the most important part of having fun is winning enough games to think you can play the game well.
Winning games and playing well are different things. You can play perfectly well and still lose due to rng, just as play bad and still win due to rng.
I have a poker background and the pattern there is the same, but on a much larger scale - you can go losing buy-ins after buy-ins besides playing perfectly. And in poker (just as in HS as it seems) are two type of players:
1) Those who enjoy winning and don't care how they played
2) Those who enjoy playing optimally and don't care whether they win or lose
The first type of players are those who throw money in the game (aka the fish). The second type are the pros (aka the sharks). In an infinite long pool simulation with sharks and fishes, at the end stay only the sharks. This means the proper type of fun is those of the pros who will play the game always, while the regular players will stop having their type of fun at some point finding it in another activity.
the most important part of having fun is winning enough games to think you can play the game well.
Winning games and playing well are different things. You can play perfectly well and still lose due to rng, just as play bad and still win due to rng.
I have a poker background and the pattern there is the same, but on a much larger scale - you can go losing buy-ins after buy-ins besides playing perfectly. And in poker (just as in HS as it seems) are two type of players:
1) Those who enjoy winning and don't care how they played
2) Those who enjoy playing optimally and don't care whether they win or lose
The first type of players are those who throw money in the game (aka the fish). The second type are the pros (aka the sharks). In an infinite long pool simulation with sharks and fishes, at the end stay only the sharks. This means the proper type of fun is those of the pros who will play the game always, while the regular players will stop having their type of fun at some point.
I know. I just said that it is important to make people thinkthey can play well. That keeps them playing. As soon as they realize they are actually not playing the game very good, they are more likely to leave. That's also a reason for the extra stars in ranked. It makes people experience a progress, even if they lose more games than they win. So they have the impression they won more often than they actually did.
Edit: If you have people constantly playing very well and losing more often than they statistically should, they will also lose interest inthe game. The thing is, that you will not lose more often if you play well. A few losses are no big deal. But lose 80 out of 100 games, it doesn't matter whether you played well (not likely) or not (more likely). It will not be fun
wild is in this state because no good player are trying to solve the format, there is no reason to play wild for a pro player. fix that and wild will fix itself. for example make worlds a dual format tournament, something like 4 rounds of std and 4 rounds of wild, and a top8 with standard only.
That is YOUR definition of Fun, not everyone agrees with you, that is the problem you seem to be unable to understand. You want to define fun, but because there are people with different perspectives from yours, your definition of fun is not going to be accurate except for you and those with the same perspective. Since Blizzard wants the game to be played by the largest possible playerbase, they cannot center their philosophy around what you and those with that same perspective find fun, they have to focus on what everyone finds fun, which means allow strategies to be centered around as many possible places as they can, since this is how they make the game as inclusive as possible.
If they want an inclusive as possible game they have to:
1) Allow people to ban cards. Otherwise we end up with the case in which either you or me will have NOT FUN scenarios.
OR
2) Create different modes, which offer different game play experience.
If they want a proper game designed around their current mechanics they have to follow the 3 golden rules in the OP and disregard the minority of people who think these can not be fun. It is really up to them to decide. We can only give advises.
Blizzard doesnt read the Hearthpwns. (Even though it has more accounts than HS subreddit). If you want to adress something. Try on their official Reddit as I did:
There are poker players losing 30+ buy-ins at the high stakes (a few millions real money) for a few days while playing optimally due to huge variance and they care less than when they played a single hand bad (which costed them only a few grands). Lesson of the story is: Learn to have fun when you play optimally, no matter if you win or lose.
There are poker players losing 30+ buy-ins at the high stakes (a few millions real money) for a few days while playing optimally due to huge variance and they care less than when they played a single hand bad (which costed them only a few grands). Lesson of the story is: Learn to have fun when you play optimally, no matter if you win or lose.
Anecdotal evidence means nothing. They can do whatever they want and lose as much as they think they want to. But I bet you everything that they would have more fun if they'd won the few million dollars.
Lesson of the story: Winning makes everything more fun.
they would have more fun if they'd won the few million dollars.
No, they won't, because they don't care about money. Only about the game. They have lost many times millions due to luck, and they will in the future, but variance is something not important to them. And if one can't handle it or have fun due to it, one is simply a fish. I know it's hard to understand, but the same applies to HS too: Those people who have fun due to playing optimally instead of when winning will be there for longer.
they would have more fun if they'd won the few million dollars.
No, they won't, because they don't care about money. Only about the game. They have lost many times millions due to luck, and they will in the future, but variance is something not important to them. And if one can't handle it or have fun due to it, one is simply a fish. I know it's hard to understand, but the same applies to HS too: Those people who have fun due to playing optimally instead of when winning will be there for longer.
Yeah, they will. I accept that they don't care about the money (although I don't believe that, but I'll give you that), but they like winning. Otherwise they are not in for a competetive game anyway. If they do not care about winning, they wouldn't try to play optimally in the first place since then playing good has no point.
Honestly, I am not sure whether you are just talking yourself into it or whether you actually believe that winning is not important for fun. Denying that the same thing is more fun when you are winning is just not really realistic (to be pollied). Look at any professional, be it chess, sport or your example Poker: Winning is more fun than losing (you can ask Phil Hellmuth how much he likes to lose when he plays optimally).
they would have more fun if they'd won the few million dollars.
No, they won't, because they don't care about money. Only about the game. They have lost many times millions due to luck, and they will in the future, but variance is something not important to them. And if one can't handle it or have fun due to it, one is simply a fish. I know it's hard to understand, but the same applies to HS too: Those people who have fun due to playing optimally instead of when winning will be there for longer.
Sorry, but this optimality thing invalidates your point: you should be able to enjoy whatever game you play optimally, independently of what your opponent plays. So what are we even talking about here?
Moreover, if you enjoy a game played with a style, you can't assume it is a universal fact. And a productive discussion should be able to convey different perspectives and tastes into a single strategy or plan, otherwise it's a monologue.
Also, we should discuss about Wild and what keeps it fun, WITHIN the general scheme of HS, not about what should be the core principles of HS.
If they want an inclusive as possible game they have to:
1) Allow people to ban cards. Otherwise we end up with the case in which either you or me will have NOT FUN scenarios.
OR
2) Create different modes, which offer different game play experience.
If they want a proper game designed around their current mechanics they have to follow the 3 golden rules in the OP and disregard the minority of people who think these can not be fun. It is really up to them to decide. We can only give advises.
How exactly does banning cards makes it more inclusive? You want more strategies, more playstyles, that makes the game more inclusive, not the other way around.
There are always going to be scenarios where someone is not going to have fun, it is literally impossible to eliminate them because again, with so many perspectives, you have so many things that make the game fun and unfun for each individual person and perspective.
If you are playing a fully board centric match against your opponent, that you love so much, and he pulls out some random 50/50 chance result that wins him the game, are you going to have fun? No. You couldn't play statistically perfectly for that scenario because the odds for each outcome were the same, the only thing that mattered was that the coin flip landed for your opponent, and it happened to take place very late in the game, but you are not going to have fun, quite the opposite, frustration, even despise it being the kind of playstyles you enjoy.
There is no reason to implement bans, aside from Casual Mode, which has no penalty for losing games, meaning you don't need to concede the games and ban what you don't want to face instead, to speed up the matching system.
In Ranked, you have to be put up against anything the field presents, be it something you like or not, you cannot only be faced with what you enjoy, chances are what you enjoy is what you can easily beat and therefore inflate your winrate.
There are different Game modes with different play experiences. Your definition of fun tells us that you would absolutely love the Arena Mode, a mode which is entirely Board Centric and doesn't leave much room for strategies that don't involve Board. Have you considered it?
Adventures and Tavern Brawl also present different experiences, if you want to try them. Sometimes they are similar to Constructed, but otherwise it is different.
If they want a properly well designed game, they actually need to ignore those who want to oppress strategies and playstyles and instead, provide as many of these as possible. Variety and diversity in strategies and playstyles is what makes strategy card games thrive, not heavily limit what strategies and playstyles can see play.
What you want is terrible design and it heavily skews balance towards Aggro and Midrange as unbalanced powerhouse playstyles. That is far from healthy or balanced. Healthy and balanced design leaves all playstyles in minimally equal levels, each of them weak and strong against one another, and allowing players to opt for their playstyle, while accepting their natural weaknesses and strengths.
If they want a properly well designed game, they actually need to ignore those who want to oppress strategies and playstyles and instead, provide as many of these as possible. Variety and diversity in strategies and playstyles is what makes strategy card games thrive, not heavily limit what strategies and playstyles can see play.
It's good to have variety and diversity, and also it is good to have limits (2 non-leg cards per deck).
I am not in favor/against any particular archtype, just against particular match-ups and I already explained why these are boring making a relation to football. Now, of course there will be some guys who would have fun with 30 board clear cards in deck and fatigueing the opponent, but based on the general HS design this won't be fun for the majority since it violates the 3 golden rules in the OP. And the HS design atm is:
Turn-based game
Mana starting from 1 and auto-raising per turn with 1
7 spaces at the board for each player's minions
3/4 cards in starting hand
30 cards in a starting deck
30 starting health for a hero
If you want game styles which go against the core principles in the game written above simply create a mode with this:
Turn-based game
Mana starting at 10
No board
10 cards in starting hand
30 cards in a starting deck
200 starting health for a hero
The above design will be ideal for combo-only type of play which directly removes health from the other hero.
But if we want to have well designed game for the current platform, see the OP.
The problem of wild is that people lack of skills in deckbuilding , they can only play the t1 decks seen by a streamer for winning so we can't blame too much on them.
I love to deckbuild and to make what is considered out of the meta competitive, but yeah this is too much to understeand for 90% of the hs players. And trust me wild is like a virgin place , there are so many archetypes playble and not perfectioned.
Another problem of wild hs is avian kun combo that even with 2 or 3 teches can still win and all of these 'standard' player who come to wild mode without knowing norhing and just playng the t1.
Fun, as has been repeatedly stated here, is entirely subjective and those 3 Rules you mentioned on the first post are NOT what define fun for everyone.
You still miss the big picture. I'll try to put it in one sentence as simple as possible in order for you to understand:
You will have more fun with decks deviating from the 3 rules stated in OP in another HS format.
I gave you an example you quoted where combo will work better and you will have more fun with it without having a board at all. Isn't this what we all want - a fun game for everyone? Maybe we should discuss this question first?
I am fully aware that there are people out there who enjoy those strategies, and why should they not be allowed to play them? Or should be forced to exile in a different mode?
Answer yourself this question: Why the soccer ball is not the same as the rugby ball? Then we can continue with the talk.
I can't help but feel that your definition of fun is very biased towards a certain one or two playstyles. I mean, you pretty much said that the game should be solely based on board interaction (ie trading). In this view you would propose "adjusting" cards and decks that do the following; win through any OTK from hand, utilize burn pressure, have a finisher that you play from hand (such as Pyro, Kill Command, or Grom), or that only make essential trades and throw everything else towards face (aggro decks and some midrange decks).
^ Can I say that I've detected a control main?
I for one would like to address what constitutes a counter vs what the vocal minority considers a counter. Let's look at Dirty Rat. Often times the average player considered the tech a counter to OTK decks when it hit a combo piece. When it did not hit a combo piece they often said that it wasn't an adequate counter because it did not provide a game winning pull 100% of the time. Yet the counter was still there. I could provide other tech/counter examples, but the gist is that players will often say that a legitimate counter is not good enough if it doesn't win games 90-100% of the time and/or they don't draw it exactly when they want it (see Mossy Horror vs Plague or Giggling). That doesn't mean that the opponent using the card that is trying to be countered is not interact-able and counter-able. And yet look at where we are in terms of community perceptions about what can be countered or interacted with.
Now let's look at one of your other main points for why you say something isn't fun for your opponent, and that is that there is no skill or involved/required. It's too vague to list a bunch of specific decks since your thread is just focused on fun in general, but I wouldn't agree that any deck doesn't require skill or thought. Some decks/archtypes even increase the skill ceiling when comparing how the deck does in rank 5-1 vs middle to upper rank legend. Aggro is a good example of this. In middle to upper rank legend you actually do have to trade more than going face 95% of the time when facing a legend meta that is control or combo oriented. Going all face or all wide has greater potential to punish you against more experienced players.
If we look at another archtype (say OTK) we also need to address the concept of bias. Players who dislike OTK decks or who don't pilot them themselves simply go for an easy out and say that they require little to no skill. I won't lie and say that all OTK decks require the same ballpark of skill, druid requires significantly less skill when compared to a hunter or rogue otk, but to write over a whole playstyle because the players that don't like and say that it is unfun is quite ridiculous. I'm not saying you are explicitly stating that OP, but there are undertones of such an assumption based off of how you are posing the argument of this thread.
Lastly, for control decks that violate the above three reasons for why players find them not fun in your OP I ask how you would address those oppressive control decks when playing other control decks. For example, say that I want to play control in wild and I choose rogue, paladin, or shaman and I face warlock, priest, or mage. It would be just as easy to say that those control decks provide less interaction for the rogue, pally, or shaman because warlock/priest/mage are blatantly more advantaged in the control game due to their classes being purposefully designed towards the archtype for the past many expansions. Does it take more skill to beat a control rogue, shaman, or pally as warlock or priest when your class will always have more answers for tall/wide boards, more giant swing turns through Kazakus or Gul'Dan, and more value generation through DK hero powers? Just some food for thought when refining your points for what makes something fun for your opponent and what doesn't make it fun for them.
Winning games and playing well are different things. You can play perfectly well and still lose due to rng, just as play bad and still win due to rng.
I have a poker background and the pattern there is the same, but on a much larger scale - you can go losing buy-ins after buy-ins besides playing perfectly. And in poker (just as in HS as it seems) are two type of players:
1) Those who enjoy winning and don't care how they played
2) Those who enjoy playing optimally and don't care whether they win or lose
The first type of players are those who throw money in the game (aka the fish). The second type are the pros (aka the sharks). In an infinite long pool simulation with sharks and fishes, at the end stay only the sharks. This means the proper type of fun is those of the pros who will play the game always, while the regular players will stop having their type of fun at some point finding it in another activity.
I know. I just said that it is important to make people think they can play well. That keeps them playing. As soon as they realize they are actually not playing the game very good, they are more likely to leave. That's also a reason for the extra stars in ranked. It makes people experience a progress, even if they lose more games than they win. So they have the impression they won more often than they actually did.
Edit: If you have people constantly playing very well and losing more often than they statistically should, they will also lose interest inthe game. The thing is, that you will not lose more often if you play well. A few losses are no big deal. But lose 80 out of 100 games, it doesn't matter whether you played well (not likely) or not (more likely). It will not be fun
TL; DR: Winning is fun.
wild is in this state because no good player are trying to solve the format, there is no reason to play wild for a pro player. fix that and wild will fix itself. for example make worlds a dual format tournament, something like 4 rounds of std and 4 rounds of wild, and a top8 with standard only.
If they want an inclusive as possible game they have to:
1) Allow people to ban cards. Otherwise we end up with the case in which either you or me will have NOT FUN scenarios.
OR
2) Create different modes, which offer different game play experience.
If they want a proper game designed around their current mechanics they have to follow the 3 golden rules in the OP and disregard the minority of people who think these can not be fun. It is really up to them to decide. We can only give advises.
I answered the thread, but it doesn't seem to get much attention by the community there... Let's hope Blizz reads and listens.
There are poker players losing 30+ buy-ins at the high stakes (a few millions real money) for a few days while playing optimally due to huge variance and they care less than when they played a single hand bad (which costed them only a few grands). Lesson of the story is: Learn to have fun when you play optimally, no matter if you win or lose.
Anecdotal evidence means nothing. They can do whatever they want and lose as much as they think they want to. But I bet you everything that they would have more fun if they'd won the few million dollars.
Lesson of the story: Winning makes everything more fun.
No, they won't, because they don't care about money. Only about the game. They have lost many times millions due to luck, and they will in the future, but variance is something not important to them. And if one can't handle it or have fun due to it, one is simply a fish. I know it's hard to understand, but the same applies to HS too: Those people who have fun due to playing optimally instead of when winning will be there for longer.
Yeah, they will. I accept that they don't care about the money (although I don't believe that, but I'll give you that), but they like winning. Otherwise they are not in for a competetive game anyway. If they do not care about winning, they wouldn't try to play optimally in the first place since then playing good has no point.
Honestly, I am not sure whether you are just talking yourself into it or whether you actually believe that winning is not important for fun. Denying that the same thing is more fun when you are winning is just not really realistic (to be pollied). Look at any professional, be it chess, sport or your example Poker: Winning is more fun than losing (you can ask Phil Hellmuth how much he likes to lose when he plays optimally).
Sorry, but this optimality thing invalidates your point: you should be able to enjoy whatever game you play optimally, independently of what your opponent plays. So what are we even talking about here?
Moreover, if you enjoy a game played with a style, you can't assume it is a universal fact. And a productive discussion should be able to convey different perspectives and tastes into a single strategy or plan, otherwise it's a monologue.
Also, we should discuss about Wild and what keeps it fun, WITHIN the general scheme of HS, not about what should be the core principles of HS.
^ Amen
Moving into https://outof.cards/members/firepaladinhs/decks
It's good to have variety and diversity, and also it is good to have limits (2 non-leg cards per deck).
I am not in favor/against any particular archtype, just against particular match-ups and I already explained why these are boring making a relation to football. Now, of course there will be some guys who would have fun with 30 board clear cards in deck and fatigueing the opponent, but based on the general HS design this won't be fun for the majority since it violates the 3 golden rules in the OP. And the HS design atm is:
If you want game styles which go against the core principles in the game written above simply create a mode with this:
The above design will be ideal for combo-only type of play which directly removes health from the other hero.
But if we want to have well designed game for the current platform, see the OP.
TRUTH
PREACH
Proud member of the real casual play network
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/222850-new-third-game-mode-real-casual-play-network
Hit rank 15 with a homebrew back in the KOFT days.
Yaayyy...
There's all my notable achievements.
You still miss the big picture. I'll try to put it in one sentence as simple as possible in order for you to understand:
You will have more fun with decks deviating from the 3 rules stated in OP in another HS format.
I gave you an example you quoted where combo will work better and you will have more fun with it without having a board at all. Isn't this what we all want - a fun game for everyone? Maybe we should discuss this question first?
Answer yourself this question: Why the soccer ball is not the same as the rugby ball? Then we can continue with the talk.
I stopped right here. This is HS we are talking about.
I can't help but feel that your definition of fun is very biased towards a certain one or two playstyles. I mean, you pretty much said that the game should be solely based on board interaction (ie trading). In this view you would propose "adjusting" cards and decks that do the following; win through any OTK from hand, utilize burn pressure, have a finisher that you play from hand (such as Pyro, Kill Command, or Grom), or that only make essential trades and throw everything else towards face (aggro decks and some midrange decks).
^ Can I say that I've detected a control main?
I for one would like to address what constitutes a counter vs what the vocal minority considers a counter. Let's look at Dirty Rat. Often times the average player considered the tech a counter to OTK decks when it hit a combo piece. When it did not hit a combo piece they often said that it wasn't an adequate counter because it did not provide a game winning pull 100% of the time. Yet the counter was still there. I could provide other tech/counter examples, but the gist is that players will often say that a legitimate counter is not good enough if it doesn't win games 90-100% of the time and/or they don't draw it exactly when they want it (see Mossy Horror vs Plague or Giggling). That doesn't mean that the opponent using the card that is trying to be countered is not interact-able and counter-able. And yet look at where we are in terms of community perceptions about what can be countered or interacted with.
Now let's look at one of your other main points for why you say something isn't fun for your opponent, and that is that there is no skill or involved/required. It's too vague to list a bunch of specific decks since your thread is just focused on fun in general, but I wouldn't agree that any deck doesn't require skill or thought. Some decks/archtypes even increase the skill ceiling when comparing how the deck does in rank 5-1 vs middle to upper rank legend. Aggro is a good example of this. In middle to upper rank legend you actually do have to trade more than going face 95% of the time when facing a legend meta that is control or combo oriented. Going all face or all wide has greater potential to punish you against more experienced players.
If we look at another archtype (say OTK) we also need to address the concept of bias. Players who dislike OTK decks or who don't pilot them themselves simply go for an easy out and say that they require little to no skill. I won't lie and say that all OTK decks require the same ballpark of skill, druid requires significantly less skill when compared to a hunter or rogue otk, but to write over a whole playstyle because the players that don't like and say that it is unfun is quite ridiculous. I'm not saying you are explicitly stating that OP, but there are undertones of such an assumption based off of how you are posing the argument of this thread.
Lastly, for control decks that violate the above three reasons for why players find them not fun in your OP I ask how you would address those oppressive control decks when playing other control decks. For example, say that I want to play control in wild and I choose rogue, paladin, or shaman and I face warlock, priest, or mage. It would be just as easy to say that those control decks provide less interaction for the rogue, pally, or shaman because warlock/priest/mage are blatantly more advantaged in the control game due to their classes being purposefully designed towards the archtype for the past many expansions. Does it take more skill to beat a control rogue, shaman, or pally as warlock or priest when your class will always have more answers for tall/wide boards, more giant swing turns through Kazakus or Gul'Dan, and more value generation through DK hero powers? Just some food for thought when refining your points for what makes something fun for your opponent and what doesn't make it fun for them.