The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?
I am not agreeing with some arguments (or conspiracy theories or the very frequent GAME IS JUST LUCK crying) from gravytrainvan, but if you played other (card) games, you cannot really call HS a difficult game either. I would personally rate its difficulty and complexity levels a 2/10 and that's honestly fine. Just like every other game, of course it gets quite complicated when you are at the highest ranks, but HS is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase, which is definitely one of the reaons for its success. If you rate the difficulty of a game, you have to compare it to other games in general, not to top level gaming. These ranks aren't a reality for most players.
Yeah, Hearthstone has a comparatively low skill ceiling. If people could imagine it like a sine curve where the peak is canceled out by the trough, the larger the skill ceiling the larger the entry level.
Heartstone would have a pretty shallow curve.
The positives of this are that more players can enjoy the game, the negatives are that outside of min-maxing there isn’t really much you can do to change a match once you have an understanding of the games mechanics and have learned how to pilot your deck.
So at the top of the table you will always have the cream of the crop, as they are able to maximise their w/r (through min-maxing and reading the meta), however in the middle of the table games are far more likely to be decided by RNG or draws than they would if they game had greater complexity.
I think adding more complexity to the game would make it better, but as people have mentioned it would likely just cause a decline in the player base.
The statement "Hearthstone is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase" may be true in terms of that group's perception, but 99.9% of the player base's games are riddled with mistakes and sub-optimal play.
So, clearly the perception of a game's simplicity says nothing about its actual skill ceiling.
I've just watched for years as folks post about how simple the game is, or how luck is the predominant factor in game outcome (which, incidentally, is an objectively falsifiable claim, but that's for another day). My personal favorite is when someone talks about their "perfect play" falling repeatedly to cheap tactics or rigged matchmaking.
Whenever I have actually gotten one of these players to show me a replay of this alleged perfect play and the game has been over 7 turns long, there has ALWAYS been at least one clear and obvious mistake made by the "perfect" player. ALWAYS. And given they were the ones who volunteered the replay to prove their own point, this means that not only were they not good enough to not make the mistake, they weren't good enough to spot the mistake in hindsight.
All of the above points to the conclusion that most of the playerbase isn't particularly qualified to pass judgment on the skill ceiling of the game.
None of the above should be read to suggest that HS is the most complex of CCGs. I was on the MtG Pro Tour for a few years, so I know that is clearly not the case. On the other hand, if HS is a 2/10, I'd be curious to know what game constitutes a 10/10 in complexity.and/or difficulty. Difficulty can be dismissed as a purely subjective rating, but complexity cannot. I would be interested to know what qualifies as such a complex card game that HS is a re-skinned version of War by comparison.
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Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
The statement "Hearthstone is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase" may be true in terms of that group's perception, but 99.9% of the player base's games are riddled with mistakes and sub-optimal play.
So, clearly the perception of a game's simplicity says nothing about its actual skill ceiling.
I've just watched for years as folks post about how simple the game is, or how luck is the predominant factor in game outcome (which, incidentally, is an objectively falsifiable claim, but that's for another day). My personal favorite is when someone talks about their "perfect play" falling repeatedly to cheap tactics or rigged matchmaking.
Whenever I have actually gotten one of these players to show me a replay of this alleged perfect play and the game has been over 7 turns long, there has ALWAYS been at least one clear and obvious mistake made by the "perfect" player. ALWAYS. And given they were the ones who volunteered the replay to prove their own point, this means that not only were they not good enough to not make the mistake, they weren't good enough to spot the mistake in hindsight.
All of the above points to the conclusion that most of the playerbase isn't particularly qualified to pass judgment on the skill ceiling of the game.
None of the above should be read to suggest that HS is the most complex of CCGs. I was on the MtG Pro Tour for a few years, so I know that is clearly not the case. On the other hand, if HS is a 2/10, I'd be curious to know what game constitutes a 10/10 in complexity.and/or difficulty. Difficulty can be dismissed as a purely subjective rating, but complexity cannot. I would be interested to know what qualifies as such a complex card game that HS is a re-skinned version of War by comparison.
Starcraft 2 (and Brood War) should be a 10/10 on complexity and difficulty. The skill ceiling goes far beyond human capacity, and there are plenty of possibilities to outsmart your opponent and force them to make mistakes on top of the game being super demanding mechanically. Compared to that, yes, Hearthstone is probably a 2/10. I can't really speak for other CCGs.
Playing something extremely demanding is early what players want, though. It is not very relaxing, and you can generally only blame your own lack of for losing, which is not pleasent.
I respect the creators of Hearthstone a lot for making a game where getting the winrate up those last few %s actually takes real effort and skill, despite luck being such an important factor.
The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?
I hate that argument. Top legend is a matter of grind, nothing else.
I specifically said what CARD game constitutes a 10/10 complexity. Obviously there are hundreds of other games of different genres that qualify, though I would hasten to add that if SC2 is a 10/10, then Brood War has proven to be a 15/10 by comparison.
The post I replied to was all about how HS is reskinned WAR (arguably the simplest of all card games), which is why for HS to be a 2/10 requires there to be a CARD game that qualifies as a 10/10, otherwise the scale is meaningless.
@Arneankann
That's a tired statement that is only true among the relatively tiny number of players who are capable of maintaining a >50% winrate while playing against the top players on ladder. The vast majority of the player base could be given an infinite number of games played and they would never hit top 10 Legend.
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If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?
I hate that argument. Top legend is a matter of grind, nothing else.
That is my response specifically to a comment claiming that the game is almost entirely luck and no skill, which is as absurd as your statement.
Luck is involved in Hearthstone, sometimes more and sometimes less, but i see a large gap between the plays i would do and the ones top legend players do. A gap as wide as that between my plays and those of players who can barely hit diamond.
Luck is also involved in Poker, but over a large enough sample of games, it doesn't matter. Card games aren't like chess, they're like Poker.
I specifically said what CARD game constitutes a 10/10 complexity. Obviously there are hundreds of other games of different genres that qualify, though I would hasten to add that if SC2 is a 10/10, then Brood War has proven to be a 15/10 by comparison.
The post I replied to was all about how HS is reskinned WAR (arguably the simplest of all card games), which is why for HS to be a 2/10 requires there to be a CARD game that qualifies as a 10/10, otherwise the scale is meaningless.
@Arneankann
That's a tired statement that is only true among the relatively tiny number of players who are capable of maintaining a >50% winrate while playing against the top players on ladder. The vast majority of the player base could be given an infinite number of games played and they would never hit top 10 Legend.
Just for the record: the SC2 vs brood war discussion is a side track, but although brood war is absolutely harder due to less automatic actions, less user friendly controls etc, the games are different enough so that the best BW players were not necessrely the best at SC2.
You are actually wrong about never hitting top 10 legend despite an infinite amount of games. "Infinity" is so big finding 10.000 very favoured matchups in a row within it is easy. With how streaks work, you can also reach legend with a sub 50% winrate, even without bonus stars. I have checked simulations for this, and the break point seemed to be somewhere between 40 and 45% but that was with the old hearthstone ladder system.
Digging deep into the statistics of the top of the Hearthstone ladder should be very interested, though! My gut tells me the top 10, or even top 100 at the end of each month is much more volatile than in games like SC2, which indicates luck is very important there as well. In standard, there is likely some breakpoint rank you can reach with skill alone, but from there and up, you need collaboration from the Hearthstone Gods to get good draws and matchups.
The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?
I hate that argument. Top legend is a matter of grind, nothing else.
Well no, grind is a necessity but top legend players need to know how to min-max their gameplay in order to squeeze out more wins. That isn’t easy at that level.
The statement "Hearthstone is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase" may be true in terms of that group's perception, but 99.9% of the player base's games are riddled with mistakes and sub-optimal play.
So, clearly the perception of a game's simplicity says nothing about its actual skill ceiling.
I've just watched for years as folks post about how simple the game is, or how luck is the predominant factor in game outcome (which, incidentally, is an objectively falsifiable claim, but that's for another day). My personal favorite is when someone talks about their "perfect play" falling repeatedly to cheap tactics or rigged matchmaking.
Whenever I have actually gotten one of these players to show me a replay of this alleged perfect play and the game has been over 7 turns long, there has ALWAYS been at least one clear and obvious mistake made by the "perfect" player. ALWAYS. And given they were the ones who volunteered the replay to prove their own point, this means that not only were they not good enough to not make the mistake, they weren't good enough to spot the mistake in hindsight.
All of the above points to the conclusion that most of the playerbase isn't particularly qualified to pass judgment on the skill ceiling of the game.
None of the above should be read to suggest that HS is the most complex of CCGs. I was on the MtG Pro Tour for a few years, so I know that is clearly not the case. On the other hand, if HS is a 2/10, I'd be curious to know what game constitutes a 10/10 in complexity.and/or difficulty. Difficulty can be dismissed as a purely subjective rating, but complexity cannot. I would be interested to know what qualifies as such a complex card game that HS is a re-skinned version of War by comparison.
Man, my wording is off today. What I wanted to say is that 99.9% of the players don't reach the top level of HS ladder where the difficulty and complexity increases, so they never experience the higher levels of complexity of the game outside of watching tournaments/streamers. Well, maybe 99.9% is a bit much, but you get the idea. This is not to say that HS players are incompetent, I have never been a top rank legend player myself, probably because I never really cared for my legend rank and thus never invested the time needed, and because I am probably not skilled enough for more than top 3000. And since that's the reality for most players, this spike in complexity isn't a good way to evaluate HS. It's better to compare it to "normal level play" in other card games.
Regarding the 2/10, probably another bad idea to rate it like that. I have just seen many card games that are much more complex. In my opinion, complexity in any game is mostly based on the number of options and the potential results each decision can have on the game. If I look at a game like HS, yes there are decisions and they sometimes cost games, notably when it comes to the order of plays/draws or sequencing of later turns. But I haven't seen a single card game where all of this doesn't exist. Well, maybe Yu-Gi-Oh has been a complete no brainer game at some point when everyone played the same list and either won or lost on t1 because of the coin flip for who goes first (yes, I have actually seen that in tournaments). Positioning of minions, for instance, isn't as important as it should be in HS, which would be another indicator of complexity because you have to make another decision. There should be more powerful cards that depend on positioning decisions. And the mana system is another aspect where HS is really simple compared to other card games. Not to mention deckbuilding and the very limited number of counterplay options (especially in standard).
If you want a list of other card games that I played myself and consider (much) more complex, there you go:
MtG
Force of Will
The Final Fantasy card game (the mana system alone is more interesting and requires some tough decisions)
The Dragon Ball card game (also close because the fighting is quite difficult, but the sequencing and end of each game feel extremely dull)
Hex: Shards of Fate (RIP!, this is what MtG would have been if it was actually good (just exaggerating here, but can you imagine RPG MtG content with awesome artworks?))
Eternal (mana, markets, some very tough sacrifices you have to make in some situations, also similar to MtG)
Duelyst (rip, this one was really big in terms of positioning)
Runescape Legends (rip, this was such a crazy mind-game sometimes)
Spellweaver (more complex mana system, more hero powers, more fighting-related decisions, once per turn you can put a card from your hand into your deck to check the top 5 cards for a mana card and draw it (just another, sometimes difficult, decision))
Mythgard (especially because of the mana system and positioning, also 2 vs. 2 mode)
And I am not sure how to rate Pokemon or Shadowverse in terms of complexity, but OTK "Mage" in Shadowverse (I think it was named Runecraft?) was a lot more difficult to pilot than Jaina is in any format right now.
Pretty sure I even missed one or two games I tested, but this should roughly be the list. Yeah, I am a card game nerd^^. Every single one of these has pros and cons in terms of complexity, so it's hard to decide on one game that is a 10/10, especially since I was in top 50-100 in some of these and a complete noob in others. But even at a basic level, I was able to see a difference between most of these and HS in terms of complexity. No idea about Gwent or Runeterra, but from what I have seen so far, Gwent seems quite a lot more complex and Runeterra a little more?
One of Hearthstone's qualities is that you don't have to worry that much about deckbuilding (mana in your deck, limited number of tech options, too many resources for netdecking) and the number of decisions is pretty limited compared to most of these games. And as I said, that's totally fine. That's how HS won that many players.
Lol. Chalk one point for you on the pedantic scoreboard.
Ok, so I'll amend my statement since the point was clearly missed. Given ONE HUNDRED MILLION games played, the vast majority of the player base would not see top 10 legend.
Complexity would include amount of actions necessary to play at a high level, so the Brood War comment stands 100%.
Comparing volatility at the top of the ladders of HS and SC2 is meaningless since SC2 has no mechanic to reset everyone's standing at the end of the month. There is no apples to apples comparison, but the tournament results would be a much better proxy than simply assuming that the same people are putting the same effort to climb legend every single month, an assumption that would be necessary for the ladder comparison. If there was some way to run an experiment where every player tried their hardest and had equal time to devote to the game every month, I seriously doubt there would be much volatility in top 200 legend (arguably the lowest sample size necessary for such an experiment), but that's as useless a statement as is the difference between one hundred million games and infinite games, so we're left to wonder.
Certainly the volatility in season by season tournament results is greater in HS than SC2, but that was a foregone conclusion without knowing the results of a single tournament, since the element of RNG is present in HS and not in SC2. That there is any consistency in results over the years among HS pros proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that skill is a prevalent component of HS results, since they actually have to overcome the RNG.
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.
By astonishing coincidence, it looks like I hit the post button almost exactly the same moment as DLord. For the record, post #31 was mostly directed at Slyde and I hadn't read his yet.
I flatly disagree with the characterization of MtG as more complex, but that's a very long subject and I need to sleep.
I am unfamiliar with the rest of the games mentioned, unfortunately.
Fair enough, concerning the player base and other wording clarifications.
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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.
Such a dramatic change is not worth thinking about, you can't even select 2 targets for the same action.
There is plenty of room for more complex minion battles within the current framework if they want to move in that direction. but we would need more taunts, more trample (excess damage goes face), less manacheating, slower otk combos, more complex deathrattles and less board fills/clears in a single card.
I remember some big priest mirrors where we might have traded off 1000 mana worth of minions each!
We absolutely do not need more Trample. Didn't the Rhino already show you what a bad idea that was?
You say "slower OTK combos" but more trample means MORE OTK, not less.
Comparing volatility at the top of the ladders of HS and SC2 is meaningless since SC2 has no mechanic to reset everyone's standing at the end of the month. There is no apples to apples comparison, but the tournament results would be a much better proxy than simply assuming that the same people are putting the same effort to climb legend every single month, an assumption that would be necessary for the ladder comparison. If there was some way to run an experiment where every player tried their hardest and had equal time to devote to the game every month, I seriously doubt there would be much volatility in top 200 legend (arguably the lowest sample size necessary for such an experiment), but that's as useless a statement as is the difference between one hundred million games and infinite games, so we're left to wonder.
No, you are wrong. Both ladders are MMR based and you do NOT lose your MMR at the start of each season in either game.
In SC2, players stay at the very top of the ladder much more consistently, and the best players also have a much better winrates, even vs other top players.
The ladder data is all there, if I have the time, I will make some comparisons, like checking how many times players have managed to hit top 10 in either game. Tournament results is a different beast with smaller sample sizes, but could be interesting as well.
I believe the less luck is involved in a competition, the less variation there will be at the top. If a CCG has a healthy pool of dedicated players, the game where the best players seem almost untouchable is almost certainly the deepest strategically.
Count me as one of those people that hates the "Defender chooses targets" gameplay of MtG. So often it forces both players to sit there and play chicken until one of them build up some insurmountable force or pull of a combo. I'm not saying that MtG doesn't take skill, but I find it far less enjoyable.
HS is supposed to more simple straightforward, hence why its so successful, lanes would ruin its core gameplay
FWIW I’m not saying HS should use a lane system, it’s just an example of how the complexity could be increased.
D_Lord has written a lot of what I wanted to say probably in a better way. With Hearthstone the complexity comes at high ranks and over a large period of games because the goal is to maximise your winrate.
After reading the thread, some thoughts from the perspective of a Whispers of the Old Gods HS Veteran:
1. I understand fully your definition of “tricked”, but that’s just not accurate as to what the game does. The tutorial shows pretty well with the moves you are forced to make that the game is in the style of “Aggressor’s Choice”. It’s not the fault of HS that you don’t prefer that, nor the category of CCG that you didn’t know other play styles were available. Getting sucked into the lore, design, and World of Warcraft theme through HS is completely independent of its style of constructed play. It’s perfectly fine you don’t like that style, but to suggest changes to it is to change the foundation of the game. It isn’t Runeterra or Gwent or Slay the Spire or MTG, etc. for that reason there will always be people who prefer it and those who don’t. You just don’t. And that is perfectly ok.
2. Many responses address game difficulty to either defend or attack the game. I don’t think HS is “easy”, I also don’t think it’s “hard”. I DEFINITELY don’t think it’s “mindless”. The game is new player friendly in the sense of a simple board layout. Yes it is a one lane game, that doesn’t make it mentally one dimensional it makes it physically one dimensional. If you think the game doesn’t have any depth then a deck that counters another should have a 100% win-rate against it. Saying that a game is easy because another game exists that is much more difficult is like saying someone’s job as a teacher is simple because somewhere else in the world an astrophysicist is trying to figure out how to traverse a black hole. Every CCG has its intricacies, strategies, styles, etc. Getting to Legend is not simply a metric of time investment, getting to top 250 legend isn’t something most are ever going to be capable of.
Personally, I like the game and I plan on playing it for the long haul. When that stops I have no idea, but I like it’s play style so much that when I tried other CCGs I quite pretty fast. It’s not sunken cost fallacy- I legitimately enjoy Hearthstone. Will another CCG come around I eventually like more? I hope so, I welcome variety.
I'm aware you don't lose your MMR, but there's no way to display it as far as I know.
Again, the fact that SC2 is less volatile than HS was never in question. There is no RNG element to overcome. That doesn't say anything about luck being the predominant factor in HS, it only confirms what we already knew about their being no luck factor in SC2. It certainly doesn't speak to which is "the deepest strategically" until you find a way to control for the luck factor.
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.
When I say ‘tricked’ I’m just talking about how it ‘tricked’ me on the concept of how card games work.
I don’t feel like the game tricked me on it’s gameplay, it’s just that I never tried out other card games because the meme shit I love about HS is what I thought I loved about card games, but trying others out I’ve realised that isn’t the case. I do love meme shit, but I also really enjoy many more aspects of card games when it feels like my decisions have more weight. ‘Tempo’ strategies for example I’ve actually learned can be engaging.
I enjoy Hearthstone, and when I feel like playing crazy decks I’ll go to Hearthstone. I’m just glad I’ve realised that, instead of expecting the game to be something it’s not.
And as I’ve said I’m using the lanes idea just as an example. I wasn’t meaning to start a conversation of how the game should be changed or anything.
I am not agreeing with some arguments (or conspiracy theories or the very frequent GAME IS JUST LUCK crying) from gravytrainvan, but if you played other (card) games, you cannot really call HS a difficult game either. I would personally rate its difficulty and complexity levels a 2/10 and that's honestly fine. Just like every other game, of course it gets quite complicated when you are at the highest ranks, but HS is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase, which is definitely one of the reaons for its success. If you rate the difficulty of a game, you have to compare it to other games in general, not to top level gaming. These ranks aren't a reality for most players.
Yeah, Hearthstone has a comparatively low skill ceiling. If people could imagine it like a sine curve where the peak is canceled out by the trough, the larger the skill ceiling the larger the entry level.
Heartstone would have a pretty shallow curve.
The positives of this are that more players can enjoy the game, the negatives are that outside of min-maxing there isn’t really much you can do to change a match once you have an understanding of the games mechanics and have learned how to pilot your deck.
So at the top of the table you will always have the cream of the crop, as they are able to maximise their w/r (through min-maxing and reading the meta), however in the middle of the table games are far more likely to be decided by RNG or draws than they would if they game had greater complexity.
I think adding more complexity to the game would make it better, but as people have mentioned it would likely just cause a decline in the player base.
The statement "Hearthstone is rather simple for 99.9% of the playerbase" may be true in terms of that group's perception, but 99.9% of the player base's games are riddled with mistakes and sub-optimal play.
So, clearly the perception of a game's simplicity says nothing about its actual skill ceiling.
I've just watched for years as folks post about how simple the game is, or how luck is the predominant factor in game outcome (which, incidentally, is an objectively falsifiable claim, but that's for another day). My personal favorite is when someone talks about their "perfect play" falling repeatedly to cheap tactics or rigged matchmaking.
Whenever I have actually gotten one of these players to show me a replay of this alleged perfect play and the game has been over 7 turns long, there has ALWAYS been at least one clear and obvious mistake made by the "perfect" player. ALWAYS. And given they were the ones who volunteered the replay to prove their own point, this means that not only were they not good enough to not make the mistake, they weren't good enough to spot the mistake in hindsight.
All of the above points to the conclusion that most of the playerbase isn't particularly qualified to pass judgment on the skill ceiling of the game.
None of the above should be read to suggest that HS is the most complex of CCGs. I was on the MtG Pro Tour for a few years, so I know that is clearly not the case. On the other hand, if HS is a 2/10, I'd be curious to know what game constitutes a 10/10 in complexity.and/or difficulty. Difficulty can be dismissed as a purely subjective rating, but complexity cannot. I would be interested to know what qualifies as such a complex card game that HS is a re-skinned version of War by comparison.
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Starcraft 2 (and Brood War) should be a 10/10 on complexity and difficulty. The skill ceiling goes far beyond human capacity, and there are plenty of possibilities to outsmart your opponent and force them to make mistakes on top of the game being super demanding mechanically. Compared to that, yes, Hearthstone is probably a 2/10. I can't really speak for other CCGs.
Playing something extremely demanding is early what players want, though. It is not very relaxing, and you can generally only blame your own lack of for losing, which is not pleasent.
I respect the creators of Hearthstone a lot for making a game where getting the winrate up those last few %s actually takes real effort and skill, despite luck being such an important factor.
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I hate that argument. Top legend is a matter of grind, nothing else.
I specifically said what CARD game constitutes a 10/10 complexity. Obviously there are hundreds of other games of different genres that qualify, though I would hasten to add that if SC2 is a 10/10, then Brood War has proven to be a 15/10 by comparison.
The post I replied to was all about how HS is reskinned WAR (arguably the simplest of all card games), which is why for HS to be a 2/10 requires there to be a CARD game that qualifies as a 10/10, otherwise the scale is meaningless.
@Arneankann
That's a tired statement that is only true among the relatively tiny number of players who are capable of maintaining a >50% winrate while playing against the top players on ladder. The vast majority of the player base could be given an infinite number of games played and they would never hit top 10 Legend.
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That is my response specifically to a comment claiming that the game is almost entirely luck and no skill, which is as absurd as your statement.
Luck is involved in Hearthstone, sometimes more and sometimes less, but i see a large gap between the plays i would do and the ones top legend players do. A gap as wide as that between my plays and those of players who can barely hit diamond.
Luck is also involved in Poker, but over a large enough sample of games, it doesn't matter. Card games aren't like chess, they're like Poker.
Just for the record: the SC2 vs brood war discussion is a side track, but although brood war is absolutely harder due to less automatic actions, less user friendly controls etc, the games are different enough so that the best BW players were not necessrely the best at SC2.
You are actually wrong about never hitting top 10 legend despite an infinite amount of games. "Infinity" is so big finding 10.000 very favoured matchups in a row within it is easy. With how streaks work, you can also reach legend with a sub 50% winrate, even without bonus stars. I have checked simulations for this, and the break point seemed to be somewhere between 40 and 45% but that was with the old hearthstone ladder system.
Digging deep into the statistics of the top of the Hearthstone ladder should be very interested, though! My gut tells me the top 10, or even top 100 at the end of each month is much more volatile than in games like SC2, which indicates luck is very important there as well. In standard, there is likely some breakpoint rank you can reach with skill alone, but from there and up, you need collaboration from the Hearthstone Gods to get good draws and matchups.
Interresting video about luck vs skill and effort:
https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I
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Well no, grind is a necessity but top legend players need to know how to min-max their gameplay in order to squeeze out more wins. That isn’t easy at that level.
Man, my wording is off today. What I wanted to say is that 99.9% of the players don't reach the top level of HS ladder where the difficulty and complexity increases, so they never experience the higher levels of complexity of the game outside of watching tournaments/streamers. Well, maybe 99.9% is a bit much, but you get the idea. This is not to say that HS players are incompetent, I have never been a top rank legend player myself, probably because I never really cared for my legend rank and thus never invested the time needed, and because I am probably not skilled enough for more than top 3000. And since that's the reality for most players, this spike in complexity isn't a good way to evaluate HS. It's better to compare it to "normal level play" in other card games.
Regarding the 2/10, probably another bad idea to rate it like that. I have just seen many card games that are much more complex. In my opinion, complexity in any game is mostly based on the number of options and the potential results each decision can have on the game. If I look at a game like HS, yes there are decisions and they sometimes cost games, notably when it comes to the order of plays/draws or sequencing of later turns. But I haven't seen a single card game where all of this doesn't exist. Well, maybe Yu-Gi-Oh has been a complete no brainer game at some point when everyone played the same list and either won or lost on t1 because of the coin flip for who goes first (yes, I have actually seen that in tournaments). Positioning of minions, for instance, isn't as important as it should be in HS, which would be another indicator of complexity because you have to make another decision. There should be more powerful cards that depend on positioning decisions. And the mana system is another aspect where HS is really simple compared to other card games. Not to mention deckbuilding and the very limited number of counterplay options (especially in standard).
If you want a list of other card games that I played myself and consider (much) more complex, there you go:
MtG
Force of Will
The Final Fantasy card game (the mana system alone is more interesting and requires some tough decisions)
The Dragon Ball card game (also close because the fighting is quite difficult, but the sequencing and end of each game feel extremely dull)
Hex: Shards of Fate (RIP!, this is what MtG would have been if it was actually good (just exaggerating here, but can you imagine RPG MtG content with awesome artworks?))
Eternal (mana, markets, some very tough sacrifices you have to make in some situations, also similar to MtG)
Duelyst (rip, this one was really big in terms of positioning)
Runescape Legends (rip, this was such a crazy mind-game sometimes)
Spellweaver (more complex mana system, more hero powers, more fighting-related decisions, once per turn you can put a card from your hand into your deck to check the top 5 cards for a mana card and draw it (just another, sometimes difficult, decision))
Mythgard (especially because of the mana system and positioning, also 2 vs. 2 mode)
And I am not sure how to rate Pokemon or Shadowverse in terms of complexity, but OTK "Mage" in Shadowverse (I think it was named Runecraft?) was a lot more difficult to pilot than Jaina is in any format right now.
Pretty sure I even missed one or two games I tested, but this should roughly be the list. Yeah, I am a card game nerd^^. Every single one of these has pros and cons in terms of complexity, so it's hard to decide on one game that is a 10/10, especially since I was in top 50-100 in some of these and a complete noob in others. But even at a basic level, I was able to see a difference between most of these and HS in terms of complexity. No idea about Gwent or Runeterra, but from what I have seen so far, Gwent seems quite a lot more complex and Runeterra a little more?
One of Hearthstone's qualities is that you don't have to worry that much about deckbuilding (mana in your deck, limited number of tech options, too many resources for netdecking) and the number of decisions is pretty limited compared to most of these games. And as I said, that's totally fine. That's how HS won that many players.
Lol. Chalk one point for you on the pedantic scoreboard.
Ok, so I'll amend my statement since the point was clearly missed. Given ONE HUNDRED MILLION games played, the vast majority of the player base would not see top 10 legend.
Complexity would include amount of actions necessary to play at a high level, so the Brood War comment stands 100%.
Comparing volatility at the top of the ladders of HS and SC2 is meaningless since SC2 has no mechanic to reset everyone's standing at the end of the month. There is no apples to apples comparison, but the tournament results would be a much better proxy than simply assuming that the same people are putting the same effort to climb legend every single month, an assumption that would be necessary for the ladder comparison. If there was some way to run an experiment where every player tried their hardest and had equal time to devote to the game every month, I seriously doubt there would be much volatility in top 200 legend (arguably the lowest sample size necessary for such an experiment), but that's as useless a statement as is the difference between one hundred million games and infinite games, so we're left to wonder.
Certainly the volatility in season by season tournament results is greater in HS than SC2, but that was a foregone conclusion without knowing the results of a single tournament, since the element of RNG is present in HS and not in SC2. That there is any consistency in results over the years among HS pros proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that skill is a prevalent component of HS results, since they actually have to overcome the RNG.
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By astonishing coincidence, it looks like I hit the post button almost exactly the same moment as DLord. For the record, post #31 was mostly directed at Slyde and I hadn't read his yet.
I flatly disagree with the characterization of MtG as more complex, but that's a very long subject and I need to sleep.
I am unfamiliar with the rest of the games mentioned, unfortunately.
Fair enough, concerning the player base and other wording clarifications.
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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.
We absolutely do not need more Trample. Didn't the Rhino already show you what a bad idea that was?
You say "slower OTK combos" but more trample means MORE OTK, not less.
No, you are wrong. Both ladders are MMR based and you do NOT lose your MMR at the start of each season in either game.
In SC2, players stay at the very top of the ladder much more consistently, and the best players also have a much better winrates, even vs other top players.
The ladder data is all there, if I have the time, I will make some comparisons, like checking how many times players have managed to hit top 10 in either game. Tournament results is a different beast with smaller sample sizes, but could be interesting as well.
I believe the less luck is involved in a competition, the less variation there will be at the top. If a CCG has a healthy pool of dedicated players, the game where the best players seem almost untouchable is almost certainly the deepest strategically.
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Count me as one of those people that hates the "Defender chooses targets" gameplay of MtG. So often it forces both players to sit there and play chicken until one of them build up some insurmountable force or pull of a combo. I'm not saying that MtG doesn't take skill, but I find it far less enjoyable.
Thats basically Artifact.
Elder Scrolls Legends also has it in a way.
HS is supposed to more simple straightforward, hence why its so successful, lanes would ruin its core gameplay
FWIW I’m not saying HS should use a lane system, it’s just an example of how the complexity could be increased.
D_Lord has written a lot of what I wanted to say probably in a better way. With Hearthstone the complexity comes at high ranks and over a large period of games because the goal is to maximise your winrate.
After reading the thread, some thoughts from the perspective of a Whispers of the Old Gods HS Veteran:
1. I understand fully your definition of “tricked”, but that’s just not accurate as to what the game does. The tutorial shows pretty well with the moves you are forced to make that the game is in the style of “Aggressor’s Choice”. It’s not the fault of HS that you don’t prefer that, nor the category of CCG that you didn’t know other play styles were available. Getting sucked into the lore, design, and World of Warcraft theme through HS is completely independent of its style of constructed play. It’s perfectly fine you don’t like that style, but to suggest changes to it is to change the foundation of the game. It isn’t Runeterra or Gwent or Slay the Spire or MTG, etc. for that reason there will always be people who prefer it and those who don’t. You just don’t. And that is perfectly ok.
2. Many responses address game difficulty to either defend or attack the game. I don’t think HS is “easy”, I also don’t think it’s “hard”. I DEFINITELY don’t think it’s “mindless”. The game is new player friendly in the sense of a simple board layout. Yes it is a one lane game, that doesn’t make it mentally one dimensional it makes it physically one dimensional. If you think the game doesn’t have any depth then a deck that counters another should have a 100% win-rate against it. Saying that a game is easy because another game exists that is much more difficult is like saying someone’s job as a teacher is simple because somewhere else in the world an astrophysicist is trying to figure out how to traverse a black hole. Every CCG has its intricacies, strategies, styles, etc. Getting to Legend is not simply a metric of time investment, getting to top 250 legend isn’t something most are ever going to be capable of.
Personally, I like the game and I plan on playing it for the long haul. When that stops I have no idea, but I like it’s play style so much that when I tried other CCGs I quite pretty fast. It’s not sunken cost fallacy- I legitimately enjoy Hearthstone. Will another CCG come around I eventually like more? I hope so, I welcome variety.
I'm aware you don't lose your MMR, but there's no way to display it as far as I know.
Again, the fact that SC2 is less volatile than HS was never in question. There is no RNG element to overcome. That doesn't say anything about luck being the predominant factor in HS, it only confirms what we already knew about their being no luck factor in SC2. It certainly doesn't speak to which is "the deepest strategically" until you find a way to control for the luck factor.
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When I say ‘tricked’ I’m just talking about how it ‘tricked’ me on the concept of how card games work.
I don’t feel like the game tricked me on it’s gameplay, it’s just that I never tried out other card games because the meme shit I love about HS is what I thought I loved about card games, but trying others out I’ve realised that isn’t the case. I do love meme shit, but I also really enjoy many more aspects of card games when it feels like my decisions have more weight. ‘Tempo’ strategies for example I’ve actually learned can be engaging.
I enjoy Hearthstone, and when I feel like playing crazy decks I’ll go to Hearthstone. I’m just glad I’ve realised that, instead of expecting the game to be something it’s not.
And as I’ve said I’m using the lanes idea just as an example. I wasn’t meaning to start a conversation of how the game should be changed or anything.