Nobody can make me believe that HS devs would take this workload just to design one card. This was already a working mechanic, they just implemented it on a card.
I find it very annoying that card draw or discover is not completely RNG dependant. 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.
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.
They are not attempts to shut down the discussion, they are counter-arguments. That's how arguments work, you present a view, others present a competing view.
Git Gud etc... that's more an insult etc... But pointing out valid statistical modeling is not.
Having played HS since the first set, I feel nothing in terms of card draw being non-randomized. Sometimes I top deck the card I need, sometimes I get complete crapola. Play 100 games with one deck and count the card draws, then compare it to expected odds, see what you get. It will never match perfectly but if it is wildly off you may have something.
That said, I do think matchmaking is rigged to some degree. Blizzard is trying to smooth out the experience of winning and losing such that folks don't win too much or lose too much. The little spinner always lands on "worthy opponent" because that's more or less what the system is trying to ensure, you get someone that will offer you about the right amount of challenge for how well you are doing. Getting crushed, you get a little gimmie if they can find one for you. On a super hot streak? They will try to find you some hardcore challenge. Playing a crap deck (I often do) you may well get someone else dicking around. Play a total agro smasher deck and you won't get quite so many agro opponents because that would make things very lopsided. But you will get a few because sometimes it wants to stomp agro down a notch when it's running wild. That's my opinion, I can't back it up with facts.
But I've not had any experiences that felt like they were tinkering with the in-game randomness and I've seen a lot of variation in the results of RNG rolls in similar situations.
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I don't think the problematic manipulation is with card draws, I think the manipulation is with the matchups. If youre doing well with x deck, lets say you win 8 in a row, you will start to queue into bad matchups. If you think, hey, ill counter this new influx of y decks that beat my x deck with this new z deck, the game will match you against the v deck that beats z. Switch back to x and you will encounter y decks again. This will happen until you get closer and closer to a 50% winrate.
The best success ive ever had in this game was when I would log in to play just my daily quests. I would routinely get top 1000 legend this way. But, if played 20-30 games a day, I would have less success.
If youre a streamer who plays 6-10 hours a day and play 100's of games a day, then yeah, you will still progress faster/fastest, but it takes a whole lot to get there.
I was thinking the same thing today. Since i have been diamond rank 1 with 3 stars more than 10 times already this month. I climb to rank 1 and 3 stars, very consistently facing the same kind of decks. Then that last match to get to legend, and suddenly I queue into my worst matchup possible. But it doesn't stop there, I queue into it 3 times in a row. Dropping my rank
I get pissed and say, well i'll play another deck. Well what do you know, I face 3 bad matchups for my new deck in a row. I play 3 games with another deck and suddenly I'm diamond rank 3 again.
Then I gradually start to win again, game after game, untill I hit diamond 1 and 3 stars...
If this happens a couple of times, RNG might not be on your side. But if you have been 1 game away from legend as many times as I have this month, you know something is up..
Still not even close to a remotely significant sample size. Sorry, but you are just frustrated and therefore biased. Unless you have data from literally hundreds of thousands of games from thousands of players, you are very ignorant to say "something is up".
OP on the other hand might have a point simply due to it being a general one:
1) We know Blizzard/Hearthstone Team (and other companies) has a history of manipulating odds of some things happening in the game, when they were meant to be completely random (heck, even pity timer when opening packs, even though it's a generally good concept, is an example of such manipulation).
2) Thanks to Zephrys we know that Blizzard has ways to affect not only objective metrics (like the amount of Legendaries opened in the packs), but also the gamestate itself. Would it be impossible for Blizzard to implement an algorithm that would affect the cards drawn from the deck or given by a random effects? Zephrys pretty much shows that only if they wanted to - they could.
Now the question is - do they?
P.S. Remember about tournaments - I know the thread was created in regards to the ranked play, but assuming Blizzard does use some gamestate-affecting algorithms, how does it make the biggest tournaments legit? For example if they wanted a certain person to win Blizzcon (a woman for political purposes or someone from China, because this is where $$$ fly to them or just someone they would consider a good ambassador for their Brand - good looking, charismatic etc.) - do you think it would be hard for them to simply "pick" a winner?
I am just dropping it here, not implying anything.
Zephrys only takes into a account what is on the board and direct lethal scenarios (which means that playing that single card gives you lethal based on the state of the board) he doesn't even check your hand, let alone possible lethals with card draw lol.
Like let's say you're playing combo DH and you have Kael in hand and a way to activate both Inner Demons in hand and you set up zeph to have 5 mana left (after playing him). The obvious card you would want is Doomhammer as it gives you 2 attacks with ridiculous damage next turn but more often that not Zeph won't give you the hammer, cause he can't see what's in your hand,. If he gives you the card is not cause he's like 'oh yeah, if you have that weapon then you can do 40+ damage next turn', if you get the Doomhammer it'll be cause it's a 'generic' 5 cost card that happens to do something impactful on that board for exactly 5 mana.
I don't think the problematic manipulation is with card draws, I think the manipulation is with the matchups. If youre doing well with x deck, lets say you win 8 in a row, you will start to queue into bad matchups. If you think, hey, ill counter this new influx of y decks that beat my x deck with this new z deck, the game will match you against the v deck that beats z. Switch back to x and you will encounter y decks again. This will happen until you get closer and closer to a 50% winrate.
The best success ive ever had in this game was when I would log in to play just my daily quests. I would routinely get top 1000 legend this way. But, if played 20-30 games a day, I would have less success.
If youre a streamer who plays 6-10 hours a day and play 100's of games a day, then yeah, you will still progress faster/fastest, but it takes a whole lot to get there.
I am glad that the matchmaker manipulations seem to be common knowledge now. But one thing i noticed is when you play long enough to draw hate from the matchmaker, you will also draw hate from the RNG.
I was thinking the same thing today. Since i have been diamond rank 1 with 3 stars more than 10 times already this month. I climb to rank 1 and 3 stars, very consistently facing the same kind of decks. Then that last match to get to legend, and suddenly I queue into my worst matchup possible. But it doesn't stop there, I queue into it 3 times in a row. Dropping my rank
I get pissed and say, well i'll play another deck. Well what do you know, I face 3 bad matchups for my new deck in a row. I play 3 games with another deck and suddenly I'm diamond rank 3 again.
Then I gradually start to win again, game after game, untill I hit diamond 1 and 3 stars...
If this happens a couple of times, RNG might not be on your side. But if you have been 1 game away from legend as many times as I have this month, you know something is up..
This is the frustation plateau that blizzard has built into their game to inspire spending. It is really gross, the approach is modeled after Candy Crush which would give you unwinnable levels unless you purchase power ups.
So your logic is that because they are able to make a card which calculates 3 great options for you from the basic/classic set, and rig packs to your favor, they also rig card draw and matchmaking?
That is does not make any sense, man.
Hsreplay has MILLIONS of games recorded. Tonnes of pack openings have been recorded as well. The material is there, but nobody has ever presented any solid statistical evidence of foul play.
The one exception is the pity-timer, which is beneficial to the player. The community was able to prove the existance of that, and it was confirmed later.
Still not even close to a remotely significant sample size. Sorry, but you are just frustrated and therefore biased. Unless you have data from literally hundreds of thousands of games from thousands of players, you are very ignorant to say "something is up".
OP on the other hand might have a point simply due to it being a general one:
1) We know Blizzard/Hearthstone Team (and other companies) has a history of manipulating odds of some things happening in the game, when they were meant to be completely random (heck, even pity timer when opening packs, even though it's a generally good concept, is an example of such manipulation).
2) Thanks to Zephrys we know that Blizzard has ways to affect not only objective metrics (like the amount of Legendaries opened in the packs), but also the gamestate itself. Would it be impossible for Blizzard to implement an algorithm that would affect the cards drawn from the deck or given by a random effects? Zephrys pretty much shows that only if they wanted to - they could.
Now the question is - do they?
P.S. Remember about tournaments - I know the thread was created in regards to the ranked play, but assuming Blizzard does use some gamestate-affecting algorithms, how does it make the biggest tournaments legit? For example if they wanted a certain person to win Blizzcon (a woman for political purposes or someone from China, because this is where $$$ fly to them or just someone they would consider a good ambassador for their Brand - good looking, charismatic etc.) - do you think it would be hard for them to simply "pick" a winner?
I am just dropping it here, not implying anything.
As to the question of: Do they?
1.We know that they can
2. We know that that many games that use microtransactions use all kinds of manipulations to inspire spending,
4. We know that corporations exist to make money once they reach the size of blizzard/activision.
5. We know if the data shows that using such tactics increases revenues, Activision has a responsibility to their shareholders to use such tactics.
I could go on but you get the point. It is quite reasonable to assume all aspects of the game are manipulated in such ways.
As to your question about would they fix a tournament? I dunno, a lot of pretty intelligent geeks play this and pay close attention. If something like that were to be proved it would invalidate hearthstone as an E sport and possibly set them up for fraud allegations.
As for the implied question of tournament RNG. Personally, I think the game has at least 3 game states.
1. Golden: you just crafted a new deck or bought packs and used the cards you opened, your mana and draws will line up perfectly, and if possible you will win. This is the system rewarding desired behavior. I think you can also trigger golden after coming back from a long layoff, the game is trying to draw you back in.
2. Fun: this is blizzards ideal gamestate. The game itself will try to match you with close games and will give players outs if they exist in their decks and the games will feature as many wild swings as possible. This has been a stated goal of the blizzard design team in interview, they think it is more entertaining and engaging to the player and viewer. I think this is the gamestate where tournaments are played. Everyone remembers the Pavelling book as the prime example of this, but now i think players are quite used to the catch up mechanisms in hearthstone. You have a game on lock down, the opponent keeps topdecking/discovering an out. This is not by chance. I think top players and streamers inherently understand this and take it into account in their decision making. One thing that held back my gameplay over the years was my years of experience of playing physical MTG where such mechanisms cannot exist and pressing an advantage with aggro was key. In hearthstone, if you press your advantage, you lose because blizzard does not think winning from an advantageous position is fun.
Hate: this is the game telling you to stop playing or go spend some money. This is game after game of horrible matchups, horrible mulligans and horrible RNG. Anyone who has played this game for multiple long sessions has felt this. If you come on the forums and bitch. People will tell you that it is tilt and that you should stop playing, take a break etc. And there is truth in that, you do play worse when titled. But for years I have avoided tilt by understanding what the game is doing, being perfectly satisfied with the rank 5 floor. If I play for a long stretch (listening to music, tabbed out watching NBA stream etc.) I still observe the same thing. So yeah, it is not all tilt. Tilt does not que you into your worst matchup and give you horrible draws while he gets the nuts. Something else is doing that.
but you joined in 2020 so how could you post a question in this forum years ago?
look up my old account 3nnui. I left the site when it insisted that you sign up for twitch. I came by to check out the discussions about this expansion. While here i saw I could make a new account without signing up for twitch so I did so.
Still not even close to a remotely significant sample size. Sorry, but you are just frustrated and therefore biased. Unless you have data from literally hundreds of thousands of games from thousands of players, you are very ignorant to say "something is up".
OP on the other hand might have a point simply due to it being a general one:
1) We know Blizzard/Hearthstone Team (and other companies) has a history of manipulating odds of some things happening in the game, when they were meant to be completely random (heck, even pity timer when opening packs, even though it's a generally good concept, is an example of such manipulation).
2) Thanks to Zephrys we know that Blizzard has ways to affect not only objective metrics (like the amount of Legendaries opened in the packs), but also the gamestate itself. Would it be impossible for Blizzard to implement an algorithm that would affect the cards drawn from the deck or given by a random effects? Zephrys pretty much shows that only if they wanted to - they could.
Now the question is - do they?
P.S. Remember about tournaments - I know the thread was created in regards to the ranked play, but assuming Blizzard does use some gamestate-affecting algorithms, how does it make the biggest tournaments legit? For example if they wanted a certain person to win Blizzcon (a woman for political purposes or someone from China, because this is where $$$ fly to them or just someone they would consider a good ambassador for their Brand - good looking, charismatic etc.) - do you think it would be hard for them to simply "pick" a winner?
I am just dropping it here, not implying anything.
They could if they want to. I dont see that happening though. They can even make it more or less obvious
To the OP of the thread:
Unless someone comes up with a large sample size I wont belive they rigged a game, and yes I have played more than 10.000 games over the years. Sometime you are lucky sometimes you are not, but it is a fact you are way more likely to remember when you are not.
I think it would be interesting though to see a large sample of games from someone, and I really do think it will show that everything is "random"
Right on the money, literally. I discard the fan-bois and their bias and let the US-Patent speak for itself. Look it up^^
There was a HUGE thread about this topic a while ago, which was fortunately locked eventually.
With the massive amount of data available, it should be very easy to prove things like: -A pack bought with real money has a better average quality. -More golden cards in a deck will give you better draws/matchups. -If you just spent real money on the game, you will be rewarded with better ingame RNG.
The problem is, NOBODY HAS YET. All that exists is speculation with no basis in the reality of the game, except personal experiences influenced by confirmation bias.
Another point: if you are on a winstreak playing a strong deck well, why would you be surprised that your first loss comes from a bad matchup or bad draws?
I also recommend this video about randomness. "Random" and "mixed up" are actually two very different things:
So your logic is that because they are able to make a card which calculates 3 great options for you from the basic/classic set, and rig packs to your favor, they also rig card draw and matchmaking?
That is does not make any sense, man.
Hsreplay has MILLIONS of games recorded. Tonnes of pack openings have been recorded as well. The material is there, but nobody has ever presented any solid statistical evidence of foul play.
The one exception is the pity-timer, which is beneficial to the player. The community was able to prove the existance of that, and it was confirmed later.
How do you even prove existence of some rng manipulation if the output is in the end, oh well, random?
I remember DisguisedToast's video on "Always Huffer". Yes, Huffer was significantly more often obtained from Animal Companion than two other options. Did it prove Animal Companion being rigged though? No, because when something is claimed to be random, such things like one option being favored despite them having the same odds, do happen. '
Haven't you ever seen a coin flipped 6 times and 5 times the end result being tails? Statistically it should be 3, right? Now let's assume you have data from 900k of coins flipped and 600k of them were tails. Sample size is there, you can no longer blame it on just not having enough flips. So there's something odd, it should be closer to 450k. Can you claim the flips were rigged? Of course you can't! Because it's just probability, you can't expect oddities not to happen!
Now let's come back to Hearthstone - Pavel's run for World Championship. The dude was heavily favored by RNG. Basically, even though we can't downplay him as a player, we have to agree luck had played huge role in his victory. And it wasn't just one instance! We are talking multiple instances of things going perfectly for him, despite low odds, throughout one event. You say "people would notice, the data is there". Well, people most certainly did notice. And so what? You can't say Pavel's win was rigged, because even though the odds of the things, which happened then, were small, they weren't zero.
"such things are rare, but they CAN happen, it's random" - using this statement you can pretty much disregard every discussion about anything rng-related being rigged.
Once again I am not claiming Blizzard influences their tourneys anyhow or that Pavel's win was rigged. Just wanted to show, why such discussion is reasonable and that people have right to have doubts.
Right on the money, literally. I discard the fan-bois and their bias and let the US-Patent speak for itself. Look it up^^
There was a HUGE thread about this topic a while ago, which was fortunately locked eventually.
With the massive amount of data available, it should be very easy to prove things like: -A pack bought with real money has a better average quality. -More golden cards in a deck will give you better draws/matchups. -If you just spent real money on the game, you will be rewarded with better ingame RNG.
The problem is, NOBODY HAS YET. All that exists is speculation with no basis in the reality of the game, except personal experiences influenced by confirmation bias.
Another point: if you are on a winstreak playing a strong deck well, why would you be surprised that your first loss comes from a bad matchup or bad draws?
So I will try to address the points you raise.
-I believe the game states are fluid, so golden cards does not give you better RNG in what i am proposing is happening.
-Whether or not cash purchase packs are better than gold purchase packs was not a question I addressed either. Though I would highly doubt they would do this, as it would be easily provable. Just like reddit proved years ago that the pack results were manipulated and blizzard called it a glitch and gave everyone who purchased packs dust as compensation.
-if you spend real money on the game, you will get better in game RNG. I did not mean this, though I see you can take my post about frustrations plateaus to inspire spending as evidence of this. When I say spending, I mean any type of deployment of hearthstone resources, using gold, dusting old cards whatever. Anything that depletes your resource pool for the now is encouraged.
And as for your winstreak example. sure that is how Winstreaks end all the time in physical actually random games. However, in those games, you do not see the exact same matchup, the exact same draws 3-5 times in a row. Also if you switch decks in this game state, you will get similarly boned.
This topic used to come up ALL the time in online poker. There was constant screaming about rigged games. For them, the major poker sites make so much money, it wouldn't be worth rigging anything, to any end, and risk losing their player base.
Similarly, to someone who knew what they were doing (background in statistics or computer programming could relatively easily decipher if this were true. Yet, after all these years, no one has. Why is that?
I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of it, because I'm not an expert in either of those fields, nor have I examine the large scale stats.
What I do know is we remember our losses much more than our wins. I've used this analogy before, but people have the "11:11 conspiracy"... people claiming they always look at the clock at 11:11. They don't mention the other 100 times in a day they see the time, when it its 8:02 or 4:39. Nor do they mention that they first noticed the time at 11:05, and probably checked the time 7 or 8 times over the next 6 minutes, but then it's 11:11...
You don't remember the 65 times you top decked your win, discovered lethal, or magic'd that heal... But, when Zephyrs pulls the win that one time you "should have" won... That sticks in your mind for months.
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Nobody can make me believe that HS devs would take this workload just to design one card. This was already a working mechanic, they just implemented it on a card.
I find it very annoying that card draw or discover is not completely RNG dependant. 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.
They are not attempts to shut down the discussion, they are counter-arguments. That's how arguments work, you present a view, others present a competing view.
Git Gud etc... that's more an insult etc... But pointing out valid statistical modeling is not.
Having played HS since the first set, I feel nothing in terms of card draw being non-randomized. Sometimes I top deck the card I need, sometimes I get complete crapola. Play 100 games with one deck and count the card draws, then compare it to expected odds, see what you get. It will never match perfectly but if it is wildly off you may have something.
That said, I do think matchmaking is rigged to some degree. Blizzard is trying to smooth out the experience of winning and losing such that folks don't win too much or lose too much. The little spinner always lands on "worthy opponent" because that's more or less what the system is trying to ensure, you get someone that will offer you about the right amount of challenge for how well you are doing. Getting crushed, you get a little gimmie if they can find one for you. On a super hot streak? They will try to find you some hardcore challenge. Playing a crap deck (I often do) you may well get someone else dicking around. Play a total agro smasher deck and you won't get quite so many agro opponents because that would make things very lopsided. But you will get a few because sometimes it wants to stomp agro down a notch when it's running wild. That's my opinion, I can't back it up with facts.
But I've not had any experiences that felt like they were tinkering with the in-game randomness and I've seen a lot of variation in the results of RNG rolls in similar situations.
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I don't think the problematic manipulation is with card draws, I think the manipulation is with the matchups. If youre doing well with x deck, lets say you win 8 in a row, you will start to queue into bad matchups. If you think, hey, ill counter this new influx of y decks that beat my x deck with this new z deck, the game will match you against the v deck that beats z. Switch back to x and you will encounter y decks again. This will happen until you get closer and closer to a 50% winrate.
The best success ive ever had in this game was when I would log in to play just my daily quests. I would routinely get top 1000 legend this way. But, if played 20-30 games a day, I would have less success.
If youre a streamer who plays 6-10 hours a day and play 100's of games a day, then yeah, you will still progress faster/fastest, but it takes a whole lot to get there.
I was thinking the same thing today. Since i have been diamond rank 1 with 3 stars more than 10 times already this month. I climb to rank 1 and 3 stars, very consistently facing the same kind of decks. Then that last match to get to legend, and suddenly I queue into my worst matchup possible. But it doesn't stop there, I queue into it 3 times in a row. Dropping my rank
I get pissed and say, well i'll play another deck. Well what do you know, I face 3 bad matchups for my new deck in a row. I play 3 games with another deck and suddenly I'm diamond rank 3 again.
Then I gradually start to win again, game after game, untill I hit diamond 1 and 3 stars...
If this happens a couple of times, RNG might not be on your side. But if you have been 1 game away from legend as many times as I have this month, you know something is up..
OP on the other hand might have a point simply due to it being a general one:
1) We know Blizzard/Hearthstone Team (and other companies) has a history of manipulating odds of some things happening in the game, when they were meant to be completely random (heck, even pity timer when opening packs, even though it's a generally good concept, is an example of such manipulation).
2) Thanks to Zephrys we know that Blizzard has ways to affect not only objective metrics (like the amount of Legendaries opened in the packs), but also the gamestate itself. Would it be impossible for Blizzard to implement an algorithm that would affect the cards drawn from the deck or given by a random effects? Zephrys pretty much shows that only if they wanted to - they could.
Now the question is - do they?
P.S. Remember about tournaments - I know the thread was created in regards to the ranked play, but assuming Blizzard does use some gamestate-affecting algorithms, how does it make the biggest tournaments legit? For example if they wanted a certain person to win Blizzcon (a woman for political purposes or someone from China, because this is where $$$ fly to them or just someone they would consider a good ambassador for their Brand - good looking, charismatic etc.) - do you think it would be hard for them to simply "pick" a winner?
I am just dropping it here, not implying anything.
Zephrys only takes into a account what is on the board and direct lethal scenarios (which means that playing that single card gives you lethal based on the state of the board) he doesn't even check your hand, let alone possible lethals with card draw lol.
Like let's say you're playing combo DH and you have Kael in hand and a way to activate both Inner Demons in hand and you set up zeph to have 5 mana left (after playing him). The obvious card you would want is Doomhammer as it gives you 2 attacks with ridiculous damage next turn but more often that not Zeph won't give you the hammer, cause he can't see what's in your hand,. If he gives you the card is not cause he's like 'oh yeah, if you have that weapon then you can do 40+ damage next turn', if you get the Doomhammer it'll be cause it's a 'generic' 5 cost card that happens to do something impactful on that board for exactly 5 mana.
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Zephrys_the_Great
Read this. It explains how the card works in general.
I am glad that the matchmaker manipulations seem to be common knowledge now. But one thing i noticed is when you play long enough to draw hate from the matchmaker, you will also draw hate from the RNG.
This is the frustation plateau that blizzard has built into their game to inspire spending. It is really gross, the approach is modeled after Candy Crush which would give you unwinnable levels unless you purchase power ups.
So your logic is that because they are able to make a card which calculates 3 great options for you from the basic/classic set, and rig packs to your favor, they also rig card draw and matchmaking?
That is does not make any sense, man.
Hsreplay has MILLIONS of games recorded. Tonnes of pack openings have been recorded as well. The material is there, but nobody has ever presented any solid statistical evidence of foul play.
The one exception is the pity-timer, which is beneficial to the player. The community was able to prove the existance of that, and it was confirmed later.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
As to the question of: Do they?
1.We know that they can
2. We know that that many games that use microtransactions use all kinds of manipulations to inspire spending,
3, We know that Activision has patented some methods: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-to-buy-microtransactions/
4. We know that corporations exist to make money once they reach the size of blizzard/activision.
5. We know if the data shows that using such tactics increases revenues, Activision has a responsibility to their shareholders to use such tactics.
I could go on but you get the point. It is quite reasonable to assume all aspects of the game are manipulated in such ways.
As to your question about would they fix a tournament? I dunno, a lot of pretty intelligent geeks play this and pay close attention. If something like that were to be proved it would invalidate hearthstone as an E sport and possibly set them up for fraud allegations.
As for the implied question of tournament RNG. Personally, I think the game has at least 3 game states.
1. Golden: you just crafted a new deck or bought packs and used the cards you opened, your mana and draws will line up perfectly, and if possible you will win. This is the system rewarding desired behavior. I think you can also trigger golden after coming back from a long layoff, the game is trying to draw you back in.
2. Fun: this is blizzards ideal gamestate. The game itself will try to match you with close games and will give players outs if they exist in their decks and the games will feature as many wild swings as possible. This has been a stated goal of the blizzard design team in interview, they think it is more entertaining and engaging to the player and viewer. I think this is the gamestate where tournaments are played. Everyone remembers the Pavelling book as the prime example of this, but now i think players are quite used to the catch up mechanisms in hearthstone. You have a game on lock down, the opponent keeps topdecking/discovering an out. This is not by chance. I think top players and streamers inherently understand this and take it into account in their decision making. One thing that held back my gameplay over the years was my years of experience of playing physical MTG where such mechanisms cannot exist and pressing an advantage with aggro was key. In hearthstone, if you press your advantage, you lose because blizzard does not think winning from an advantageous position is fun.
Hate: this is the game telling you to stop playing or go spend some money. This is game after game of horrible matchups, horrible mulligans and horrible RNG. Anyone who has played this game for multiple long sessions has felt this. If you come on the forums and bitch. People will tell you that it is tilt and that you should stop playing, take a break etc. And there is truth in that, you do play worse when titled. But for years I have avoided tilt by understanding what the game is doing, being perfectly satisfied with the rank 5 floor. If I play for a long stretch (listening to music, tabbed out watching NBA stream etc.) I still observe the same thing. So yeah, it is not all tilt. Tilt does not que you into your worst matchup and give you horrible draws while he gets the nuts. Something else is doing that.
but you joined in 2020 so how could you post a question in this forum years ago?
Right on the money, literally. I discard the fan-bois and their bias and let the US-Patent speak for itself. Look it up^^
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look up my old account 3nnui. I left the site when it insisted that you sign up for twitch. I came by to check out the discussions about this expansion. While here i saw I could make a new account without signing up for twitch so I did so.
They could if they want to. I dont see that happening though. They can even make it more or less obvious
To the OP of the thread:
Unless someone comes up with a large sample size I wont belive they rigged a game, and yes I have played more than 10.000 games over the years. Sometime you are lucky sometimes you are not, but it is a fact you are way more likely to remember when you are not.
I think it would be interesting though to see a large sample of games from someone, and I really do think it will show that everything is "random"
Silver Hand Recruit
There was a HUGE thread about this topic a while ago, which was fortunately locked eventually.
With the massive amount of data available, it should be very easy to prove things like:
-A pack bought with real money has a better average quality.
-More golden cards in a deck will give you better draws/matchups.
-If you just spent real money on the game, you will be rewarded with better ingame RNG.
The problem is, NOBODY HAS YET. All that exists is speculation with no basis in the reality of the game, except personal experiences influenced by confirmation bias.
Another point: if you are on a winstreak playing a strong deck well, why would you be surprised that your first loss comes from a bad matchup or bad draws?
I also recommend this video about randomness. "Random" and "mixed up" are actually two very different things:
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
How do you even prove existence of some rng manipulation if the output is in the end, oh well, random?
I remember DisguisedToast's video on "Always Huffer". Yes, Huffer was significantly more often obtained from Animal Companion than two other options. Did it prove Animal Companion being rigged though? No, because when something is claimed to be random, such things like one option being favored despite them having the same odds, do happen. '
Haven't you ever seen a coin flipped 6 times and 5 times the end result being tails? Statistically it should be 3, right? Now let's assume you have data from 900k of coins flipped and 600k of them were tails. Sample size is there, you can no longer blame it on just not having enough flips. So there's something odd, it should be closer to 450k. Can you claim the flips were rigged? Of course you can't! Because it's just probability, you can't expect oddities not to happen!
Now let's come back to Hearthstone - Pavel's run for World Championship. The dude was heavily favored by RNG. Basically, even though we can't downplay him as a player, we have to agree luck had played huge role in his victory. And it wasn't just one instance! We are talking multiple instances of things going perfectly for him, despite low odds, throughout one event. You say "people would notice, the data is there". Well, people most certainly did notice. And so what? You can't say Pavel's win was rigged, because even though the odds of the things, which happened then, were small, they weren't zero.
"such things are rare, but they CAN happen, it's random" - using this statement you can pretty much disregard every discussion about anything rng-related being rigged.
Once again I am not claiming Blizzard influences their tourneys anyhow or that Pavel's win was rigged. Just wanted to show, why such discussion is reasonable and that people have right to have doubts.
So I will try to address the points you raise.
-I believe the game states are fluid, so golden cards does not give you better RNG in what i am proposing is happening.
-Whether or not cash purchase packs are better than gold purchase packs was not a question I addressed either. Though I would highly doubt they would do this, as it would be easily provable. Just like reddit proved years ago that the pack results were manipulated and blizzard called it a glitch and gave everyone who purchased packs dust as compensation.
-if you spend real money on the game, you will get better in game RNG. I did not mean this, though I see you can take my post about frustrations plateaus to inspire spending as evidence of this. When I say spending, I mean any type of deployment of hearthstone resources, using gold, dusting old cards whatever. Anything that depletes your resource pool for the now is encouraged.
And as for your winstreak example. sure that is how Winstreaks end all the time in physical actually random games. However, in those games, you do not see the exact same matchup, the exact same draws 3-5 times in a row. Also if you switch decks in this game state, you will get similarly boned.
This topic used to come up ALL the time in online poker. There was constant screaming about rigged games. For them, the major poker sites make so much money, it wouldn't be worth rigging anything, to any end, and risk losing their player base.
Similarly, to someone who knew what they were doing (background in statistics or computer programming could relatively easily decipher if this were true. Yet, after all these years, no one has. Why is that?
I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of it, because I'm not an expert in either of those fields, nor have I examine the large scale stats.
What I do know is we remember our losses much more than our wins. I've used this analogy before, but people have the "11:11 conspiracy"... people claiming they always look at the clock at 11:11. They don't mention the other 100 times in a day they see the time, when it its 8:02 or 4:39. Nor do they mention that they first noticed the time at 11:05, and probably checked the time 7 or 8 times over the next 6 minutes, but then it's 11:11...
You don't remember the 65 times you top decked your win, discovered lethal, or magic'd that heal... But, when Zephyrs pulls the win that one time you "should have" won... That sticks in your mind for months.