What do you all think about the “Soft Nerf”? The soft nerf is when blizzard doesn’t nerf cards, but instead adjusts the rng to discourage certain decks from being played. This makes it easier than changing a whole card.
My experience was when I delved into the wild side a couple of months ago and began playing the most OP deck around just for fun - Star Aligner Druid. Yes, I should be shamed. It was pretty fun. I had like an insane 80% win rate. At one point I had an 8 game win streak, but as time went on, I started to have some incredibly bad luck when I played it. Just not drawing key cards soon enough and losing to decks I always used to beat. My win rate went down to about 40%. Id lose five in a row sometimes and it wasn’t the meta changing, it was just bad bad luck. Unbelievably bad luck. I’m not even upset about it, I just moved on and still have fun, but when I play Star Aligner Druid anymore, I get more of the same nonsense. So it occurred to me that it’s possible that maybe Blizzard is doing this? It makes sense. I even suspect shudderwock shaman has gotten some of this same treatment just because it was wayyy too popular.
What do you all think? Any decks you’ve played that you feel this may have happened to? I’d love to hear more theories, or you can smack me upside the head with why I’m a dummy. No worries.
Although conspiracy theorists will delight in this thread, 'serious' players will be infuriated by the implicit suggestion that their 'skill' at the game was due to something other than skill. Discuss quickly and take a screenshot, threads like this have a habit of vanishing from the boards with no trace. To get business out of the way, the term 'confirmation bias; will be repeated, and one guy has an alien gif and a story about how aliens admitted to him they made the HS code to screw the player base.
It seems to me much more likely that any quirks around this come from the matchmaking system. A series of 8 wins would, in any good matchmaking formula, give you much harder players also on win streaks or suchlike. Matchmaking systems are simpleish and well understood, it would take an incredibly complicated formula to nerf your luck - the game would need to keep track of the counters for every deck and somehow promote them into the hands of other players, or hide your best cards deep in your deck - it all sounds horribly over complicated and not all that likely to work. From the team that took 3 years to give us a second page of decks. All to avoid nerfs, that they don't mind doing.
I think what you are seeing is natural uneven luck and matchmaking in action.
Blizzard usually nerfs RNG in a more direct way. Firelands Portal was nerfed by having several unplayable 5-drops gradually added to the game.
Messing directly with RNG to lower winrates is not a method any design team would probably take part in. If anything, and this is going on the fringe, extreme side of things, it is possible, very very VERY slightly possible I mean, that they fiddle with the matchmaking if they want to lower a winrate. It explains plenty of loss streaks against bad match-ups after winning sprees and doesn't sound that hard to do. Directly interfering with games is already way too far, though.
But alas, disregard all that I said. Hard nerfs are the way to go, because they pave the way in the meta for new decks. Killing a card/archetype off rejuvenates several others. It's a beautiful cycle.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
It seems to me much more likely that any quirks around this come from the matchmaking system. A series of 8 wins would, in any good matchmaking formula, give you much harder players also on win streaks or suchlike. Matchmaking systems are simpleish and well understood, it would take an incredibly complicated formula to nerf your luck - the game would need to keep track of the counters for every deck and somehow promote them into the hands of other players, or hide your best cards deep in your deck - it all sounds horribly over complicated and not all that likely to work. From the team that took 3 years to give us a second page of decks. All to avoid nerfs, that they don't mind doing.
I think what you are seeing is natural uneven luck and matchmaking in action.
You’re probably right, but not knowing what is and isn’t possible and the complexities or ease of what I am proposing, I thought it might be within the scope of Blizzard’s willingness and abilities to implement.
I’ll set out one example - which is the incident that sparked this thread. I went back to play Star Aligner Druid today and went up against a mage. One of the most crucial points to winning against mage is to draw armor. There are four armor cards in the deck. I went 22 cards deep into the deck without drawing any of the 4 armor cards. I lost one turn away, on exact damage, from being able to pull off lethal. If I’d gotten a single armor card, I would’ve won. Yes, this sort of thing happens and is bound to. Isn’t it simple enough to write code that pulls these armor cards deeper into the deck when a star aligner deck goes up against a mage, not always, but say an extra 15% of the time?
There is always someone who will say "have you ever considered that you are just facing tougher players who are better than you?". Yup, luck had nothing to do back when I would play Jade Druid, and my Jade cards would consistently be in the bottom 8 cards of my deck. It was my opponents skill keeping me from drawing my win condition, of course.
Blizzard usually nerfs RNG in a more direct way. Firelands Portal was nerfed by having several unplayable 5-drops gradually added to the game.
Messing directly with RNG to lower winrates is not a method any design team would probably take part in. If anything, and this is going on the fringe, extreme side of things, it is possible, very very VERY slightly possible I mean, that they fiddle with the matchmaking if they want to lower a winrate. It explains plenty of loss streaks against bad match-ups after winning sprees and doesn't sound that hard to do. Directly interfering with games is already way too far, though.
But alas, disregard all that I said. Hard nerfs are the way to go, because they pave the way in the meta for new decks. Killing a card/archetype off rejuvenates several others. It's a beautiful cycle.
I also agree with you, in particular that if any messing with games was going on, it would most likely happen with matchmaking and not direct interference with in-game rng. As far as waiting for other cards to be added to nerf the deck, that would take too long - as there is a serious howl of protest now, unlike any seen before, coming from angry wild players against Star Aligner Druid. My proposal would explain a quick patch.
Wow! I just played another game against resurrect priest. Once again, every armor card was in the bottom ten cards. I drew malfurion with nourish, but had no mana left. Lost again.
I never understand why people ask "is it possible that . . ."
This is a computer game. Of course it's possible.
I seriously doubt that they execute your "soft nerf" and I know that I've never seen evidence to support the assertion that they do. But of course they could.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
The naysayers have no more evidence than the conspiracy theorists. Why are the devs employed by a for-profit megacorporation immediately granted the benefit of the doubt? It would be trivial, undetectable, and beneficial to implement RNG other than a straight bell curve.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
Why would a company who has total control over the game and can legally make any change they want to any card at any time do something that would destroy their reputation like manipulating RNG behind the scenes? The only thing blizzard has done to manipulate RNG is do things like add shitty 5 drops to make firelands portal worse, or to add shitty drops in general to make cards that spawn random minions worse overall, and those are done in the open.
The reason why you can safely assume blizzard wouldn't do something like cheat the RNG on the back end is there's NO upside for them to do that, and plenty of downside if they did it and proof of it got leaked.
I'm not going to make any claims that Blizzard has influenced the draw rng in any way but let me say this. Back before the nerf, Firey Waraxe on turn two happened so frequently that it started to feel a bit suspect. I have also noticed that more often than not my deathknight is bottom ten cards of my deck. Conspiracy? Maybe not. I will say this though. Given how much Blizzard loves to please casual players, it would not surprise me at all if there was some tinkering going on to influence draw rng.
"I'm not bad at the game, it's just Blizzard and their soft nerfs" EXCEPT WE HAVE TRACKING PROGRAMMES THAT WOULD NOTICE THIS SHIT IN AN INSTANT BECAUSE THEY RECORD MILLIONS OF GAMES EVERY DAY
These claims are all totally unsupported by any evidence at all beyond the anecdotal which makes it all basically a giant waste of time. Hsreplay probably has a way to track how often cards are drawn, in their giant datasets I'm sure they could see if draw rates weren't level. But short of them reporting it, or you going to their data and presenting some actual evidence, you might as well be suggesting Brode left to collaborate with Tupac and Elvis, it's just meaningless speculation
I don't think any of these claims are true, but sure, they might be, I could very well be wrong. But I like to consider myself a rational adult and so need evidence to shape my views, so, here we are
Why would a company who has total control over the game and can legally make any change they want to any card at any time do something that would destroy their reputation like manipulating RNG behind the scenes? The only thing blizzard has done to manipulate RNG is do things like add shitty 5 drops to make firelands portal worse, or to add shitty drops in general to make cards that spawn random minions worse overall, and those are done in the open.
The reason why you can safely assume blizzard wouldn't do something like cheat the RNG on the back end is there's NO upside for them to do that, and plenty of downside if they did it and proof of it got leaked.
The upside is that it makes players feel good. Giving 1, 2 and 3 drops a 3-5% increase to be in your starting hand would make people feel better than having their 8, 9 and 10 which might be around 45% to be in your opener. That would have a very real benefit on pleasing casual players who might quit if they lost with a hand full of cards they couldn't play half the time. Also as far as leaks are concerned. Blizzard employees are under such tight nda that even wiping their asses probably comes with stipulations and terms. Any anonymous leaker would be laughed out of town and we would be right back here.
Again I'm not saying it's true, but I have long suspected some tampering. Especially when it comes to key cards like death knights, early game weapons or game deciding factors like keleseth. It's probably nothing, but let's not act like they wouldn't benefit from it. One of the biggest complaints HS players have about magic is mana flood and screw. Open hand rng is very real in dictating how your game is perceived by a casual audience. The better opener, the more likely you are to feel good, and feeling good is the key to keeping people's interest.
What do you all think about the “Soft Nerf”? The soft nerf is when blizzard doesn’t nerf cards, but instead adjusts the rng to discourage certain decks from being played. This makes it easier than changing a whole card.
My experience was when I delved into the wild side a couple of months ago and began playing the most OP deck around just for fun - Star Aligner Druid. Yes, I should be shamed. It was pretty fun. I had like an insane 80% win rate. At one point I had an 8 game win streak, but as time went on, I started to have some incredibly bad luck when I played it. Just not drawing key cards soon enough and losing to decks I always used to beat. My win rate went down to about 40%. Id lose five in a row sometimes and it wasn’t the meta changing, it was just bad bad luck. Unbelievably bad luck. I’m not even upset about it, I just moved on and still have fun, but when I play Star Aligner Druid anymore, I get more of the same nonsense. So it occurred to me that it’s possible that maybe Blizzard is doing this? It makes sense. I even suspect shudderwock shaman has gotten some of this same treatment just because it was wayyy too popular.
What do you all think? Any decks you’ve played that you feel this may have happened to? I’d love to hear more theories, or you can smack me upside the head with why I’m a dummy. No worries.
Just be salty enough to lose.
Although conspiracy theorists will delight in this thread, 'serious' players will be infuriated by the implicit suggestion that their 'skill' at the game was due to something other than skill. Discuss quickly and take a screenshot, threads like this have a habit of vanishing from the boards with no trace. To get business out of the way, the term 'confirmation bias; will be repeated, and one guy has an alien gif and a story about how aliens admitted to him they made the HS code to screw the player base.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
Lol. If this disappears I’ll head over to one of the reddit Hearthstone forums and ask there.
It seems to me much more likely that any quirks around this come from the matchmaking system. A series of 8 wins would, in any good matchmaking formula, give you much harder players also on win streaks or suchlike. Matchmaking systems are simpleish and well understood, it would take an incredibly complicated formula to nerf your luck - the game would need to keep track of the counters for every deck and somehow promote them into the hands of other players, or hide your best cards deep in your deck - it all sounds horribly over complicated and not all that likely to work. From the team that took 3 years to give us a second page of decks. All to avoid nerfs, that they don't mind doing.
I think what you are seeing is natural uneven luck and matchmaking in action.
Blizzard usually nerfs RNG in a more direct way. Firelands Portal was nerfed by having several unplayable 5-drops gradually added to the game.
Messing directly with RNG to lower winrates is not a method any design team would probably take part in. If anything, and this is going on the fringe, extreme side of things, it is possible, very very VERY slightly possible I mean, that they fiddle with the matchmaking if they want to lower a winrate. It explains plenty of loss streaks against bad match-ups after winning sprees and doesn't sound that hard to do. Directly interfering with games is already way too far, though.
But alas, disregard all that I said. Hard nerfs are the way to go, because they pave the way in the meta for new decks. Killing a card/archetype off rejuvenates several others. It's a beautiful cycle.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
You’re probably right, but not knowing what is and isn’t possible and the complexities or ease of what I am proposing, I thought it might be within the scope of Blizzard’s willingness and abilities to implement.
I’ll set out one example - which is the incident that sparked this thread. I went back to play Star Aligner Druid today and went up against a mage. One of the most crucial points to winning against mage is to draw armor. There are four armor cards in the deck. I went 22 cards deep into the deck without drawing any of the 4 armor cards. I lost one turn away, on exact damage, from being able to pull off lethal. If I’d gotten a single armor card, I would’ve won. Yes, this sort of thing happens and is bound to. Isn’t it simple enough to write code that pulls these armor cards deeper into the deck when a star aligner deck goes up against a mage, not always, but say an extra 15% of the time?
There is always someone who will say "have you ever considered that you are just facing tougher players who are better than you?". Yup, luck had nothing to do back when I would play Jade Druid, and my Jade cards would consistently be in the bottom 8 cards of my deck. It was my opponents skill keeping me from drawing my win condition, of course.
I earn free Hearthstone packs with swagbucks! https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Smartmoney
I also agree with you, in particular that if any messing with games was going on, it would most likely happen with matchmaking and not direct interference with in-game rng. As far as waiting for other cards to be added to nerf the deck, that would take too long - as there is a serious howl of protest now, unlike any seen before, coming from angry wild players against Star Aligner Druid. My proposal would explain a quick patch.
Wow! I just played another game against resurrect priest. Once again, every armor card was in the bottom ten cards. I drew malfurion with nourish, but had no mana left. Lost again.
I never understand why people ask "is it possible that . . ."
This is a computer game. Of course it's possible.
I seriously doubt that they execute your "soft nerf" and I know that I've never seen evidence to support the assertion that they do. But of course they could.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
The naysayers have no more evidence than the conspiracy theorists. Why are the devs employed by a for-profit megacorporation immediately granted the benefit of the doubt? It would be trivial, undetectable, and beneficial to implement RNG other than a straight bell curve.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
tinfoil hat
I never understand these paranoia conspiracy claims.
Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake.
Why would a company who has total control over the game and can legally make any change they want to any card at any time do something that would destroy their reputation like manipulating RNG behind the scenes? The only thing blizzard has done to manipulate RNG is do things like add shitty 5 drops to make firelands portal worse, or to add shitty drops in general to make cards that spawn random minions worse overall, and those are done in the open.
The reason why you can safely assume blizzard wouldn't do something like cheat the RNG on the back end is there's NO upside for them to do that, and plenty of downside if they did it and proof of it got leaked.
S39 Legend - Quest Rogue, S38 Legend - Murloc Paladin, S37 Legend - Miracle Rogue, S36 Top 200 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S35 - Finished Rank 51 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S34 Legend - Aggro Shaman
I'm not going to make any claims that Blizzard has influenced the draw rng in any way but let me say this. Back before the nerf, Firey Waraxe on turn two happened so frequently that it started to feel a bit suspect. I have also noticed that more often than not my deathknight is bottom ten cards of my deck. Conspiracy? Maybe not. I will say this though. Given how much Blizzard loves to please casual players, it would not surprise me at all if there was some tinkering going on to influence draw rng.
"I'm not bad at the game, it's just Blizzard and their soft nerfs" EXCEPT WE HAVE TRACKING PROGRAMMES THAT WOULD NOTICE THIS SHIT IN AN INSTANT BECAUSE THEY RECORD MILLIONS OF GAMES EVERY DAY
These claims are all totally unsupported by any evidence at all beyond the anecdotal which makes it all basically a giant waste of time. Hsreplay probably has a way to track how often cards are drawn, in their giant datasets I'm sure they could see if draw rates weren't level. But short of them reporting it, or you going to their data and presenting some actual evidence, you might as well be suggesting Brode left to collaborate with Tupac and Elvis, it's just meaningless speculation
I don't think any of these claims are true, but sure, they might be, I could very well be wrong. But I like to consider myself a rational adult and so need evidence to shape my views, so, here we are
The upside is that it makes players feel good. Giving 1, 2 and 3 drops a 3-5% increase to be in your starting hand would make people feel better than having their 8, 9 and 10 which might be around 45% to be in your opener. That would have a very real benefit on pleasing casual players who might quit if they lost with a hand full of cards they couldn't play half the time. Also as far as leaks are concerned. Blizzard employees are under such tight nda that even wiping their asses probably comes with stipulations and terms. Any anonymous leaker would be laughed out of town and we would be right back here.
Again I'm not saying it's true, but I have long suspected some tampering. Especially when it comes to key cards like death knights, early game weapons or game deciding factors like keleseth. It's probably nothing, but let's not act like they wouldn't benefit from it. One of the biggest complaints HS players have about magic is mana flood and screw. Open hand rng is very real in dictating how your game is perceived by a casual audience. The better opener, the more likely you are to feel good, and feeling good is the key to keeping people's interest.
Sadly, this idiotic thread did not disappear.