Hearthstone

Don't lie. I've seen you cunting about in numerous locations with the exact same tone.

Right now Hearthstone is a prisoner of its card pool. Is there skill? Sure. Keeping in your head what you've played, what your opponent's played, what he's likely to have, properly deciding what to play against and when, using your opponent's actions to try and read his hand, and being able to navigate a complex board state with numerous options available while also keeping all that other shit in mind are skills. And those skills take work. But that doesn't mean the game itself isn't shallow. It is.

I admitted it was shallow due to a new release and small card pool. Glad you agree that it takes skill. Now convince Column.

Column_sl said:

No, they watch them because Hearthstone is one of the most popular streamed games right now. Allot of those streamers started at the ground level a year ago.

They are the same players that were in invite only events for the last 12 months.

2% of Hearthstone populace is a fucking shitload of people.

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There are probably hundreds of people streaming hearthstone right now and most of them don't have any viewers because they blow.

2% is a lot of people in the sense that there are over 10 million hearthstone accounts, yes; but you don't just luck your way into the top 2%. In the case of someone like kolento who was #1 in two regions at once and finished #1 eu and ~#20 na I would say that requires a great deal of skill. How can the same people be consistently high in multiple regions if it is such a low skill game. If as you say there is no difference among the top several thousand players shouldn't kolento have done something like reached #1 eu, but only #1,046 na despite how hard he tried? Once you reach legend it isn't just a matter of grinding games to reach #1 either.

Seananigans_sl said:

Holy shit some of you have terrible reading comprehension. He's not saying it requires no skill, he's sayingthe skill wall is relatively low for a CCG, which it is, and that it causes pros to be in the same boat with many more people than similar games.

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Column stated HS = Monopoly. Who has the reading comprehension problem?

Seananigans_sl said:

Holy shit some of you have terrible reading comprehension. He's not saying it requires no skill, he's sayingthe skill wall is relatively low for a CCG, which it is, and that it causes pros to be in the same boat with many more people than similar games.

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I'm pretty sure we all got that part. Thanks, captain obvious. Our point is it isn't any different from any other ccg.

Edit - Well that was the point until column started comparing hearthstone to fighting games and monopoly.

Drtyrm_sl said:

I admitted it was shallow due to a new release and small card pool. Glad you agree that it takes skill. Now convince Column.

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I'm not against you thus my agreement is not capitulation.

And in other news... New warrior weapon for Naxx. Spoilered for size

Damn, that weapon is pretty sick for warrior.

Drtyrm_sl said:

Column stated HS = Monopoly. Who has the reading comprehension problem?

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No, he said it had a low skill caplikeMonopoly. Column is full on retarded and Monopoly may be a bit far down the chain of board games to be a good comparison, but yea you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

mures_sl said:

There are probably hundreds of people streaming hearthstone right now and most of them don't have any viewers because they blow.

2% is a lot of people in the sense that there are over 10 million hearthstone accounts, yes; but you don't just luck your way into the top 2%. In the case of someone like kolento who was #1 in two regions at once and finished #1 eu and ~#20 na I would say that requires a great deal of skill. How can the same people be consistently high in multiple regions if it is such a low skill game. If as you say there is no difference among the top several thousand players shouldn't kolento have done something like reached #1 eu, but only #1,046 na despite how hard he tried? Once you reach legend it isn't just a matter of grinding games to reach #1 either.

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That's why Legendary Lea, or Elohime has 10k a day for hearthstone ,and can barely break rank 5??
I'm sure there are good Hearthstone players people do not watch. The game is too simplistic for there to not be.

In fact I bet you haven't even heard of the top 30 ladder players in North America.



I'd love to see a real tournament with no special seeding, or favors for popular streamers in a large pool of competitors, and see how that all works out. I don't think it will go as you wish it to be.

Comparing laddering from streamers which is sometimes not even done by the streamer himself (I.E. Reckful getting friends to boost him) is not even in the same league as the tournaments which are done off of 3 decks.
Laddering is 100% grinding with the knowledge of what times of day to play what decks.. You can have a team of players grind to over 1000.

I don't know who Elohime is but let's not kid ourselves, 99% of the people watching Legendary Lea are hoping to see some boobs. You'll notice a pattern with all of the female streamers: Low cut tops that show off lots of cleavage and they're super "cutsey look at me!" The majority of them are doing it for the donations.

I don't know any female that gets 10k tho no matter how pretty they are.
Like this girl is by far the prettiest girl on twitch, and she cant even touch Lea in viewers.

http://www.twitch.tv/lleuca/c/4028625

Most of them cap at 1000 max. But that is off subject..

Hafu breaks 10k on occasion I think, but she doesn't even have boobs so she falls into a different category I guess?

Yeah Hafu gets 10k, but she doesn't fall into the twitch whore category.

She's a legit gamer

Again, let's not kid ourselves. Hafu is good (particularly at Arena) but a lot of people watch her because she is a girl. She's, definitely, not as flirty as some of the twitch girls but she knows her audience. With that being said, it's obvious she plays the game because she enjoys it.

It doesn't really bother me that Twitch girls do what they do. I'm more amused by it than anything else. I just don't pretend that, in a lot of the cases, they're doing it for the love of the game.

Personality and branding trumps skill or looks on twitch that is for sure. Hafu doesn't look like a troll, has a personality, has earned the 20,000 gold cap through arenas, and placed top 16 legendary last season so there is a reason she gets so many viewers and so many more viewers than whoever the fuck lea is. Ellohime had a following before hearthstone, I haven't seen him stream hearthstone in awhile, but towards the end he was only averaging ~1k viewers while both popular AND skilled streamers had much more at the same time.

But back to the topic on hand if the top several thousand players(which again that is an extremely small number when we are talking millions) are all at the same skill ceiling at blizzcon when they invite the top 16 legendary players if they also invited the bottom 16 legendary players do you honestly believe that the top 16 players wouldn't consistently place higher? Sure there would be some upsets in there, there are upsets in virtually all things competitive. What competition would be worth watching if upsets were not possible?

Either you disagree and you believe the top 16 wouldn't consistently place higher or else you are saying there is a skill difference even amongst the top <.2% of all hearthstone players.

I'm debating on DE'ing my 1 gold UTH (since I have 2 normal ones).. but I just love gold cards too much! But I also need more druid epic cards.. ugh...

Well I mean its full value, if you're not playing hunter right now de it and you can craft it again later. Its not like you're losing 360 dust because you de'd a gold card for dust now and you're starting to craft your gold collection later.