothing but a hassle and it is way more difficult then it needs to be. Oh, and you can't even craft cards in Spellstone (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) so have fun spending lots of money until you finally get the card you want.

Lastly, the campaign: "What? How is the campaign bad?" Some may ask, and my reply is that it shares the same problems with dueling rich people: They'll just have too many damn powerful cards. The campaign starts off easy enough, being on equal footing with the computers, but as the game progresses, the enemies begin to have more powerful cards in their deck as well as having stronger abilities such as "Weak 1 All" or something along those lines. In fact, by the fourth chapter, enemy decks will be mainly comprised of blue rarity cards (have fun when the Void plays two 7/25 Elementals with 3 armor.) The difficulty spike is horrendous for f2p players who can't afford all those rare packs and makes the campaign pretty much unplayable for them by the fourth chapter unless they dig into their pockets for that all powerful plastic rectangle of money.

tl;dr: This game only caters to those who can afford to put in copious amounts of money into buying packs and upgrading cards. If you can't do that, then avoid playing this game.

[masteroben]

hmm

[MrRight555]

ive played this game for a few months and about 170 hours im ditching it and heres 3 reasons why.......

1. When you get about 50 hours in the game you need 10+ energy to play one single level so you find yourself wanting to check in to the game every couple of hours to advance.
(unless you pay for energy)


2. Strange and odd things start happening after you p[lay a month as well......glitches,no reaction in multiple guilds i joined, game is decided in <4 cards usually.


3. Not to agree with previous comments here but even if you pay you cant beat the quad fused legendarys the cpu plays and about every months is new bonus type so your screwed on the deck you bout in more ways than one.

Lastely im sorta confused about what "this game" means anymore covetous,lies,terrorism/slander........not really fun but attacking fun to try and give the so called "credit" for winning to someone who is better. I believe trying to play when someone is always being better than you is a form of terrorism in my life. "Jude 1:10" Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct--as irrational animals do--will destroy them. This is not a bad game but is somewhat fun to lose.

[blazegamma]

the game itself isn't bad, it has clear ways to put your cards out and win, to attack and to defend....

but the business model is quite terrible and kills everything that makes it an actual GAME and isntead turns it into just an investment.... the more money you invest the better you assets... and while I understand that this is usually normal within a card game, the increment of what is available to you with the more money you spend is incredibly ridiculous.

Let me make a rather blunt and straightforward comparison....
normally in a card game you spend a bit starting out and it's like climbing stairs to the next floor in a building, you start getting a good couple of cards to reinforce your deck with, maybe you get lucky and get a very nice card and climb more than one step at a time, maybe you climb 2-3 steps, but you are still able to play well with player ability even with slightly weaker cards than someone else and can actually beat them if you are good at it.

In here, you spend money and instead of climbing a few steps, you literally ride the elevator up to the next floor with how op some of these units even just START as based on rarity. Only once you have spent a nice wad of cash to ride the elevator up do you only start to go up the stairs little by little with how much more money you need to spend to get even just a little bit stronger, only for them to build another floor on the building when they release new, even stronger cards that you have to get to even stay relevant or get left behind almost immediately.

[Tumo]

nope

[dedwynde80]

I'll just paste this here. "One of the great things about this game is that it is not exclusively P2W as so many others these days are. True, you can dump obscene amounts of money into it, not that I can understand why anyone does, poor as economy is and so many better things that could be done with it, but it is difinitely not required to do well. I've been playing steadily for a bit over a year and do quite well without ever having spent a cent of real money in the game."
It is certainly true you won't hit the tippy-top tiers for pvp related activities unless you dump $ into it, but still playable and enjoyable without spending a cent.