Hearthpwn

Quote from Tyk3 >>

The amount of dick swinging over a children’s card game in this thread is brilliant. Some of you lads really need to get something more important to worry about. 

 As much as I love the phrase "dick swinging" here - calling Hearthstone a "children's card game" to emphasize how unimportant it is doesn't seem fair.

It's just a card game. I would wager the target audience and most of its players are well above the age you'd consider "children", too, so no need to belittle the thing we're all here for just to make your point.

On topic: Without stats to back it up, I've noticed (and I'm sure other people have too) that when you play on ladder with a deck, you often see a certain class more often than anything else... and then as soon as you change decks you suddenly see a new class. Is this really a coincidence? It could be, but it's that kind of thing that makes me squint my eyes and go: "HMMMMM".

Does it change my play habits? No - just keep rolling and do my best. Honestly, if I drew my cards in the correct order every game it wouldn't matter what class I face.

As a side note: does anyone actually mulligan cards based on their opponent anymore, or just mulligan for the cards you need for your game plan? I was playing Maestra of the Masquerade in my rogue deck for fun, and it seemed like it didn't matter what class I "disguise" myself as, my opponent still just looks for the cards they would play against anyone... oh well.

Quote from 3nnu1 >>

It's funny how the reality deniers always fall back on the same tired excuses.

 

Uh, you have confirmation bias. Which is a classic gaslighting technique that is use by con men of all ilks. Basically the argument is. You see that reality that is right in front of you, you are too stupid to know it is not real. Which is quite effective, especially with younger people who fear being perceived as different or dumb and are very sensitive to the criticism of their peers. This makes manipulating them way too easy. 

But my very favorite is when they start in with burden of proof. That is language from court proceedings which is tied to two meanings, preponderance of evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt. Most lay people only think of beyond a reasonable doubt which is actually quite a difficult burden to make. I mean a guy has to be really guilty with a lot of strong evidence to overcome a reasonable doubt which a decent atty can generate. 

So just in life, remember when someone goes to Burden of Proof to defend their position. What they usually mean is you are right but I can still deny it, nyaah, nyaah, nyaah. 

 

But if you look at Blizzard/Activision...it is very hard to look at them as some moral group that would never engage in shenanigans to make money. I think their track record in the last decade speaks for itself. If you read through the other zephry;s thread I linked you will see many of the same arguments as this one, there is another good thread on this too, but I am bit too lazy to dig it up. But one thing to keep in mind is that Activision acquired King, which is notorious for manipulative controlled gameplay designed to cause frustration in their users to get them to spend. King also generates a bazillion dollars because that shit works. It is ridiculous to think that blizzard would not engage in similar tactics in this game. 

 So are you saying cognitive biases do not exist ? Or just that you and everyone on your side of an argument are somehow immune to them ?

The burden of proof is not only a thing in court and its not only semantics. From Wikipedia:
The burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi, shortened from Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat) is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient warrant for its position.

Simply put you can't just make any statement without any proof whatsoever and expect people to believe you. That is just not how anything works.

Lastly .. no one is arguing that Blizzard is somehow morally above doing something if it helps their profit. Nor does anyone deny that it would be possible to influence all kinds of things in games.
But none of the proposed "rigging" has any actual benefit for Blizzard or their profits and more importantly there just is no prove for it !

These endless analyses to prove or disprove the obvious…. 

the game is a software driven casino-like game. Whoever has played more than 50 games and doesn’t think it’s rigged is naive at best 

Whoever thinks in this day and age that the game is rigged are plain and simple morons and should check how straight their family tree is.

All these heresay examples made to be gospel, you know 'Heard from a friend' etc

Pitiful

Quote from M0res >>

These endless analyses to prove or disprove the obvious…. 

the game is a software driven casino-like game. Whoever has played more than 50 games and doesn’t think it’s rigged is naive at best 

 TBH All the decks that I've played 50+ games with turned out to have some surprisingly predictive and average matchups, with a WR that would go up and down as it should and end somewhere around 60. Had the WR been much lower, I'd probably not have played 50+ games with it anyway. I see crazier shit in an average backgammon game than in most of the "HS is rigged" examples.

Quote from M0res >>

These endless analyses to prove or disprove the obvious…. 

the game is a software driven casino-like game. Whoever has played more than 50 games and doesn’t think it’s rigged is naive at best 

It's a horrible analogy: you're not playing against the house, you're playing against other players.  So to suggest that Blizzard unfairly favors some players, at the expense of others, is just bizarre.  Why would they do that?  Why would they need to?  A neutral matchmaking system does the job pretty well, without any complicated AI or deep learning or WTF-ever dynamic data analysis of decklists and winrates, and God knows what else.

Just a neutral MMR, and some heuristics to keep queue times in check, and try to keep newbies from queuing into seasoned veterans in their first 10 games.

So, what is it that keeps people playing?  Idunno... maybe they're having fun?  What makes the game fun?  It's not the matchmaking system.

You know what keeps people coming back to a game? Winning and fun experiences. Winning is more enjoyable than losing. While you learn more from your losses, losing still sucks and is super frustrating. You know what people do when they lose too often? They quit and find something else to do. 

I am personally on the worst BG losing streak I've ever had. In the last week I've played about 20 games and haven't finished higher than 5th. It sucks. I suck at the game but I thought I was getting better. Clearly not. So instead of playing BG's tonight like I've done for the last few months I am going to do something else. Not sure what I'll do yet but I know for sure I ain't touching BG's. Fucking game drives me mad.  A few weeks ago I was winning and climbing nicely. And you know what? I was thinking that maybe I'd pre-order a Mercenaries bundle and maybe buy myself a Tavern Pass for the season and see how it goes. Right now, after having such a shit time playing the game the last thing I want to do is actually spend more money on it. 

So what am I trying to say? The only way for Blizzard to rig HS in their benefit is to ensure people win more and enjoy their time in the game. This will keep players coming back for more and make them more likely to spend money on the game. Why would they go out of their way to punish a random selection of their player base and deliberately give them bad RNG? What purpose would that serve? The only thing it would do is ensure more and more people have a negative experience when playing which increases the odds that they will quit the game and not spend money on it. 

And believe me, the game is not rigged in favour of those who spend money on it. If that were the case I'd finish top 100 legend every month and make the BG's leaderboard. 

All card games have an element of randomness to them. HS even more so because it's an online game with mechanics like discover and spells that generate random effects etc. Sometimes you will draw the nuts and destroy any opponent. Sometimes you will discover exactly what you need to steal a game you were bound to lose. Sometimes you will topdeck exactly what you need. And sometimes you'll draw like shit and die on turn 5. Or your discovers and random effects will work against you. Or you'll pick Patches in BG's and not be offered a pirate in the shop until turn 8. The outcomes, both good and bad are part of the game. 

Generally speaking, humans are averse to losing. A person who loses $100 will lose more satisfaction than the same person will gain satisfaction from a $100 win. It's just how we're wired psychologically. As unique and wonderful as all of us are as individuals, this applies to everyone. I just cannot see how Blizzard would benefit from deliberately creating negative experiences for its players, which they would have to do by default if they rigged the game in favour of certain other players.  

Do some research into player engagement. There is a reason they seek a 50 percent win rate in all of their competitive games.

It's not necessary to "rig" the game to achieve that.  That's just a natural overall outcome of fair pairings and a well designed game mechanics.

Quote from M0res >>

These endless analyses to prove or disprove the obvious…. 

the game is a software driven casino-like game. Whoever has played more than 50 games and doesn’t think it’s rigged is naive at best 

 Agree. I played many times to legend 2k to 500 and stopped. Many games rigged for both sides, after a few bad matchups straight and many rage quits, some hour of the day I queued ranked again and faced many trash players, decks and legend shit decks tanking mmr which made easyer to get legend each time. No, there's not only skill to ladder up in this game, like read ur opponent plays and predict some stuff that u seen many times, play in a way that u like check mate ur opponent and so on.
Sometimes that game just smack some rng and u lose even if u played right, specially against decks that have cards u don't (script to make u buy those cards and build this deck) but in the end, this "rigged" stuff is to make the about 50/55% WR for both players. 
So yes, it's rigged, but not so much to the point u can't ladder to at least diamond 10, if u're down that's because u play bad, accept this.
The rig is just to make u purchase stuff on ur own frustration, then u go and spend some bucks to make u feel better in achieve more collection (useless collection most of time).

Sometimes that game just smack some rng and u lose even if u played right, specially against decks that have cards u don't (script to make u buy those cards and build this deck) 

That's not "rigging".  That's human nature.  Your opponent did the cool, overpowered thing, and now you want to do it, too.  Simple as that.

"Curse you, Blizzard, for programming the game to make me want to buy the cards to do the cool, overpowered thing!"

LOL these conspiracies are hilarious. 

Quote from ThisWasTheOnlyUsernameAvailable >>

You know what keeps people coming back to a game? Winning and fun experiences. Winning is more enjoyable than losing. While you learn more from your losses, losing still sucks and is super frustrating. You know what people do when they lose too often? They quit and find something else to do. 

I am personally on the worst BG losing streak I've ever had. In the last week I've played about 20 games and haven't finished higher than 5th. It sucks. I suck at the game but I thought I was getting better. Clearly not. So instead of playing BG's tonight like I've done for the last few months I am going to do something else. Not sure what I'll do yet but I know for sure I ain't touching BG's. Fucking game drives me mad.  A few weeks ago I was winning and climbing nicely. And you know what? I was thinking that maybe I'd pre-order a Mercenaries bundle and maybe buy myself a Tavern Pass for the season and see how it goes. Right now, after having such a shit time playing the game the last thing I want to do is actually spend more money on it. 

So what am I trying to say? The only way for Blizzard to rig HS in their benefit is to ensure people win more and enjoy their time in the game. This will keep players coming back for more and make them more likely to spend money on the game. Why would they go out of their way to punish a random selection of their player base and deliberately give them bad RNG? What purpose would that serve? The only thing it would do is ensure more and more people have a negative experience when playing which increases the odds that they will quit the game and not spend money on it. 

And believe me, the game is not rigged in favour of those who spend money on it. If that were the case I'd finish top 100 legend every month and make the BG's leaderboard. 

All card games have an element of randomness to them. HS even more so because it's an online game with mechanics like discover and spells that generate random effects etc. Sometimes you will draw the nuts and destroy any opponent. Sometimes you will discover exactly what you need to steal a game you were bound to lose. Sometimes you will topdeck exactly what you need. And sometimes you'll draw like shit and die on turn 5. Or your discovers and random effects will work against you. Or you'll pick Patches in BG's and not be offered a pirate in the shop until turn 8. The outcomes, both good and bad are part of the game. 

Generally speaking, humans are averse to losing. A person who loses $100 will lose more satisfaction than the same person will gain satisfaction from a $100 win. It's just how we're wired psychologically. As unique and wonderful as all of us are as individuals, this applies to everyone. I just cannot see how Blizzard would benefit from deliberately creating negative experiences for its players, which they would have to do by default if they rigged the game in favour of certain other players.  

 

 

 As much as I'd like for this argument to be true and despite how logical it might seem at the very simplest level, the truth of the matter is quite a bit more complicated. Winning and "fun" experiences may contribute to enjoyment in games like Hearthstone, but to assert that these criteria are the primary directive for Blizzard is just patently incorrect. The reason why is simple: Hearthstone is primarily a player vs player game, and as such it is impossible for one person to win without another person losing. It is literally impossible to enable everyone to win because this is contrary to the fundamental premise of the game. Ultimately, what Blizzard wants is player engagement and profit, which unfortunately are not predicated solely on enjoyment.

The idea with maximizing engagement is merely to make the game as addictive as possible and as difficult to leave as possible, and a crucial aspect of this process for Blizzard is encouraging players to spend money in order to feel engaged. Hence the obvious correlation between buying packs and players capability to craft more potentially meta-relevant decks, bundles, cosmetic skins, the tavern pass, etc. All of these items should effectively make the purchaser feel good, but more importantly for Blizzard, they need to make the purchaser more engaged with Hearthstone. This is where the patent that their parent company filed in 2014 for manipulation of matchmaking in PvP games comes in. Here's the link if you want to read about it: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270.

In essence, the premise of the patent as is communicated directly in the abstract is to facilitate players participation in microtransactions via matchmaking. The hypothetical situation in which this might be achieved is related as follows: "...the system may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player". This is quite ingenious in that, as you noted, humans generally do not enjoy losing; Blizzard would be able to take maximal advantage of this psychological bias towards winning by artificially producing unfavorable matches and subsequently offering players a means to achieve the same success their opponents had by purchasing card packs (i.e. microtransactions). So you see, if this methodology were actually being implemented in Hearthstones matchmaking algorithm, it is quite clear that ensuring that players win matches would not exactly be Blizzards objective. If anything, it would be quite the opposite. 

try plaing  encountering endless pirate warriors

then when you slot in crabs that eats pirate

suddenly you wont face them anymore

Quote from Sevasmios >>

The simple answer would be that the matchmaking algorithm keeps track of your winrate and gives you bad RNG when you stray too far above 50 percent. 

 No. The matchmaking algorithm keeps track of your winrate and gives you stronger opponents when you stray too far above 50 percent. Or to put it another way, you lucksacked your way into a higher ranking than you deserve, then experienced the likely consequences of that event.

Quote from 3nnu1 >>

This thread sums up the positions on this argument pretty well.

Does Zephrys the Great prove rigged card draw/discover system? - Card Discussion - Hearthstone General - HearthPwn Forums - HearthPwn

It really comes down to whether you believe that blizzard has such integrity that they would never put money ahead of a principle like fairness. 

 Money and not synonymous with a lack of principles. I can see how implementing rigging on any scale would represent putting something ahead of principles, and I can see how algorithmic rigging on a small, targeted scale could generate money. But I don't see how implementing rigging on a global algorithmic scale could make more money than simple equal-skill matchmaking. I mean, how can you even rig globally, it doesn't make sense, there has to be both a rig-winner and a win-loser and with thousands of losers that means thousands of winners.

Quote from PetiteMouche >>

Wait, you GENUINELY think the game is not rigged ?

Please enlighten me, oh arrogant one, how don't they do it ?

8 years into the game I still haven't seen one evidence, one confirmation, one proof that HS is not rigged. But I have seen confirmation from Blizzard themselves, that the game is rigged, so, arrogant shills need to chill out. This isn't bias, this is reality.

 Please link Blizzard confirming that HS is rigged.

Quote from Strongpoint >>

HSreplay would catch any rigging. So ones believing in this conspiracy should also believe that HSreplay is involved. As well as smaller tools that track HS games,

 HSreplay secretly owned by Activision then :) You can't prove anything to conspiracy theorists.

Quote from XanKortal >>

Quote from Skeng >>

So how do the same players consistently get to the top of legend every month? Or how do GM players consistently perform at a high level? They're immune to the rigging or something?

 

Because the algorithms utilized probably don't really care about the top players, as far as sales are concerned.

I've talked about Acti-Blizzard in the past, and how they own a patent for utilizing matchmaking to drive microtransaction sales - and it does so specifically by analyzing psyche profiles (every action in game, from random clicks to mulligan choices are tracked) by matching veteran players with less experienced players, in order to incentivize the less experienced players to buy products they may want.

It's not much of a stretch to say that HSreplay might not be able to track such things because of incomplete information pertaining to those psyche profiles, and that individual players might have their matchups tweaked with to drive sales, in such a way that also happens to line up with wins/losses being skewed positively or some people, and negatively for others, and the whole thing comes out as net neutral in aggregate.

Put another way: It's not necessarily rigging for/against a particular person's winrates, but may be putting greater weight on certain matchups to drive sales independently of what the winrate is for that player.

 

For reference, the patent in question:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270

 if you give me your account I make a deck and got legend :))