Hearthpwn

Why doesn't it summon totems in order?  

SOOOOOO many shaman games come down totem RNG.

Why? Why have that element in the game? It's so superfluous and horrible. It adds literally nothing, just frustration for the player who doesn't get favored by the totem RNG that particular game.

Why have one of the hero powers have such a random element in it?
Why do they think that random is a good way to balance things? "Oh we want to make a 1.5/1.5.. let's make it randomly a 1 or a 2! Yeah that works!
Nope.

Quote from Mister_Smith »

 

Having totems summoned in a order makes it more predictable, yes but not just for you but your opponent as well.

Yeah that's what is called "balanced".

If the order is set, yes, sometimes it will not work out. But so what? What if the other hero powers were "balanced" by being random?
Mage now deals 0...or 2! Hey LUCK EVENS OUT ON AVERAGE! IT TAKES SKILL TO PLAY AROUND LUCK!
Warrior, priest, hunter... 0 or 4!  
Do you get two lucky shots with your hunter hero power, or do they do nothing? BALANCED! 

I like to showcase how dumb their "let's balance things with random" approach by applying it to existing things. I think most people who defend random crap would see it differently if it was applied to established non-random elements of the game. 

Does it sound like a good idea to make arcane intellect draw 1 or 3 cards at random? 
Why not, right? 

Maybe flamestrike now rolls 3 or 5 like lightning storm! Maybe all aoe does that now. Holy nova deals 0-4 and heals 0-4.... why not?

It seems to me like it would make the game a lot worse to make all these changes so why defend similar mechanics on existing cards??

Quote from Mister_Smith »

See how that works? Just by making some ridicolous statements i haven't proven anything because it's in no way related to wether having a form of RNG is good for the game or not. 

Explain to me how the hunter power dealing 0 or 4 is not balanced the same as it dealing 2 always? It averages out to exactly the same amount: 2.
Why would arcane intellect draw 5? What does that have to do with my examples? Makes no sense.
If it drew 1-3 or 0-4, it would still average out to 2. 

Randomness is how they chose to balance many cards in the game: Mad bomber, mind control tech, knife juggler, imp-losion, goblin blastmage etc.
Rather than price these cards higher and let you choose the ability or having them have a set ability, they decided to price them aggressively but to make their ability random, with the philosophy that over time it averages out.

But why stop there right? Make everything just average out needlessly. 

It's clear to me that you don't think that's a fun way to balance the game. Most people don't. 

Quote from Nabil48 »

As allready mentioned by Mister_Smith , making an order for the totem summoning would ruin the class . as it would be too pridictable , and mostly useless .

why?
None of the other hero powers "ruin" their class yet none are random.

What argument do you have to support this notion that if you could predict the order, it would ruin shaman?

?

As RevolutionaryArtillery mentioned, most of the time what totem you get is not a big deal. But some of the time the game is decided by it. Why would you want more games to be decided entirely by random chance? 
??

Such questions lol

Quote from Mister_Smith »

So if you would stop trying to make every form of RNG look stupid with your way or arguing and stop to think about what it actually provides for a second you would certainly see the unnecessity of this thread.

Ok so basically I'm wrong because I'm wrong. 
Yes, got it.

Why does the shaman hero power have to be random, but not the hunter?
Because!

Yes understood.

You're saying my idea is bad because.. the game has some RNG. 
And some RNG is good because it "balances out" non-RNG. 

But my hypothetical RNG situations are "really stupid" for some reason because.. you decided that they are.

Why would it be more stupid for arcane intellect to draw 1-3 cards? Who knows. It averages out to the same card, but it's random instead of not random. 

I don't think it's necessarily worse than other classes right now, but it's needlessly random.

Quote from Mister_Smith »

It's the same with Hearthstone. The game needs a basic ruleset and mechanics that work reliably in order to guarantee a smooth and consistent experience for the player. Adding random elements into the mix is then what brings new aspects into the game in form of events you can't precisely calculate. 

There's already a random element to card games: The deck.
Every extra element of random you add after that needs a case-by-case justification. 

In MTG for instance, there's virtually no extra random effects. In fact, lots of cards even curb the randomness of the deck order by letting you search for cards for instance.
Some card games, like the old 1995 Decipher Star Wars game ( that sucked lol ) largely negated the randomness by letting you draw like 7 cards a turn.

Other card games, like pokemon, had abilities that flip coins. A LOT of them. Every other attack from a monster involved flipping one or more stupid coins.

What seems odds to me is that the designers of hearthstone don't seem to get that randomness is not inherently better for their game. They always fall back on the same examples of why SOME random is good but they ignore the fact that the best-selling TCG, MTG, has largely eliminated random effects from its cards, with the rationale that people hate it. Randomness is fine for a few casual games, but when you play dozens / hundreds of games and have a large portion of them come literally to a coin flip, it pisses people off.

It seems obvious to me that the hearthstone team just LIKES randomness. They don't really have any particular strong logical points to show why XYZ amount of random is better or worse. 
They just have this game and it lets them make certain random things, so they do it. 

They don't have too and I see no evidence that the game would be worse if they didn't, but they still want that in there. 

Right now it seems pretty clear to me that the current level of RNG is really pissing off a LOT of players and is largely making hearthstone a big joke in the card game world. It's really popular though, but in my opinion that has almost nothing to do with the design of the game. Well ok it has to do with ONE aspect of the design: You can't interact during the opponent's turn. That, more than anything, is the design element that keeps the game fast-paced and that's something most people LOVE about hearthstone. No endless priority passing, no waiting around, no 10 minute clock for the opponent to run out. 
At most you will wait 90 seconds and then it's your turn and you have YOUR 90 seconds.

By far I think this is the design element of the game that contributes the most to its popularity. The RNG, if anything, detracts from it.

Quote from lseelba »

Fixed totem order would make the Shaman worse.  You would end up too many times with a totem you know is going to be 100% bad, and be forced to either waste 2 mana to cycle (but what if what you want is 3 deep), or you just stop playing totems.

It would just force a different playstyle. 
Every time you make a totem you would need to think whether or not it's the right time to make it. Right now you just make them whenever and hope to land on the right one, or the right one multiple times so you end up on trolden, aka Ben Brode's Hall of Gaming Excellence. lol