All of the posters that keep pointing out that card games have both skill and chance are correct. I go to Las Vegas often and I can tell you that this is 100% accurate. However I also bet online and I will tell you that I won't ever play poker or blackjack or any casino game online. Why? Because there is no way to tell if the cards are being manipulated. The difference with Hearthstone is that we know for a fact that the RNG is manipulated. Quest cards start in every opening hand, at least one rare or better in packs, so many rares or better in arena, pity timer, not to mention the fact that Blizzard flat out broadcasts it when the manipulate the occurrence of cards in arena.
The question is not whether or not the RNG in Hearthstone is manipulated - it is to what extent. Going by casual observance the extent is massive.
That RNG is manipulated is a public secret. Rather coin it card design corruption. The most obvious one is Zephrys which simple corrupts the boardstate making skill a sham.
Skill is necessary in hearthstone but not in a way that it is used in other games.
In my opinion skill is assuming most likely scenario and playing around it.
Say priest combo Vs priest combo deck. You drew just 1 drop and 4 drop early, enemy got coin. Do you play northshire and when, is enemy likely to benefit of it. Is he likely to coin his pyromancer, T1 into your northshire losing you your early game and letting enemy snowball during turn 2 and 3 or do you use 1 of you combo cards to fight for early board etc.
Skill in hearthstone is judging RNG and playing around it.
It is skill to include tech cards which win you more games than they lose you etc.
Say dropping out 1 lightwarden for a crab to kill murlock decks or adding 1 stormwind knight for charge minnion, to combo out of hand with low board presence instead of adding 1 more minnion to fight for actual board itself early.
Skill in hearthstone is not outplaying our opponent as it would in shooters, it is out planning our enemy.
Skill is necessary in hearthstone but not in a way that it is used in other games.
In my opinion skill is assuming most likely scenario and playing around it.
Say priest combo Vs priest combo deck. You drew just 1 drop and 4 drop early, enemy got coin. Do you play northshire and when, is enemy likely to benefit of it. Is he likely to coin his pyromancer, T1 into your northshire losing you your early game and letting enemy snowball during turn 2 and 3 or do you use 1 of you combo cards to fight for early board etc.
Skill in hearthstone is judging RNG and playing around it.
It is skill to include tech cards which win you more games than they lose you etc.
Say dropping out 1 lightwarden for a crab to kill murlock decks or adding 1 stormwind knight for charge minnion, to combo out of hand with low board presence instead of adding 1 more minnion to fight for actual board itself early.
Skill in hearthstone is not outplaying our opponent as it would in shooters, it is out planning our enemy.
Very well said and I tend to agree with you. But how do you out plan your enemy if they overwhelm you with murlocs (Shaman, Paladin) as a say control archetype? My point, skill is curbed as RPS is too steep. Skill is curbed as AI intervenes.
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We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Skill is necessary in hearthstone but not in a way that it is used in other games.
In my opinion skill is assuming most likely scenario and playing around it.
Say priest combo Vs priest combo deck. You drew just 1 drop and 4 drop early, enemy got coin. Do you play northshire and when, is enemy likely to benefit of it. Is he likely to coin his pyromancer, T1 into your northshire losing you your early game and letting enemy snowball during turn 2 and 3 or do you use 1 of you combo cards to fight for early board etc.
Skill in hearthstone is judging RNG and playing around it.
It is skill to include tech cards which win you more games than they lose you etc.
Say dropping out 1 lightwarden for a crab to kill murlock decks or adding 1 stormwind knight for charge minnion, to combo out of hand with low board presence instead of adding 1 more minnion to fight for actual board itself early.
Skill in hearthstone is not outplaying our opponent as it would in shooters, it is out planning our enemy.
Very well said and I tend to agree with you. But how do you out plan your enemy if they overwhelm you with murlocs (Shaman, Paladin) as a say control archetype? My point, skill is curbed as RPS is too steep. Skill is curbed as AI intervenes.
you don't. You plan your matchups in deck maker. That is where planning begins. Occasionally you get into a match you can't possibly win, and you take it like a champ, knowing odds of that happening are rather low, and well if 10% of your matches are unwinnable you should have over 10% auto win matches.
If you do not over a long run, your planning failed and you need to change deck or part of it at least.
Too many people are focused on if you win or loose. Yes, its important, but it hides the skill involved in playing the game.
You can loose and play like a pro, and you can loose while playing like a chump. These are not the same thing. The win or loss wil be the same, but how bad you were beat might not be.
Hearthstone is like a series of puzzles. Some are pretty easy to solve, some are pretty tricky to solve. Solving them well doesn't always mean you win becasue the random elements of the game can confound you. But what you do control is how well you react to what is happening at anygiven moment. That takes skill, it just doesn't always win you games.
So saying hearthstone takes no skill flies in the face of what we all do each time we play. What you really mean is that it is not a game where skill ensures victory, and that is true. But that is not at all the same as saying there is no skill in playing it.
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Check out my gaming blog: Downy Owlbear Designs and download free P&P games. Or argue with me about games on Qallout, the video debate site.
Too many people are focused on if you win or loose. Yes, its important, but it hides the skill involved in playing the game.
You can loose and play like a pro, and you can loose while playing like a chump. These are not the same thing. The win or loss wil be the same, but how bad you were beat might not be.
Hearthstone is like a series of puzzles. Some are pretty easy to solve, some are pretty tricky to solve. Solving them well doesn't always mean you win becasue the random elements of the game can confound you. But what you do control is how well you react to what is happening at anygiven moment. That takes skill, it just doesn't always win you games.
So saying hearthstone takes no skill flies in the face of what we all do each time we play. What you really mean is that it is not a game where skill ensures victory, and that is true. But that is not at all the same as saying there is no skill in playing it.
Yeah those cancerous Murloc Shamans are really proving skill by vomiting their hand on each turn. Just like those Mages that sit back and play secret after secret. Yeah the skill...
Too many people are focused on if you win or loose. Yes, its important, but it hides the skill involved in playing the game.
You can loose and play like a pro, and you can loose while playing like a chump. These are not the same thing. The win or loss wil be the same, but how bad you were beat might not be.
Hearthstone is like a series of puzzles. Some are pretty easy to solve, some are pretty tricky to solve. Solving them well doesn't always mean you win becasue the random elements of the game can confound you. But what you do control is how well you react to what is happening at anygiven moment. That takes skill, it just doesn't always win you games.
So saying hearthstone takes no skill flies in the face of what we all do each time we play. What you really mean is that it is not a game where skill ensures victory, and that is true. But that is not at all the same as saying there is no skill in playing it.
Yeah those cancerous Murloc Shamans are really proving skill by vomiting their hand on each turn. Just like those Mages that sit back and play secret after secret. Yeah the skill...
You seem to be rather salty about it, but that is another can of worms I guess.
Secret mage does take some skill, applying right secrets at right time etc, it is considerably less than say shaman or priest right now , but choosing a less skill intensive deck does not mean it is less valid. Btw secret mage in standard is just meh, and it takes some skill to win with it good amount of time as your early just does not cut it by itself. Wild secret mage is too easy yes, but cmon in wild there is 101 problem and secret mage is just 1 of them.
Skill is necessary in hearthstone but not in a way that it is used in other games.
In my opinion skill is assuming most likely scenario and playing around it.
Say priest combo Vs priest combo deck. You drew just 1 drop and 4 drop early, enemy got coin. Do you play northshire and when, is enemy likely to benefit of it. Is he likely to coin his pyromancer, T1 into your northshire losing you your early game and letting enemy snowball during turn 2 and 3 or do you use 1 of you combo cards to fight for early board etc.
Skill in hearthstone is judging RNG and playing around it.
It is skill to include tech cards which win you more games than they lose you etc.
Say dropping out 1 lightwarden for a crab to kill murlock decks or adding 1 stormwind knight for charge minnion, to combo out of hand with low board presence instead of adding 1 more minnion to fight for actual board itself early.
Skill in hearthstone is not outplaying our opponent as it would in shooters, it is out planning our enemy.
Very well said and I tend to agree with you. But how do you out plan your enemy if they overwhelm you with murlocs (Shaman, Paladin) as a say control archetype? My point, skill is curbed as RPS is too steep. Skill is curbed as AI intervenes.
you don't. You plan your matchups in deck maker. That is where planning begins. Occasionally you get into a match you can't possibly win, and you take it like a champ, knowing odds of that happening are rather low, and well if 10% of your matches are unwinnable you should have over 10% auto win matches.
If you do not over a long run, your planning failed and you need to change deck or part of it at least.
You don't? Not good enough. You can't work your way around any red meat Blizzard throws at you. There's something like fairness, righteousness and doing the right thing even in a card game. Not caring about that not good enough.
I don't know if it's the ESL problem or just deliberate trolling. Either way, at some point it just becomes futile to try with this guy. The constant assertions about violations of ethics based on completely moral neutral design decisions have been going on for months now.
It's always shitty to have to wonder whether folks actually feel the way they profess to or if it's just troll culture, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. There's so much misplaced anger, though.
The statement was made earlier that the fact that the same people win consistently in the game is NOT an indicator that skill is a factor. Since it obviously disproves the notion that who wins and loses over time is totally random, the only other explanation is some multi-dimensional conspiracy theory in which Blizzard has arbitrarily picked a bunch of folks, many of whom do not stream or contribute to the publicity of the game in any way, and hold those names up as professionals. He's sort of hinted at some sort of belief like that, but never come right out and said it.
Again, if you acknowledge reality and admit that a small group of players enjoy far more success than can be explained by random chance, there are ONLY two explanations. Either that group of people is better at the game than most and that difference in level of play translates into success, or there is some artificial manipulation of win rates over a long period of time for the benefit of a few players, many of whom have no ties to the company or particularly large public followings that translate into aiding the game's sales.
No matter how many syllables you use to couch your arguments; no matter how many lofty ethical quandaries you try to create out of a card game, you simply can't get away from the fact that believing in the latter explanation flies in the face of all evidence available to us. If you are willing to do that, then there is no arguing with you.
In any case, I've been away from the forums for a bit because I've actually been playing and enjoying the game. The announcement of 1000 win portraits has me grinding away, and I have to admit I enjoy the hell out of this standard meta. Just fought a 25 minute battle as Control Warrior vs Highlander Hunter in which the hunter cast 4 Hunter's Pack (2 of which got him Savannah Highmane) and 8 Unleash the Beasts. Furthermore, he elected to take Twisting Nether off his Zephrys, and I instantly thought to myself, "well, that's going to suck for him when he plays Zul'jin". Except it didn't, because the Twisting Nether was the 1st spell Zul'jin elected to cast, meaning it didn't kill any of his board. Now, all of what I described is fodder for the folks who believe that RNG in the game is manipulated, these things couldn't possibly happen with truly random gameplay, etc. And of course, that is all nonsense. It could happen, it does happen, and it can (and in this case was) beaten. I can't help but wonder how many of these folks would have pressed the concede button as soon as they saw the Zul'jin result. Oh, by the way, my Dr. Boom was the bottom card of my deck.
I love games like that, and the experience would neither have been ruined, nor have changed the reality about RNG of the game if I had lost in the end. If you can't derive enjoyment from the gameplay in situations like that, this game might just not be for you. You don't have to poor poison out all over the forums; you can just go elsewhere for entertainment. But acting as if there are factual statements to make that the game is not only flawed, but somehow malicious or evil, is far beyond absurd at this point. Just decide if you want to listen to evidence and reason or not, and if not, be honest about it so we can move on.
In other news, someone else in this thread claimed that it was proven that RNG was manipulated because of things like the Quest card mechanic where the quests are drawn in the opening hand every game. You do understand, that piece of programming doesn't even touch the random number generation algorithms, right? That's a trait of the card itself which triggers at start of game, just like Genn or Baku did last year. There's nothing going on there related to this issue.
That was just a very weird way to come at this, especially from a programming standpoint.
TL;DR Work on your attention span
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.
I don't know if it's the ESL problem or just deliberate trolling. Either way, at some point it just becomes futile to try with this guy. The constant assertions about violations of ethics based on completely moral neutral design decisions have been going on for months now.
It's always shitty to have to wonder whether folks actually feel the way they profess to or if it's just troll culture, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. There's so much misplaced anger, though.
The statement was made earlier that the fact that the same people win consistently in the game is NOT an indicator that skill is a factor. Since it obviously disproves the notion that who wins and loses over time is totally random, the only other explanation is some multi-dimensional conspiracy theory in which Blizzard has arbitrarily picked a bunch of folks, many of whom do not stream or contribute to the publicity of the game in any way, and hold those names up as professionals. He's sort of hinted at some sort of belief like that, but never come right out and said it.
Again, if you acknowledge reality and admit that a small group of players enjoy far more success than can be explained by random chance, there are ONLY two explanations. Either that group of people is better at the game than most and that difference in level of play translates into success, or there is some artificial manipulation of win rates over a long period of time for the benefit of a few players, many of whom have no ties to the company or particularly large public followings that translate into aiding the game's sales.
No matter how many syllables you use to couch your arguments; no matter how many lofty ethical quandaries you try to create out of a card game, you simply can't get away from the fact that believing in the latter explanation flies in the face of all evidence available to us. If you are willing to do that, then there is no arguing with you.
In any case, I've been away from the forums for a bit because I've actually been playing and enjoying the game. The announcement of 1000 win portraits has me grinding away, and I have to admit I enjoy the hell out of this standard meta. Just fought a 25 minute battle as Control Warrior vs Highlander Hunter in which the hunter cast 4 Hunter's Pack (2 of which got him Savannah Highmane) and 8 Unleash the Beasts. Furthermore, he elected to take Twisting Nether off his Zephrys, and I instantly thought to myself, "well, that's going to suck for him when he plays Zul'jin". Except it didn't, because the Twisting Nether was the 1st spell Zul'jin elected to cast, meaning it didn't kill any of his board. Now, all of what I described is fodder for the folks who believe that RNG in the game is manipulated, these things couldn't possibly happen with truly random gameplay, etc. And of course, that is all nonsense. It could happen, it does happen, and it can (and in this case was) beaten. I can't help but wonder how many of these folks would have pressed the concede button as soon as they saw the Zul'jin result. Oh, by the way, my Dr. Boom was the bottom card of my deck.
I love games like that, and the experience would neither have been ruined, nor have changed the reality about RNG of the game if I had lost in the end. If you can't derive enjoyment from the gameplay in situations like that, this game might just not be for you. You don't have to poor poison out all over the forums; you can just go elsewhere for entertainment. But acting as if there are factual statements to make that the game is not only flawed, but somehow malicious or evil, is far beyond absurd at this point. Just decide if you want to listen to evidence and reason or not, and if not, be honest about it so we can move on.
In other news, someone else in this thread claimed that it was proven that RNG was manipulated because of things like the Quest card mechanic where the quests are drawn in the opening hand every game. You do understand, that piece of programming doesn't even touch the random number generation algorithms, right? That's a trait of the card itself which triggers at start of game, just like Genn or Baku did last year. There's nothing going on there related to this issue.
That was just a very weird way to come at this, especially from a programming standpoint.
TL;DR Work on your attention span
Except the game is rigged. Just because a handful of people are “pros” doesn’t mean they have discovered this great skill, it just means they made this game their full time job and got through the grind. They are not better at playing the game, just more patient. You’re fighting the 50/50 winrate no matter the meta.
exactly, replace "skill" with "play a buttload". everything comes naturally with that, really
i mean, i play a very weird all battlecry minions warlock with zero spells in the deck. so far, almost undefeated
it's just my way of getting a huge advantage. just playing stuff nobody expects or has ever seen. i can't stand playing the stupid decks you see every day. you're barely learning anything from doing that approach
i count that as way better than fighting decks with pretty much the same decks everyone else does. then you really just have to be the better player
No, tournaments are not won via a "grind", and there is absolutely no reason to believe that the players who have enjoyed the most success in the professional scene have put in more hours than all of the random basement dwellers out there (not a disparaging term, btw, I was a proud basement dweller for a decade).
Also, even if ladder was the end all be all of determining success in professional hearthstone, that whole mythos about "just play a lot of games and you'll be gravy" falls apart when you're trying to actually reach the top 50 or so in legend. I will grant you that it is not particularly difficult to attain a 50.1% record, and thus, getting INTO legend can turn into more of a grind than a skill contest. However, reaching #1 Legend is something the vast majority of folks have never, will never, and COULD never done/do. Again, speaking from experience, anyone who breaks top 10 or so . . . actually even top 50 . . . and straight-facedly claims that skill is not a factor and he just played a lot of games is trolling you and loving every second of it.
And anyone who disagrees . . . by all means, prove me wrong. Show me that high rank crystal and tell me about how you got there with a close-to-break-even win rate and a thousand games played or so. I'll be interested to see it.
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.
I don't know if it's the ESL problem or just deliberate trolling. Either way, at some point it just becomes futile to try with this guy. The constant assertions about violations of ethics based on completely moral neutral design decisions have been going on for months now.
It's always shitty to have to wonder whether folks actually feel the way they profess to or if it's just troll culture, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. There's so much misplaced anger, though.
The statement was made earlier that the fact that the same people win consistently in the game is NOT an indicator that skill is a factor. Since it obviously disproves the notion that who wins and loses over time is totally random, the only other explanation is some multi-dimensional conspiracy theory in which Blizzard has arbitrarily picked a bunch of folks, many of whom do not stream or contribute to the publicity of the game in any way, and hold those names up as professionals. He's sort of hinted at some sort of belief like that, but never come right out and said it.
Again, if you acknowledge reality and admit that a small group of players enjoy far more success than can be explained by random chance, there are ONLY two explanations. Either that group of people is better at the game than most and that difference in level of play translates into success, or there is some artificial manipulation of win rates over a long period of time for the benefit of a few players, many of whom have no ties to the company or particularly large public followings that translate into aiding the game's sales.
No matter how many syllables you use to couch your arguments; no matter how many lofty ethical quandaries you try to create out of a card game, you simply can't get away from the fact that believing in the latter explanation flies in the face of all evidence available to us. If you are willing to do that, then there is no arguing with you.
In any case, I've been away from the forums for a bit because I've actually been playing and enjoying the game. The announcement of 1000 win portraits has me grinding away, and I have to admit I enjoy the hell out of this standard meta. Just fought a 25 minute battle as Control Warrior vs Highlander Hunter in which the hunter cast 4 Hunter's Pack (2 of which got him Savannah Highmane) and 8 Unleash the Beasts. Furthermore, he elected to take Twisting Nether off his Zephrys, and I instantly thought to myself, "well, that's going to suck for him when he plays Zul'jin". Except it didn't, because the Twisting Nether was the 1st spell Zul'jin elected to cast, meaning it didn't kill any of his board. Now, all of what I described is fodder for the folks who believe that RNG in the game is manipulated, these things couldn't possibly happen with truly random gameplay, etc. And of course, that is all nonsense. It could happen, it does happen, and it can (and in this case was) beaten. I can't help but wonder how many of these folks would have pressed the concede button as soon as they saw the Zul'jin result. Oh, by the way, my Dr. Boom was the bottom card of my deck.
I love games like that, and the experience would neither have been ruined, nor have changed the reality about RNG of the game if I had lost in the end. If you can't derive enjoyment from the gameplay in situations like that, this game might just not be for you. You don't have to poor poison out all over the forums; you can just go elsewhere for entertainment. But acting as if there are factual statements to make that the game is not only flawed, but somehow malicious or evil, is far beyond absurd at this point. Just decide if you want to listen to evidence and reason or not, and if not, be honest about it so we can move on.
In other news, someone else in this thread claimed that it was proven that RNG was manipulated because of things like the Quest card mechanic where the quests are drawn in the opening hand every game. You do understand, that piece of programming doesn't even touch the random number generation algorithms, right? That's a trait of the card itself which triggers at start of game, just like Genn or Baku did last year. There's nothing going on there related to this issue.
That was just a very weird way to come at this, especially from a programming standpoint.
TL;DR Work on your attention span
Now it is correct but you aimed your comment at the wrong person.
I kinda like T5 bandwagon pundits who don't believe in progress and insist to take life as it appears to be. In their mind there's no marketing based card design...just cards printed to work with. Never marvell why certain cards are printed to what end beyond T5 announced explanations.
I kinda like pundits who come here and explain the world to me.
I like pundits writing lengthy comments about this card and that mechanic.. ..and of course how good they are at the game...and that others asking questions to the contrary must suck.
This game is not just a game. For many it is formative how they will make life's decisions. If Zephrys is to be considered unfair because it intervenes with the boardstate, undermining skill, it is probably ok in real live to be unfair as well.
In the end there's just winners and losers. That's all there is. Right?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
exactly, replace "skill" with "play a buttload". everything comes naturally with that, really
i mean, i play a very weird all battlecry minions warlock with zero spells in the deck. so far, almost undefeated
it's just my way of getting a huge advantage. just playing stuff nobody expects or has ever seen. i can't stand playing the stupid decks you see every day. you're barely learning anything from doing that approach
i count that as way better than fighting decks with pretty much the same decks everyone else does. then you really just have to be the better player
So , you don’t wanna tell me you’re honestly thinking just because you played a buttload, you can compete with the best hearthstone players out there??
Obviously you become better since you gained more experience with your deck and how to behave in various matchups. But let’s be real here at a certain point on the Ladder, people will beat you since they make less mistakes. I and many others experienced this with several homebrew, or slightly different tier 2-4 decks.
Btw. I remember well being top 100 a year ago, and someone on my friendslist wrote: Wow nice rank, you must be playing a lot... And my response was. Uhmm I wouldn’t say so. I played like 6 games in the last 3 days..
The better you get at hearthstone the less RNG becomes a factor in the outcome. Better players will think about a higher number of results from a single play whether it be their turn or their opponents to come. You only need to watch the best players in the world to see that sometimes they don't just play around a top deck but I've seen players play around a possible discover from a top deck. In short if your games are often decided by RNG you have vast room for improvement in your play.
The true skill in Hearthstone is accepting the game the way it is and be happy about the outcome of the match even if you weren't in control of it. Also, not victimizing yourself because you lost in the most unfair way possible and not wishing anything bad to happen to your opponent or to Blizzard requires a huge amount of skill.
If you don't think there is skill in the game of Hearthstone, then I feel sorry for you.
You will probably go through life without the ability to think critically and understand true personal improvement. Blaming failure on randomness and accepting mediocrity instead of improving, evaluating, and gaining.
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That RNG is manipulated is a public secret. Rather coin it card design corruption. The most obvious one is Zephrys which simple corrupts the boardstate making skill a sham.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Skill is necessary in hearthstone but not in a way that it is used in other games.
In my opinion skill is assuming most likely scenario and playing around it.
Say priest combo Vs priest combo deck. You drew just 1 drop and 4 drop early, enemy got coin. Do you play northshire and when, is enemy likely to benefit of it. Is he likely to coin his pyromancer, T1 into your northshire losing you your early game and letting enemy snowball during turn 2 and 3 or do you use 1 of you combo cards to fight for early board etc.
Skill in hearthstone is judging RNG and playing around it.
It is skill to include tech cards which win you more games than they lose you etc.
Say dropping out 1 lightwarden for a crab to kill murlock decks or adding 1 stormwind knight for charge minnion, to combo out of hand with low board presence instead of adding 1 more minnion to fight for actual board itself early.
Skill in hearthstone is not outplaying our opponent as it would in shooters, it is out planning our enemy.
Very well said and I tend to agree with you. But how do you out plan your enemy if they overwhelm you with murlocs (Shaman, Paladin) as a say control archetype? My point, skill is curbed as RPS is too steep. Skill is curbed as AI intervenes.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
you don't. You plan your matchups in deck maker. That is where planning begins. Occasionally you get into a match you can't possibly win, and you take it like a champ, knowing odds of that happening are rather low, and well if 10% of your matches are unwinnable you should have over 10% auto win matches.
If you do not over a long run, your planning failed and you need to change deck or part of it at least.
Too many people are focused on if you win or loose. Yes, its important, but it hides the skill involved in playing the game.
You can loose and play like a pro, and you can loose while playing like a chump. These are not the same thing. The win or loss wil be the same, but how bad you were beat might not be.
Hearthstone is like a series of puzzles. Some are pretty easy to solve, some are pretty tricky to solve. Solving them well doesn't always mean you win becasue the random elements of the game can confound you. But what you do control is how well you react to what is happening at anygiven moment. That takes skill, it just doesn't always win you games.
So saying hearthstone takes no skill flies in the face of what we all do each time we play. What you really mean is that it is not a game where skill ensures victory, and that is true. But that is not at all the same as saying there is no skill in playing it.
Check out my gaming blog: Downy Owlbear Designs and download free P&P games.
Or argue with me about games on Qallout, the video debate site.
It's better to be lucky than good *cough* Pavelling's Book *cough*
at least in one a segment of 1 separate game
Yeah those cancerous Murloc Shamans are really proving skill by vomiting their hand on each turn. Just like those Mages that sit back and play secret after secret. Yeah the skill...
You seem to be rather salty about it, but that is another can of worms I guess.
Secret mage does take some skill, applying right secrets at right time etc, it is considerably less than say shaman or priest right now , but choosing a less skill intensive deck does not mean it is less valid. Btw secret mage in standard is just meh, and it takes some skill to win with it good amount of time as your early just does not cut it by itself. Wild secret mage is too easy yes, but cmon in wild there is 101 problem and secret mage is just 1 of them.
You don't? Not good enough. You can't work your way around any red meat Blizzard throws at you. There's something like fairness, righteousness and doing the right thing even in a card game. Not caring about that not good enough.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
@Stingeris
I don't know if it's the ESL problem or just deliberate trolling. Either way, at some point it just becomes futile to try with this guy. The constant assertions about violations of ethics based on completely moral neutral design decisions have been going on for months now.
It's always shitty to have to wonder whether folks actually feel the way they profess to or if it's just troll culture, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. There's so much misplaced anger, though.
The statement was made earlier that the fact that the same people win consistently in the game is NOT an indicator that skill is a factor. Since it obviously disproves the notion that who wins and loses over time is totally random, the only other explanation is some multi-dimensional conspiracy theory in which Blizzard has arbitrarily picked a bunch of folks, many of whom do not stream or contribute to the publicity of the game in any way, and hold those names up as professionals. He's sort of hinted at some sort of belief like that, but never come right out and said it.
Again, if you acknowledge reality and admit that a small group of players enjoy far more success than can be explained by random chance, there are ONLY two explanations. Either that group of people is better at the game than most and that difference in level of play translates into success, or there is some artificial manipulation of win rates over a long period of time for the benefit of a few players, many of whom have no ties to the company or particularly large public followings that translate into aiding the game's sales.
No matter how many syllables you use to couch your arguments; no matter how many lofty ethical quandaries you try to create out of a card game, you simply can't get away from the fact that believing in the latter explanation flies in the face of all evidence available to us. If you are willing to do that, then there is no arguing with you.
In any case, I've been away from the forums for a bit because I've actually been playing and enjoying the game. The announcement of 1000 win portraits has me grinding away, and I have to admit I enjoy the hell out of this standard meta. Just fought a 25 minute battle as Control Warrior vs Highlander Hunter in which the hunter cast 4 Hunter's Pack (2 of which got him Savannah Highmane) and 8 Unleash the Beasts. Furthermore, he elected to take Twisting Nether off his Zephrys, and I instantly thought to myself, "well, that's going to suck for him when he plays Zul'jin". Except it didn't, because the Twisting Nether was the 1st spell Zul'jin elected to cast, meaning it didn't kill any of his board. Now, all of what I described is fodder for the folks who believe that RNG in the game is manipulated, these things couldn't possibly happen with truly random gameplay, etc. And of course, that is all nonsense. It could happen, it does happen, and it can (and in this case was) beaten. I can't help but wonder how many of these folks would have pressed the concede button as soon as they saw the Zul'jin result. Oh, by the way, my Dr. Boom was the bottom card of my deck.
I love games like that, and the experience would neither have been ruined, nor have changed the reality about RNG of the game if I had lost in the end. If you can't derive enjoyment from the gameplay in situations like that, this game might just not be for you. You don't have to poor poison out all over the forums; you can just go elsewhere for entertainment. But acting as if there are factual statements to make that the game is not only flawed, but somehow malicious or evil, is far beyond absurd at this point. Just decide if you want to listen to evidence and reason or not, and if not, be honest about it so we can move on.
In other news, someone else in this thread claimed that it was proven that RNG was manipulated because of things like the Quest card mechanic where the quests are drawn in the opening hand every game. You do understand, that piece of programming doesn't even touch the random number generation algorithms, right? That's a trait of the card itself which triggers at start of game, just like Genn or Baku did last year. There's nothing going on there related to this issue.
That was just a very weird way to come at this, especially from a programming standpoint.
TL;DR Work on your attention span
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.
Except the game is rigged. Just because a handful of people are “pros” doesn’t mean they have discovered this great skill, it just means they made this game their full time job and got through the grind. They are not better at playing the game, just more patient. You’re fighting the 50/50 winrate no matter the meta.
exactly, replace "skill" with "play a buttload". everything comes naturally with that, really
i mean, i play a very weird all battlecry minions warlock with zero spells in the deck. so far, almost undefeated
it's just my way of getting a huge advantage. just playing stuff nobody expects or has ever seen. i can't stand playing the stupid decks you see every day. you're barely learning anything from doing that approach
i count that as way better than fighting decks with pretty much the same decks everyone else does. then you really just have to be the better player
@DrWho
No, tournaments are not won via a "grind", and there is absolutely no reason to believe that the players who have enjoyed the most success in the professional scene have put in more hours than all of the random basement dwellers out there (not a disparaging term, btw, I was a proud basement dweller for a decade).
Also, even if ladder was the end all be all of determining success in professional hearthstone, that whole mythos about "just play a lot of games and you'll be gravy" falls apart when you're trying to actually reach the top 50 or so in legend. I will grant you that it is not particularly difficult to attain a 50.1% record, and thus, getting INTO legend can turn into more of a grind than a skill contest. However, reaching #1 Legend is something the vast majority of folks have never, will never, and COULD never done/do. Again, speaking from experience, anyone who breaks top 10 or so . . . actually even top 50 . . . and straight-facedly claims that skill is not a factor and he just played a lot of games is trolling you and loving every second of it.
And anyone who disagrees . . . by all means, prove me wrong. Show me that high rank crystal and tell me about how you got there with a close-to-break-even win rate and a thousand games played or so. I'll be interested to see it.
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.
Now it is correct but you aimed your comment at the wrong person.
I kinda like T5 bandwagon pundits who don't believe in progress and insist to take life as it appears to be. In their mind there's no marketing based card design...just cards printed to work with. Never marvell why certain cards are printed to what end beyond T5 announced explanations.
I kinda like pundits who come here and explain the world to me.
I like pundits writing lengthy comments about this card and that mechanic.. ..and of course how good they are at the game...and that others asking questions to the contrary must suck.
This game is not just a game. For many it is formative how they will make life's decisions. If Zephrys is to be considered unfair because it intervenes with the boardstate, undermining skill, it is probably ok in real live to be unfair as well.
In the end there's just winners and losers. That's all there is. Right?
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
So , you don’t wanna tell me you’re honestly thinking just because you played a buttload, you can compete with the best hearthstone players out there??
Obviously you become better since you gained more experience with your deck and how to behave in various matchups. But let’s be real here at a certain point on the Ladder, people will beat you since they make less mistakes. I and many others experienced this with several homebrew, or slightly different tier 2-4 decks.
Btw. I remember well being top 100 a year ago, and someone on my friendslist wrote: Wow nice rank, you must be playing a lot... And my response was. Uhmm I wouldn’t say so. I played like 6 games in the last 3 days..
The better you get at hearthstone the less RNG becomes a factor in the outcome. Better players will think about a higher number of results from a single play whether it be their turn or their opponents to come. You only need to watch the best players in the world to see that sometimes they don't just play around a top deck but I've seen players play around a possible discover from a top deck. In short if your games are often decided by RNG you have vast room for improvement in your play.
Requires you to play bullshit classes like Hunter which seem to lose no tempo ever.
The true skill in Hearthstone is accepting the game the way it is and be happy about the outcome of the match even if you weren't in control of it. Also, not victimizing yourself because you lost in the most unfair way possible and not wishing anything bad to happen to your opponent or to Blizzard requires a huge amount of skill.
If you don't think there is skill in the game of Hearthstone, then I feel sorry for you.
You will probably go through life without the ability to think critically and understand true personal improvement. Blaming failure on randomness and accepting mediocrity instead of improving, evaluating, and gaining.