It doesn’t matter what we say and how terrible meta has become, Blizz fan boys will blindly continue to support any Blizzard’s decision like they own the company.
Thanks for raising awareness. I've always hated the Un'Goro meta because of the polarization but everyone was so focused on "diversity" that it didn't matter. Personally, I don't give a crap about how many different netdecks are out there to choose from. I usually make my own stuff anyway
Polarization is what's really bad for the game. It takes the skill out of actual gameplay and makes the luck of who you queue into the most important factor in winning
I liked the article - was backed up by some great data. I think it can feel like you see who you're playing and already feel like you've won or lost. I also think the major problem is that they didn't freshen it up with balance changes.
Even if the game seems fairly balanced, when they do some nerfs it just freshens everything up and folk start trying new decks. That hasn't happened this time so we're still playing the same decks that got refined several weeks ago. I think they should see balance changes as a chance to mix things up so it's disappointing that they never took the opportunity this time.
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
To me it all boils down to "My _______ deck cant win against _______________". No matter if the meta is balanced or one or two decks dominate it goes back to the same complaint.
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Yeah, this could be the stall of the problem: the least polarised metas appear to be those we remember as the least diverse.
If that is true, I think Un'goro was a good compromise between diversity and polarisation (not a perfect meta ofc, eg Jade Druid).
Balance between the two poisons is probably the best death you can achieve.
But it is not necessarily true that diversity is obtainable only through polarisation. We can infer it from the past meta experience, but i don't think there's any proof?
Btw, i'd be curious to see the polarity in Wild, where all the polarising cards are bound to dwell together for ever...
Do you know the funny thing here? Seeing the witchwood meta (one of the most polarized metas ever) with cubelock as 2nd most played deck and we all know the hate it received for how strong that deck was but just look at this, it was the least polarized match up in that meta. Almost as low as whisper of the old gods decks.
I would love cubelock meta over the current meta anyday. Way less cancer.
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
It would be near impossible to create. If one deck does not have other decks that counter it, it will have a high win rate. Decks with a high win rate are shown on stat sites. People visit stat sites and look for high win rate decks. The high win rate deck gets played by more and more people and there goes the diversity.
I believe they’re stuck between trying to keep a game that rotates “fresh” while also trying to preserve the integrity of the original format. Meaning.., let’s say you like playing chess. But have decided to play a variant of the original game that has some new pieces as you’ve become bored with the original format. How do you balance adding new pieces to keeping chess the game people know and love? The answer as the article points out is that basically you don’t. The more things you add to the “new” list the further you get away from the popular game. Which leaves you with one option that Blizz has tackled well up until now which is, not changing anything but disguising the pieces as “new” pieces that essentially do the same thing as the old piece did but it looks different. And that’s the right move as boring as it sounds, because if you start adding entirely new pieces to the board and the game veers off on a tangent, it may still be playable but you lost your ace in the hole, that being that a lot of people love the game of chess in its original format. I think the solution is to bring it back down to Earth will balance changes and seeing if they can’t get those numbers to fall back to previous years... it’ll be almost impossible though considering you can’t nerf a quest or dk hero enough to make the game “the same”. They’re huge outliers and all the community can do is play around the changes. Just my opinion. If my analogy made no sense I apologize, I couldn’t think of the best way to present the problem as I see it in my head. What “solutions” do you all see that would solve the problem without changing the game as we know it?
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
It would be near impossible to create. If one deck does not have other decks that counter it, it will have a high win rate. Decks with a high win rate are shown on stat sites. People visit stat sites and look for high win rate decks. The high win rate deck gets played by more and more people and there goes the diversity.
Therefore, people ruin the game. Lol! So much for thinking on your own.
This report is what happens when non statisticians try to do stastics.
“Polarity Metric” is not a standard statistic. Statistics need to have certain properties to be useful. For example, if we are estimating the win rate of a certain matchup, we use the sample average. This statistic is unbiased, consistent, sufficient, and most likely (things that mean something to a mathematician). I’m not convinced any of these apply to PM.
For starters, as deck diversity increases, the frequency of mirrors decreases, and this might result in an artificially high PM. The article didn’t detail how mirrors were handled, so I’m not sure whether or not this is a flaw.
I also am skeptical of some of the tabular data presented. Specifically, the table for the Witchwood. Why are only 11 archetypes listed? Why is Odd Paladin omitted? When we sum the percentages in the right hand column, why do we get something significantly less than 100%?
TL/DR - the math sucks.
Now having said all that, I do agree with many of the conclusions. Quests, DK’s, Recruit, and Odd/Even might all be detrimental to the game (not necessarily for the same reasons).
In my opinion cards should rotate out of Standard must faster. Too many cards is bad. As one set comes in, another must leave. Otherwise, the best decks stay on top too long. We wouldn’t have had to nerf QR a second time if it got rotated out in April.
It would be near impossible to create. If one deck does not have other decks that counter it, it will have a high win rate. Decks with a high win rate are shown on stat sites. People visit stat sites and look for high win rate decks. The high win rate deck gets played by more and more people and there goes the diversity.
So you're saying decks that are of low polarity are too powerful when they are powerful? Decks with high polarity and high power level will show up as high winrate decks on netdeck sites all the same. Low polarity doesn't cause decks to be powerful. Being powerful makes them powerful. You shouldn't need hard counters to keep decks in check, just having a power level that isn't too far off from the other decks is good enough. The presence of softer counters will always be there. You don't need matchups to be 20-80 to deter too much of the same deck flooding the meta
To me it all boils down to "My _______ deck cant win against _______________". No matter if the meta is balanced or one or two decks dominate it goes back to the same complaint.
That's not true. I'm flexible and always try a large range of decks and archetypes each meta, of both low and high tier. I don't have issues with single decks either. But at the end of trying out all the decks, I always settle on decks that don't have autolose matchups. In other words, I specifically choose to avoid decks that are "My _______ deck can't win against _______" because I find them not enjoyable. The exception to this rule is when I disagree with the data and believe my personal skill tides over the bad matchups to the point where the match wr is even enough
The issue recently is that such decks don't exist anymore. What you're playing is irrelevant, there's going to be at least one deck out there that you're going to lose turn zero to by merit of bad queues. I'm not disappointed that "my" chosen deck that is losing; I'm disappointed that all the valid choices I can make have the same problem. It doesn't even matter if I'm netdecking or homebrewing, there are decks out there that counter entire archetypes very effectively
That all said, I think the current meta is FeelsOkayMan. I'm having a decent time because there's a couple decks that only have terrible matchups on paper (in other words, when played poorly). The point I'm making is that polarization is an issue with merit and the current meta is by no means perfect in its current state
"B-b-but it's all just fatigue I tells ya! The meta is fine! Diversity is at an all time high! Savjz played for years 8 hours a day every day, that's why he is tired of Hearthstone! It's all your guys faults! Blizzard needs to introduce time warnings to let you know when you may be getting close to fatigue! You are all just playing way too much!"
Suck it. It's official folks. This is the absolute most polarized meta in the history of the game. Even when the pirates, Reno Jackson and Jade Golems were duking it out, there was a better chance of you not being bullied out of the game just for the deck you decided to play, and your in game actions actually meant something more than they do now. Control warrior right now is just as unhealthy as pirate warrior ever was if not more so because it has been taken much more extreme in the other direction. Think about that. The only reason more people aren't complaining is because it's not an aggro deck. The bias is real. The sad thing is, Blizzard has purposely pushed us to this point and knowingly left this meta as is. All those people who made complaint threads written off as salty are vindicated. This game is hopeless under the current team. Thank god for MTGA and Artifact.
I see there are already people in here doubting VS though and trying to white knight the poor indie company known as Blizzard. Oh well. The numbers will speak for themselves as the game continues to bleed them.
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Here's a new interesting and insightful article by Vicious Syndicate, in case you missed it.
It is about matchup polarisation across the history of the game, since the Old Gods. Not good news btw, or at least, not entirely.
https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/meta-polarity-and-its-impact-on-hearthstone/
Very interesting, thanks for sharing it.
It doesn’t matter what we say and how terrible meta has become, Blizz fan boys will blindly continue to support any Blizzard’s decision like they own the company.
Dead but dreaming
Thanks for raising awareness. I've always hated the Un'Goro meta because of the polarization but everyone was so focused on "diversity" that it didn't matter. Personally, I don't give a crap about how many different netdecks are out there to choose from. I usually make my own stuff anyway
Polarization is what's really bad for the game. It takes the skill out of actual gameplay and makes the luck of who you queue into the most important factor in winning
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
You cant please all the people all of the time. No matter what Blizzard does some will be unhappy.
If you are in your first year of playing please read this post.
Dust does not burn a hole in the jar. Be careful what you craft, especially before and right after a rotation.
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
I liked the article - was backed up by some great data. I think it can feel like you see who you're playing and already feel like you've won or lost. I also think the major problem is that they didn't freshen it up with balance changes.
Even if the game seems fairly balanced, when they do some nerfs it just freshens everything up and folk start trying new decks. That hasn't happened this time so we're still playing the same decks that got refined several weeks ago. I think they should see balance changes as a chance to mix things up so it's disappointing that they never took the opportunity this time.
To me it all boils down to "My _______ deck cant win against _______________". No matter if the meta is balanced or one or two decks dominate it goes back to the same complaint.
If you are in your first year of playing please read this post.
Dust does not burn a hole in the jar. Be careful what you craft, especially before and right after a rotation.
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
Yeah, this could be the stall of the problem: the least polarised metas appear to be those we remember as the least diverse.
If that is true, I think Un'goro was a good compromise between diversity and polarisation (not a perfect meta ofc, eg Jade Druid).
Balance between the two poisons is probably the best death you can achieve.
But it is not necessarily true that diversity is obtainable only through polarisation. We can infer it from the past meta experience, but i don't think there's any proof?
Btw, i'd be curious to see the polarity in Wild, where all the polarising cards are bound to dwell together for ever...
Hm I suppose time to play some even shaman... it is least polarizing one
I am envoy from nowhere in nowhere. Nobody and nothing have sent me. And though it is impossible I exist. ©Trimutius
Do you know the funny thing here? Seeing the witchwood meta (one of the most polarized metas ever) with cubelock as 2nd most played deck and we all know the hate it received for how strong that deck was but just look at this, it was the least polarized match up in that meta. Almost as low as whisper of the old gods decks.
I would love cubelock meta over the current meta anyday. Way less cancer.
It would be near impossible to create. If one deck does not have other decks that counter it, it will have a high win rate. Decks with a high win rate are shown on stat sites. People visit stat sites and look for high win rate decks. The high win rate deck gets played by more and more people and there goes the diversity.
If you are in your first year of playing please read this post.
Dust does not burn a hole in the jar. Be careful what you craft, especially before and right after a rotation.
Maybe, the point is that the least polarising decks are those that can stretch better across different matchups...
And the risk is that such decks could turn out to be OP because of that nature, killing diversity.
(And this explanation applies perfectly to Wild btw...).
Interesting, thanks for sharing the link.
I believe they’re stuck between trying to keep a game that rotates “fresh” while also trying to preserve the integrity of the original format. Meaning.., let’s say you like playing chess. But have decided to play a variant of the original game that has some new pieces as you’ve become bored with the original format. How do you balance adding new pieces to keeping chess the game people know and love? The answer as the article points out is that basically you don’t. The more things you add to the “new” list the further you get away from the popular game. Which leaves you with one option that Blizz has tackled well up until now which is, not changing anything but disguising the pieces as “new” pieces that essentially do the same thing as the old piece did but it looks different. And that’s the right move as boring as it sounds, because if you start adding entirely new pieces to the board and the game veers off on a tangent, it may still be playable but you lost your ace in the hole, that being that a lot of people love the game of chess in its original format. I think the solution is to bring it back down to Earth will balance changes and seeing if they can’t get those numbers to fall back to previous years... it’ll be almost impossible though considering you can’t nerf a quest or dk hero enough to make the game “the same”. They’re huge outliers and all the community can do is play around the changes. Just my opinion. If my analogy made no sense I apologize, I couldn’t think of the best way to present the problem as I see it in my head. What “solutions” do you all see that would solve the problem without changing the game as we know it?
“Put your faith in the Light!”
More proof Raza Priest was not as awful as the haters said it was.
Therefore, people ruin the game. Lol! So much for thinking on your own.
This report is what happens when non statisticians try to do stastics.
“Polarity Metric” is not a standard statistic. Statistics need to have certain properties to be useful. For example, if we are estimating the win rate of a certain matchup, we use the sample average. This statistic is unbiased, consistent, sufficient, and most likely (things that mean something to a mathematician). I’m not convinced any of these apply to PM.
For starters, as deck diversity increases, the frequency of mirrors decreases, and this might result in an artificially high PM. The article didn’t detail how mirrors were handled, so I’m not sure whether or not this is a flaw.
I also am skeptical of some of the tabular data presented. Specifically, the table for the Witchwood. Why are only 11 archetypes listed? Why is Odd Paladin omitted? When we sum the percentages in the right hand column, why do we get something significantly less than 100%?
TL/DR - the math sucks.
Now having said all that, I do agree with many of the conclusions. Quests, DK’s, Recruit, and Odd/Even might all be detrimental to the game (not necessarily for the same reasons).
In my opinion cards should rotate out of Standard must faster. Too many cards is bad. As one set comes in, another must leave. Otherwise, the best decks stay on top too long. We wouldn’t have had to nerf QR a second time if it got rotated out in April.
So you're saying decks that are of low polarity are too powerful when they are powerful? Decks with high polarity and high power level will show up as high winrate decks on netdeck sites all the same. Low polarity doesn't cause decks to be powerful. Being powerful makes them powerful. You shouldn't need hard counters to keep decks in check, just having a power level that isn't too far off from the other decks is good enough. The presence of softer counters will always be there. You don't need matchups to be 20-80 to deter too much of the same deck flooding the meta
That's not true. I'm flexible and always try a large range of decks and archetypes each meta, of both low and high tier. I don't have issues with single decks either. But at the end of trying out all the decks, I always settle on decks that don't have autolose matchups. In other words, I specifically choose to avoid decks that are "My _______ deck can't win against _______" because I find them not enjoyable. The exception to this rule is when I disagree with the data and believe my personal skill tides over the bad matchups to the point where the match wr is even enough
The issue recently is that such decks don't exist anymore. What you're playing is irrelevant, there's going to be at least one deck out there that you're going to lose turn zero to by merit of bad queues. I'm not disappointed that "my" chosen deck that is losing; I'm disappointed that all the valid choices I can make have the same problem. It doesn't even matter if I'm netdecking or homebrewing, there are decks out there that counter entire archetypes very effectively
That all said, I think the current meta is FeelsOkayMan. I'm having a decent time because there's a couple decks that only have terrible matchups on paper (in other words, when played poorly). The point I'm making is that polarization is an issue with merit and the current meta is by no means perfect in its current state
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
"B-b-but it's all just fatigue I tells ya! The meta is fine! Diversity is at an all time high! Savjz played for years 8 hours a day every day, that's why he is tired of Hearthstone! It's all your guys faults! Blizzard needs to introduce time warnings to let you know when you may be getting close to fatigue! You are all just playing way too much!"
Suck it. It's official folks. This is the absolute most polarized meta in the history of the game. Even when the pirates, Reno Jackson and Jade Golems were duking it out, there was a better chance of you not being bullied out of the game just for the deck you decided to play, and your in game actions actually meant something more than they do now. Control warrior right now is just as unhealthy as pirate warrior ever was if not more so because it has been taken much more extreme in the other direction. Think about that. The only reason more people aren't complaining is because it's not an aggro deck. The bias is real. The sad thing is, Blizzard has purposely pushed us to this point and knowingly left this meta as is. All those people who made complaint threads written off as salty are vindicated. This game is hopeless under the current team. Thank god for MTGA and Artifact.
I see there are already people in here doubting VS though and trying to white knight the poor indie company known as Blizzard. Oh well. The numbers will speak for themselves as the game continues to bleed them.