I find it very annoying that card draw is not completely RNG based. Obviously, cards needed for lethal are computed after each move and it's okay, but when it affects the top-deck or discover results I think that's not good. I think there's even a punish/reward algorithm that triggers this effect. You will start feeling it after a couple thousand games.
Opinion: If there's RNG, let it be pure RNG.
Before my kids were born i used to play physical MTG. I played competively, even made to 100 in the world at one point. Thousands of games over years. So I had a pretty good sense of what random felt like.
When I first found hearthstone, I was overjoyed. Sure the game was simpler, but it was fun, it was deep enough and I decided to take it up. First I was limited by my collection, so I would not get past rank 8-10 in a given season. But then I crafted Dr. Boom and soon was knocking on the door of legend.
But around that time I started really noticing funky things going on. The game giving me the worst possible hands and topdecks it could find time after time if I played too long. I would have a rush deck and get my 3 high casting cost cards in my opening hand, mulligan them away and then have them come back like boomerangs.
I actually came on here years ago and asked the same question you were asking and I was met with a storm of insults, tinfoil hat memes, recommendations to git gud etc. At that point I did a lot of research into game design, reading about frustration plateaus and how they increase spending (candy crush is famous for this). I was also playing a phone game called clash Royale that had a card collecting mechanic. I could see how gaining cards in that game was not random, which made me question whether it was random here.
What I came to realize is that hearthstone is engineered like all the other micro transaction games. Activision has patented methods that have proven successful to inspire spending. Blizzard gives symposiums on how to tinker the matchmaker to maximize 'player engagement'. What that really means is that they want to keep as many players playing and spending as possible. All parts of their game are built around this.
With the discover mechanic in general, and zephry's in particular. You can see they are perfectly capable of manipulating the results in a myriad of ways. And if you wanted to take a fair look at it, as a corporation with a responsibilty to their stockholders, they would be fired if they were not doing these things. So to me, it is simply common sense to assume that they do. And it is their right.
The only part of it that bothers me, are the people here and on reddit etc. who will just act insanely aggressive if you talk about this stuff. They will try to get mods to ban it, they will try to engage you in a flame war simply for asking a legitimate question.
Now i am sure you will see a bunch of answers in this thread about perception bias, you will see some answers saying that you cannot assume that hearthsone isn't random because you have not spent thousands of hours running tests, you will see all kinds of attempts to shut down the discussion. Which is really troubling because kids play this game, and they should know the reason that they are having such insanely bad luck is that the game is trying to make them buy cards.
1
I've never been a fan of the sacrificial pact jaraxxus interaction. I don't think it's "fair" and it's a shame since Jarraxus would be a fun card to use.
2
I play HS (since closed beta), MTG:A and Runeterra at the moment and I can agree that the games are very different. HS is casual friendly in terms of gameplay, while MTG:A is the most hardcore and Runeterra is something in between. In terms of economy MTG:A is the most expensive, HS is quite close second tbh and Runeterra is the cheapest game to play.
HS is a good game and that's why I keep coming back to it, but the new things they are bringing this year have to work or else it will start falling behind the competition or it will truly become a card game only for casual audience, since in terms of gameplay and depth it can't compete well against the other two games I play and for me after going mostly F2P apart from adventures, the economy restricts what is left of the fun aspect, which for me is often brewing my own decks around cards I enjoy playing. EDIT: So is HS too expensive? for me in my current situation in life to enjoy "fully": yes and I don't preorder sets anymore since I don't feel I get enough worth for my money, but this is just my opinion of course.
Yes the game needs to generate money, but would it hurt if the players could choose their favourite class and get 1/2 legendaries of that class for free as their free legendary of the expansion when the new sets are released?
EDIT 2: billion typos.
8
for 80 euros and that's what it gets you? that is excatly why I now longer pre order packs in this game.
Some nice pulls though! especially Hanar and Gorefiend are cards that I would like to have myself. It does sound that if you were a bit luckier you could have had a few more legendaries, but then again Im pretty bad at estimating what is the average.
1
How is the bonus pool stage useless? If you put in the effort and are decent at the game you'll rank up faster and get your rewards faster, so for once the game is rewarding you for playing. I also don't see a world where people from HS community would be conceding just to be nice for the opponent, at least I wouldn't be doing that.
9
It's second day of the season, with well established meta, ppl are running tier 1 decks a lot (it's common in HS in general and i'm doing it too when climbing, that has 0 legendaries btw), but my experience with the system has been good. I ranked up fast with the bonus stars and have felt more rewarded than before so my suggestion is: either wait untill the new expansion comes, but it will be a DH fest in the beginning at least, or tank your MMR untill you face worse people.
about the misplays, I played in gold 1 against a mech paladin that made 2-4 huge plunders in the game so it's just a matter of luck who you run into.
6
I think they should have let the DH cards be used against innkeeper or something at least or have heroic mode of the bosses, since I agree that this was very underwhelming.
1
Smuggler's Run won't return since it didn't target friendly characters. It should only work with spells you target friendly characters with, but a bit unclear wording as often is the case with HS cards...
3
no, just no, maybe in casual, but would make zero sense in competetive ladder. You ban your worst MU and que your top tier deck.
1
You get packs from playing the ladder now, so, as some one who usually won't push past rank 8-5, I have already outvalued the old system at gold 1 and I get a single epic or a gold rare from any of my packs this month, I have out valued it by a lot and getting rewards even if they are smaller rewards feels a lot better for me than the old system and opening the chest at the end of the month will be something to look forward to instead of just getting few hundred dust, so for me it made playing ladder more rewarding and fun.
1
It's just easy to see people mocking aggro players in this forum and always crying about it and personally I haven't seen many arguments here against it.
I play all kinds of decks too and have always enjoyed all kinds of decks, although atm in the current meta I don't enjoy the viable control decks, so my post was perhaps more about the general impression I've got when reading threads like this and somehow I was left with the idea from your first post that you would have implied that playing short games doesn't reguire thinking few games ahead thus skill in card games, but I get your point now so my bad, I misinterpeted what you wrote.