Kibeth41 said:
MoltenSilver said:
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But then I saw the ads for WotOG
"Hey that's actually a neat theme"
And look at all these high-mana cards with complicated effects
"Well they wouldn't bother making those and casting all the spotlight on them unless they're actually bloody playable would they?"
And then the word came about Standard, and that garbage like Piloted Shredder was going away, and some problem cards would be nerfed
And then looking at Jackson and Elise from LoE and at Twin Emperor and the like from WotOG
"Hey, maybe it will be possible to actually play something other than a low-curve or solitaire deck
And from that, we can tell that these brainless curve decks are clearly a thing Blizzard wants to encourage instead of kill. So nope, I'm done, I feel like a moron for putting money in WotOG, and I'm not going to just blindly hope that this somehow is the expansion that makes Hearthstone a game of meaningful interactions
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.
Just because your decks were shit =\= the cards themselves were shit. I recommend Hearthpwn.com if you want to research some good deck builds. You don't have to netdeck, but it'll give you a good idea on how to make good decks with the cards you want to use.
And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.
And if you don't think there's any skill or decision making, then how do you rationalize the same players consistently hitting Legend every season? It isn't their deck lists, money, or sticking to "high tier decks". Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.
I understand if you dislike the game. But don't try pinning it for faults which it ultimately does not have.
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.
Neither Elise Starseeker nor Reno Jackson do a damn thing to counter board tempo; playing Reno into an enemy board means you've bought maybe two turns of being swatted across the face until you're dead again
And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.
My definition of a 'brainless' curve deck
a) is a deck loaded with just low-cost minions and thus almost always has turns 1-4 covered, and therefore auto-wins against any mid-range/heavy deck that happens to stumble at any of the early mana turns. You don't make any decisions when playing the deck, you just spew out the things with the biggest tempo and either you win from overwhelming your opponent or your opponent gets lucky, draws their board clear, and you then lose or just spew out more overstatted low-drops until someone wins. For an advanced demonstration of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu5D71PBOXc
and
b) is a deck with an entirely unflinching, nonreactive game-plan, basically the kind of deck where I could put a piece of paper of over my opponent's side of the board and do just as well since the entirely plan of the deck is to not give a shit what my opponent does.
as for 'how can I say they take little skill', simple: Would we all agree that Freeze Mage(Despite having my own other severe issues with this deck's place in the game) is harder to play than Midrange Hunter?
If so, that demonstrates it is possible for there to be a differential between skill required to play certain decks. Since we've now established that there are some decks easier to play than others, I would posit that the main factor in how hard it is to play a deck comes down to how many meaningful choices are required to play it; in other words, how easy it is to 'solve' a deck, such as how easy would it be to teach a computer to play it optimally?
The fewer meaningful choices a player has while playing a deck, the less variance the deck has in how it plays out, and the more static to game-play of the deck is. It becomes more about just rote-performing the correct thing to do than puzzling it out and thinking ahead. The more static the deck is, the more luck plays a factor in whether the player wins or loses because they are no longer exerting an influence in the game
Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.
You're right that it isn't luck, but what it really is is time
(*first as a caveat I'm going to address what I say below only to F2P Legend climbs that don't involve arena; when some smurfing account plays arena to build up resources I feel it destroys the entire demonstration since they will on average make fantastically more out of a few arena runs than a real newbie would)
The reason a professional can get from ftp to legend is because they can literally sit there all day because it's their job, which matters a lot for 2 reason: 1)because given a long enough stretch the system will buoy you to legend, as streaks produce more stars than are removed by losses, it's a net-upwards system (It takes astronomically long, but it does trend up and eventually variance will carry there) and 2)Because sitting there playing all day means they have a much better grasp of the meta and due to their professional experience are much better at making 1-2 card adjustments to feed on it.
If anything I'd say I can turn that to prove my point: How many losses do the professional players incur while climbing? Why are they losing these matches while they climb? Are they losing because they actually ran into someone as good as them, or are they losing because it was mathematically impossible to win the match?
Yes, I understand Hearthstone is a game of margins, but Hearthstone doesn't exist in a state where there's the occasional super-rare exodia game, it it exists in a state where the matches that aren't mathematically pre-determined are in a minority
It isn't their deck lists
Actually yes it is their decklists that make them consistent. Hearthstone tournaments are decided far, far more by who had the most insight into what the meta will be and prepared accordingly than by in-game play. On ladder the guy who is able to play as a job has a much much better pulse on what the meta is than the person playing this on a bus, and thus is playing a deck-list that preys on that meta; this is what keeps the pros consistently high-ranking above any other factor. And that's before how we factor in the massive difference between tournament meta and ladder meta. In a tournament you usually must bring a minimum variety of deck, and that's what cracks open the way for "b"-tier decks beyond zoo and face shaman to see the light of day, some of which might actually be worth watching past the opening hand. But that does shit-all to help a filthy casual like me; on ladder you are ruthlessly incentivized to play whatever generates wins fast, it doesn't matter what your win-rate is, it doesn't matter how you do it, just play games fast with a deck that by its nature can instantly-win against an opponent with a bungled opening.
Are there deck matchups and moments in Hearthstone that do reward skill? Absolutely. But those moments come so rarely that you need a sample size of hundreds of games to see the benefits of those margins, and every single thing I've said above does jack shit to improve the game experience of someone like me who would like to play for an hour or two a day and would like a choice beyond 'play the netdeck that requires the IQ of a doughnut to follow the simple directions', or 'play something that has aspirations to live beyond turn 6 only to instantly be reminded why that's a bad idea.'