Hearthpwn

Quote from Daulphas >>

TL;DR =
Too long
Didn't read

To ask someone to create a TL;DR post is to ask them to limit the articulation and specificity of their thoughts.
Which in turn can lead to misinterpretation and ambiguity.

Would much rather have a wall of text that explains things clearly than 2 sentences that explain little to nothing.

 I agreed..

If people can't stand paragraph, they should stay in TikTok.

So first of all, don't call for banning folks who don't like . . . I don't know, threaten bodily harm IRL or something legally problematic.  Not a fan of that under all but the worst circumstances, and Popeye and other dude whose name is weird to spell aren't even close to that.

M0res, I'd love to see this proof you speak of.  The whole discussion of this thread is centered around a video that claims to prove the same stuff, and fails miserably to come anywhere near "proof".  Regardless, I haven't said a word in defense of Blizzard.  I have merely shown that the video being discussed is deliberately misleading and contains no evidence of the claims made.

As to the whole TL;DR thing, I wrote a follow up that never really got a response about it.  Maybe the follow up was TL;DR, despite being about ten sentences.  The first post I made could have been shorter, but if I had taken out all of the examples and stuff that didn't center around a clear and concise statement, one of two things would happen.  1) I'd be accused of not watching the video or not understanding and end up including all the stuff in a response, or 2) worse, I'd be ignored by people who might otherwise listen.

As to insulting someone's intelligence, honestly, if someone is willing to type a post insulting me for attention-seeking behavior, inflated vocabulary to inflate ego, etc., when I'm fully aware that if anything, I try to simplify my wording in order to appeal to folks who don't have English as a first language, I'm willing to speculate on that person's intelligence.  It would have been much easier to take the 90 seconds, read my post, and actually critique the substance if there are issues therein.

Honestly, given his response to my follow-up when I made a good-faith effort to address his concerns, no one has any serious reason to think he's doing anything but trolling.

On a hilarious note, this same video has been posted late in the Zeddy thread as evidence against me there, so I got to redirect to this thread rather than have that whole argument again.  I hope the guy who posted it is just a troll, because if he's sincere, he's got a deep rabbit hole to climb in here.

Quote from M0res >>

Quote from sQuba >>

Blizzard started investing in forums i see .. nice.at least we know they hear us.and that video is 100% real.every time i craft a new legendary .. that legendary gets intk the honeymoon period for at least 5 games(being the card that wins the game).and Random ( as generated by a computer )  does not exist . Machines know algorithms . That s all.

 That’s exactly my point in the previous post. a) it’s obvious to whoever plays 4-5 games, more importantly b) it’s published evidence, written by blizzard’s lawyers. What other proof do these flat earthers need??

 I don't know if you actually read my first post here, but I assume not.  You say "it's obvious" and call us flat earthers, but the so-called honeymoon period theory would be so ridiculously easy to prove if true, so basically, I require that proof.

If the draws are random, then every card has a 1/x chance to be drawn each turn, where x is the remaining cards in the deck (obviously 2/x if we're talking about a card that has two copies still in deck).  Even a 5% weight towards a certain card being drawn at a certain turn would show up within double digits of games played.  So . . . someone should definitely prove that and show it to us.

Until then, just stating "it's obvious" is meaningless.

There are tons of HUGE flaws in the game, one of which are the prices. I live in Europe and idk how it is for Americans but for me (and everyone in my country) the prices are just ridiculous. Literally for the money one would spend on a single pre-order I could buy games to play for at least a few years. The Witcher 3 (one of the best games IMO) costs around 5% of the Mega Pre-Order Bundle's price. On top of that it doesn't even grant you 50% of the expansions' legendaries. That has to change, because If it doesn't I will never spent a single penny on the game and feed the greedy assholes. The amount of legendaries a f2p player can get in an expnasion cycle is idiotic. I understand that they have to make profit, but the pity timer is so freaking stupid. An average of 1 legendary in 40 packs seems cool untill you realize 40 packs cost 4000 gold, so if you're honestly an unlucky f2p player, you can even get only 1 legendary in packs for f*cking 4 months, obviously apart from the one guaranteed in the first 10 packs. (wow thank you Blizzard)

This is just more of the usual "blizz bad" videos that try to cash in on the hype by taking advantage of players' need to blame the game for their own lack of success.

Noone is rigging the game against you. You just don't know how to win. You don't know how to read the meta, you don't know how to make proper deck adjustments, you probably don't even know how to win favourable matchups. To sum it up:

Git Gud.

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

Is this the first time you've heard of this document?  There was a huge rush of post a year or two ago when this patent first became public knowledge.

I'm typing this as I listen, and I won't hit post until I'm done with all 14 mins of the video, but so far this guy has proceeded from a premise no one has ever claimed (that matchmaking is random) and drawn one conclusion that is in no way supported by a single line of text in the document (the game picks which player "is going to have fun", the other player "is not going to have fun").  He uses the word prove after jumping two logical steps beyond what actually appears in the document.

Ohhhhh, huge ridiculous logical fallacy at 5:17.  The document says a gamer's profile will carry data such that the game will recommend game modes it expects the player to enjoy (the example given is "capture the flag").  This video creator says that the relevant comparison to Hearthstone is picking a Soul Demon Hunter opponent for a Control Warrior.  That is grossly dishonest.  A "game mode" and a specific opponent are not remotely synonyms.

Good God, this guy has an insufferable tone.  I'm having to listen to him pretend to throw up in his mouth while he goes through the whole "Blizzard matches new players with players who have items and skins they paid for, in the hopes that the new player will want those items as well and be influenced to buy them."  That's old news, and has been acknowledged for years.  This guy claims he's using a budget deck in wild and getting matched up against Highlander Priest, which is a more expensive deck.  No allowance for how popular and successful Highlander Priest is.

 

Wow, ok, so at 8:00, he takes a quote from the document talking about making sure new players are exposed to whales, or "marquee players" in the words of the patent, and the whales' premium weapons, and compares this to having players in Hearthstone see rigged topdecks so that certain legendaries are drawn in an artificially timely manner and work to win the game.  This is in no way what is contemplated in the text, and by the way, if we proceed from the logic that decks with more legendaries and epics are going to be stronger than budget decks (a logic I generally agree with), then one must admit, it is not necessary for their to be any MM rigging for new players to be exposed to these cards for two reasons:  1) if the new player enjoys any success at all, he will be matched against those cards naturally, and 2) as time goes on in a meta, there is a natural pressure to craft and include those cards in order to be able to win games, regardless of what level of play is being observed.

This is the fundamental issue with videos alleging "proof" of rigging from this document.  The document exclusively talks about team-based games, and though it says the principles are generalized to all multiplayer games, Blizzard patented the system for games with a cooperative element specifically to have a way in which they can advertise skins and other purchasable items thru matching both teammates and opponents in non-ranked beginner-level play.  In ranked play, when these premium items (like legendary cards in Hearthstone) positively affect win rates, players are naturally exposed to them without this sort of engineering.  I'm not saying at all that Blizzard is too principled to engage in such activity.  I'm saying the same effect occurs without any of this easily data-mined manipulation.

In any case, I'm continuing with the video, but my God, this guy is hard to listen to.  I'm going to need ASMR therapy after this.  And the word "proof" has never been molested and mutilated as hard as what I'm seeing today. 

I like how from 8:40 - 9:20 he just stops referencing the document completely to refer to something called the "honeymoon period" where apparently it's a "fact" that when you make a new deck, you get a win streak before things "even out".  No reference to the document or any other evidence, just a little throw-in there.

I also like how he just dismisses all the diagrams that don't support his point.  Mostly because they all clearly refer to games that have no analogy to Hearthstone (which is true of the stuff he's referencing also, but if we can just accept his jumps between what is written and what he wants to prove, he'll get somewhere here).  I'm also scared we're taking analytical proof from a guy that doesn't know the word "coefficient", but whatevs.

So minute 9 and 10 are more of the same, he's insisting that legendaries are the "items" that cause players to be matched together, and that you will have a rigged matchmaking system based on what cards you own.  Of course, this completely ignores the contrapositive of this point, meaning that if what he says is true, I should be able to affect what decks I get matched against based on what legendaries I do not own.  That is an easily testable hypothesis, and so anyone who purports to have "proof" without doing that work is full of it.

THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST EASILY ASSAILABLE POINT OF THE VIDEO.  If Blizzard is rigging the matchmaking as he says, I should be able to track a statistically relevant increase in opponent's decks that contain legendaries (and perhaps epics, but DEFINITELY legendaries) which I do not own.  If, on the other hand, I am correct and the only relevance to matchmaking my opponent's legendaries have is how they affect his winrate and MMR, then I will see an increase in the more powerful legendaries in my opponent's decks, regardless of whether I own said legendaries or not.

He continues to ignore the language of the document when it doesn't match his rhetoric.  There are a few particularly egregious misstatements of the text around 12:30 when the document talks about gauging player satisfaction from things like quitting a match while it is still in progress for other players (a factor which does not translate to Hearthstone, as quitting a game before actually taking lethal damage is the outcome of a huge percentage of games and generally indicates only that one player believes he is beaten). 

 

Anyway, his last bit about Hearthstone watching you is another "what else is new?" moment, but that's just a cherry on top of the conspiracy sundae.  As with most videos that purport to "prove" something on this topic, I'm not suggesting there is proof to the contrary.  I'm simply pointing out how grossly inadequate and misleading the evidence (or in this case, the interpretation of evidence) is as a source of proof.

 

 

EDIT:  After 5 pages of trollery and very few arguments against what I've written, apparently this 90 seconds or so of reading requires a TL;DR summary.

TL;DR:  You don't care whether the video is correct or not; you just enjoy another rant against Blizzard.  If I'm wrong, read for 90 seconds and find out why this particular video is incorrect and deliberately misleading.

 Lots of similar tactics used by people who push things like flat earth. A clear misunderstanding/deliberate misuse of science, systems, words etc and the typical viewer gets stunned into going along with it.

Ive seen many people point to 'proof' videos for all sorts of things and they tend to prey on people's limited understanding of the subject or details.

When it plays on pre existing paranoia then you get people who not only just accept what is it said, they actually already want to accept it. 

It isn't difficult to convince someone who wants aliens to exist that aliens exist and visit regularly. Confirmation bias plays a huge part.

I've tried to test this multiple times and gotten nowhere. I can't consistently get the games to give me specific match ups and have never seen any data in my deck tracker data that suggests anything strange or deliberately unfair is going on. 

I don't WANT to believe this, if it were true I would much rather know so I can move on, I'm absolutely not sticking around in a game that does that sort of thing. 

Go on the fifa forums and you get the exact same conspiracy match making arguments, how its rigged to stop you having streaks or to get you started on a streak etc. This community thinks it makes unique arguments but it really, really doesn't. This stuff exists in loads of other games. 

I love how I try really hard to be civil and go over arguments point by point and then . . .

Bengalaas:  Just git gud scrubs!

I guess you can boil things down to just one sentence.

Well I still don't see that "honeymoon" period happen. I tried out deck of lunacy. Didn't draw it in 5 games. Crafted Bulwark of Azinoth. Didn't get it during 3 games and actually didn't use it for winning until my first game against soul DH which was at least 9 games. If you crafted a good card and that won the game, maybe you just made the right decision and had the luck to draw it within like 18/30 cards drawn... Not that crazy really. If you feel tricked after 3 games, then play 97 more and look at the actual statistic ;) 

Maybe there is a guy having the time of his life messing with the RNG. I can't prove or disprove that, just like I can't prove any algorithm theory, but I have been playing quiet a few games recently and it seems pretty random what happens...

EDIT: I just realized how old this discussion is. Sorry for poking it open again XD

Maybe just ignore this last comment for the sake of humanity...

Funny thing about mmr, when I started my climb this month, I’m at bronze right? I added a player I had a fun game with. They were already DIAMOND RANK. Why? Because I got top 400 legend last month. Your mmr matches you with people who are also winning as much as you do, and that doesn’t reset with each month. That does not mean matchmaking is rigged for me to face a bad matchup, it just means they are trying to match me with people I will have a harder time with because they win as much as I do. As a mill rogue, some days I face 20 secret mages out of 40-50 games. On bother days, I might face 5 or less. I didn’t switch decks, I was winning the same amount, and yet it changed. Why? Because it happened that other players had either caught up or surpassed secret mage enough that I was matching against them, or it was just a coincidence.