Hearthstone

bwuceli said:

It took WotC 10 years to get somewhat competent. Plenty of examples during the first 10 years of completely broken cards that ended up banned or restricted and I'm not including the obvious alpha/beta/unlimited cards: Library of Alexandria, Mishra's Workshop, Candelabra of Tawnos, Mana Drain, Necropotence, Dream Halls, Memory Jar,

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Yea, but just like others said, blizzard had the luxury of learning from the mistakes wotc made in the beginning. They didnt invent a completely new game genre from scratch. They built off their WoW ccg, which built off of mtg.
They knew the value of card advantage, what 'tempo'is, etc.. concepts we figured out over the first 10 years of mtg that the early mtg designers were clueless about.

I mean, when new FPS games come out that are bad, you cant say 'well, in comparison to quake1, this game is great!'. It gets compared to current day games of similar caliber. Mtg is the closest competitor to HS and they need to be on the same level from a design and balance standpoint.
I rarely see the mtg community up in arms about a new set being a complete trainwreck the way the HS community often does. Occasionally they will complain about a card being too good, but rarely is there not a built in way to beat that card in the sets these days. Or, the card ends up being secretly OP and it takes awhile to figure that out.

You'll be rushed down by aggro for sure. By the time you get your burn going on you'll be dead.

You either need to focus on stalling for big burn turns while keeping the board controlled like OTK priest or Freeze Mage. Or you try to proactively do damage with minions and use your damage spells for reach like tempo mage.

Problem is priest has shitty early game minions so you can't be aggressive.

Just had a game in arena where my firelands gave me the thaddius 4-7 and it died. My opponents firelands gives him the 7-4. Giving him thaddeus. This fucking game.

So, I'm not a theorycrafter for Hearthstone. I'm not a deckbuilder, or an expert in CCGs. I played Magic for about a year some 20 years ago when I was a kid suckering his parents into buying cards, but that didn't last long before they said screw that I bring that up to underline how much *I don't know* - even if I'm familiar with the basics.

My question is - why don't the Reynads and the theorycrafters and the badasses of Hearthstone all just adjust to this level of randomness? Reynad bitched in that video Origin linked about how he played a Hunter that Barnes'd out a Savannah Highmane, and that "no one enjoyed him playing that card. There are two options for that card - you get a shit card and you go "meh" or you get a Highmane or a Rag and you go *Yaaaaay*"

If the meta has introduced that much random (shredders, raptor, portals) and it's pterrible - then why hasn't the responding meta doubled down with more removal and boardclears? I mean, the #1 deck right now is midrange shaman.... which isn't even abusing any randomness. It's a deck all centered around controlling by spamming enough totems to have spell power regularly, or using drakes/thalnos, and then being able to pop down the 5/5 taunts for free/cheap. It's running 2x hex, and has 4 AEs, 2 lightning bolts.

That isn't a situation where the game is being ruined by the random.

I totally do understand how it's un-fun to have situations like Littles brings up where your random portal gives you a shit 5drop, then gives your opponent a badass sticky 5drop. But that sort of terrible luck has astronomically low chances, and isn't the solution to have a poly so you can avoid killing his 4/7, or poly his thaddius?

So, TL;DR - Why does Hearthstone's randomness suck so bad - and why isn't the solution "run more cards to mitigate that randomness" ....?

So, Lifecoach invited over to help the retards at Blizzard out... or share blame for the next abomination that they make... lol.

Hey Guys,

Some people told me about the post and that the translation might have been misunderstood or mistranslated (especially point 2.)

The correct translation would be: I offered my help, blizz invited me for 1 week over to introduce me into the blizzard philosophy and with that knowledge i hopefully will be able to make suggestions which are alligning with the blizzard phiosophy and are also very good for the competitive environment. If that works out I hope that I might do suggestions which could lead to changes in the follow up expansions. If that happens i would also be willing to retreat for competitive play to make it fair for everybody.

I hope that helps to clarify things up.

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This could turn it around for Van... i mean, Hearthstone...

Hearthstone Announcement and Introducing the New Format! (Lifecoach) • /r/hearthstone

You can't mitigate randomness like that in this game. This isn't MTG, it's like 99% tempo and value with the occasional accidental combo before they nerf it.

The problem with those top tier rng cards isn't that bad rng makes them bad, it's that good rng makes them insane and bad rng is really upsetting because you lose out on what you shouldn't have been able to "win" with rng anyway.

Palum said:

You can't mitigate randomness like that in this game. This isn't MTG, it's like 99% tempo and value with the occasional accidental combo before they nerf it.

The problem with those top tier rng cards isn't that bad rng makes them bad, it's that good rng makes them insane and bad rng is really upsetting because you lose out on what you shouldn't have been able to "win" with rng anyway.

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So, why can't we mitigate? Why doesn't the meta shift to *more extra control to shut shit down* when people are pulling crazy hijinx out of their butts with firelands portals ---> Earth Elemental.

Why is the current level of RNG un-repairable, or "un-adjustable-to" ?

(In case this isn't obvious, I'm not championing some cause or trying to defend Ben Brode or really make any statement of my own. I don't understand how CCG metas change, and I'd love to hear insight from people who do.)

Because the cards for that to happen don't exist. Board clears have been and continue to be entirely underpowered, to the point where they don't actually counter aggro, they work better in control vs. control match ups because they're so slow. In a lot of cases, the RNG effect happens instantly so dealing with it afterwards always puts you at a disadvantage.

Amzin said:

Because the cards for that to happen don't exist. Board clears have been and continue to be entirely underpowered, to the point where they don't actually counter aggro, they work better in control vs. control match ups because they're so slow. In a lot of cases, the RNG effect happens instantly so dealing with it afterwards always puts you at a disadvantage.

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So why does the solution have to be "get rid of the random" instead of "give better reactionary tools" ?

Aaubert said:

My question is - why don't the Reynads and the theorycrafters and the badasses of Hearthstone all just adjust to this level of randomness?

If the meta has introduced that much random (shredders, raptor, portals) and it's pterrible - then why hasn't the responding meta doubled down with more removal and boardclears?

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Because these streams (at least when I watched them a year or two ago) are all about playing LOTS of matches and making a video which only shows the insane random plays. Nobody is going to watch someone polymorph every random threat, they want to see stupid Ragnaros random victories or misses.

It's why I don't play this game.

My last 10 matches have been against shaman. And I'm playing shaman.

GODDAMN WARRIORSTONE

*edit*

10 shaman matches in a row, switch to freeze mage, immediately lose to aggro freeze mage. Then get matched against anyfin.

Great game blizzard.

What the fuck is up with all of the Aggro Warriors out there? Is someone streaming that shit?

Amzin said:

Because the cards for that to happen don't exist. Board clears have been and continue to be entirely underpowered, to the point where they don't actually counter aggro, they work better in control vs. control match ups because they're so slow. In a lot of cases, the RNG effect happens instantly so dealing with it afterwards always puts you at a disadvantage.

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Board clears aren't underpowered. Midrange Shaman is an aberration because it generates so many minions for free it doesn't really matter what the power level of the board clears is. The board clears could all deal 10 damage, you're still trading a card for a bunch of hero power activations. Once TBV rotates and it becomes possible to ignore a board full of totems for a few turns without risking an instant loss, it's going to go back to Arcane Giant/Yogg spam garbage.

The main problem with HS is there's too many top-end cards that reward you for packing your deck with cheap shit, thus letting you have the best of both worlds. Did you get your board swept by a control deck before doing much damage and can't win the aggro game? That's fine, just start stockpiling cards in your hand and playing the bare minimum to not die against the slow deck, then eventually play Antonidas and dump all the cheap shit for 5 Fireballs. You win. Or vomit all the cheap shit against your opponent's board and face in one turn, then drop 2 free Arcane Giants. Or drop auctioneer, conceal it, and draw six extra cards. Then on your next turn draw 6 extra cards again, kill his entire board, sap everything big, and drop a 20/20 Vancleef plus two Arcane Giants. Even if he has the answers he likely can't cast them all before he's dead. Or just play the "losing" game of staying alive against the control deck's stronger cards with your cheap spells, his board advantage won't matter when Yogg comes down, sweeps all his shit, and draws you six more cards.

Right now it's a fucked up version of rock paper scissors. Hardcore linear aggro decks beat cheap-shit synergy decks which beat everything else. Because "everything else" is a lot of decks, you're basically always going to want to be piloting the cheap-shit synergy deck.

10 shamans in a row. Switch decks, next 6 games are 1 shaman, 4 anyfin pallies, and aggro freeze mage.

Aaubert said:

So why does the solution have to be "get rid of the random" instead of "give better reactionary tools" ?

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Because, even the best reactionary tool (aka 'answer') is still happening the turn after. You can't do it during their turn like in other games. But, yes, the more competitive players would love if there was non-RNG cards that could combat the RNG cards. However, they'd have to be very good to do that, and then everyone would play those. Why is that a better solution then just removing the stupidly high variance of some of the RNG cards?

To take your shaman example, if they go t1 spirit claws, t2 spellpower totem, all of your early minion drops are null and v oid. If you played a 1 drop, they kill it. If you play a 2 drop, they kill that as well. If you try to not play a 2 drop, then they hold the charges. So, you still didn't do anything and their board gets bigger. Even if you play a 3 drop with 4+ health, they can still often kill it anyways by hitting with claws + trading a smaller minion. If you try to go wide by playing multiple little minions, you are vulnerable to maelstrom portal. There ISNT an effective way to counter that opening. Blizzard 'balanced' the card by making that scenario happen 25% of the time, but that means 1/4th of the time you didn't get to play the game against the shaman. There is no counterplay to that line of play.

The problem RNG cards are not 'bad sometimes and good sometimes'. They are 'good sometimes and insane sometimes'. Their overall power level is very high, so playing more consistent cards have a lower power level overall. You can't counter the RNG like you can in some other games and end up winning more. You are forced to join the club rather then try to counter it.