Hearthstone

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The Master

Bronze Squire
2,084
2
You're not getting randomly matched in arena, you're getting matched against people who also just went 3-0 with their deck. It shouldn't surprise you that you lose at that point. Anyone with a shitty draft is gone, as is anyone who can't play the game well. 65.7% of Arena decks end with 3 wins or less. 77.4% end with 4 wins or less. To regularly get 5+ wins, you have to regularly draft and correctly play decks that put you in the top 25%. Only 9% of decks get to 7+ wins.

I get to 4 wins with about 60% of my arena drafts. In basically every case it is the same thing. Win the first three games. Then we see how the deck is actually going to do. I haven't gotten less than three wins since the first couple of days I started playing, and I rarely get to 6. About ~30-35% is five wins and the rest are the very rare 6/7/8/9 wins.

Really I think of those first three games as a warm up with the deck. I know I'm going to win them unless I do some massive misplay.
 
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Teron D'Amun

607
1
Keep in mind that less people are playing in arena than say constructed, so you can get matched up with people that are already 8-0 with a killer deck on your first few arena games and go 0-3. It should work out better once the game goes open beta and more people get in.
 
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Neph_sl

shitlord
1,635
0
It's also dependent upon the time of day. Play in the morning and you'll see tougher opponents. Play in the evening, when more people are playing, and you should be able to get further in your arena than you normally would.
 
A

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,763
Neph_sl said:
It's also dependent upon the time of day. Play in the morning and you'll see tougher opponents. Play in the evening, when more people are playing, and you should be able to get further in your arena than you normally would.
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Yeah playing from Europe I see that as a big issue. My evening is when the mouthbreathers log on in the morning to stomp on everyone.
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,217
2,365
That might be something, since I generally play during the night/morning instead of afternoon/evening, so maybe it's the more "hardcore" people. Still I feel it doesn't have to do with skill a lot of the time.

Basically after losing I generally go over the game in my head(wtb longer log of abilities and being able to check it at the end) and try to see what I could have done better/differently that might have affected the outcome, but quite often, there's simply no other way I could have played that would have made any difference, I just didn't have the right cards and/or my opponent had all the right cards. See when I compare to dota or lol, I can look back at my game and while sometimes I can be like "meh couldn't have won, team too heavy", I can still review my own play and find a lot of shit I can improve on, because of the high personnal skill ceiling. In hearthstone it's pretty much all RNG, there's sometimes game changing plays and shit like you target the wrong thing or decide to not kill a mob to drop more of your own and it bites you in the ass, but a lot of time there's no actual options, you just use what you have and sometimes that's enough and sometimes not. Maybe if I could review the draft it'd be nice to see if I could have drafted differently to improve the deck's performance.

Anyway, for all the shallowness, I still find it pretty addictive to play. I guess it's the fast paced games and drawing a good card at the right time that makes it fun to play.
 
Mures

Mures

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,014
511
Yeah, I understand it is/was a small team working on hearthstone. I know they are expanding the hearthstone team with how popular it is becoming, but I can't believe how slow they have been to patch it, the only thing they have patched since beta 2 started, about 8 weeks ago, is the change to battle rage. I'm surprised they haven't patched in a fix to something like the brewmaster bug since it allows people to freeze the game.
 
C

Column_sl

shitlord
9,833
7
Brewmaster bug, is really any card that makes a animated change on the battlefield.
Works with Faceless minion, and Ysara has a card just like the brewmaster.

That's been there since Beta 1.
 
Famm

Famm

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
11,041
794
RNG really does seem to factor in very heavily. Sometimes it just seems like you should say fuck it and concede right on your original draw. Its a shame because when you and your opponent do end up with reasonably even draws over a game then it can be very equitable and skill dependent. I don't know what the fix is, I'm totally new to the TCG/CCG thing.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Yeah playing from Europe I see that as a big issue. My evening is when the mouthbreathers log on in the morning to stomp on everyone.
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There are dedicated EU servers right? I was thinking about this the other day. Is there really a compelling reason to have this game segregated by region? Would latency even be much of an issue? Despite all the controversy over it at launch, I sort of understand in retrospect for WoW, but for Hearthstone it seems like the game would only benefit from lumping everyone together. I guess this is just how Blizzard is structured in general these days maybe.
 
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axeman_sl

shitlord
592
0
Famm_sl said:
RNG really does seem to factor in very heavily. Sometimes it just seems like you should say fuck it and concede right on your original draw. Its a shame because when you and your opponent do end up with reasonably even draws over a game then it can be very equitable and skill dependent. I don't know what the fix is, I'm totally new to the TCG/CCG thing.
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The fix is increased card complexity. M:TG also had a healthy dose of RNG, but still nowhere near as bad as HS because the cards created more room for skill factor. HS is almost entirely creature rush, the game has too few moving parts and interactions, so the draw ends up determining almost every match. If/when they start to design cards and mechanics with more depth, the game can become about skill instead of luck.
 
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Oloh_sl

shitlord
298
0
Famm_sl said:
RNG really does seem to factor in very heavily. Sometimes it just seems like you should say fuck it and concede right on your original draw. Its a shame because when you and your opponent do end up with reasonably even draws over a game then it can be very equitable and skill dependent. I don't know what the fix is, I'm totally new to the TCG/CCG thing.
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This is my first time TCG as well and my decks all felt very RNG until I had a long time MTG player help me build my decks. He called my deck very "top heavy" even though I felt like I was playing a ton of low cards. After we ironed out the deck, the breakdown is based on mana 2 0 mana cards, 10 1 mana cards, 8 2 mana cards, 2 3 mana cards, 2 4 mana cards, 1 5 mana cards, 3 6 mana cards and 2 7+ mana cards. The gut check rule is to have 20 cards that cost from 0-2 mana. I'm told that generally takes care of the RNG. I know it has for me.
 
Delly

Delly

Trakanon Raider
2,995
634
They could fix RNG by changing the way the starting hand works, either giving you an extra card or at least an extra pick (not increased starting hand size, just an extra card to choose from). Wouldn't totally squash it, but it would help.

I'm already sick of playing constructed. Play 20 or so matches unranked, 0 ranked, and several arenas. I do fairly well in arena, usually 4-5 wins, except one 7 win. Whenever I go back to constructed I face decks with legendaries, all the best rares/commons. This game is definitely not a f2p game anymore.
 
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The Master

Bronze Squire
2,084
2
Oloh_sl said:
This is my first time TCG as well and my decks all felt very RNG until I had a long time MTG player help me build my decks. He called my deck very "top heavy" even though I felt like I was playing a ton of low cards. After we ironed out the deck, the breakdown is based on mana 2 0 mana cards, 10 1 mana cards, 8 2 mana cards, 2 3 mana cards, 2 4 mana cards, 1 5 mana cards, 3 6 mana cards and 2 7+ mana cards. The gut check rule is to have 20 cards that cost from 0-2 mana. I'm told that generally takes care of the RNG. I know it has for me.
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It depends on the deck. Druid ramp decks are pretty good and their curve is pretty far to the right. Aggro decks are the most common of anything right now and their curve is way left, some Warlock/Murloc decks have nothing over 4 mana. Paladin midrange decks are pretty centered and are probably some of the most balanced things around in terms of responses, at least going by tournament results.
 
Ishad

Ishad

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,845
4,888
DeLLy_sl said:
They could fix RNG by changing the way the starting hand works, either giving you an extra card or at least an extra pick (not increased starting hand size, just an extra card to choose from). Wouldn't totally squash it, but it would help.

I'm already sick of playing constructed. Play 20 or so matches unranked, 0 ranked, and several arenas. I do fairly well in arena, usually 4-5 wins, except one 7 win. Whenever I go back to constructed I face decks with legendaries, all the best rares/commons. This game is definitely not a f2p game anymore.
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There is no incentive to play ranked when you first start. Best think would be to roll scrubs in unranked for fast arenas until you round out your card collection.
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,217
2,365
How does ranked work anyway, it seems every win advances your rank so it just progresses super fast, does it stop doing that before you reach the end? I played like I don't know 12-15 ranked games and lost like 2 using mostly a vanilla rogue deck(had a few cards from arena packs too but not many and only one of each) and every win the little medal shit was going up. Does the ranking only start once you reach the end of the medals or?
 
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MaulNutz_sl

shitlord
182
3
DeLLy_sl said:
They could fix RNG by changing the way the starting hand works, either giving you an extra card or at least an extra pick (not increased starting hand size, just an extra card to choose from). Wouldn't totally squash it, but it would help.

I'm already sick of playing constructed. Play 20 or so matches unranked, 0 ranked, and several arenas. I do fairly well in arena, usually 4-5 wins, except one 7 win. Whenever I go back to constructed I face decks with legendaries, all the best rares/commons. This game is definitely not a f2p game anymore.
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In my experience unranked was a lot harder than ranked for whatever reason when I first started out. Really though if your goal is to get gold for arena then you should be playing rush down decks in which case most legendaries are not very good because most games are over by turn 8. Some people might think that is boring but IMO going 20 rounds with a priest or druid is worse. Worst case you go 50% in rank 3 masters and your rate of gold skyrockets, dont need any legendaries or even epics to do it either. Though people are slowly catching on and before long every game will be either rush vs rush or rush vs mass taunt/heal.
 
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The Master

Bronze Squire
2,084
2
Unranked is a hodge podge. I think a lot of people who have been playing for a while play in unranked to test decks, or think the wins are easier to farm gold for arena, and there are some real new people in there, but they are few and far between. I go through games faster in ranked.
 
Famm

Famm

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
11,041
794
Pyros_sl said:
How does ranked work anyway, it seems every win advances your rank so it just progresses super fast, does it stop doing that before you reach the end? I played like I don't know 12-15 ranked games and lost like 2 using mostly a vanilla rogue deck(had a few cards from arena packs too but not many and only one of each) and every win the little medal shit was going up. Does the ranking only start once you reach the end of the medals or?
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Doesn't matter, the whole thing is changing soon anyway.

Hearthstone at BlizzCon - Fireside Chat Panel Highlights - News - Hearthstone

Hearthstone: A Look at Today

Going first is still only slightly better than going second.
Top-level class balance looks pretty good, looking at 3 different days in October shows a different #1 class each day.
44% of our current 3-Star Master players have spent no money on Hearthstone.
Over one million players have been invited to the closed beta for Hearthstone.

Next Patch or Two

Card Changes

Mind Control's cost is changing to 10, up from 8. Mind Control can be frustrating to play against, and is dominating play at the lower ranks. This should allow opponents playing versus a Priest to have a couple more rounds to make use of their high cost minions before they have a sudden change of mind.
Starving Buzzard's Health is changing to 1, down from 2. Hunters were very strong against Druid, Mage, and Rogue in Copper through Platinum leagues, and this change should help those match-ups.
Unleash the Hounds can blow you out in a single turn, without any minions on the table. We're going to take a look at this card to see if there are some changes we'd like to make for the next patch. We haven't decided on a direction yet.

Ranked Play Changes

Exciting changes are coming to Ranked Play in Hearthstone! Our new system makes your path to move up in the rankings more transparent, and gives top-level players more ways to differentiate themselves from each other.

Each month, all players restart at Rank 25: "Angry Chicken"
Players will be matched against players of similar rank.
Win a game, acquire a star!
Acquire enough stars and you'll rank up!
Each rank has its own icon and medal.
Win streaks may give additional stars.
At higher ranks, you'll lose a star if you lose a game.

Beyond Rank 1 is a special rank: Legend.

Once you hit the Legend rank, it cannot be lost until the season ends.
Legend rank will have a big number in the middle of the icon - this tells you your exact rank in your region!

This won't be ready at the launch of our new ranked system, but eventually, if you participate in ranked play during a season, there's a reward awaiting you: Special card backs!

Card backs are acquired through participating in a ranked play season.
Each month holds a new card back for your collection!

One of the most exciting reasons to try Ranked Play is the epic Golden Heroes. After you've played 500 Ranked games with a specific class, you unlock the animated golden hero for that class. Whenever you play that class, it'll automatically be the golden version of the class rather than the regular one. Each Golden hero has its own special animations, just like the other Golden cards!

Additional Features on the Horizon

Reconnecting to a game in progress
Even more spell effects and animations!

A Bit Further Out

Hearthstone on the Go!

Hearthstone for Android, iPhone and Windows 8 Touch

Expansions!

Hearthstone will have expansion sets, each featuring packs full of exciting new cards!

Single-player Adventures!

To supplement expansions, we plan to release Adventures! These will come with a smaller set of cards that can be unlocked and will provide new strategies to explore.
 
Mures

Mures

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,014
511
Saw a blue on the official forums say the ranking part was next patch. Since open beta is supposed to release this month, I assume the patch will come at the same time.
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,217
2,365
They've been shuffling shit on their launcher so might be something this week, however could be Diablo3 PTR instead. They have those 2 big events for december so I guess they'll try staggering them for server stability shit.

Wasn't there some talks of having more quests(either max or per day I'm not sure) once open beta comes too? Think I remember reading that.
 
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