I've been thinking about this for a long time now and decided to write something about it. It is basically my view of the game as it stands today, with the highs and the lows and why I think hearthstone should not be called a competitive game, but a fun one to pass the time with. Feel free to agree or disagree and point out where I'm looking at it from the wrong angle :)
As Hearthstone has aged and we've gotten access to more and more powerful cards, the game has become less about managing resources and more about three things: broken turns, RNG, and resource generation. I'll go over them all below and why I think it makes for a less fun game. I want to start out with a disclaimer that this will not be an "I lost to this", or an "I hate this type of deck"-post, I just want to share my thoughts. I got legend with what some might call the degenerate ramp paladin deck last month. It was my third time reaching legend. I've also played tickatus lock, rez priest and lots of home-brewed or "meme"-decks.
Broken turns: We all know the feeling, right? You pull off something so insane that you just instawin, and you get that nice kick of dopamine that starts out in your head and nestles its way down to your tummy. But is it really fun in the long run, or good game design to stray from the path of fighting for resources to "I drew this so I win unless you're playing this class and this card". The new ramp paladin is a good example. I can think of one class that can beat a turn four/five tip the scales and that's warrior, if he draws brawl. The chance for the warrior to draw brawl is about the same as it is for the paladin to get a tip the scales out at turn five. What do the other classes do? Nothing, they lose.
The problem is prevalent in a lesser scale when you have decks that hard counter other archetypes. Tickatus into Y'shaarj versus a slow deck, most of the time you can't come back from it and there was nothing you could do about it other than play another deck. Rez priest throwing a grave runes on a convincing infiltrator versus a big deck. Mozaki mage is similar even though it's not doing as well on ladder. Sometimes they just draw the combo by turn 8 or something and you die. No counterplay. Yogg is another example: sometimes it does something so powerful you just win the game on the spot. The games have become less about resource management and more about having turns so powerful they win you the game. The problem is that while this might be fun for the player piloting the deck, it is less so for the player facing it.
But, you say, some decks should beat others. That's just the nature of rock-paper-scissors game design. Yes it is! But compared to MTG for example Hearthstone has no way to interact with your opponents win condition. In MTG you can counter their spells, use instants to disrupt chain of events, and make them discard cards from their hand. For a rock-paper-scissors game design to work well it has to feel like you could still have done something. Decks that rely on uninteractive win conditions like OTK, bomb warrior and to a lesser extent tickatus lock feels like shit to play against because you can't prevent them from playing the cards that screw you over. There is no targeted disruption in Hearthstone.
RNG and resource generation: Playing around stuff used to be a thing, right? Would you still say you do that? Maybe. I do sometimes, but an equal amount of the time I get screwed over by a card I could not have guessed my opponent would have. A druid with Murozond, a mage with five frostbolts in a row, the list goes on. Resource generation has removed a big layer of strategy from the game. Rogue and Mage are good examples of this. They don't draw cards from their deck as much as they create random cards. And random cards are unpredictable to a fault.
Now let's talk about RNG. Remember when that Reno hero power mashed out a Plague of Death at just the right moment? Or when it assassinated your own big minion just as you were going for the win? Remember when you played Yogg and it pyroblasted yourself in the face three times, making you lose? These are not outcomes you were in control over. They were completely luck-based, not just in the cards they generated but in what they targeted. RNG is a big part of the game now, and people (including myself) think it can be fun. But it is not competitive, at least not with the huge swings it can generate. I actually think discover is the lesser evil here compared to random targeting, random discard and the likes. It removes strategy, favouring "youtube moments" or whatever you want to call it.
And this is why midrange is mostly dead apart from arguably pure paladin sometimes. But that deck is both a midrange deck and a control deck all in one. Swing turns are simply too powerful for a deck to rely on curving out nicely and applying steady pressure. You either go balls out aggro or you go ramp, control or OTK. And sometimes you queue into a counter-deck and lose. I'd argue this is why netdecking is so prevalent, since the good decks just do such powerful stuff that playing anything else is a no-go.
Now I fully realise that the nature of card games is that they will be like this sometimes. Aggro can dump on you just as hard as an otk deck. But for a deck to be considered "good" in this game it should sport a win-rate somewhere around 52-55 %. It wins basically half the time. If you're good that percentage goes up to maybe 60%, or 70-80% if you're playing a broken deck.
With all that said, I still enjoy the game. It's fun most of the time, I like trying new stuff and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm just disappointed at the direction the game has taken since the start. I had more fun playing curvestone than I do playing RNG-stone, if you call it that.
Sorry if this was a bit incoherent, I wrote it just before going to bed. What are your views on the current state of the game?
First of all, we'd have to agree on some boundaries to the discussion. There are plenty of decks I see out there from time to time which would have large meta implications if they were able to achieve any sort of solid win rate against the field, but they never have. Mozaki mage falls squarely into that category, and my attitude towards that deck is therefore, "let the memer have his fun," when it occasionally takes a win off me. I just refuse to really entertain some huge concern about a deck like that. But for the sake of argument, we'll be fairly conservative about which decks we put in that category and NOT include Tickatus Lock. I certainly have maintained a 50%+ winrate with it, though not by much, but that's a whole 'nother discussion, and I'd encourage future responders to not turn this into the 6th Tickatus complaint thread.
Regarding rock-paper-scissors, we'd have to discuss what constitutes a win rate at which one could say something was a "rock" to an opponent's "scissors". A few times, there have been control v control matchups where something in the card interactions combined with the fact that most games allowed both players to see their entire decks (thereby eliminating the "it was the bottom card" losses) to make the win rates very near to a literal 100% one way. But I realize that high a win rate is not necessary to create the phenomenon you're talking about. Looking at the stats, there are a lot of polarized matches, but I wish I had kept various stats from previous years, because I don't think the current state of affairs is anywhere near as polarized as it has been in the past. Despite the endless Tickatus complaining, the reality is a wide variety of slower decks hold their own against it on a statistical basis, and some aggro decks have a commanding lead in the matchup, as expected.
Honestly, I look at the "rock/paper/scissors" complaint as a less eloquent way of saying, "the expected outcome of games is difficult to avoid".
And I've always thought that was the fun of the game. We all know control > aggro > combo > control . . . or at least, we know that's how it's supposed to be. But both during deck construction, and during the games themselves, the object is to find the margins where that expectation can be confounded. Frankly, I often find that the "expected" outcome as defined by winrates across the entire game is not remotely representative of my personal experience. Contrary to endless complaint posts (I'm sorry I have to say that so much, but it's accurate every time), there is room for individual play and individual deck choices to effect the game in a huge way.
Regarding huge swing turns, in any given meta anyone is free to like or dislike the options available for combos or other card interactions that produce powerful results. That part is pure opinion. But I vividly remember the first time I watched Miracle Rogue draw and play over half its deck on one turn and burn me out the next turn while I sat helpless before his stealthed Malygos. I knew that day that this game was not going to be a simple tempo race where each player tried to use all their mana each turn and smoothly ramp into larger and larger creatures while trying to make the best combat trades. It is often a tempo race, don't get me wrong, but it's not a linear progression of tempo.
Again, I don't really think we want it to be. In Vanilla, there was a shell of neutral cards like Knife Juggler, Shattered Sun Cleric, Yeti, etc. which appeared in nearly every competitive deck in the game, and failing to draw your turn one and/or turn two play basically decided the game. I don't pine for a return to those days, and the only way they can be avoided is to have "catch up" options that can recover a slow early game. Whether or not Turn 4 Alura, Coin, Tip the Scales is too much catching up is a more detailed argument than we are having here, but catching up as a concept is necessary, IMO.
I might also add that you drew distinctions between Hearthstone and Magic with regards to Magic's ability to interact with the opponent's win condition via counter magic and opposing turn play in general. First, Hearthstone does have ways to interact with the opponent's hand and deck, though I will certainly admit they are limited compared to Mtg. Second, as we are seeing from Tickatus discussions, Hearthstone players react downright violently when Blizzard goes even a few steps down that road. And there is some irony in the fact that people criticize Tick Lock because there is "no counterplay". I'm not speaking of OP when I say this; he seems to be fairly consistent in this post, but for a lot of folks, the seemless transition between complaints about swing turns, complaints about disruption, complaints about the inability to disrupt disruption, etc. just seem to boil down to "there's a card I don't like in standard". If Illucia was a neutral card, she'd have been tarred and feathered far worse than Tickatus, despite being exactly the sort of "counter play" being requested.
I hope a few folks made it to this last point, because this one strikes me as the most important.
With regards to playing around cards and the inability to do so due to all the discovering and other such random card generation . . .
I think it's a deliciously complicated pitfall in game balance and design. Leaving out the balance considerations (because you'd have to go card by card, class by class), the other design considerations are funny. In one way, the game is dumbed down in that you have no idea what your opponent has, or even what class the cards are from (sometimes). But in a lot of circumstances, it is far more complicated and challenging to try to maximize the number of possibilities you CAN play around. I have seen plenty of times in tournaments where players have clearly been compensating for as many factors as possible, and a couple of times where a person has, by carefully keeping track of how long someone held a card after generating it, been able to narrow it down to the exact card in hand. SO, I am hesitant to trust most players (including myself) to know when a situation has been lost to complete randomness and when a situation is giving off all sorts of information for a good player.
Now, getting away from the theoretical for a moment, I have been spending a lot of time playing Highlander Mage and Highlander Control Shaman lately. One of the huge issues with both is they have few or no huge swing turns of their own, and have to manage resources very carefully to avoid dying to the opponent's big swing turns. I had a LONG drawn out game playing mage against a priest, and it was the sort of game where everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. I had C'thun in the deck and deliberately played the components as soon as they were drawn after turn 8 to avoid Illucia. Nevertheless, he played illucia, sacrificed his Thalnos to draw a card, and sure enough caught one of the components, so that threat was gone. My Dragon Queen got me Fairie Dragon and Crimson . . . whatever it's called, the 3/6 guy who spellbursts for 1 attack and taunt. My Yogg got the Puzzle Box and killed himself. The only thing I had going for me was being even on fatigue and considerably ahead in life. When his deck runs out, he finally plays his DQ Alex. I look over at my wife and tell her, "Nozari or I've got him". He got Nozari.
I went over the replay and though I never state this as a certainty, there were no mistakes that I could spot. He healed 22 life with Nozari, and that was the deciding factor of the game. So at that point, as a player I have a choice to make. I can rant about losing to an RNG moment, or I can take note that in a very long game, in a situation where I am very much expected to lose (note, I mean in the situation where he eliminated C'thun and my DQ Alex was a complete blank), I managed to outlast a Galakrond Priest and he had to pull the 1 in however-many-dragons-there-are chance to win. If you can't look on the bright side of that, go play chess!
Seriously, go play chess. That's not a joke or a put-down. You will never lose to RNG in chess (no, you don't lose because you got black pieces). Playing a card game is a different mentality, and part of that mentality is being able to take the RNG and move on.
EDIT: The first response to this responded very poorly to this paragraph, so I just want to make clear. I'm not saying get out of Hearthstone or anything like that. You just might actually like chess.
For whatever all of that is worth to the discussion.
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The games have become less about resource management and more about having turns so powerful they win you the game. The problem is that while this might be fun for the player piloting the deck, it is less so for the player facing it.
But, you say, some decks should beat others. That's just the nature of rock-paper-scissors game design. Yes it is! But compared to MTG for example Hearthstone has no way to interact with your opponents win condition. In MTG you can counter their spells, use instants to disrupt chain of events, and make them discard cards from their hand. For a rock-paper-scissors game design to work well it has to feel like you could still have done something. Decks that rely on uninteractive win conditions like OTK, bomb warrior and to a lesser extent tickatus lock feels like shit to play against because you can't prevent them from playing the cards that screw you over. There is no targeted disruption in Hearthstone.
As Shadowrisen already hinted at, the idea of counters is partially what you describe as "uninteractive". Tickatus is a very slow card that destroys some of the opponent's cards. It usually only affects decks that mean to win with an OTK or in a drawn out control game. It IS one of the disruption tools you are asking for. And OTKs are supposed to counter decks that are packed with removals and mostly rely on making it impossible for the opponent to win with their board. If Control could Counter combo reliably, what is Control supposed to lose to?
I don't want to make any assumptions about you, but having seen similar arguments way too often, Control is not the way the game is "meant" to be played, neither is it the "honorable" way to play, or anything alike. It's a playstyle that needs to have weaknesses like any other. And while OTKs or other win conditions like King Togwaggle might not be fun to play against, they are fair within the limtis of the game.
Hearthstone is not a game where matches are meant to last forever, Archivist Elysiana aside. The structure of the game intends (most) matches to be decided within a relatively small number of turns. Maybe it favors fast decks a bit more than it should, and we can argue about how long games should at least be, but OTK decks do not conflict with that idea. People who want to play slow control decks need to accept that their playstyle isn't fun for everyone else either, and as rarely as OTKs ever even make it into the meta, they need to be a possibility to keep the meta open for changes.
Seriously, go play chess. That's not a joke or a put-down. You will never lose to RNG in chess (no, you don't lose because you got black pieces). Playing a card game is a different mentality, and part of that mentality is being able to take the RNG and move on.
Sorry, but that is (and has always been) a stupid response. I can agree with most of what you said (as usual), and it's nice that you can see losing to a Nozari clawed from the devil's own hand as "part of the game", but that is still, in my opinion, a really stupid argument.
There's the "RNG" of shuffling decks, drawing cards in a certain order etc in every card game. In those that allow it, there are things like coinflips, and dicerolls (let's say D20, though D6 is/was more common normally). And then there's Hearthstone's 1 in X chances. That one dragon out of a 40, that one Mage spell out of 50, that one random legendary out of 200 (just example numbers) etc. etc. Discover making it slightly less random by letting you choose one out of 3 out of X. But most of those X's are already rather high in Standard, and grow indefinitely in Wild. And those effects are so common and cheap to use, that most decks run some forms of them.
All card games have a random element to them, and it's also fair for a purely digital card game to have "crazy" effects that could not be repeated with physical card games. But in my opinion that is no reason to put 0 limits on the amount and impact of RNG.
I know Hearthstone players really struggle with the color "grey" as everything needs to be either black or white, but can we maybe have something between "50% win the game" and "just play chess"?
I mean, if we had a card like a 10 mana 1/1 minion with the effect "Battlecry: Destroy a random hero", would that really be your response? "Can't happen in chest, just go play that instead"? Not to mention that Yogg-Saron (both versions) come pretty close to providing that under layers of randomness. It's impossible to predict the exact outcome, and it's lower than 50%, but the chance of winning (or losing) the game regardless of any previous event or current board state is almost always there.
It's not even like Hearthstone has always been like this, despite what some people claim. There was always some sort of randomness, even beyond the shuffle aspect, but the loads of random card generators, spell casters etc. we have nowadays are a good deal different than Imp-losion hitting for 4.
Even for as much as Hearthstone embraces the randomness as part of its identity, it still likes to describe itself as a strategic esports title. Even for all the talk of defenders about "minimizing risks" or the "skill of adapting to unpredictable events", some effects are so immediate and potentially massive that there's little else to them but dumb luck. And considering the impact of the dozens and dozens of smaller effects we have in the game, to the point even developers aknowledge that it's getting a little out of hand, maybe we can agree to tone it down just a little bit, before everyone with a slightly different opinion is better advised to play chess instead (like there is no other game out there).
It's not an argument. I'm not saying "there's no place for these people" in Hearthstone. I'm literally suggesting you might enjoy chess if you really want to fully eliminate the RNG component.
I'm sorry if it came off differently, but the concept of minimizing RNG in a card game is night and day different from playing a game where there is no aspect of RNG. It's literally just a hobby you might like better.
I love chess. Thousands of years of history and hilarity. Just a suggestion.
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So after I write that long post, I decide I'm going to try that meme deck that acts like it's Tickatus, but is actually the new Rustwix legendary with Vectus and Felosophy. Basically just Quest Lock with a deck full of Primes.
Ended up against a Ramp Paladin. He does what Ramp Paladins do, turn 4 Nozdormu and go from there. He's running the version with a few less murlocs so he can run Carousel Gryph, Strongmen, etc. I end up playing a game where swing turn meets swing turn, and a board full of Carnival Clowns gets fought down FOUR TIMES in the game. Four full rows of clowns die to straight minion attacks. N'zoth got Nether'ed, but Y'shaarj got all the clowns, the strongmen, and the gryphon. In short, Ramp Paladin got the absolute max amount of threats the deck could generate, and the meme deck outfought it.
He messages me after the game, and I'm thinking, "this is gonna be good." And a ramp paladin player proceeds to unleash a torrent of abuse complete with all sorts of -isms, -phobias, and everything else you can imagine.
Clearly Rustwix needs to be banned. It's a brainless card that injects huge amounts of expensive cards, some of which I get to play for free. As a matter of fact, I played more power of minions for free via the quest than Y'shaarj has ever generated. So clearly we have another problem here.
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I feel like in the early days of Hearthstone the RNG element was actually somewhat controllable and there was clearly a certain skill involved in making certain plays. For example:
You have 2/2, opponent has 3/3. You got Mad Bomber in hand. If you trade and then the Bomber whiffs all three shots, youre setting yourself up for a disaster, do you take the risk? When you calculate that there is actually around 70% chance that at least one of the bombs hits, you can see its actually good idea. Yea, sometimes you get screwed, but over long period of time (dozens of games), making the "smart" choice when it comes to RNG pays off.
Same with other older cards like Piloted Shredder - yes there was the occasional Doomsayer or Millhouse Manastorm. But that was also the part of the "skill". Knowing which 2-drops are in the pool, and how many of the possible outcomes are going to screw you and then deciding whether to go for it or not. But most of the time, it was just going to be just some random 2/2, 2/3 or 3/2 body without any significant effect.
So if you have Backstab in hand and two 3/2 minions, if you trade one of the 3/2s into the front part of the Shredder, you can estimate that about 70% of the time, youll be able to backstab the deathrattle part, if its 2/1, 2/2, 3/2, 3/1. Around 15% of the time its gonna be 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 - so you can kill it with the other 3/2, and only around 15% of the time its gonna be 2/3.
But today the randomness seems a bit too much "spread out". When something generates a random spell, well it can be Frostbolt or Flamestrike or Pyroblast. The variance is simply too high. Considering theres about 50 Mage spells valid in standard, it results in a situation where its actually smarter not to play around anything. Because if you do play around something, youre making the wrong choice 98% of the time.
Lets say for instance enemy Paladin has 3/3 minion and Oh My Yogg!. You have Holy Smite and Shadow Word: Pain, so youre going to try to kill it with the second spell. But which one you play first? Is random 1-drop spell better, or random 2-drop spell better? The pool for both cards is simply too big and the number of outlier spells that can produce huge swings is high. You might think that 2-cost spell must be better than 1-cost, right? Well theres also lot more buffs for 2-mana that can buff the minion out of range of your Holy Smite... Same thing if the 1-cost spell buffs its attack (making it 4 or higher therefore nullifying the option to kill it with SW: Pain). Tell me - how many people know the ratio of 1-cost attack buffing spells vs. 2-cost health buffing spells across all 10 classes from the top of their head? In the end the best decision is just "do whatever" and hope. There are no smart choices.
Ythiel illustrated very well that simultaneous complication and dumbing down of the game, though he/she seems to lean more towards dumbing down.
It's somewhat of an opinion, but I actually thought your two examples illustrated one of each situation for me. The variance of all the mage spells is nearly impossible to credibly "play around". But the question of variance of 1 vs 2 cost spells and how many are harmful vs helpful . . . in standard at least, I'm not sure that's something that you couldn't at least make an educated stab at on the fly.
I don't know, I'd have to run the numbers. Off the top of my head, seems very clear you'd want to play the 1 mana spell first. I'm just working thru all the one and two mana spells I know, and what I'm thinking is that with all the discover "studies" spells, you're looking at a sizably better chance of getting a random spell which helps you in the 1-cost category. That sort of question is interesting enough that I wouldn't be just rolling my eyes saying, "lul, time to roll the dice".
Just me.
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Totally agree with OP. The game is casino style and that’s what keeps people playing (and paying) more. It’s no secret that hearthstone model is entirely based on psychology.
That random card that your opponent got and you lost? Makes you want to play the same deck, craft more cards, play one more game to get revenge. The Rock Paper Scissors combined with the matchmaking algorithm makes it an endless loop that only benefits blizzard in the end
You know what, i a made a rant post about the current situation from the gamedesign perspective wich is like „No answer to this or that turn? - your dead“
I went over the replay and though I never state this as a certainty, there were no mistakes that I could spot. He healed 22 life with Nozari, and that was the deciding factor of the game. So at that point, as a player I have a choice to make. I can rant about losing to an RNG moment, or I can take note that in a very long game, in a situation where I am very much expected to lose (note, I mean in the situation where he eliminated C'thun and my DQ Alex was a complete blank), I managed to outlast a Galakrond Priest and he had to pull the 1 in however-many-dragons-there-are chance to win.
As a primarily mage player myself, I think it's important to accept RNG in all its forms. And it's a matter of perspective and your ability to deal with the good and the bad that will either make a player the forum rage-troll type of person, or a Shadowrisen type of person.
I can understand that coming from the perspective of a person who has perhaps played the game since launch (not me, in this case), the changes to the amount of RNG, discover and the like can seem like it's too much, but I do believe its necessary. It's really what gives the game excitement. Not knowing the outcome, playing the best game you can with what you are given and adapting to win is very satisfying.
That said, do I think this game deserves to be an "e-Sport" and have people play it competitively in tournaments for money? I really don't... it really surprised me to discover that this game had such events all year 'round. But that's just my opinion and not the topic at hand.
I guess there will always be people who want to be competitive and take this game very seriously, but personally, I think this type of game is best enjoyed without stakes on the table and with an open mind to all possible outcomes.
On the subject of esports, it's funny, I remember back around the year 2000, the movie Rounders came out, and all of a sudden, you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing a poker event on ESPN, Travel, all sorts of channels. And though they tried very hard, and were successful for a while, the poker scene was never going to survive on TV long term. At least not with a large audience; I suppose there is still a niche for it.
Because poker, as a game, is all about the long term. There were 15 years in a row where the final table of the WSOP had no return players from the year before, because in any one tournament, the variance of the game is so high, it's impossible for player skill to win out enough to consistently win single events. The only way the highest level poker players make themselves known is over months, even years, of play, where consistent good play can finally overcome the variance of the game after thousands and millions of hands.
Some people love it, some people hate it. But either way, it's never going to make for a sport where you can root for your favorites and have much hope of them winning any particular event.
To be fair, Hearthstone is nowhere near that bad. A few players have been able to overcome the RNG and stay consistent some years. On the other hand, those players are few and far between, and some years it does seem like the most random of folks end up in the top spots. But tournament Hearthstone brings with it a few considerations that just don't exist on the ladder, and the vast majority of the player base knows very little about tourney formats and the methods players use to select decks to beat the field. I usually keep things focused on ladder play here.
To each their own with regards to the esports scene. Personally, after the rash of firings, fines, and suspensions throughout many professional leagues for hurt feefees and bad words, I have lost all interest in supporting such things myself.
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You have 2/2, opponent has 3/3. You got Mad Bomber in hand. If you trade and then the Bomber whiffs all three shots, youre setting yourself up for a disaster, do you take the risk? When you calculate that there is actually around 70% chance that at least one of the bombs hits, you can see its actually good idea. Yea, sometimes you get screwed, but over long period of time (dozens of games), making the "smart" choice when it comes to RNG pays off.
There has always been a lot of pure RNG interactions in this game, I just think we forget them too quickly. The first ballot HOF had Sylvanas Windrunner and Ragnaros the Firelord. Yes, there were skillful use of both, but there were also longshot hail Marys and coinflips deciding games. Knife Juggler did the same thing but earlier, and Tinkmaster Overspark was nerfed to the ground for a reason.
But I agree with the OP that the explosiveness of the game should be toned down, and in Wild, the game has been pushed even farther in that direction. I remember playing a big shaman vs big priest game, where he summoned 40+ Mana worth of minions on both turn 5 and 6. I know that is not the norm, but it explains why even powerhouse mid-range decks like Even shaman and Cubelock are barely viable.
I feel like in the early days of Hearthstone the RNG element was actually somewhat controllable and there was clearly a certain skill involved in making certain plays. For example:
The difference is in the early days of hearthstone "RNG" cards were negligible because they were mostly not very good. And typically were *far* too feast or famine. Even now, counterspell and freezing trap and whether you have an answer to them can easily decide games.
Random effects that summon minions are high variance, recruit is potentially high variance, but generating cards really isn't. Getting blasted in the face by Fireball or Frostbolt is something that could have happened if they ran it in their deck and played Arcane Intellect. If you lose in that situation you were probably not in a strong position and going to lose anyway. Losing to a priest who just keeps generating cards (when priest spells and minions in the current standard set don't vary much in power at all) means they were able to outvalue you. Which is a strength of Priest.
What's a bigger issue, is that discover mechanics allow adaptability but if you don't have those randomly generated effects or discover effects you don't have adaptability, and I guess that can feel lousy. But GENERALLY speaking, most of the "random" effects people whine about nowadays aren't all that random.
I've been thinking about this for a long time now and decided to write something about it. It is basically my view of the game as it stands today, with the highs and the lows and why I think hearthstone should not be called a competitive game, but a fun one to pass the time with. Feel free to agree or disagree and point out where I'm looking at it from the wrong angle :)
As Hearthstone has aged and we've gotten access to more and more powerful cards, the game has become less about managing resources and more about three things: broken turns, RNG, and resource generation. I'll go over them all below and why I think it makes for a less fun game. I want to start out with a disclaimer that this will not be an "I lost to this", or an "I hate this type of deck"-post, I just want to share my thoughts. I got legend with what some might call the degenerate ramp paladin deck last month. It was my third time reaching legend. I've also played tickatus lock, rez priest and lots of home-brewed or "meme"-decks.
Broken turns: We all know the feeling, right? You pull off something so insane that you just instawin, and you get that nice kick of dopamine that starts out in your head and nestles its way down to your tummy. But is it really fun in the long run, or good game design to stray from the path of fighting for resources to "I drew this so I win unless you're playing this class and this card". The new ramp paladin is a good example. I can think of one class that can beat a turn four/five tip the scales and that's warrior, if he draws brawl. The chance for the warrior to draw brawl is about the same as it is for the paladin to get a tip the scales out at turn five. What do the other classes do? Nothing, they lose.
The problem is prevalent in a lesser scale when you have decks that hard counter other archetypes. Tickatus into Y'shaarj versus a slow deck, most of the time you can't come back from it and there was nothing you could do about it other than play another deck. Rez priest throwing a grave runes on a convincing infiltrator versus a big deck. Mozaki mage is similar even though it's not doing as well on ladder. Sometimes they just draw the combo by turn 8 or something and you die. No counterplay. Yogg is another example: sometimes it does something so powerful you just win the game on the spot. The games have become less about resource management and more about having turns so powerful they win you the game. The problem is that while this might be fun for the player piloting the deck, it is less so for the player facing it.
But, you say, some decks should beat others. That's just the nature of rock-paper-scissors game design. Yes it is! But compared to MTG for example Hearthstone has no way to interact with your opponents win condition. In MTG you can counter their spells, use instants to disrupt chain of events, and make them discard cards from their hand. For a rock-paper-scissors game design to work well it has to feel like you could still have done something. Decks that rely on uninteractive win conditions like OTK, bomb warrior and to a lesser extent tickatus lock feels like shit to play against because you can't prevent them from playing the cards that screw you over. There is no targeted disruption in Hearthstone.
RNG and resource generation: Playing around stuff used to be a thing, right? Would you still say you do that? Maybe. I do sometimes, but an equal amount of the time I get screwed over by a card I could not have guessed my opponent would have. A druid with Murozond, a mage with five frostbolts in a row, the list goes on. Resource generation has removed a big layer of strategy from the game. Rogue and Mage are good examples of this. They don't draw cards from their deck as much as they create random cards. And random cards are unpredictable to a fault.
Now let's talk about RNG. Remember when that Reno hero power mashed out a Plague of Death at just the right moment? Or when it assassinated your own big minion just as you were going for the win? Remember when you played Yogg and it pyroblasted yourself in the face three times, making you lose? These are not outcomes you were in control over. They were completely luck-based, not just in the cards they generated but in what they targeted. RNG is a big part of the game now, and people (including myself) think it can be fun. But it is not competitive, at least not with the huge swings it can generate. I actually think discover is the lesser evil here compared to random targeting, random discard and the likes. It removes strategy, favouring "youtube moments" or whatever you want to call it.
And this is why midrange is mostly dead apart from arguably pure paladin sometimes. But that deck is both a midrange deck and a control deck all in one. Swing turns are simply too powerful for a deck to rely on curving out nicely and applying steady pressure. You either go balls out aggro or you go ramp, control or OTK. And sometimes you queue into a counter-deck and lose. I'd argue this is why netdecking is so prevalent, since the good decks just do such powerful stuff that playing anything else is a no-go.
Now I fully realise that the nature of card games is that they will be like this sometimes. Aggro can dump on you just as hard as an otk deck. But for a deck to be considered "good" in this game it should sport a win-rate somewhere around 52-55 %. It wins basically half the time. If you're good that percentage goes up to maybe 60%, or 70-80% if you're playing a broken deck.
With all that said, I still enjoy the game. It's fun most of the time, I like trying new stuff and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm just disappointed at the direction the game has taken since the start. I had more fun playing curvestone than I do playing RNG-stone, if you call it that.
Sorry if this was a bit incoherent, I wrote it just before going to bed. What are your views on the current state of the game?
First of all, we'd have to agree on some boundaries to the discussion. There are plenty of decks I see out there from time to time which would have large meta implications if they were able to achieve any sort of solid win rate against the field, but they never have. Mozaki mage falls squarely into that category, and my attitude towards that deck is therefore, "let the memer have his fun," when it occasionally takes a win off me. I just refuse to really entertain some huge concern about a deck like that. But for the sake of argument, we'll be fairly conservative about which decks we put in that category and NOT include Tickatus Lock. I certainly have maintained a 50%+ winrate with it, though not by much, but that's a whole 'nother discussion, and I'd encourage future responders to not turn this into the 6th Tickatus complaint thread.
Regarding rock-paper-scissors, we'd have to discuss what constitutes a win rate at which one could say something was a "rock" to an opponent's "scissors". A few times, there have been control v control matchups where something in the card interactions combined with the fact that most games allowed both players to see their entire decks (thereby eliminating the "it was the bottom card" losses) to make the win rates very near to a literal 100% one way. But I realize that high a win rate is not necessary to create the phenomenon you're talking about. Looking at the stats, there are a lot of polarized matches, but I wish I had kept various stats from previous years, because I don't think the current state of affairs is anywhere near as polarized as it has been in the past. Despite the endless Tickatus complaining, the reality is a wide variety of slower decks hold their own against it on a statistical basis, and some aggro decks have a commanding lead in the matchup, as expected.
Honestly, I look at the "rock/paper/scissors" complaint as a less eloquent way of saying, "the expected outcome of games is difficult to avoid".
And I've always thought that was the fun of the game. We all know control > aggro > combo > control . . . or at least, we know that's how it's supposed to be. But both during deck construction, and during the games themselves, the object is to find the margins where that expectation can be confounded. Frankly, I often find that the "expected" outcome as defined by winrates across the entire game is not remotely representative of my personal experience. Contrary to endless complaint posts (I'm sorry I have to say that so much, but it's accurate every time), there is room for individual play and individual deck choices to effect the game in a huge way.
Regarding huge swing turns, in any given meta anyone is free to like or dislike the options available for combos or other card interactions that produce powerful results. That part is pure opinion. But I vividly remember the first time I watched Miracle Rogue draw and play over half its deck on one turn and burn me out the next turn while I sat helpless before his stealthed Malygos. I knew that day that this game was not going to be a simple tempo race where each player tried to use all their mana each turn and smoothly ramp into larger and larger creatures while trying to make the best combat trades. It is often a tempo race, don't get me wrong, but it's not a linear progression of tempo.
Again, I don't really think we want it to be. In Vanilla, there was a shell of neutral cards like Knife Juggler, Shattered Sun Cleric, Yeti, etc. which appeared in nearly every competitive deck in the game, and failing to draw your turn one and/or turn two play basically decided the game. I don't pine for a return to those days, and the only way they can be avoided is to have "catch up" options that can recover a slow early game. Whether or not Turn 4 Alura, Coin, Tip the Scales is too much catching up is a more detailed argument than we are having here, but catching up as a concept is necessary, IMO.
I might also add that you drew distinctions between Hearthstone and Magic with regards to Magic's ability to interact with the opponent's win condition via counter magic and opposing turn play in general. First, Hearthstone does have ways to interact with the opponent's hand and deck, though I will certainly admit they are limited compared to Mtg. Second, as we are seeing from Tickatus discussions, Hearthstone players react downright violently when Blizzard goes even a few steps down that road. And there is some irony in the fact that people criticize Tick Lock because there is "no counterplay". I'm not speaking of OP when I say this; he seems to be fairly consistent in this post, but for a lot of folks, the seemless transition between complaints about swing turns, complaints about disruption, complaints about the inability to disrupt disruption, etc. just seem to boil down to "there's a card I don't like in standard". If Illucia was a neutral card, she'd have been tarred and feathered far worse than Tickatus, despite being exactly the sort of "counter play" being requested.
I hope a few folks made it to this last point, because this one strikes me as the most important.
With regards to playing around cards and the inability to do so due to all the discovering and other such random card generation . . .
I think it's a deliciously complicated pitfall in game balance and design. Leaving out the balance considerations (because you'd have to go card by card, class by class), the other design considerations are funny. In one way, the game is dumbed down in that you have no idea what your opponent has, or even what class the cards are from (sometimes). But in a lot of circumstances, it is far more complicated and challenging to try to maximize the number of possibilities you CAN play around. I have seen plenty of times in tournaments where players have clearly been compensating for as many factors as possible, and a couple of times where a person has, by carefully keeping track of how long someone held a card after generating it, been able to narrow it down to the exact card in hand. SO, I am hesitant to trust most players (including myself) to know when a situation has been lost to complete randomness and when a situation is giving off all sorts of information for a good player.
Now, getting away from the theoretical for a moment, I have been spending a lot of time playing Highlander Mage and Highlander Control Shaman lately. One of the huge issues with both is they have few or no huge swing turns of their own, and have to manage resources very carefully to avoid dying to the opponent's big swing turns. I had a LONG drawn out game playing mage against a priest, and it was the sort of game where everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. I had C'thun in the deck and deliberately played the components as soon as they were drawn after turn 8 to avoid Illucia. Nevertheless, he played illucia, sacrificed his Thalnos to draw a card, and sure enough caught one of the components, so that threat was gone. My Dragon Queen got me Fairie Dragon and Crimson . . . whatever it's called, the 3/6 guy who spellbursts for 1 attack and taunt. My Yogg got the Puzzle Box and killed himself. The only thing I had going for me was being even on fatigue and considerably ahead in life. When his deck runs out, he finally plays his DQ Alex. I look over at my wife and tell her, "Nozari or I've got him". He got Nozari.
I went over the replay and though I never state this as a certainty, there were no mistakes that I could spot. He healed 22 life with Nozari, and that was the deciding factor of the game. So at that point, as a player I have a choice to make. I can rant about losing to an RNG moment, or I can take note that in a very long game, in a situation where I am very much expected to lose (note, I mean in the situation where he eliminated C'thun and my DQ Alex was a complete blank), I managed to outlast a Galakrond Priest and he had to pull the 1 in however-many-dragons-there-are chance to win. If you can't look on the bright side of that, go play chess!
Seriously, go play chess. That's not a joke or a put-down. You will never lose to RNG in chess (no, you don't lose because you got black pieces). Playing a card game is a different mentality, and part of that mentality is being able to take the RNG and move on.
EDIT: The first response to this responded very poorly to this paragraph, so I just want to make clear. I'm not saying get out of Hearthstone or anything like that. You just might actually like chess.
For whatever all of that is worth to the discussion.
TL;DR: Read something else.
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As Shadowrisen already hinted at, the idea of counters is partially what you describe as "uninteractive". Tickatus is a very slow card that destroys some of the opponent's cards. It usually only affects decks that mean to win with an OTK or in a drawn out control game. It IS one of the disruption tools you are asking for. And OTKs are supposed to counter decks that are packed with removals and mostly rely on making it impossible for the opponent to win with their board. If Control could Counter combo reliably, what is Control supposed to lose to?
I don't want to make any assumptions about you, but having seen similar arguments way too often, Control is not the way the game is "meant" to be played, neither is it the "honorable" way to play, or anything alike. It's a playstyle that needs to have weaknesses like any other. And while OTKs or other win conditions like King Togwaggle might not be fun to play against, they are fair within the limtis of the game.
Hearthstone is not a game where matches are meant to last forever, Archivist Elysiana aside. The structure of the game intends (most) matches to be decided within a relatively small number of turns. Maybe it favors fast decks a bit more than it should, and we can argue about how long games should at least be, but OTK decks do not conflict with that idea. People who want to play slow control decks need to accept that their playstyle isn't fun for everyone else either, and as rarely as OTKs ever even make it into the meta, they need to be a possibility to keep the meta open for changes.
Sorry, but that is (and has always been) a stupid response. I can agree with most of what you said (as usual), and it's nice that you can see losing to a Nozari clawed from the devil's own hand as "part of the game", but that is still, in my opinion, a really stupid argument.
There's the "RNG" of shuffling decks, drawing cards in a certain order etc in every card game. In those that allow it, there are things like coinflips, and dicerolls (let's say D20, though D6 is/was more common normally). And then there's Hearthstone's 1 in X chances. That one dragon out of a 40, that one Mage spell out of 50, that one random legendary out of 200 (just example numbers) etc. etc. Discover making it slightly less random by letting you choose one out of 3 out of X. But most of those X's are already rather high in Standard, and grow indefinitely in Wild. And those effects are so common and cheap to use, that most decks run some forms of them.
All card games have a random element to them, and it's also fair for a purely digital card game to have "crazy" effects that could not be repeated with physical card games. But in my opinion that is no reason to put 0 limits on the amount and impact of RNG.
I know Hearthstone players really struggle with the color "grey" as everything needs to be either black or white, but can we maybe have something between "50% win the game" and "just play chess"?
I mean, if we had a card like a 10 mana 1/1 minion with the effect "Battlecry: Destroy a random hero", would that really be your response? "Can't happen in chest, just go play that instead"? Not to mention that Yogg-Saron (both versions) come pretty close to providing that under layers of randomness. It's impossible to predict the exact outcome, and it's lower than 50%, but the chance of winning (or losing) the game regardless of any previous event or current board state is almost always there.
It's not even like Hearthstone has always been like this, despite what some people claim. There was always some sort of randomness, even beyond the shuffle aspect, but the loads of random card generators, spell casters etc. we have nowadays are a good deal different than Imp-losion hitting for 4.
Even for as much as Hearthstone embraces the randomness as part of its identity, it still likes to describe itself as a strategic esports title. Even for all the talk of defenders about "minimizing risks" or the "skill of adapting to unpredictable events", some effects are so immediate and potentially massive that there's little else to them but dumb luck. And considering the impact of the dozens and dozens of smaller effects we have in the game, to the point even developers aknowledge that it's getting a little out of hand, maybe we can agree to tone it down just a little bit, before everyone with a slightly different opinion is better advised to play chess instead (like there is no other game out there).
It's not an argument. I'm not saying "there's no place for these people" in Hearthstone. I'm literally suggesting you might enjoy chess if you really want to fully eliminate the RNG component.
I'm sorry if it came off differently, but the concept of minimizing RNG in a card game is night and day different from playing a game where there is no aspect of RNG. It's literally just a hobby you might like better.
I love chess. Thousands of years of history and hilarity. Just a suggestion.
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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.
So after I write that long post, I decide I'm going to try that meme deck that acts like it's Tickatus, but is actually the new Rustwix legendary with Vectus and Felosophy. Basically just Quest Lock with a deck full of Primes.
Ended up against a Ramp Paladin. He does what Ramp Paladins do, turn 4 Nozdormu and go from there. He's running the version with a few less murlocs so he can run Carousel Gryph, Strongmen, etc. I end up playing a game where swing turn meets swing turn, and a board full of Carnival Clowns gets fought down FOUR TIMES in the game. Four full rows of clowns die to straight minion attacks. N'zoth got Nether'ed, but Y'shaarj got all the clowns, the strongmen, and the gryphon. In short, Ramp Paladin got the absolute max amount of threats the deck could generate, and the meme deck outfought it.
He messages me after the game, and I'm thinking, "this is gonna be good." And a ramp paladin player proceeds to unleash a torrent of abuse complete with all sorts of -isms, -phobias, and everything else you can imagine.
Clearly Rustwix needs to be banned. It's a brainless card that injects huge amounts of expensive cards, some of which I get to play for free. As a matter of fact, I played more power of minions for free via the quest than Y'shaarj has ever generated. So clearly we have another problem here.
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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 feel like in the early days of Hearthstone the RNG element was actually somewhat controllable and there was clearly a certain skill involved in making certain plays. For example:
You have 2/2, opponent has 3/3. You got Mad Bomber in hand. If you trade and then the Bomber whiffs all three shots, youre setting yourself up for a disaster, do you take the risk? When you calculate that there is actually around 70% chance that at least one of the bombs hits, you can see its actually good idea. Yea, sometimes you get screwed, but over long period of time (dozens of games), making the "smart" choice when it comes to RNG pays off.
Same with other older cards like Piloted Shredder - yes there was the occasional Doomsayer or Millhouse Manastorm. But that was also the part of the "skill". Knowing which 2-drops are in the pool, and how many of the possible outcomes are going to screw you and then deciding whether to go for it or not. But most of the time, it was just going to be just some random 2/2, 2/3 or 3/2 body without any significant effect.
So if you have Backstab in hand and two 3/2 minions, if you trade one of the 3/2s into the front part of the Shredder, you can estimate that about 70% of the time, youll be able to backstab the deathrattle part, if its 2/1, 2/2, 3/2, 3/1. Around 15% of the time its gonna be 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 - so you can kill it with the other 3/2, and only around 15% of the time its gonna be 2/3.
But today the randomness seems a bit too much "spread out". When something generates a random spell, well it can be Frostbolt or Flamestrike or Pyroblast. The variance is simply too high. Considering theres about 50 Mage spells valid in standard, it results in a situation where its actually smarter not to play around anything. Because if you do play around something, youre making the wrong choice 98% of the time.
Lets say for instance enemy Paladin has 3/3 minion and Oh My Yogg!. You have Holy Smite and Shadow Word: Pain, so youre going to try to kill it with the second spell. But which one you play first? Is random 1-drop spell better, or random 2-drop spell better? The pool for both cards is simply too big and the number of outlier spells that can produce huge swings is high. You might think that 2-cost spell must be better than 1-cost, right? Well theres also lot more buffs for 2-mana that can buff the minion out of range of your Holy Smite... Same thing if the 1-cost spell buffs its attack (making it 4 or higher therefore nullifying the option to kill it with SW: Pain). Tell me - how many people know the ratio of 1-cost attack buffing spells vs. 2-cost health buffing spells across all 10 classes from the top of their head? In the end the best decision is just "do whatever" and hope. There are no smart choices.
Ythiel illustrated very well that simultaneous complication and dumbing down of the game, though he/she seems to lean more towards dumbing down.
It's somewhat of an opinion, but I actually thought your two examples illustrated one of each situation for me. The variance of all the mage spells is nearly impossible to credibly "play around". But the question of variance of 1 vs 2 cost spells and how many are harmful vs helpful . . . in standard at least, I'm not sure that's something that you couldn't at least make an educated stab at on the fly.
I don't know, I'd have to run the numbers. Off the top of my head, seems very clear you'd want to play the 1 mana spell first. I'm just working thru all the one and two mana spells I know, and what I'm thinking is that with all the discover "studies" spells, you're looking at a sizably better chance of getting a random spell which helps you in the 1-cost category. That sort of question is interesting enough that I wouldn't be just rolling my eyes saying, "lul, time to roll the dice".
Just me.
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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.
Totally agree with OP. The game is casino style and that’s what keeps people playing (and paying) more. It’s no secret that hearthstone model is entirely based on psychology.
That random card that your opponent got and you lost? Makes you want to play the same deck, craft more cards, play one more game to get revenge. The Rock Paper Scissors combined with the matchmaking algorithm makes it an endless loop that only benefits blizzard in the end
You know what, i a made a rant post about the current situation from the gamedesign perspective wich is like „No answer to this or that turn? - your dead“
i was downvoted so fucking hard
I got Lethaled 30 damage by this wall of text :)
Didn't read lol
As a primarily mage player myself, I think it's important to accept RNG in all its forms. And it's a matter of perspective and your ability to deal with the good and the bad that will either make a player the forum rage-troll type of person, or a Shadowrisen type of person.
I can understand that coming from the perspective of a person who has perhaps played the game since launch (not me, in this case), the changes to the amount of RNG, discover and the like can seem like it's too much, but I do believe its necessary. It's really what gives the game excitement. Not knowing the outcome, playing the best game you can with what you are given and adapting to win is very satisfying.
That said, do I think this game deserves to be an "e-Sport" and have people play it competitively in tournaments for money? I really don't... it really surprised me to discover that this game had such events all year 'round. But that's just my opinion and not the topic at hand.
I guess there will always be people who want to be competitive and take this game very seriously, but personally, I think this type of game is best enjoyed without stakes on the table and with an open mind to all possible outcomes.
On the subject of esports, it's funny, I remember back around the year 2000, the movie Rounders came out, and all of a sudden, you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing a poker event on ESPN, Travel, all sorts of channels. And though they tried very hard, and were successful for a while, the poker scene was never going to survive on TV long term. At least not with a large audience; I suppose there is still a niche for it.
Because poker, as a game, is all about the long term. There were 15 years in a row where the final table of the WSOP had no return players from the year before, because in any one tournament, the variance of the game is so high, it's impossible for player skill to win out enough to consistently win single events. The only way the highest level poker players make themselves known is over months, even years, of play, where consistent good play can finally overcome the variance of the game after thousands and millions of hands.
Some people love it, some people hate it. But either way, it's never going to make for a sport where you can root for your favorites and have much hope of them winning any particular event.
To be fair, Hearthstone is nowhere near that bad. A few players have been able to overcome the RNG and stay consistent some years. On the other hand, those players are few and far between, and some years it does seem like the most random of folks end up in the top spots. But tournament Hearthstone brings with it a few considerations that just don't exist on the ladder, and the vast majority of the player base knows very little about tourney formats and the methods players use to select decks to beat the field. I usually keep things focused on ladder play here.
To each their own with regards to the esports scene. Personally, after the rash of firings, fines, and suspensions throughout many professional leagues for hurt feefees and bad words, I have lost all interest in supporting such things myself.
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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.
There has always been a lot of pure RNG interactions in this game, I just think we forget them too quickly. The first ballot HOF had Sylvanas Windrunner and Ragnaros the Firelord. Yes, there were skillful use of both, but there were also longshot hail Marys and coinflips deciding games. Knife Juggler did the same thing but earlier, and Tinkmaster Overspark was nerfed to the ground for a reason.
But I agree with the OP that the explosiveness of the game should be toned down, and in Wild, the game has been pushed even farther in that direction. I remember playing a big shaman vs big priest game, where he summoned 40+ Mana worth of minions on both turn 5 and 6. I know that is not the norm, but it explains why even powerhouse mid-range decks like Even shaman and Cubelock are barely viable.
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The difference is in the early days of hearthstone "RNG" cards were negligible because they were mostly not very good. And typically were *far* too feast or famine. Even now, counterspell and freezing trap and whether you have an answer to them can easily decide games.
Random effects that summon minions are high variance, recruit is potentially high variance, but generating cards really isn't. Getting blasted in the face by Fireball or Frostbolt is something that could have happened if they ran it in their deck and played Arcane Intellect. If you lose in that situation you were probably not in a strong position and going to lose anyway. Losing to a priest who just keeps generating cards (when priest spells and minions in the current standard set don't vary much in power at all) means they were able to outvalue you. Which is a strength of Priest.
What's a bigger issue, is that discover mechanics allow adaptability but if you don't have those randomly generated effects or discover effects you don't have adaptability, and I guess that can feel lousy. But GENERALLY speaking, most of the "random" effects people whine about nowadays aren't all that random.
I agree with you on almost all points, but please bear in mind that mice warm their bacon with wool blankets in winter.