I thought it would be fun to do a little thought experiment here. What do you think would happen to the meta if there was no net decking? If there wasn't any websites providing decks to play, and there weren't any youtubers or streamers to reccomend decks, what would happen?
I think that's quite simple, people would try to copy the decks they lose against ;) So essentially the same thing but slower and not as efficient, because you don't see the whole deck in a single game, you only get an impression of all the parts when you meet it more than once or play to fatigue. And good players would have the advantage of seeing and understanding a successful deck concept easier and completing a deck "copy" better than the casual player. More or less the same way decks evolve in the first place today before everybody netdecks them.
I thought it would be fun to do a little thought experiment here. What do you think would happen to the meta if there was no net decking? If there wasn't any websites providing decks to play, and there weren't any youtubers or streamers to reccomend decks, what would happen?
The game would have stuck to it's original vision: a niche game for a few WoW players. That WAS what the game was originally made to be. It was the youtubers, streamers, websites discussion strategy and decks to play, and the wide accessability created by that environment that made hearthstone the juggernaut it's become. Even the esports scene wasn't something planned (Bilzzard was pushing Heroes of the Storm as their big Esports thing back then).
So there's that first off. Secondly, you'd have to have NO discussion anywhere. No Friends lists. No websites PERIOD, not just deck creation sites. MTG was massively netdecking before there was even a net due to private players talking to each other and newsletters, magazines, and the tournament scene.
So what if you could somehow do that: somehow stop everyone from obtaining decks from others and working together to make and share decks? What would happen with the game?
Basically the same thing as now.. except MUCH MUCH smaller.
Firstly, most players aren't good deck designers. Most don't WANT to be good deck designers.. at least they don't want to put the REAL effort to do it. They arent competitive, they are casual. Most of the rest pretend to want to do it but don't either and really just want their poorly made deck to somehow triumph, similar to a person who wants to be known as a renown author after writing a 2 page fanfic. Thus most people would not be able to make even a half decent deck, leaving them prey to the folks who can. The game would be much MUCH harder to get into causing most people to just not bother (which is why most people don't play starcraft (1 or 2) outside of custom).
So we'd have a MUCh smaller playerbase mostly made up of people who can naturally deck build and those masochistic enough to keep trying. The meta, though, would be the same: same decks, same designs. The variety wouldn't exist since instead of millions of people playing the top decks you have a few thousand at best who are...playing the best decks and scoring free wins from the folks who don't. Folks who want to experiment would still rage, though they'd have no where to rage to (no websites or social platforms remember?). You'd also have no means of determining the deck's weakness or any counter decks to try since, again, that's from the same channels as netdecking tier 1 decks. So they'd leave too.
This isn't a new situation. I'm sure folks know about games that have proven to be extremely anti-newbie friendly go through the same cycle, mostly when it involves tactics you can't pick up easily with a walkthrough. Few people enter and all who enter leave quickly. The pros run amok tearing apart anyone new until all that's left are the pros playing each other with their tier 1 strategies.
And that's it until the game dies, which may take a while since such people tend to whale and blizzard, again, never planned on the game to be extremely large. The game would look insanely different having to cater only to the few elite whales and never gaining a popularity boom. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as diverse a playerbase. Probably not as diverse deck wise since you couldn't, say, play at rank 15, to get some air away from the competitive scene. Also A LOT of the brainpower behind the game is coming from the folks making a living in the Esport scene.. which won't exist.
So there you go. It would be te same meta.. just a lot fewer players, much smaller support, no social elements to enjoy, and just a few whales beating each other.
Meanwhile, most of the folks playing here would probably play some other card game that DID have a social scene and youtube scene and websites sharing decks and strategies and netdecking and probably MUCH better F2P mechanics than here. Hard to say which one, but Shadowverse would probably be the closest (though the anime art pushes a lot of people away) or Gwent (though not sure it's newbie friendly enough. It's easy to get into but the Witcher world is nowhere near as easy to swallow as WOW's "orcs and humans and elves" world, and the "me go face" win mechanics of Hearthstone is much easier to hype up than gwent's point system. People like slamming others and making them explode)
But yeah, you'd have no netdecking. So there you go. Enjoy.
Meanwhile, most of the folks playing here would probably play some other card game that DID have a social scene and youtube scene and websites sharing decks and strategies and netdecking and probably MUCH better F2P mechanics than here. Hard to say which one, but Shadowverse would probably be the closest (though the anime art pushes a lot of people away) or Gwent
No they wouldn't. The success of Hearthstone is what caused the current wave of card games. Most of the players would play games of completely different genres, and the few fans of card games would probably play MtG.
Meanwhile, most of the folks playing here would probably play some other card game that DID have a social scene and youtube scene and websites sharing decks and strategies and netdecking and probably MUCH better F2P mechanics than here. Hard to say which one, but Shadowverse would probably be the closest (though the anime art pushes a lot of people away) or Gwent
No they wouldn't. The success of Hearthstone is what caused the current wave of card games. Most of the players would play games of completely different genres, and the few fans of card games would probably play MtG.
Well I didn't really bring up most card games. While it was just because I didn't see them being 'the replacement' your point is probably more valid: they wouldn't exist or would remain obscure.
Shadowverse, now that I see when it started, probably would've been in the same boat, so that cancels that one. Gwent would've been around as that was just a side game in Witcher that went big. It probably wouldn't have gotten a big esports scene though.
...yeah in the end your theory holds out. There really isn't a game that would've rose up if hearthstone didn't show up. I guess I probably would've stuck with Clash Royal or the like then.
I thought it would be fun to do a little thought experiment here. What do you think would happen to the meta if there was no net decking? If there wasn't any websites providing decks to play, and there weren't any youtubers or streamers to reccomend decks, what would happen?
MtG launched alongside the World Wide Web - the MagicDojo was the place where all the CCG theory which is currently taken for granted was initially hashed out. But most people didn't access online resources in those days - "net-decking" was simply done by word of mouth, by competing IRL at the local store. In any competitive game, natural selection will attrit weak decks - far moreso in a game like HS. I can play more competitive HS games in a single afternoon than I can play games of competitive MtG at the store in an entire mouth. Easily. I frankly suspect that the meta-game wouldn't be much different at all if the only source of "net-decking" was playing against opponents - you notice which decks outperform the decks you are playing, you notice which combinations of cards work best together, and you learn what to play through "reinforcement learning,' more or less . . .
With respect to HS players and online CCGs with "better" F2P models - it's worthwhile mentioning that games like Faeria, Gwent, Duelyst, and all the rest, give away most of their content for free because they have to. None of those games can possibly compete with HS in any way other than under-cutting the costs of play. If any of those games manage to survive, their business models will adapt to reflect that success - and their player bases will bitch and moan about it. For every Pokemon that survives in a market dominated by MtG, there are dozens of Spellfires, Duel Masters, L5Rs and WoW TCGs that had varying levels of success before ultimately vanishing - the digital CCG market will presumably be quite similar.
I thought it would be fun to do a little thought experiment here. What do you think would happen to the meta if there was no net decking? If there wasn't any websites providing decks to play, and there weren't any youtubers or streamers to reccomend decks, what would happen?
Net-decking is by far the most overrated thing in hearthstone
I think that's quite simple, people would try to copy the decks they lose against ;) So essentially the same thing but slower and not as efficient, because you don't see the whole deck in a single game, you only get an impression of all the parts when you meet it more than once or play to fatigue. And good players would have the advantage of seeing and understanding a successful deck concept easier and completing a deck "copy" better than the casual player. More or less the same way decks evolve in the first place today before everybody netdecks them.
edit: too slow :D
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
People would just copy the decks from Scrye or Inquest
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.