There are so many threads about who is at fault for the ladder madness/staleness. Let's forge our thoughts.
Do we blame Blizzard? This is a fair point, because they are adding so many mana-cheat cards it's silly. They implement a gold system that seemingly entices to only play bullshit tier 1 decks in any mode (Casual is far from casual nowadays, and completing quests is a LOL reason when the decks being played are Cubelock and Raza).
Do we blame players? This is most likely the culprit IMO, because Blizzard doesn't FORCE us to play this way. Also, is anyone really afraid of losing stars in Ranked? Playing is casual to avoid losing stars, regardless of the daily quest, seems silly as well. Ranked doesn't produce enough reward incentive for that to make any sense. But, I admin, if I'm at ranks 16 or 6, I will finish my daily quest after hitting the next rank floor.
Blame sites like this? This I don't think is the problem. This site is awesome, and offers lots of incite on stuff that new and veteran players overlook all the time. We aren't forced to play netdecks advertised on this site. In fact, they help us build a solid foundation for what is good and what is ineffective.
Do we blame the notorious RNG? I'm ok with this part. That's what keeps the game interesting. RNG is a huge part of the game, and arguing otherwise is foolish. What drives people crazy is the RNG trumping skill. This can happen. Does Raza Preist drawing perfect curve = luck? Yep. Does it take skill to pilot decks like Cubelock and Raza Preist? Some, but not really. Again, perfect curve = advantage with any deck, but they seem to benefit more than the average. We see Raza in < Rank 20 for crying out loud. These must be noobs who paid for a ton of decks, want to be OP right away, but don't know how to pilot it. Either that or they didn't play last season. But even then, how many people with tier 1 decks play casually? I call bullshit on anyone who claims that.
At the end of the day, both players and Blizzard are to blame for the staleness we are experiencing. How do we keep things interesting? BUILD NEW DECKS! How is this overlooked time and time again? The Eggmancer deck on last weeks popular list is a blast to play, and actually wins because people aren't teching against it or expect it. I've been playing a Marin Silence Priest and got to rank 5 this month. Why? Nobody expects it.
At the end of the day, most important thing is to have fun! Cheers~
Well, most of my friends that are at rank 20-18, or are new to the game, do not like play ranked, they usually say that they will when they get better, instead they keep on playing casual, because they fear of doing mistakes or something like that, and when they reach like 16-11 they start to get desperate with fear of losing the stars because, their friends will see that they aren't doing well, so, people with most likely "different decks" are too scared of ranked, or they play wild/standard on their lower rank so they will not get so guilty about losing stars, leaving the higher ranks, or people who want to rank up to netdecked decks, those who are confident that "people succeded with this deck, why not me?" So they keep on playing the most famous decks in hopes of getting higher ranks...
Well, most of my friends that are at rank 20-18, or are new to the game, do not like play ranked, they usually say that they will when they get better, instead they keep on playing casual, because they fear of doing mistakes or something like that, and when they reach like 16-11 they start to get desperate with fear of losing the stars because, their friends will see that they aren't doing well, so, people with most likely "different decks" are too scared of ranked, or they play wild/standard on their lower rank so they will not get so guilty about losing stars, leaving the higher ranks, or people who want to rank up to netdecked decks, those who are confident that "people succeded with this deck, why not me?" So they keep on playing the most famous decks in hopes of getting higher ranks...
I did exactly the same 2 years ago. I never played much ranked until the added the rank 15, 10 and 5 roofs. I only play weird decks and it wasn't fun to lose all games back to rank 20. Ranked is much better since those changes. I can play my favourite decks without getting punished too much
The main problem is that experimentation is expensive. You need a lot of packs, which means a lot of time or a lot of money. If you design a deck and it turns out to be crap, there's no way to undo all the dust you burnt to get it. So people look up decks that they know will work so they can climb ladder, which is fun for a lot of people.
The main issue is that you can't craft cards efficiently with the current pack cost and dust efficiency. If people could experiment more painlessly they would.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Look at this thing and let me know what you think!
Well, most of my friends that are at rank 20-18, or are new to the game, do not like play ranked, they usually say that they will when they get better, instead they keep on playing casual, because they fear of doing mistakes or something like that, and when they reach like 16-11 they start to get desperate with fear of losing the stars because, their friends will see that they aren't doing well
I actually felt this way during my first season of HS, but then a friend of mine told me that there is nothing to lose. I was especially worried about rewards, then he explained how it works and what the actual rewards are for each rank.
As for the topic, I feel like it's Blizzard's fault only because they are always too late with nerfs. Apart from that, the players are the problem. Nowadays it seems like nobody is playing for fun (unless netdecking is fun). I am usually hanging on low ranks, like 18 or so, and I actually see very few original decks. Mostly I see either midrange hunter or kingsbane rogue. The most original one I've seen is control jade shaman without any evolve cards.
I've never quite understood the community complaint regarding stagnation in the meta-game - it's to be expected that the competitive play mode will attrit weak decks, and reward strong ones. Ever since BB became the HS overlord, there have been regular balance changes two months after the release of new content - in other words, every two months, give or take, the meta-game shifts, either in response to new content, or to the shake-up in the meta-game produced by nerfing that new content. That's exactly what many members of the community have desired for years, but it doesn't seem to have made any impact - "what can I aimlessly complain about . . ." is a moving target.
FWIW - HSReplays tracks well over one million games each day. The K&C meta-game is likely unique in HS history - the two best decks in the meta-game, by far, aren't among the ten most-played decks on ladder. For most of K&C, Aggro Paladin has had the 11th highest play-rate, while Murloc Paladin has had the 13th. Both decks are favoured to heavily favoured against the most popular decks on ladder - but there was never any ladder adjustment in light of their performance, and the decks have each enjoyed a play-rate slightly above 2% as a result. Owing to the pending nerfs, Aggro Paladin is likely dead. Murloc Paladin will likely be fine, but it probably won't matter - Big Spell Mage has a higher play-rate on ladder, despite having a win-rate a full 10% worse than the Fish. If the HS community were more interested in discussing developments in the game, rather than complementing itself on how much better they understand HS than the idiots who actually make it, the depressed play-rate of Paladin would be among the hottest topics of debate on the forums. It's not . . .
I would refine the blaming players option to say 'too' large a fraction of the human race comes under the 'Spike' player type (using MtG terminology). It is deeper than worrying about stars: most people just don't like losing at all.
If you could come up with a way (likely impossible) to separate the Spikes from the Timmys and the Johnnys half of the problem would vanish in an instant. Spikes might still complain about a grind and encountering the same decks (a problem entirely of their own doing!), but the rest of us will happily get along with our own creations in a haven of diverse decks where people play to pull off crazy stuff rather than to optimise win rates.
Well, most of my friends that are at rank 20-18, or are new to the game, do not like play ranked, they usually say that they will when they get better, instead they keep on playing casual, because they fear of doing mistakes or something like that, and when they reach like 16-11 they start to get desperate with fear of losing the stars because, their friends will see that they aren't doing well
I actually felt this way during my first season of HS, but then a friend of mine told me that there is nothing to lose. I was especially worried about rewards, then he explained how it works and what the actual rewards are for each rank.
As for the topic, I feel like it's Blizzard's fault only because they are always too late with nerfs. Apart from that, the players are the problem. Nowadays it seems like nobody is playing for fun (unless netdecking is fun). I am usually hanging on low ranks, like 18 or so, and I actually see very few original decks. Mostly I see either midrange hunter or kingsbane rogue. The most original one I've seen is control jade shaman without any evolve cards.
now i play only for fun, i reached legend once for the card back and thats it, i never pushed more than ranks 10-5 after that.Now i am playing a nzoth secret hunter with profesor putricide in wild LUL
- The community cannot be satisfied. Ever. Nobody likes aggro decks, but nobody likes long control mirrors either. Nobody likes RNG, but nobody wants to be bored. That deck may have 40% win rate, but OMG LOSING TO IT SUX, plz nerf (why yes, I am still salty about The Caverns Below being nerfed, thank you). Blizzard try to satisfy as many people as they can, but even with their development team then they're probably going to have a hard time of it.
- Rewards in Hearthstone are largely based around winning games rather than being creative. Those "play 50 (class) cards" quests? They're actually pretty new. Even then, there's nothing in your daily quests that would particularly inspire anyone to do anything different from what they may usually do... barring playing a class you don't like, though you can always re-roll those. Having quests like "win 2 games with no legendary cards in your deck" might help towards this, though the balance may be tricky. Even then, the Internet exists and sites like Hearthpwn, TempoStorm and ViciousSyndicate are always around to offer any list you may need. And since success brings reward, why not ride other's coat-tails?
Continuing the above point: the casual queue is a shambles. There's little casual about it; it's the same as ladder except you might play someone who's way better than you or has more cards, and you often play hardcore aggro decks despite the casual ladder. I'd suggest an ever-changing ruleset to help balance things out, but that's what Tavern Brawl is for. Honestly, I have little idea how you'd solve it.
- Lastly, the one-game format. No sideboards means you either have to be ready for everything ever (less likely) or have an extremely focused gameplan. Both of these promote linearity in deckbuilding and means the place you're most likely to run into the more obscure combos or deck types (Twilight's Call -> Corrupted Healbot x2 then Embrace the Shadow) is by watching Youtube videos rather than by actually playing Hearthstone. Because you want to actually win, right!? To get all those sweet gold rewards...
Oh, and arena costs too much. Frown. I'd like to get better at it but I'd rather just have the chance to open more stuff for ranked.
I think it's Blizzard, but that option needs to be more specific. But first to dispatch the other three:
Players: People play games according to how they're incentivized. Maybe we're not "forced", but the path to make progress in any game is what players generally take.
Sites like this: Not to be too esoteric, but websites provide what they're incentivized to provide, which in the case of this site is the best tools available for players to use to make progress in the game, which, see above.
RNG: We know it's reality. You can't really have a game without it. Tuning it is a very difficult burden for Blizzard, but the existence of RNG in the game is not to blame.
So when it comes to Blizzard, there are multiple things that can be going wrong. One is in card design -- some may argue, but I think they're ok-to-good on this. Another is speed and effectiveness at making changes -- I think they're weak at this, and yet I think there are reasons we don't appreciate on why they can't react too fast without making it worse. I lay the lion's share of the blame and at the Ranked game modes design. It's the heart of what incentivizes us to play how we play. It demands grinding and meta-decking.
I'll admit I don't have a great answer to how the primary game mode should be. But if I spent a day job's worth of time, I think I might come up with something good. I've always thought that the quality of the game execution, art, and even card design is producing some of the best game assets around, but that the game modes are squandering too much of it.
The problem was defined by one of the developers a while ago. The community is quick to figure out what the best meta decks are since the creation of sites like Hearthpwn. So you can't really expect to ladder efficiently without building these decks that you see most often as you get into the higher ranks.
This is why they nerf cards. Raza was nerfed because it is the most popular refined deck at the moment. Creeper was also nerfed because it is in almost all other decks (mostly aggro/combo). Bonemare? Again, very popular, in too many decks. Hearthstone is a popular game so it is not a surprise that good decks will become popular and get posted. Do you think that you are going to all of the sudden build a deck that is better then these refined decks? Highly unlikely.
Also keep in mind that most people do not have enough epic/legend cards to be so versatile. They will save until they can buy 1 legendary, then build a deck around it. And they pick the one card they see is at the top tier. There is nothing wrong with what is going on, and the meta will get stale any way you slice it. Then they will rotate out some cards and you will slide further back unless you spend some cash.
That's how business works. Think about card design also. Sure, some cards are broken, but do you want a whole set of mediocre crap? No, you want some broken cards in there so that everyone can't wait to play them. It's where the hype comes from. Cards like The Darkness. Looks awesome but not that great.
Always amazes me when people think that trying to win in a PvP game is something for which guilt must be assigned. They can't make a game mode where everyone wins every game. People built the alternative decks you suggested and lost more, then they deleted them. Simple concept.
Always amazes me when people think that trying to win in a PvP game is something for which guilt must be assigned. They can't make a game mode where everyone wins every game. People built the alternative decks you suggested and lost more, then they deleted them. Simple concept.
Some people are try hard pieces of shit as well. Gold is not the only reason to play. I’ve been steamrolling meta decks all day with my Marin Silence Priest, lol. Fun as hell plus a little gold!
Always amazes me when people think that trying to win in a PvP game is something for which guilt must be assigned. They can't make a game mode where everyone wins every game. People built the alternative decks you suggested and lost more, then they deleted them. Simple concept.
Some people are try hard pieces of shit as well. Gold is not the only reason to play. I’ve been steamrolling meta decks all day with my Marin Silence Priest, lol. Fun as hell plus a little gold!
He's right though. You can play your fun deck all you want, but after a while you'll get bored of rank 10 and 0 stars and want to try and make rank 5. And to do that you will need 1 of those top 5 meta decks. So you'll pick the one that you have all the needed cards for -
Aggro/Murloc paladin
Cube/Control Warlock
Highlander Priest
Combo Rogue
Dragon Priest
Or maybe you want to struggle with a Mage deck, but good luck with that. I didn't have much luck after I crafted Alune.
Or throw PK in a Warlock deck. Face it. These are all net decks.
Even your Marin Silence Priest is a net deck that you added Marin.
Always amazes me when people think that trying to win in a PvP game is something for which guilt must be assigned. They can't make a game mode where everyone wins every game. People built the alternative decks you suggested and lost more, then they deleted them. Simple concept.
Some people are try hard pieces of shit as well. Gold is not the only reason to play. I’ve been steamrolling meta decks all day with my Marin Silence Priest, lol. Fun as hell plus a little gold!
He's right though. You can play your fun deck all you want, but after a while you'll get bored of rank 10 and 0 stars and want to try and make rank 5. And to do that you will need 1 of those top 5 meta decks. So you'll pick the one that you have all the needed cards for -
Aggro/Murloc paladin
Cube/Control Warlock
Highlander Priest
Combo Rogue
Dragon Priest
Or maybe you want to struggle with a Mage deck, but good luck with that. I didn't have much luck after I crafted Alune.
Or throw PK in a Warlock deck. Face it. These are all net decks.
Even your Marin Silence Priest is a net deck that you added Marin.
I’m ok with my decks and I get to rank 5 often enough without the aforementioned cancer decks.
The best is tryhards in casual. How can it be easy wins if the MMR scales with more wins/loses? Be a grownup and play ranked where skill is at least somewhat of a factor. But alas, weaklings are afraid to lose their precious stars. Lol
THE main problem I see is that you are trying to tell people what is fun and what isn’t, if you open your mind a but you may find that opinions are ok.
There are so many threads about who is at fault for the ladder madness/staleness. Let's forge our thoughts.
Do we blame Blizzard? This is a fair point, because they are adding so many mana-cheat cards it's silly. They implement a gold system that seemingly entices to only play bullshit tier 1 decks in any mode (Casual is far from casual nowadays, and completing quests is a LOL reason when the decks being played are Cubelock and Raza).
Do we blame players? This is most likely the culprit IMO, because Blizzard doesn't FORCE us to play this way. Also, is anyone really afraid of losing stars in Ranked? Playing is casual to avoid losing stars, regardless of the daily quest, seems silly as well. Ranked doesn't produce enough reward incentive for that to make any sense. But, I admin, if I'm at ranks 16 or 6, I will finish my daily quest after hitting the next rank floor.
Blame sites like this? This I don't think is the problem. This site is awesome, and offers lots of incite on stuff that new and veteran players overlook all the time. We aren't forced to play netdecks advertised on this site. In fact, they help us build a solid foundation for what is good and what is ineffective.
Do we blame the notorious RNG? I'm ok with this part. That's what keeps the game interesting. RNG is a huge part of the game, and arguing otherwise is foolish. What drives people crazy is the RNG trumping skill. This can happen. Does Raza Preist drawing perfect curve = luck? Yep. Does it take skill to pilot decks like Cubelock and Raza Preist? Some, but not really. Again, perfect curve = advantage with any deck, but they seem to benefit more than the average. We see Raza in < Rank 20 for crying out loud. These must be noobs who paid for a ton of decks, want to be OP right away, but don't know how to pilot it. Either that or they didn't play last season. But even then, how many people with tier 1 decks play casually? I call bullshit on anyone who claims that.
At the end of the day, both players and Blizzard are to blame for the staleness we are experiencing. How do we keep things interesting? BUILD NEW DECKS! How is this overlooked time and time again? The Eggmancer deck on last weeks popular list is a blast to play, and actually wins because people aren't teching against it or expect it. I've been playing a Marin Silence Priest and got to rank 5 this month. Why? Nobody expects it.
At the end of the day, most important thing is to have fun! Cheers~
Well, most of my friends that are at rank 20-18, or are new to the game, do not like play ranked, they usually say that they will when they get better, instead they keep on playing casual, because they fear of doing mistakes or something like that, and when they reach like 16-11 they start to get desperate with fear of losing the stars because, their friends will see that they aren't doing well, so, people with most likely "different decks" are too scared of ranked, or they play wild/standard on their lower rank so they will not get so guilty about losing stars, leaving the higher ranks, or people who want to rank up to netdecked decks, those who are confident that "people succeded with this deck, why not me?" So they keep on playing the most famous decks in hopes of getting higher ranks...
The main problem is that experimentation is expensive. You need a lot of packs, which means a lot of time or a lot of money. If you design a deck and it turns out to be crap, there's no way to undo all the dust you burnt to get it. So people look up decks that they know will work so they can climb ladder, which is fun for a lot of people.
The main issue is that you can't craft cards efficiently with the current pack cost and dust efficiency. If people could experiment more painlessly they would.
Look at this thing and let me know what you think!
I've never quite understood the community complaint regarding stagnation in the meta-game - it's to be expected that the competitive play mode will attrit weak decks, and reward strong ones. Ever since BB became the HS overlord, there have been regular balance changes two months after the release of new content - in other words, every two months, give or take, the meta-game shifts, either in response to new content, or to the shake-up in the meta-game produced by nerfing that new content. That's exactly what many members of the community have desired for years, but it doesn't seem to have made any impact - "what can I aimlessly complain about . . ." is a moving target.
FWIW - HSReplays tracks well over one million games each day. The K&C meta-game is likely unique in HS history - the two best decks in the meta-game, by far, aren't among the ten most-played decks on ladder. For most of K&C, Aggro Paladin has had the 11th highest play-rate, while Murloc Paladin has had the 13th. Both decks are favoured to heavily favoured against the most popular decks on ladder - but there was never any ladder adjustment in light of their performance, and the decks have each enjoyed a play-rate slightly above 2% as a result. Owing to the pending nerfs, Aggro Paladin is likely dead. Murloc Paladin will likely be fine, but it probably won't matter - Big Spell Mage has a higher play-rate on ladder, despite having a win-rate a full 10% worse than the Fish. If the HS community were more interested in discussing developments in the game, rather than complementing itself on how much better they understand HS than the idiots who actually make it, the depressed play-rate of Paladin would be among the hottest topics of debate on the forums. It's not . . .
I would refine the blaming players option to say 'too' large a fraction of the human race comes under the 'Spike' player type (using MtG terminology). It is deeper than worrying about stars: most people just don't like losing at all.
If you could come up with a way (likely impossible) to separate the Spikes from the Timmys and the Johnnys half of the problem would vanish in an instant. Spikes might still complain about a grind and encountering the same decks (a problem entirely of their own doing!), but the rest of us will happily get along with our own creations in a haven of diverse decks where people play to pull off crazy stuff rather than to optimise win rates.
As I said, it is likely impossible.
What a god damn pretentious post
Blame yourself for not having other interests.
Three main things, in my opinion.
- The community cannot be satisfied. Ever. Nobody likes aggro decks, but nobody likes long control mirrors either. Nobody likes RNG, but nobody wants to be bored. That deck may have 40% win rate, but OMG LOSING TO IT SUX, plz nerf (why yes, I am still salty about The Caverns Below being nerfed, thank you). Blizzard try to satisfy as many people as they can, but even with their development team then they're probably going to have a hard time of it.
- Rewards in Hearthstone are largely based around winning games rather than being creative. Those "play 50 (class) cards" quests? They're actually pretty new. Even then, there's nothing in your daily quests that would particularly inspire anyone to do anything different from what they may usually do... barring playing a class you don't like, though you can always re-roll those. Having quests like "win 2 games with no legendary cards in your deck" might help towards this, though the balance may be tricky. Even then, the Internet exists and sites like Hearthpwn, TempoStorm and ViciousSyndicate are always around to offer any list you may need. And since success brings reward, why not ride other's coat-tails?
Continuing the above point: the casual queue is a shambles. There's little casual about it; it's the same as ladder except you might play someone who's way better than you or has more cards, and you often play hardcore aggro decks despite the casual ladder. I'd suggest an ever-changing ruleset to help balance things out, but that's what Tavern Brawl is for. Honestly, I have little idea how you'd solve it.
- Lastly, the one-game format. No sideboards means you either have to be ready for everything ever (less likely) or have an extremely focused gameplan. Both of these promote linearity in deckbuilding and means the place you're most likely to run into the more obscure combos or deck types (Twilight's Call -> Corrupted Healbot x2 then Embrace the Shadow) is by watching Youtube videos rather than by actually playing Hearthstone. Because you want to actually win, right!? To get all those sweet gold rewards...
Oh, and arena costs too much. Frown. I'd like to get better at it but I'd rather just have the chance to open more stuff for ranked.
I think it's Blizzard, but that option needs to be more specific. But first to dispatch the other three:
Players: People play games according to how they're incentivized. Maybe we're not "forced", but the path to make progress in any game is what players generally take.
Sites like this: Not to be too esoteric, but websites provide what they're incentivized to provide, which in the case of this site is the best tools available for players to use to make progress in the game, which, see above.
RNG: We know it's reality. You can't really have a game without it. Tuning it is a very difficult burden for Blizzard, but the existence of RNG in the game is not to blame.
So when it comes to Blizzard, there are multiple things that can be going wrong. One is in card design -- some may argue, but I think they're ok-to-good on this. Another is speed and effectiveness at making changes -- I think they're weak at this, and yet I think there are reasons we don't appreciate on why they can't react too fast without making it worse. I lay the lion's share of the blame and at the Ranked game modes design. It's the heart of what incentivizes us to play how we play. It demands grinding and meta-decking.
I'll admit I don't have a great answer to how the primary game mode should be. But if I spent a day job's worth of time, I think I might come up with something good. I've always thought that the quality of the game execution, art, and even card design is producing some of the best game assets around, but that the game modes are squandering too much of it.
The problem was defined by one of the developers a while ago. The community is quick to figure out what the best meta decks are since the creation of sites like Hearthpwn. So you can't really expect to ladder efficiently without building these decks that you see most often as you get into the higher ranks.
This is why they nerf cards. Raza was nerfed because it is the most popular refined deck at the moment. Creeper was also nerfed because it is in almost all other decks (mostly aggro/combo). Bonemare? Again, very popular, in too many decks. Hearthstone is a popular game so it is not a surprise that good decks will become popular and get posted. Do you think that you are going to all of the sudden build a deck that is better then these refined decks? Highly unlikely.
Also keep in mind that most people do not have enough epic/legend cards to be so versatile. They will save until they can buy 1 legendary, then build a deck around it. And they pick the one card they see is at the top tier. There is nothing wrong with what is going on, and the meta will get stale any way you slice it. Then they will rotate out some cards and you will slide further back unless you spend some cash.
That's how business works. Think about card design also. Sure, some cards are broken, but do you want a whole set of mediocre crap? No, you want some broken cards in there so that everyone can't wait to play them. It's where the hype comes from. Cards like The Darkness. Looks awesome but not that great.
Don't blame it on the Sunwalker.
Don't blame it on the Moonfire.
Don't blame it on the good times.
Blame it on The Boogeymonster.
Also, I just can't, I just can't, I just can't control my feet.
Always amazes me when people think that trying to win in a PvP game is something for which guilt must be assigned. They can't make a game mode where everyone wins every game. People built the alternative decks you suggested and lost more, then they deleted them. Simple concept.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
THE main problem I see is that you are trying to tell people what is fun and what isn’t, if you open your mind a but you may find that opinions are ok.
blame bog creeper!!