Hearthpwn

So, having gone through all the comments up to this post, this is the first one that gave me a new idea to think on.  

Is an OTK deck on it’s face non-interactive.  According to the post above, the answer is no.  You can always interact with the opponents hero in an OTK deck, it claims.  That is not always true.  Control decks are designed in to interact with the board and not the opponents hero.  The control deck has to set up plays over time to effect the opponent hero, which the OTK deck will then disrupt since that is part of their design as well.  

The end point here is that no deck on its face is non-interactive, but many match-ups are.  Control v. OTK lacks interaction because the control deck does not have the tools to effect the OTK deck in any meaningful way.  Many OTK v. aggro match-ups lack interaction because the OTK deck does not have the consistent tools to survive against a strong early game.  

In these cases, I feel like the most meaningful interaction is not between the decks but between the player and their own knowledge of what they are facing.  “How many turns before the combo goes off? How much damage can I do in that time?  Can I afford to play into a board clear?” 

To cut the ramble short, if you are playing a deck and you are consistently playing against non-interactive match-ups, then you are playing the wrong deck for the meta that you are in, and the best thing that you can do for the sake of your sanity is to stop playing that deck 

Hearthstone is very interactive, but I know what people are tryna say. There are some auto pilot decks that play out the same so much and so consistent, it can sometimes be pointless to play against. 

Quote from Hooghout >>

Quote from Sherman1986 >>

Quote from Hooghout >>

Quote from Sherman1986 >>

Quote from Hooghout >>

Amazing to watch the succes of Blizzard in convincing people to believe the game is interactive. Amazing  to watch fakenews converted into the real thing. Amazing to watch people debasing themselves just for an uninteractive mindless winfix. Amazing amazing then when their mindless agressive playstyle or OTK is considered to be interactive and full of skill.

The succes of devs = the 'mindlessification' of the masses. Good for you.

You know nothing if you really think Blizzard is "mind-controlling" people. For example, most aggro players have considered their beloved playstyle interactive and full of skill since the release of the game, this is nothing new. At least inform yourself a little before posting...

 You just proved my point.

WTF? How?

 "For example, most aggro players have considered their beloved playstyle interactive and full of skill since the release"

The very fact that aggro players consider their playstyle interactve and full of skill proves how Blizzard is able to let them think just that. Only those who have been freed from 'The Matrix' of the Aggro world see that. Remember this guy?

Dude, did you read my post? I said they think that since the game was released, which means it was their own conclusion because of their fragile ego, that's all.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from Zenai10 >>

I just hate ONE turn kills. I mean decks that draw cards until they kill you and you have no chance to stop it. Thats non interactive to me. Yes they clear your board, but their win condition is unstopable once drawn. You can kill them before they get it. But i dont really consider that interaction.

There are 3 types of "otks"

1. 2 turn set up kills. This is how otks should be imo. Examples of this are, play alexstrasa or malygos raw. Next turn that player will win if you dont deal with it. That is telegraphed Otk. This is interactive otk and the most fun version imo.

2. Set up otks, but still 1 turn. This is an otk that requires set up but the kill is unstoppable if drawn. Examples of this are emperor thaurisan or mechathun otks, Or quest mage. These are telegraphed otks you know they are coming at some point in the future. But the otk itself is unstoppable. You can delay them (mechathun) but they cant be stopped. Im iffy on otks like this. Sometimes i feel bad and other times i think its bs.

3. The sudden and unstoppable otk. This is an unstoppable untelegraphed kill turn. These otks are problematic imo. Examples of this is release shudderwalk, partially clone priest and shadow madness inner fire combo. Cloning gallery priest combo when done with gallery is like this. It feels dirty, it feels unfair and its unstoppable. Shudderwalk won you the game on release. Granted you knew it was coming, but the turn he came down the game was over. These otks must be avoided at all costs as they are completly unfair to the losing player.

Note: Im not saying anything aboit these decks. Im only talking about the win condition

 #1 are not OTK decks. The moment you require a setup from the previous turn, it becomes a TWO turn kill, not ONE.

#3 Do not exist. There is not a single deck in the game that you cannot see their Combo coming. You need to be extremely unaware of the Game State to be completely obvious to what deck you are facing, specially against an OTK deck, which tends to play around 20 turns before they kill you. It is almost literally impossible for you not to understand what you are facing after all those turns.

Quote from TheJourneyman03 >>

So, having gone through all the comments up to this post, this is the first one that gave me a new idea to think on.  

Is an OTK deck on it’s face non-interactive.  According to the post above, the answer is no.  You can always interact with the opponents hero in an OTK deck, it claims.  That is not always true.  Control decks are designed in to interact with the board and not the opponents hero.  The control deck has to set up plays over time to effect the opponent hero, which the OTK deck will then disrupt since that is part of their design as well.  

The end point here is that no deck on its face is non-interactive, but many match-ups are.  Control v. OTK lacks interaction because the control deck does not have the tools to effect the OTK deck in any meaningful way.  Many OTK v. aggro match-ups lack interaction because the OTK deck does not have the consistent tools to survive against a strong early game.  

In these cases, I feel like the most meaningful interaction is not between the decks but between the player and their own knowledge of what they are facing.  “How many turns before the combo goes off? How much damage can I do in that time?  Can I afford to play into a board clear?” 

To cut the ramble short, if you are playing a deck and you are consistently playing against non-interactive match-ups, then you are playing the wrong deck for the meta that you are in, and the best thing that you can do for the sake of your sanity is to stop playing that deck 

 It doesn't matter if Matchups are Interactive. All that matters is whether the Decks themselves are Interactive. You don't need to face a Combo deck to have an Uninteractive Matchup in the way you are thinking. That can happen with pretty much any playstyle. That doesn't make either deck of the Matchup Uninteractive, it just makes that Matchup, which is perfectly fine. In order to have a wide variety of strategies, that means you have to accept that some strategies will clash in very hard circumstances.

There is no single deck that is meant to be capable of winning against the entirety of all the other decks the game allows.

 Blue pill

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

The only uninteractive decks most of you have seen in Hearthstone are the Aggro mage deck back before the Mana Wyrm nerf and the Aggro druid deck popular at the World Championships last year.

They are uninteractive because they will frequently choose the same line of play regardless of what their opponent plays (with the pedantic exception of taunt minions forcing a response).

Nothing in the current meta plays that way.  Hearthstone is a game of tempo and board control except at the most extreme fringe of aggro decks.

 This was correct when I wrote it the first time, and still correct now.  Threads like this are illustrative examples of where people find themselves arguing about stuff because they won't back down from using "uninteractive" as a euphemism for "deck I don't like to play against".

Someone said "uninteractive" refers to a win condition.  That is wrong.  For the term to have any meaning at all, it has to refer to the entire game plan.  Most of the people on this thread seem to concede that control decks are some of the MOST interactive, but somehow OTK combos are not.

Have you ever noticed that combo decks are control decks with a few value cards taken out in favor of a particular interaction creating a win condition?  Look at Shudderwock back before chain gang was nerfed.  The whole deck is draw cards and stay alive by board clearing or value trading minions.  Every combo deck has to be a control deck first, unless you have a deck that pulls off an OTK before turn 8 or so, at which point it will probably be nerfed into the ground.

At least some of the folks posting here have been honest enough to admit that this is all motivated by this weird anti-aggro bias.  Bad players consider aggro and combo decks "low skill" compared to control.  This is pervasive among folks who have never played in a tournament or even finished particularly high in the legend ladder.

Meanwhile, many of the players who are actually accomplished in the game tell us that aggro decks have a lower skill floor and at least an equal skill ceiling to any other type of deck.  If I needed to, I'd say I'll take their word for it, but I don't need to, because this is self-evidently true.

Have you realized how nice it will be after Worlds this year?  Everyone is going to have an opportunity to play in online tournaments, and at that point, no one will need to listen to the bullshit anymore.  Anytime someone talks shit about "low skill" just ask them to link their latest tournament results and replays.  If they don't have any, why would you listen to them in favor of those that do?

Anyway, words have meanings and they don't change based on your preferred . . . usage of the word. 

Interactive - (of two people or things) influencing or having an effect on each other.

The only type of deck that is typically not influenced by an opponent is the extreme form of aggro where there is basically no play for tempo.  I've only seen two of them in recent years, and they were the 2017 aggro druid and the more recent Secret Aggro mage.  More often than not, these two decks would race to 30 damage with absolutely no heed to the opponent's play.  In the case of the mage, sometimes even taunt minions couldn't force them to play the board, as they would finish the opponent with direct damage.

These decks are uninteractive.

Odd Paladin, Tempo Rogue, and any of the current aggro decks often play for tempo, at which point they are definitionally interactive.

Combo decks are clearly influenced by others because they are forced to survive.  Furthermore, the presence of an opponent playing combo greatly influences the decisions a control or aggro player will make, presumably in service of speeding up their own win conditions as much as possible.

If you mean "boring" or "deck I don't like to play against" or "source of my superiority complex since I play control", just say that.

I like the mentioning of skill floor and cealing. Because that makes a huge diffrence. I personally dislike low floor aggro but i don´t considder decks like zoolock brainless. You can play them like that but will loose at least a few games more. The diffrence in this game is quite slight at high levels.  It´s a few % points and often not immidiately noticeable. I struggle in testing decks due to this because a few games don´t tell me enough due to the decks themselfs are basically good. But some OTK decks have a moderate skill floor but quite low cealing. This can be true for some control decks too. The meta taunt warrior doesn´t look very complicated but you need to know/anticipate what/how your oponent plays for a good winrate.

The culprits to make the game less intresting are T1/T2 decks with low cealings (regardless of type!) and the disability to build inovative decks that can withstand the(that?) meta. The key word for me to keep the game intresting is diversity.

The only type of deck that is typically not influenced by an opponent is the extreme form of aggro where there is basically no play for tempo.  I've only seen two of them in recent years, and they were the 2017 aggro druid and the more recent Secret Aggro mage.  More often than not, these two decks would race to 30 damage with absolutely no heed to the opponent's play.  In the case of the mage, sometimes even taunt minions couldn't force them to play the board, as they would finish the opponent with direct damage.

I don't agree! Even the most charge/burn heavy aggro decks are absolutely interactive, as they need to maximize their minion damage early and plan ahead for when and how to go for lethal. Their opponent is interacting by surviving the best they can, digging for heals when they can afford to or going for a lethal of their own, playing around burst. I have tried to play such decks and mindlessly throw everything at face, but trust me, your winrate will always be low!

The least interactive decks I know in the game are the old Naga Sea Witch decks. That deck is all about its own gameplan (Spam as many giants as possible on turn 5) and they cared very little about what their opponent were doing. The decks barely had any reactive cards! Big Priest is fairly uninteractive too, but mostly when they highroll Barnes. In normal games, there can be some interresting value wars.

Have you realized how nice it will be after Worlds this year? Everyone is going to have an opportunity to play in online tournaments, and at that point, no one will need to listen to the bullshit anymore. Anytime someone talks shit about "low skill" just ask them to link their latest tournament results and replays. If they don't have any, why would you listen to them in favor of those that do?

Moronism is quite a thing reading all the pro- staus quo comments like this one.. It is about the average level of skill floor which is linked to card design. If all the cards tend to create decks are low skill, one might be succesful playing low skill, even in tournaments, The result remains low skill. This is the beating heart of HS' success. Serving the mindless fanboy. On the contrary, skill begins when you raise the (current) skill floor.

So listening to people who are succesfull in playing mindless decks and give them credit is the worst thing you can do. Succesful moronism has nothing to do with skill. You just show that you as them are still trapped in the card design Matrix of HS. 

This game is amazing!!!!!

* Hecklebot joined the chat *

What cards are you guys excited for?

Quote from Hooghout>>

Have you realized how nice it will be after Worlds this year? Everyone is going to have an opportunity to play in online tournaments, and at that point, no one will need to listen to the bullshit anymore. Anytime someone talks shit about "low skill" just ask them to link their latest tournament results and replays. If they don't have any, why would you listen to them in favor of those that do?

Moronism is quite a thing reading all the pro- staus quo comments like this one.. It is about the average level of skill floor which is linked to card design. If all the cards tend to create decks are low skill, one might be succesful playing low skill, even in tournaments, The result remains low skill. This is the beating heart of HS' success. Serving the mindless fanboy. On the contrary, skill begins when you raise the (current) skill floor.

So listening to people who are succesfull in playing mindless decks and give them credit is the worst thing you can do. Succesful moronism has nothing to do with skill. You just show that you as them are still trapped in the card design Matrix of HS. 

This made me LOL!

If you hate low-skill games and blizzard fanboys at once, go reach Grandmaster in Starcraft 2, there is an incredibly high skillcap and very little rng waiting for you. Hearthstone is more casual, they never intended it to be a game where a mediocre player will lose to a pro 100% of the time.

It is fine to debate the complexity level of the game, but lately, I think the main problem has been polarized matchups rather than low skillcap decks. Even piloting the most grindy controldeck perfectly has little impact when facing a 20-80 matchup.

Quote from SlydE >>

Quote from Hooghout>>

Have you realized how nice it will be after Worlds this year? Everyone is going to have an opportunity to play in online tournaments, and at that point, no one will need to listen to the bullshit anymore. Anytime someone talks shit about "low skill" just ask them to link their latest tournament results and replays. If they don't have any, why would you listen to them in favor of those that do?

Moronism is quite a thing reading all the pro- staus quo comments like this one.. It is about the average level of skill floor which is linked to card design. If all the cards tend to create decks are low skill, one might be succesful playing low skill, even in tournaments, The result remains low skill. This is the beating heart of HS' success. Serving the mindless fanboy. On the contrary, skill begins when you raise the (current) skill floor.

So listening to people who are succesfull in playing mindless decks and give them credit is the worst thing you can do. Succesful moronism has nothing to do with skill. You just show that you as them are still trapped in the card design Matrix of HS. 

This made me LOL!

If you hate low-skill games and blizzard fanboys at once, go reach Grandmaster in Starcraft 2, there is the an incredibly high skillcap and very little rng waiting for you. Hearthstone is more casual, they never intended it to be a game where a mediocre player will lose to a pro 100% of the time.

It is fine to debate the complexity level of the game, but lately, I think the main problem has been polarized matchups rather than low skillcap decks. Even piloting the most grindy controldeck perfectly has little impact when facing a 20-80 matchup.

Apart from my spelling errors in mentioned post dear moderator, I assume you realise that polarization is quintessential to mindlessness. Deliberate constructing polarization through card design is a important mechanic to define the low skill floor. Albeit if you raise the skill floor, by design automatically avoid polarization. You make it harder to win games, you must think harder, plan better, outwith, outmanoeuvre your opponent. Also a nice result: a better diversified meta, where creative decks can blossom. A HS I'm looking for. A HS that is denied by the fanboy.

Another aspect of mindlessness is to steep RPS. Shallow it up, means skill gets a better chance to win in a unfavourable matchup. It all comes down to what devs want the meta to be. They steer through card design and steer low skill. And as is well esthablished: the meta is defined by devs, the community - infested by the plague called fanboy - is just its executioner.

Thats it. The constructed deck, matchup and in the end draw luck has more impact then clever play.

Draw luck is part of a card game like MTG or HS so take that.

As long as matchups are random this is also part of the game and should even out in the long run. Bad part is people will experience far drifferent climb speeds depending on that. Some are legend after 100-200 games from 5-L and others fight for the last rank at game 666. Both with the same deck and skill.

I am fine if deck construction has a high impact. Unfortunately netdecking reduces diversity. But as long as i can beat the netdeckers without cop%paste , thus the game allows diversity, i am fine. Deck construction and choice should have the main impact.

If you want a 100% skill based game i suggest Chess.  I played it in my youth and did beat a GM so ... But i prefer games with surprises where anticipation and adaption plays a role and this makes the diffrence between 50% or 55% winrate. Random factors inherently reduce skill impact. As long as skill, and not grind, makes the diffrence for going legend all would be fine. Unfortunately ........

Final words: It´s great if easy to join tournaments are coming.  

Call me a degenerate but in 15+ years of playing card games competitively, I've always gravitated towards the most uninteractive decks. In Magic I played a lot of vintage and legacy, using combo decks like The Perfect Storm and ANT. If combo decks capable of killing in the first 2 or 3 turns were not available to me, I would pick a hyper aggressive deck like Affinity. When playing Yugioh, I play a Magical Explosion FTK deck. What's my go to in Hearthstone? You've guessed it! Pirate Warrior! It's a hundred times more solitaire than any OTK deck that hasn't been nerfed into oblivion (I play Wild exclusively FYI). Nagalock and Star Aligner Druid are the only decks that piqued my interest because well, it was blatantly obvious that these decks were incredibly uninteractive, but I didn't enjoy playing those decks because they lacked depth. The presence of those decks in Wild forced my hand - they pushed Pirate Warrior out of the format.

Anyway, the two points I'm hoping to make are 1; there are players out there that enjoy playing "uninteractive" decks. Not because we're looking for free wins, but because we enjoy the aspect of focusing all of our energy and thought into counting damage, as well as looking at our hand and determining our gameplan from the very first turn taking all (limited) information into consideration. In short, we think deeply about what WE try to do, and carefully plan. There are lots of aspects, ranging from the hero the opponent plays, how many cards they mulligan, the odds of me drawing that missing 2-drop that would complete my curve while contemplating my mulligan, the list goes on. I'm trying to kill you before you get a chance to execute your own strategy, so yes, very uninteractive but there's a lot of decision making involved. Maybe not for you, because you opened a hand of 5+ mana cards and I killed you on turn 4, but all things considered, you cannot say the game played out with zero decision making involved.

Point 2; I believe that decks that  try to avoid interaction (in Wild mode, typically hyper aggressive decks) play an important part in a healthy metagame. It keeps other decks honest. It preys on greedy decks as well as combo decks. When you build your deck, there should be the question; how do I deal with [insert boogeyman deck name]?

That said, I will admit there is a problem with OTK decks if certain classes lack meaningful ways to disrupt the opponent. That's why I love Wild, where cards like Loatheb and Dirty Rat exist. It's not cool to be pushed into certain archetypes or you're forced to accept you've lost before a game started. At least with Pirate Warrior there's more RNG; mulligan and draws play a big part in the outcome of a game. You can "steal" a win, even when the matchup is super unfavorable.

Quote from SlydE >>

The only type of deck that is typically not influenced by an opponent is the extreme form of aggro where there is basically no play for tempo.  I've only seen two of them in recent years, and they were the 2017 aggro druid and the more recent Secret Aggro mage.  More often than not, these two decks would race to 30 damage with absolutely no heed to the opponent's play.  In the case of the mage, sometimes even taunt minions couldn't force them to play the board, as they would finish the opponent with direct damage.

I don't agree! Even the most charge/burn heavy aggro decks are absolutely interactive, as they need to maximize their minion damage early and plan ahead for when and how to go for lethal. Their opponent is interacting by surviving the best they can, digging for heals when they can afford to or going for a lethal of their own, playing around burst. I have tried to play such decks and mindlessly throw everything at face, but trust me, your winrate will always be low!

The least interactive decks I know in the game are the old Naga Sea Witch decks. That deck is all about its own gameplan (Spam as many giants as possible on turn 5) and they cared very little about what their opponent were doing. The decks barely had any reactive cards! Big Priest is fairly uninteractive too, but mostly when they highroll Barnes. In normal games, there can be some interresting value wars.

 I was just talking about standard when I said "only" decks, so fair enough on the wild stuff.

The reason I count the aggro mage and druid as uninteractive is they are the only decks that I see that take the same line of play regardless of opponent "more often than not", though of course in mirror matchups and against other hard aggro decks they may be forced to play the board as well . . . so basically I agree.

For the record, I don't buy the "uninteractive" trope in any sense, but I am trying to extend the concept to at least a couple of decks in order to illustrate how many others have no relation to the concept at all.

@Hogsnout (however it's spelled)

The phrase "low skill" can only have meaning in relativity to the rest of available decks or available players.  In other words, there will always be a gigantic skill gap between your average Hearthpwn poster and the professional scene.  While I do look forward to you explaining to me how major tournament winners are "low skill", and I think we will all get a laugh when that inevitably happens, no amount of explanation will make a definitionally false premise true.

You have only to look at the professional Go! scene to understand that regardless of the simplicity of a game, the skill ceiling is basically infinite.  I suppose one could play Tic-Tac-Toe and not have this hold up, but if you really think Hearthstone is a valid analogue for Tic-Tac-Toe, I think we can /thread now.

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

Quo@Hogsnout (however it's spelled)

The phrase "low skill" can only have meaning in relativity to the rest of available decks or available players.  In other words, there will always be a gigantic skill gap between your average Hearthpwn poster and the professional scene.  While I do look forward to you explaining to me how major tournament winners are "low skill", and I think we will all get a laugh when that inevitably happens, no amount of explanation will make a definitionally false premise true.

You have only to look at the professional Go! scene to understand that regardless of the simplicity of a game, the skill ceiling is basically infinite.  I suppose one could play Tic-Tac-Toe and not have this hold up, but if you really think Hearthstone is a valid analogue for Tic-Tac-Toe, I think we can /thread now.

 To Swaodrisnes (whatever it's spelled).

No further elaboration needed. The non-fanboy understands me perfectly. But I bet you don't understand core difference between floor and ceiling.

From page 2 Hogsnout post:

" The skill floor decides wether a deck is requires skill, not its ceiling."

First of all, you actually called out Slyde on grammar errors after writing the above sentence.  I hope your ESL teacher is fired.

Second, that statement couldn't be more incorrect.  But it explains a lot of how you can write these well thought-out dissertations and still be so completely off the mark.  It only takes one incorrect premise, and an entire argument goes off the rails.

Because Hearthstone is a game in which many individual games are decided more by matchup and draw than by any difference in skill between players, most decks will enjoy a reasonably comparable win rate when played by you or by Hunterace.  The skill difference only becomes evident over many iterations, and the difference between you and Hunterace would be pronounced whether the deck in question was Secret Mage, Patron Warrior, or Control Lock.

As I said, however, we are quickly approaching a point in this game where none of us (myself included) should be listened to with regards to what constitutes a "skilled player" unless we can point to some actual results when playing the game.  I look forward to seeing who on this forum will come up with those results.

EDIT:  By the way, why are we talking about "skill" when this thread is literally named "the ream meaning behind uninteractive"?  Could it possibly be that "uninteractive" is exactly what I said it was; a poorly constructed euphemism for "decks I don't like and want to claim moral superiority over"?