Here is something you can do to test one of the mechanics I believe exists. This is what I refer to as the 'golden' RNG, Don't play constructed for a week, then play something powerful with an easy curve (like taunt druid), bet you go on a nice little win streak. This game state seems to be triggered by not playing for a while, as a way of hooking players back in to the game.
Another one that most players are familiar with are the progress gates. Like at diamond 10, diamond 5 and legend. Don't be surprised if you get terrible RNG consistently that drives you back from breaking through. This type of thing was first publicly observed in the game Candy Crush. The game would stick players on levels so they would buy powerups to break through.....who owns king? Activision. Activision thought so highly of King's manipulative tactics, that they went out and acquired them. But watch people on this site scream up and down that Activision would never do something like that in hearthstone.
This post is all the proof you need to show that these dudes know exactly nothing about probability. Seriously, this might be the most laughably asinine idea for data collection I've ever seen on this forum. "Play a few games and see if you go on a winning streak." Don't look at the vast data collected by numerous sites: go with your hunch.
Last time I came back from a break I got thrashed for like 10 straight games...
Activison are greedy. Even by gaming industry standards they are greedy. They would absolutely rig the game if they thought they could get away with it and it would positively impact their profit margins. They have zero ethical or moral compass.
But they can't so they don't. That is the ultimate point. You need to disregard personal experience (or indeed, any individual experience or event), it is anecdotal evidence and so largely useless.
Imagine you worked at Blizzard and were proposing a new premium item where players who paid $5 or whatever would get Golden RNG.
And your boss would be like, "but won't players stop playing the game if we reveal that it's pay-to-win?"
And you'd be like, "Yes but we won't tell them that. Instead we'll bundle it in with existing available card purchases. And we'll flat out deny that it exists if anyone asks about it."
And they'd be all, "But why would people pay for it if we didn't tell them that were selling it?"
And you'd say, "Well nobody would think they were paying for it, it would just be like a little extra unadvertised, plausibly-deniable service we'd provide on the fly for people who thought they were buying our other products."
And your boss would say, "Wouldn't we make more money if we created new products we could actually advertise and sell? If we provide this as an unadvertised benefit to people who were going to buy the packs anyway, how will it generate any additional..."
At which point you'd snap and shout something like "Damnit! Not everything is about making money! I have personal vendettas against Ennui and a number of our other players!"
The main reason all the rigging accusations strike me as nonsense is that I don't see any way that they could logically transform rigging the game into better pack sales.
If I'm on a losing streak because the rigged RNG has kicked in to determine that I should stop winning, I'm not going to be having much fun. I am much more inclined to spend money on Hearthstone, and hobbies in general, when I'm enjoying them. The idea that a losing streak would make me buy packs is obviously nonsense. It would ruin a lot of players' fun and have the opposite effect.
The idea that buying packs is similar to buying a power up in candy crush saga is also ridiculous. You get no mechanical advantage from having a larger collection. Any card that is not in your deck is totally irrelevant for the purposes of determining the outcome of any game you're playing. Of course the game could be programmed in such a way that having a larger collection improves your RNG, even if only temporarily, but that would ruin players' experiences while doing nothing to incentivize purchasing packs.
Say for example owning a random not-in-my-deck legendary (let's call him Tyrion) means that I'm more likely to get favorable matchups when I'm playing mage. There's no reason that should be the case, it's illogical and counter-intuitive. The official line from the developers is that it's not the case. I'd have no realistic way of knowing whether I was benefitting from having Tyrion in my collection or not. Clever players who saw through the deception would realize that buying packs until they opened Tyrion would mean better win rates, but the rest of us Blzzard-apologist sheep would continue to believe the Company Line and would stop buying packs once we had opened or crafted Sorcerer's Gambit.
The system would have the effect that over time people with better collections would hit higher ranks, but a) not in a way that was discernible to the desired customers and b) this would happen naturally over time anyway. Having a bigger collection is an inevitable outcome of spending time and/or money in the game. People who play a lot of Hearthstone, on average, over time, become better at Hearthstone than people who play less and are less invested. And I say that as someone who was fairly invested (about $50 per expansion for about 5 years I think) and never got very good. But hey there's always going to be outliers.
Finally, I could absolutely believe that they use similar systems to what they apparently use in other games to promote the sale of cosmetics. I don't own any mage skins other than the default Jaina, and I could see how putting me up against players who own Khadgar, or whatever, might make me more likely to buy him.
It wouldn't work with legendaries though, at least not outside the very narrow conditions of players who are playing decks missing key cards being matched up against players who have the cards in question. "If I could just craft X then my deck would work so much better". But even at low ranks and in casual I rarely encounter people playing decks missing key cards
In practice, if I was playing an expensive deck that included all the legendaries I could make space for and MMR rigging kicked in to stop me from winning, they'd generally be matching me against cheaper more effective decks rather than ones based around dubious legendary synergies. Any time that MMR rigging matched some super fast aggro deck with 1 or 2 legendaries against some ponderous highlander control deck they'd be achieving exactly the opposite of what the system is supposed to be promoting.
If having a more expensive deck meant you got coddled by RNG and given favorable match ups we'd expect to see that generally the more expensive decks outperformed the cheaper ones. Perhaps that decks built around new legendaries (cards that prospective customers don't own yet) do better than cheaper decks. You wouldn't expect that Face Hunter would be consistently one of the cheapest and most effective decks in meta after meta. Or that cutting quests and other new legendaries like Varian and Cornelias from popular United in Stormwind decks would improve their win rates.
If I did believe that the game was rigged in the way that some people do, though, I would absolutely stop playing. You're not actually playing an online card game at that point, you're playing some sort of Freemium "Card Game Simulator" and I don't know why you'd want to give them your time or money. But hey I don't expect to change any minds here and what you do with your free time is up to you.
This is in no way what I am talking about.
Running inefficient decks full of legendaries will cause you to lose.
OK, so please point me to a dataset that includes not only few milions of games played but also what cards each players own, what are their money spending, cards crafting, modes choosing patterns. What classes they play, how frequent do they play etc. For at least 2 last years of course. And if you don't have one please learn a bit of "basic" math.
The truth is we can only speculate whether any form of "rigging" takes place or not (unless of course we can get hs source code, both user and server side).
That is an insanely complicated way to do something that no company would ever need to do in the first place. To develop that kind of program would be a huge expense, and it would require ridiculous amounts of computing power and upkeep to track such data on every single player. It would simply not be worth it. Ask anyone who knows anything about database management, and they will confirm what I'm telling you.
It is 100% true that Blizzard tries to trick you into buying more cards, but they do not do it by manipulating RNG or matchmaking. They do it by giving you a game that is ALMOST fun if you are a free player, but ACTUALLY fun if you have a decent collection of cards. People with more cards can more easily build a variety of decks, change strategies and keep up with the meta. That is really, truly all it takes to make people want to spend money in Hearthstone.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
OK, so please point me to a dataset that includes not only few milions of games played but also what cards each players own, what are their money spending, cards crafting, modes choosing patterns. What classes they play, how frequent do they play etc. For at least 2 last years of course. And if you don't have one please learn a bit of "basic" math.
The truth is we can only speculate whether any form of "rigging" takes place or not (unless of course we can get hs source code, both user and server side).
That is an insanely complicated way to do something that no company would ever need to do in the first place. To develop that kind of program would be a huge expense, and it would require ridiculous amounts of computing power and upkeep to track such data on every single player. It would simply not be worth it. Ask anyone who knows anything about database management, and they will confirm what I'm telling you.
It's not just the database stuff. It's all the programming that goes into analyzing it and making decisions based off of it. All of that costs a ton of money and resources to maintain and keep hidden. It also has a ton of risk if someone finds out about it. Turns out companies are very risk averse and don't like that type of thing.
Also, as mentioned no site that tracks these things has never found anything suspicious. You would also assume that if a programmer was being told to write code that seems unethical they would probably leak that information somewhere. Are the developers at Activision so evil that none would even consider that? And why is it that like 3 people on Hearthpwn have found an answer that no one else has? It's confusing to me.
To me the answer is someone is paying this 3nnu1 guy to be a huge troll. Lots of paid "activists" out there and plenty of them are internet trolls.
"An average player and missing a few meta legendaries."
Apologies if my examples aren't quite on point, I haven't been playing much recently. That said....
Would an example of that be Handbuff Paladin but without Cornelius Roame/Varian King of Stormwind?
Because I remember early in the UiS meta those two neutral legendaries were much hyped but seemed to be underperforming, and not many decks had found homes for them. Handbuff Paladin did but seemed to be performing better when they were cut. Which would mean that if you matched two similar decks, both handbuff paladins, one with the key legendaries and one without, in an attempt to prompt to loser to buy more packs so they could afford the missing legendaries, the cheaper deck would win more than it would lose. These would be times that the rigged matchmaking kicked in to literally create a disincentive to buying more packs. "
If the rigging was so egregious that the weaker deck usually won those matchups, it'd be reflected in the overall winrates of the decks. Whenever you had two versions of the same deck, one with and one without "meta" legendaries, the one with the legendaries should be favored by the system. This obviously isn't the case.
And I'm not sure where that leaves us exactly. I don't know what a proportionate vs. disproportionate number of losses against Cornelius Roame while playing Handbuff Paladin would look like.
I bet if you try to play Quest Mage without the quest you lose a tonne, though. More specifically than that, I bet if you play quest mage with no quest and you're matched against quest mage with quest then your win rate would be absolutely abysmal. Because having better cards in your deck gives you a strict advantage over players with worse cards in theirs. And decks lacking important cards are outperformed by decks that have them.
These threads are always a lot of fun, I'll admit. It always devolves into a bunch of nonsense between the hearthstone equivalent of flat-earthers and people who have at least a bare understanding of how chance and statistics work.
It's amazing how much these people really resemble flat-earthers, antivax, qanon etc etc. The pattern is eerily similar. Just make a frankly preposterous point that goes against logic and actual objective facts and when asked to prove in some way shape or form said point, hide back behind "well if you've played half a game, you'd know hearthstone was rigged", "oh, you're asking me proof but why don't you give me some" and the evergreen "THE PATENT OMG SOMEONE THINK OF THE PATENT".
It's 100% pointless to argue with these people. It's not that they lack understanding of what "random" is or how statistics work (which they most assuredly do) but that they lack the basic premise that should be at the base of a discussion...rational thought. Their belligerent refusal to understand what they're arguing about also can't help matters that much.
I was even going to go on a tirade explaining how if there was any "rigging" we'd know but...what's the point. It's like me trying to tell my cat not to climb the plant, I may shout as much as I want but the cat isn't able to understand me and does what she wants because that's how she is.
So please do carry on with the conspiracies, but I would like to ask you to at the very least come up with something new or a bit more original because the Hanon points are really...stale. A few reptilians, a kabal or two and maybe the NWO would make things more interesting.
Lol, your big argument is that believing that Video game makers in fremium games manipulate those game to inspire spending is equivalent to believing the earth is flat.
The reality is that believing that Blizzard would not do such a thing flies in the face of logic and reason.
You don't understand what being a conspiracy theorist is. Being a conspiracy theorist is not believing something ridiculous or impossible. Being a conspiracy theorist is believing in something for some silly reason and waving away every fact that contradicts the theory and explaining it by a wider conspiracy.
Also, just like flat earthers know nothing about basic physics, people like you know nothing about rather basic math. Because anyone who knows something about probabilities and statistics will understand that this rigging is impossible to hide in the world of data collection tools.
If Blizzard is capable of doing something or not IS IRRELEVANT. This hypothesis, which is based on that patent, contradicts reality, contradicts observable facts. What you claim is easy to spot by any HS data gathering software.
When, quite a few years ago, Unibet, a reputable (at that time) poker site, was accused of having superusers (players who could see opponent's cards) everyone dismissed it as yet another excuse... Until it was mathematically proven that they do have them because play patterns of superusers indicated that.
OK, so please point me to a dataset that includes not only few milions of games played but also what cards each players own, what are their money spending, cards crafting, modes choosing patterns. What classes they play, how frequent do they play etc. For at least 2 last years of course. And if you don't have one please learn a bit of "basic" math.
The truth is we can only speculate whether any form of "rigging" takes place or not (unless of course we can get hs source code, both user and server side).
Woah, settle down folks.
No matter which side of this debate you're on, the majority of those on your side are irrational and want to continue believing that which they already believe. This is called confirmation bias.
No matter which side of this debate you're on, you yourself are not immune to confirmation bias. Our emotional minds inherently present a steelman exaggeration of our arguments to ourselves, and a strawman exaggeration of the opposing arguments to ourselves as well.
Now I personally do not believe that Hearthstone games are rigged. But if you think they are rigged, and you'd hang out with me and play Hearthstone like two Dudes abiding, then you're my friend. And to Kurgo and those like him, well, that's just our opinion, man. How about you stop acting like a jerk to people whose worldview differs slightly from yours.
Heck, you might even want to start treating people who believe in the real craziness, like flat earth or qanon, like they're human beings. Perhaps slightly mentally ill human beings but I'm not saying I'm cognitively perfect myself.
In short, let's be smart and bring it off, and be excellent to each other.
The main reason all the rigging accusations strike me as nonsense is that I don't see any way that they could logically transform rigging the game into better pack sales.
If I'm on a losing streak because the rigged RNG has kicked in to determine that I should stop winning, I'm not going to be having much fun. I am much more inclined to spend money on Hearthstone, and hobbies in general, when I'm enjoying them. The idea that a losing streak would make me buy packs is obviously nonsense. It would ruin a lot of players' fun and have the opposite effect.
The idea that buying packs is similar to buying a power up in candy crush saga is also ridiculous. You get no mechanical advantage from having a larger collection. Any card that is not in your deck is totally irrelevant for the purposes of determining the outcome of any game you're playing. Of course the game could be programmed in such a way that having a larger collection improves your RNG, even if only temporarily, but that would ruin players' experiences while doing nothing to incentivize purchasing packs.
Say for example owning a random not-in-my-deck legendary (let's call him Tyrion) means that I'm more likely to get favorable matchups when I'm playing mage. There's no reason that should be the case, it's illogical and counter-intuitive. The official line from the developers is that it's not the case. I'd have no realistic way of knowing whether I was benefitting from having Tyrion in my collection or not. Clever players who saw through the deception would realize that buying packs until they opened Tyrion would mean better win rates, but the rest of us Blzzard-apologist sheep would continue to believe the Company Line and would stop buying packs once we had opened or crafted Sorcerer's Gambit.
The system would have the effect that over time people with better collections would hit higher ranks, but a) not in a way that was discernible to the desired customers and b) this would happen naturally over time anyway. Having a bigger collection is an inevitable outcome of spending time and/or money in the game. People who play a lot of Hearthstone, on average, over time, become better at Hearthstone than people who play less and are less invested. And I say that as someone who was fairly invested (about $50 per expansion for about 5 years I think) and never got very good. But hey there's always going to be outliers.
Finally, I could absolutely believe that they use similar systems to what they apparently use in other games to promote the sale of cosmetics. I don't own any mage skins other than the default Jaina, and I could see how putting me up against players who own Khadgar, or whatever, might make me more likely to buy him.
It wouldn't work with legendaries though, at least not outside the very narrow conditions of players who are playing decks missing key cards being matched up against players who have the cards in question. "If I could just craft X then my deck would work so much better". But even at low ranks and in casual I rarely encounter people playing decks missing key cards
In practice, if I was playing an expensive deck that included all the legendaries I could make space for and MMR rigging kicked in to stop me from winning, they'd generally be matching me against cheaper more effective decks rather than ones based around dubious legendary synergies. Any time that MMR rigging matched some super fast aggro deck with 1 or 2 legendaries against some ponderous highlander control deck they'd be achieving exactly the opposite of what the system is supposed to be promoting.
If having a more expensive deck meant you got coddled by RNG and given favorable match ups we'd expect to see that generally the more expensive decks outperformed the cheaper ones. Perhaps that decks built around new legendaries (cards that prospective customers don't own yet) do better than cheaper decks. You wouldn't expect that Face Hunter would be consistently one of the cheapest and most effective decks in meta after meta. Or that cutting quests and other new legendaries like Varian and Cornelias from popular United in Stormwind decks would improve their win rates.
If I did believe that the game was rigged in the way that some people do, though, I would absolutely stop playing. You're not actually playing an online card game at that point, you're playing some sort of Freemium "Card Game Simulator" and I don't know why you'd want to give them your time or money. But hey I don't expect to change any minds here and what you do with your free time is up to you.
This is in no way what I am talking about.
Running inefficient decks full of legendaries will cause you to lose.
If you actually read the patent document, it was obviously not developed with Hearthstone in mind. It was clearly developed with first person shooters (e.g. Call of Duty) in mind. For instance, the system described in the patent presumes that the most important matchmaking criteria (outside of promoting microtransactions) is latency between the players, with skill level further down the list; this is an assumption that holds true for first person shooters but doesn't really apply to Hearthstone. It mentions PlayStation and Microsoft gaming networks, but doesn't mention Battle.net at all.
There are numerous reasons why it would be idiotic for Blizzard to implement the patented system for Hearthstone. For instance, there is the fact that Hearthstone chase cards or cosmetic microtransactions you might want are mostly utilized by the same class as you. A disproportionate number of mirror matches is definitely something that HSReplay would be able to detect, and having mirrors that are deliberately lopsided would not produce happy players.
Having actually read the patent, raw text, rather than trusting the slant of journalists, I think the chance that Blizzard is using such matchmaking systems in Hearthstone is less than 5%. In contrast, I think the likelihood that it's being used for Call of Duty Mobile is well over 50%.
Heck, you might even want to start treating people who believe in the real craziness, like flat earth or qanon, like they're human beings. Perhaps slightly mentally ill human beings but I'm not saying I'm cognitively perfect myself.
In short, let's be smart and bring it off, and be excellent to each other.
As someone who works under a boss who is a conspiracy theorist (his words) - be very careful with them. A lot of conspiracy theories end up with globalist/Zionist/antisemetic tripe at the end of the rabbit hole, it seems (basing this also on books and the like that come through my other job). A massive conspiracy is needed for a lot of these ideas and you've got jews as 'easy targets' (part of the whole issues with antisemetism in the harder left in the UK - this pervading idea that they run the banks, paired with banks being bad, leads to jokes that are... sketchy).
Sure, be excellent to each other, but be aware that a lot of people who tie into conspiracy theories of the ilk of the ones you mention are actually horrible people using it as a rationalization for their bigotry).
Answer: Yes. We know it from the patent. In Battlegrounds its easy to rig the amount of triples offered, let the computer auto-decide the winner if possible. It already calculates who won before the right start. The tech is there. No doubt.
If yes to the above. What would Blizzard gain from rigging the game?
Answer: Keeping people hooked. Incentivizing F2P-players to buy more packs. If people lose too many games they will quit the game. So the game makes sure you win the game once in a while. It is 100% determined by your win-rate. So in the end its about profit-maximizing.
So if a multimillion corporation has the tech to rig the game they sure as hell will. Stop being naive people.
I think the reason why some people think the game is rigged (and try to find explanations as to HOW it is done by using the example of the patent and others) is actually related to real randomness vs pseudo-randomness.
Yes, the patent could be used to, for example, favor matchups against people that have:
- a certain hero skin you don't have
- more golden cards
- golden portrait
- a larger collection (for the chance that you see those cards and are incentivised to buy packs to get them, if they work against your deck or if you like their animations etc)
Anything other than this, like rigging the win rates or card draw is not computationally possible. When IBM is going to mainstream the quantum processors they are working on, then yes, it will be done, as long a relatively working algorithm could be found to determine what action to take against/for a player in the multi-billion possibilities that exist in each moment of the game.
Why it's not done currently?
1. Mobile users. The lag and disconnects are already bad enough. Even more lag due to server-side heavy computations (that take at least a few seconds) would make the game unplayable - in both HS and BGs.
2. Databases. I'm a programmer for many years now. Storing all the information in a database means that any heavy computation with that data is gonna take a good while. This is the usual bane of relational databases. If it's not a relational one, you still end up with the server having to do a lot of comparisons between EVERY player in the MM queue, at that time, and yourself, regarding anything that some people believe is 'rigging'. Each of these comparisons means you have to go to the database and keep reading all kinds of information based on what you want to compare. Like i said above, it's simply not feasible, unless: a) you use a quantum processor AND b) you've devised an algorithm on what to compare, establish weights for each 'category' and decide how the final 'score' should affect EACH of the players FROM THE MM QUEUE. As you can see, this becomes quite impossible computationally, unless you wait like several HOURS for the MM to find you an opponent.
Now, coming back to pseudo-randomness, this is the type of randomness that computers use. Some studies were made that show that human brains cannot work with true randomness - if someone is asked to provide a sequence of 10 random numbers, the chosen ones are NOT actually random (even simply because your brain 'chose' them and didn't actually 'generate' them, but it's a lot more than that). Google it if you don't believe me.
Pseudo-randomness's effects could be seen in older games, like Heroes of Might and Magic 3. If you played the game and generated a random map at certain dates and hours/minutes, the pseudo-generator would end up with the exact same map as in a completely different date (because computer randomness is usually based on the number of milliseconds that passed since a date, and that the function used to generate a random number does NOT have a unique output). Even GUID generators (google it!) have a higher chance to hit a duplicate the more GUIDs you generate (since the possible outcomes for all/most pseudo-random generator functions are FINITE, even though very large). Generating a maximum of 10^29 numbers before you hit a duplicate (i.e. number that was generated before) is NOT infinity. It's just a very large number. That means that there is always a chance of hitting a duplicate even after the 6-th number is generated, but this chance is extremely small.
Other cases related to the effects of pseudo-rabdomness in computer can be seen in older games (e.g. shooting very quickly, twice, the same object, results in doing the same amount of damage most of the time, because the randomness function is not 'sensitive' enough to register a 'change' inside a very small amount of time, like a few hundred milliseconds).
Obviously, nowadays processors have evolved beyond those older limitations, but the theory still stands. Pseudo-randomness is prone to give you more streaks (be them winning or losing) than true randomness in the same scenario. Feel free too google the difference between these two for yourselves. And no, no one from Blizzard can change how a processor computes random numbers.
Are you gonna come and claim that Microsoft has some hidden interest in HS and that they rigged their own processors to make you lose more? If so, you sound a lot like the anti-vaxers that believe Bill Gates wants to put a chip in them through the vaccine - in other words, you are a moron. And no, it's not about the freedom of speech. It's just like believing the earth is flat - you're even more of a moron, an uneducated one too.
Start reading up on pseudo-randomness. If your brain allows it, you'll understand something.
Answer: Yes. We know it from the patent. In Battlegrounds its easy to rig the amount of triples offered, let the computer auto-decide the winner if possible. It already calculates who won before the right start. The tech is there. No doubt.
If yes to the above. What would Blizzard gain from rigging the game?
Answer: Keeping people hooked. Incentivizing F2P-players to buy more packs. If people lose too many games they will quit the game. So the game makes sure you win the game once in a while. It is 100% determined by your win-rate. So in the end its about profit-maximizing.
So if a multimillion corporation has the tech to rig the game they sure as hell will. Stop being naive people.
Rigging draws sounds ridiculously hard for Blizz to do, given how badly the one card that does vaguely similar (Zeph) actually does it - I heartily recommend people claiming him as an example of how it's possible actually try playing the blighter, see for yourself how he ignores a lot of factors. Would be absolutely useless for decks who do not intend to just curve out every turn, or have reactive answers they need.
Rigging matchmaking based on decks requires a significant input of tech/resources analyzing the decks to determine winrates against other decks. Doable, but has extra downside of gameable as well based on what cards people are using, probably would show up in big datasets as core cards actually dropping winrates and thus might disincentivise sales.
Using a MMR system already makes long win/loss streaks relatively unlikely, and it's very easy for Blizz to, say, have MMR decay when you don't play a mode or decrease faster when you're on a losing streak (to reincentivise playing a mode or limit long loss streaks). Any rigging will be aimed at MMR tweaks, IMO, due to significantly lower costs for a similar benefit - and they also don't really count as rigging because it's a MMR system, rather than a straight ELO or whatever (heck, most places will use a modified ELO, AFAIK, with a reliability factor that affects how much rating is gained or lost - nobody claims Chess.com is rigged).
Answer: Yes. We know it from the patent. In Battlegrounds its easy to rig the amount of triples offered, let the computer auto-decide the winner if possible. It already calculates who won before the right start. The tech is there. No doubt.
If yes to the above. What would Blizzard gain from rigging the game?
Answer: Keeping people hooked. Incentivizing F2P-players to buy more packs. If people lose too many games they will quit the game. So the game makes sure you win the game once in a while. It is 100% determined by your win-rate. So in the end its about profit-maximizing.
So if a multimillion corporation has the tech to rig the game they sure as hell will. Stop being naive people.
Rigging draws sounds ridiculously hard for Blizz to do, given how badly the one card that does vaguely similar (Zeph) actually does it - I heartily recommend people claiming him as an example of how it's possible actually try playing the blighter, see for yourself how he ignores a lot of factors. Would be absolutely useless for decks who do not intend to just curve out every turn, or have reactive answers they need.
Rigging matchmaking based on decks requires a significant input of tech/resources analyzing the decks to determine winrates against other decks. Doable, but has extra downside of gameable as well based on what cards people are using, probably would show up in big datasets as core cards actually dropping winrates and thus might disincentivise sales.
Using a MMR system already makes long win/loss streaks relatively unlikely, and it's very easy for Blizz to, say, have MMR decay when you don't play a mode or decrease faster when you're on a losing streak (to reincentivise playing a mode or limit long loss streaks). Any rigging will be aimed at MMR tweaks, IMO, due to significantly lower costs for a similar benefit - and they also don't really count as rigging because it's a MMR system, rather than a straight ELO or whatever (heck, most places will use a modified ELO, AFAIK, with a reliability factor that affects how much rating is gained or lost - nobody claims Chess.com is rigged).
It is irrelevant if Blizzard can or can't do some rigging.
Their whole logic of "Blizzard can do this" is like "This guy has a penis, therefore he can commit a rape, therefore he is a rapist"
And you, instead of dismissing their notion as an absurd one, give them legitimacy by arguing something like "Well, this guy is an impotent..." when you should just dismiss their nonsense as... nonsense
In the real world, it isn't enough to prove ability, it isn't even enough to prove a motive. You need to prove that this did happen.
And in the real world, we have no proof of Blizarrd rigging Hearthstone. Any kind of rigging would be immediately noticed by HSreplay and similar services.
Answer: Yes. We know it from the patent. In Battlegrounds its easy to rig the amount of triples offered, let the computer auto-decide the winner if possible. It already calculates who won before the right start. The tech is there. No doubt.
If yes to the above. What would Blizzard gain from rigging the game?
Answer: Keeping people hooked. Incentivizing F2P-players to buy more packs. If people lose too many games they will quit the game. So the game makes sure you win the game once in a while. It is 100% determined by your win-rate. So in the end its about profit-maximizing.
So if a multimillion corporation has the tech to rig the game they sure as hell will. Stop being naive people.
Rigging draws sounds ridiculously hard for Blizz to do, given how badly the one card that does vaguely similar (Zeph) actually does it - I heartily recommend people claiming him as an example of how it's possible actually try playing the blighter, see for yourself how he ignores a lot of factors. Would be absolutely useless for decks who do not intend to just curve out every turn, or have reactive answers they need.
Rigging matchmaking based on decks requires a significant input of tech/resources analyzing the decks to determine winrates against other decks. Doable, but has extra downside of gameable as well based on what cards people are using, probably would show up in big datasets as core cards actually dropping winrates and thus might disincentivise sales.
Using a MMR system already makes long win/loss streaks relatively unlikely, and it's very easy for Blizz to, say, have MMR decay when you don't play a mode or decrease faster when you're on a losing streak (to reincentivise playing a mode or limit long loss streaks). Any rigging will be aimed at MMR tweaks, IMO, due to significantly lower costs for a similar benefit - and they also don't really count as rigging because it's a MMR system, rather than a straight ELO or whatever (heck, most places will use a modified ELO, AFAIK, with a reliability factor that affects how much rating is gained or lost - nobody claims Chess.com is rigged).
It is irrelevant if Blizzard can or can't do some rigging.
Their whole logic of "Blizzard can do this" is like "This guy has a penis, therefore he can commit a rape, therefore he is a rapist"
And you, instead of dismissing their notion as an absurd one, give them legitimacy by arguing something like "Well, this guy is an impotent..." when you should just dismiss their nonsense as... nonsense
In the real world, it isn't enough to prove ability, it isn't even enough to prove a motive. You need to prove that this did happen.
And in the real world, we have no proof of Blizarrd rigging Hearthstone. Any kind of rigging would be immediately noticed by HSreplay and similar services.
Actually, I'm trying to point out that if there is rigging, it makes much more sense to use an adjusted MMR system to 'rig', which barely counts as rigging as other games and systems do that in varying ways without the same cries of rigging (chess is rigged!). It makes very little sense for Blizz to leap through hoops to rig in game RNG when there's easier and less problematic routes to take.
I quite agree that there is no proof, and the burden of proof is on those making these claims - and people often aren't really putting forward even testable hypotheses, if we're honest. I was just attempting to engage and explain which - IMO - is an important and rarely used part of science. Dismissing as nonsense rather than pointing out flaws alienates lay people and leads to situations where people can manipulate with warped statistics [such as my work, where they used stats from one week in the middle of summer to generalize to yearly take], or make things obtuse with differences in meaning [such as theory being used to actually mean hypothesis], as well as feeding the current trend of "People have had enough of experts".
Maybe I'm coming at this from more of a science angle where you need something to base a hypothesis on, and you're looking from a more legal viewpoint, given your proof (beyond reasonable doubt) comment?
Scrotie thinks that the patent would not work because most players only play one class.......Yeah, I think that is fallacious and untrue.
Fusili seems to be going with, anyone who thinks the game is rigged may be a dangerous Nazi. And then returns with cuz Science for good measure.
Strongpoint (ironic name) weighs in with the tried and true strawman 'that is like believing anyone with a penis is automatically a rapist!' -absolutely ridiculous.
While user lays out some very basic logic that will make sense to anyone with any objectivity. I really do enjoy this thread.
Heck, you might even want to start treating people who believe in the real craziness, like flat earth or qanon, like they're human beings. Perhaps slightly mentally ill human beings but I'm not saying I'm cognitively perfect myself.
In short, let's be smart and bring it off, and be excellent to each other.
As someone who works under a boss who is a conspiracy theorist (his words) - be very careful with them. A lot of conspiracy theories end up with globalist/Zionist/antisemetic tripe at the end of the rabbit hole, it seems (basing this also on books and the like that come through my other job). A massive conspiracy is needed for a lot of these ideas and you've got jews as 'easy targets' (part of the whole issues with antisemetism in the harder left in the UK - this pervading idea that they run the banks, paired with banks being bad, leads to jokes that are... sketchy).
Sure, be excellent to each other, but be aware that a lot of people who tie into conspiracy theories of the ilk of the ones you mention are actually horrible people using it as a rationalization for their bigotry).
I don't know about you, but I grew up with the words "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me." You pointing out that certain ideas lead to certain other ideas doesn't make me all alarmed, as if it was actually possible to harm Jewish people using nothing but psychic energy. As far as I'm concerned, a kid who steals a Milky Way from a gas station has done more wrong than someone who has thought or said the most repugnant of racist things, but taken no action on them. It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you, and that irrelevance of who you are underneath applies to both the good thoughts not acted upon, and the bad thoughts not acted upon. And until and unless someone actually DOES something horrible, we should treat people who express horrible ideas the way we'd treat a friend who's contemplating a tremendously stupid course of action, because that's precisely what they are — friends with silly ideas.
(Although I would like to draw a distinction between public and private speaking here. Obviously a person who speaks publicly to audiences can be promoting hateful views, which is different from one person thinking out loud working out what he thinks. The first should be considered action for which one can be held accountable, the second as mere thought that should be safe. I'm not being an apologist for hate preachers here.)
Scrotie thinks that the patent would not work because most players only play one class.......Yeah, I think that is fallacious and untrue.
Fusili seems to be going with, anyone who thinks the game is rigged may be a dangerous Nazi. And then returns with cuz Science for good measure.
Strongpoint (ironic name) weighs in with the tried and true strawman 'that is like believing anyone with a penis is automatically a rapist!' -absolutely ridiculous.
While user lays out some very basic logic that will make sense to anyone with any objectivity. I really do enjoy this thread.
And 3nnu1 continues to draw from their bag of tricks labeled "list of logical fallacies" and invokes Godwin's Law by dropping the n word. If your accusations is that people are demonizing the opposition, then bravo on your hypocrisy.
Seriously,the most dubious claim there is the first line "reading replies." Reading but choosing not to comprehend through, giving you the benefit of the doubt here, willful ignorance of they intent.
Scrotie thinks that the patent would not work because most players only play one class.......Yeah, I think that is fallacious and untrue.
I didn't say "most players only play one class." But it's absolutely the case that only a tiny fraction of the playerbase plays all classes equally. Let's say in arguendo that the typical HS player focuses on 3 classes, that would still result in an easily detectable excess of mirror matches.
This post is all the proof you need to show that these dudes know exactly nothing about probability. Seriously, this might be the most laughably asinine idea for data collection I've ever seen on this forum. "Play a few games and see if you go on a winning streak." Don't look at the vast data collected by numerous sites: go with your hunch.
Last time I came back from a break I got thrashed for like 10 straight games...
Activison are greedy. Even by gaming industry standards they are greedy. They would absolutely rig the game if they thought they could get away with it and it would positively impact their profit margins. They have zero ethical or moral compass.
But they can't so they don't. That is the ultimate point. You need to disregard personal experience (or indeed, any individual experience or event), it is anecdotal evidence and so largely useless.
Imagine you worked at Blizzard and were proposing a new premium item where players who paid $5 or whatever would get Golden RNG.
And your boss would be like, "but won't players stop playing the game if we reveal that it's pay-to-win?"
And you'd be like, "Yes but we won't tell them that. Instead we'll bundle it in with existing available card purchases. And we'll flat out deny that it exists if anyone asks about it."
And they'd be all, "But why would people pay for it if we didn't tell them that were selling it?"
And you'd say, "Well nobody would think they were paying for it, it would just be like a little extra unadvertised, plausibly-deniable service we'd provide on the fly for people who thought they were buying our other products."
And your boss would say, "Wouldn't we make more money if we created new products we could actually advertise and sell? If we provide this as an unadvertised benefit to people who were going to buy the packs anyway, how will it generate any additional..."
At which point you'd snap and shout something like "Damnit! Not everything is about making money! I have personal vendettas against Ennui and a number of our other players!"
This is in no way what I am talking about.
Running inefficient decks full of legendaries will cause you to lose.
But if you are an average player and missing a few meta legendaries, you will lose to those cards a disproportionate amount of times. That is this patent Activision Patents Matchmaking That Encourages Players To Buy Microtransactions (kotaku.com) or something like it at work.
That is an insanely complicated way to do something that no company would ever need to do in the first place. To develop that kind of program would be a huge expense, and it would require ridiculous amounts of computing power and upkeep to track such data on every single player. It would simply not be worth it. Ask anyone who knows anything about database management, and they will confirm what I'm telling you.
It is 100% true that Blizzard tries to trick you into buying more cards, but they do not do it by manipulating RNG or matchmaking. They do it by giving you a game that is ALMOST fun if you are a free player, but ACTUALLY fun if you have a decent collection of cards. People with more cards can more easily build a variety of decks, change strategies and keep up with the meta. That is really, truly all it takes to make people want to spend money in Hearthstone.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
It's not just the database stuff. It's all the programming that goes into analyzing it and making decisions based off of it. All of that costs a ton of money and resources to maintain and keep hidden. It also has a ton of risk if someone finds out about it. Turns out companies are very risk averse and don't like that type of thing.
Also, as mentioned no site that tracks these things has never found anything suspicious. You would also assume that if a programmer was being told to write code that seems unethical they would probably leak that information somewhere. Are the developers at Activision so evil that none would even consider that? And why is it that like 3 people on Hearthpwn have found an answer that no one else has? It's confusing to me.
To me the answer is someone is paying this 3nnu1 guy to be a huge troll. Lots of paid "activists" out there and plenty of them are internet trolls.
I've no idea how you would track that.
"An average player and missing a few meta legendaries."
Apologies if my examples aren't quite on point, I haven't been playing much recently. That said....
Would an example of that be Handbuff Paladin but without Cornelius Roame/Varian King of Stormwind?
Because I remember early in the UiS meta those two neutral legendaries were much hyped but seemed to be underperforming, and not many decks had found homes for them. Handbuff Paladin did but seemed to be performing better when they were cut. Which would mean that if you matched two similar decks, both handbuff paladins, one with the key legendaries and one without, in an attempt to prompt to loser to buy more packs so they could afford the missing legendaries, the cheaper deck would win more than it would lose. These would be times that the rigged matchmaking kicked in to literally create a disincentive to buying more packs. "
If the rigging was so egregious that the weaker deck usually won those matchups, it'd be reflected in the overall winrates of the decks. Whenever you had two versions of the same deck, one with and one without "meta" legendaries, the one with the legendaries should be favored by the system. This obviously isn't the case.
And I'm not sure where that leaves us exactly. I don't know what a proportionate vs. disproportionate number of losses against Cornelius Roame while playing Handbuff Paladin would look like.
I bet if you try to play Quest Mage without the quest you lose a tonne, though. More specifically than that, I bet if you play quest mage with no quest and you're matched against quest mage with quest then your win rate would be absolutely abysmal. Because having better cards in your deck gives you a strict advantage over players with worse cards in theirs. And decks lacking important cards are outperformed by decks that have them.
As conspiracies go, though....
Woah, settle down folks.
No matter which side of this debate you're on, the majority of those on your side are irrational and want to continue believing that which they already believe. This is called confirmation bias.
No matter which side of this debate you're on, you yourself are not immune to confirmation bias. Our emotional minds inherently present a steelman exaggeration of our arguments to ourselves, and a strawman exaggeration of the opposing arguments to ourselves as well.
Now I personally do not believe that Hearthstone games are rigged. But if you think they are rigged, and you'd hang out with me and play Hearthstone like two Dudes abiding, then you're my friend. And to Kurgo and those like him, well, that's just our opinion, man. How about you stop acting like a jerk to people whose worldview differs slightly from yours.
Heck, you might even want to start treating people who believe in the real craziness, like flat earth or qanon, like they're human beings. Perhaps slightly mentally ill human beings but I'm not saying I'm cognitively perfect myself.
In short, let's be smart and bring it off, and be excellent to each other.
If you actually read the patent document, it was obviously not developed with Hearthstone in mind. It was clearly developed with first person shooters (e.g. Call of Duty) in mind. For instance, the system described in the patent presumes that the most important matchmaking criteria (outside of promoting microtransactions) is latency between the players, with skill level further down the list; this is an assumption that holds true for first person shooters but doesn't really apply to Hearthstone. It mentions PlayStation and Microsoft gaming networks, but doesn't mention Battle.net at all.
There are numerous reasons why it would be idiotic for Blizzard to implement the patented system for Hearthstone. For instance, there is the fact that Hearthstone chase cards or cosmetic microtransactions you might want are mostly utilized by the same class as you. A disproportionate number of mirror matches is definitely something that HSReplay would be able to detect, and having mirrors that are deliberately lopsided would not produce happy players.
Having actually read the patent, raw text, rather than trusting the slant of journalists, I think the chance that Blizzard is using such matchmaking systems in Hearthstone is less than 5%. In contrast, I think the likelihood that it's being used for Call of Duty Mobile is well over 50%.
As someone who works under a boss who is a conspiracy theorist (his words) - be very careful with them. A lot of conspiracy theories end up with globalist/Zionist/antisemetic tripe at the end of the rabbit hole, it seems (basing this also on books and the like that come through my other job). A massive conspiracy is needed for a lot of these ideas and you've got jews as 'easy targets' (part of the whole issues with antisemetism in the harder left in the UK - this pervading idea that they run the banks, paired with banks being bad, leads to jokes that are... sketchy).
Sure, be excellent to each other, but be aware that a lot of people who tie into conspiracy theories of the ilk of the ones you mention are actually horrible people using it as a rationalization for their bigotry).
Question to ask yourself.
Can the game be rigged? Is the technology there?
Answer: Yes. We know it from the patent. In Battlegrounds its easy to rig the amount of triples offered, let the computer auto-decide the winner if possible. It already calculates who won before the right start. The tech is there. No doubt.
If yes to the above. What would Blizzard gain from rigging the game?
Answer: Keeping people hooked. Incentivizing F2P-players to buy more packs. If people lose too many games they will quit the game. So the game makes sure you win the game once in a while. It is 100% determined by your win-rate. So in the end its about profit-maximizing.
So if a multimillion corporation has the tech to rig the game they sure as hell will. Stop being naive people.
I think the reason why some people think the game is rigged (and try to find explanations as to HOW it is done by using the example of the patent and others) is actually related to real randomness vs pseudo-randomness.
Yes, the patent could be used to, for example, favor matchups against people that have:
- a certain hero skin you don't have
- more golden cards
- golden portrait
- a larger collection (for the chance that you see those cards and are incentivised to buy packs to get them, if they work against your deck or if you like their animations etc)
Anything other than this, like rigging the win rates or card draw is not computationally possible. When IBM is going to mainstream the quantum processors they are working on, then yes, it will be done, as long a relatively working algorithm could be found to determine what action to take against/for a player in the multi-billion possibilities that exist in each moment of the game.
Why it's not done currently?
1. Mobile users. The lag and disconnects are already bad enough. Even more lag due to server-side heavy computations (that take at least a few seconds) would make the game unplayable - in both HS and BGs.
2. Databases. I'm a programmer for many years now. Storing all the information in a database means that any heavy computation with that data is gonna take a good while. This is the usual bane of relational databases. If it's not a relational one, you still end up with the server having to do a lot of comparisons between EVERY player in the MM queue, at that time, and yourself, regarding anything that some people believe is 'rigging'. Each of these comparisons means you have to go to the database and keep reading all kinds of information based on what you want to compare. Like i said above, it's simply not feasible, unless: a) you use a quantum processor AND b) you've devised an algorithm on what to compare, establish weights for each 'category' and decide how the final 'score' should affect EACH of the players FROM THE MM QUEUE. As you can see, this becomes quite impossible computationally, unless you wait like several HOURS for the MM to find you an opponent.
Now, coming back to pseudo-randomness, this is the type of randomness that computers use. Some studies were made that show that human brains cannot work with true randomness - if someone is asked to provide a sequence of 10 random numbers, the chosen ones are NOT actually random (even simply because your brain 'chose' them and didn't actually 'generate' them, but it's a lot more than that). Google it if you don't believe me.
Pseudo-randomness's effects could be seen in older games, like Heroes of Might and Magic 3. If you played the game and generated a random map at certain dates and hours/minutes, the pseudo-generator would end up with the exact same map as in a completely different date (because computer randomness is usually based on the number of milliseconds that passed since a date, and that the function used to generate a random number does NOT have a unique output). Even GUID generators (google it!) have a higher chance to hit a duplicate the more GUIDs you generate (since the possible outcomes for all/most pseudo-random generator functions are FINITE, even though very large). Generating a maximum of 10^29 numbers before you hit a duplicate (i.e. number that was generated before) is NOT infinity. It's just a very large number. That means that there is always a chance of hitting a duplicate even after the 6-th number is generated, but this chance is extremely small.
Other cases related to the effects of pseudo-rabdomness in computer can be seen in older games (e.g. shooting very quickly, twice, the same object, results in doing the same amount of damage most of the time, because the randomness function is not 'sensitive' enough to register a 'change' inside a very small amount of time, like a few hundred milliseconds).
Obviously, nowadays processors have evolved beyond those older limitations, but the theory still stands. Pseudo-randomness is prone to give you more streaks (be them winning or losing) than true randomness in the same scenario. Feel free too google the difference between these two for yourselves. And no, no one from Blizzard can change how a processor computes random numbers.
Are you gonna come and claim that Microsoft has some hidden interest in HS and that they rigged their own processors to make you lose more? If so, you sound a lot like the anti-vaxers that believe Bill Gates wants to put a chip in them through the vaccine - in other words, you are a moron. And no, it's not about the freedom of speech. It's just like believing the earth is flat - you're even more of a moron, an uneducated one too.
Start reading up on pseudo-randomness. If your brain allows it, you'll understand something.
Rigging draws sounds ridiculously hard for Blizz to do, given how badly the one card that does vaguely similar (Zeph) actually does it - I heartily recommend people claiming him as an example of how it's possible actually try playing the blighter, see for yourself how he ignores a lot of factors. Would be absolutely useless for decks who do not intend to just curve out every turn, or have reactive answers they need.
Rigging matchmaking based on decks requires a significant input of tech/resources analyzing the decks to determine winrates against other decks. Doable, but has extra downside of gameable as well based on what cards people are using, probably would show up in big datasets as core cards actually dropping winrates and thus might disincentivise sales.
Using a MMR system already makes long win/loss streaks relatively unlikely, and it's very easy for Blizz to, say, have MMR decay when you don't play a mode or decrease faster when you're on a losing streak (to reincentivise playing a mode or limit long loss streaks). Any rigging will be aimed at MMR tweaks, IMO, due to significantly lower costs for a similar benefit - and they also don't really count as rigging because it's a MMR system, rather than a straight ELO or whatever (heck, most places will use a modified ELO, AFAIK, with a reliability factor that affects how much rating is gained or lost - nobody claims Chess.com is rigged).
It is irrelevant if Blizzard can or can't do some rigging.
Their whole logic of "Blizzard can do this" is like "This guy has a penis, therefore he can commit a rape, therefore he is a rapist"
And you, instead of dismissing their notion as an absurd one, give them legitimacy by arguing something like "Well, this guy is an impotent..." when you should just dismiss their nonsense as... nonsense
In the real world, it isn't enough to prove ability, it isn't even enough to prove a motive. You need to prove that this did happen.
And in the real world, we have no proof of Blizarrd rigging Hearthstone. Any kind of rigging would be immediately noticed by HSreplay and similar services.
Actually, I'm trying to point out that if there is rigging, it makes much more sense to use an adjusted MMR system to 'rig', which barely counts as rigging as other games and systems do that in varying ways without the same cries of rigging (chess is rigged!). It makes very little sense for Blizz to leap through hoops to rig in game RNG when there's easier and less problematic routes to take.
I quite agree that there is no proof, and the burden of proof is on those making these claims - and people often aren't really putting forward even testable hypotheses, if we're honest. I was just attempting to engage and explain which - IMO - is an important and rarely used part of science. Dismissing as nonsense rather than pointing out flaws alienates lay people and leads to situations where people can manipulate with warped statistics [such as my work, where they used stats from one week in the middle of summer to generalize to yearly take], or make things obtuse with differences in meaning [such as theory being used to actually mean hypothesis], as well as feeding the current trend of "People have had enough of experts".
Maybe I'm coming at this from more of a science angle where you need something to base a hypothesis on, and you're looking from a more legal viewpoint, given your proof (beyond reasonable doubt) comment?
So reading replies
Scrotie thinks that the patent would not work because most players only play one class.......Yeah, I think that is fallacious and untrue.
Fusili seems to be going with, anyone who thinks the game is rigged may be a dangerous Nazi. And then returns with cuz Science for good measure.
Strongpoint (ironic name) weighs in with the tried and true strawman 'that is like believing anyone with a penis is automatically a rapist!' -absolutely ridiculous.
While user lays out some very basic logic that will make sense to anyone with any objectivity. I really do enjoy this thread.
I don't know about you, but I grew up with the words "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me." You pointing out that certain ideas lead to certain other ideas doesn't make me all alarmed, as if it was actually possible to harm Jewish people using nothing but psychic energy. As far as I'm concerned, a kid who steals a Milky Way from a gas station has done more wrong than someone who has thought or said the most repugnant of racist things, but taken no action on them. It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you, and that irrelevance of who you are underneath applies to both the good thoughts not acted upon, and the bad thoughts not acted upon. And until and unless someone actually DOES something horrible, we should treat people who express horrible ideas the way we'd treat a friend who's contemplating a tremendously stupid course of action, because that's precisely what they are — friends with silly ideas.
(Although I would like to draw a distinction between public and private speaking here. Obviously a person who speaks publicly to audiences can be promoting hateful views, which is different from one person thinking out loud working out what he thinks. The first should be considered action for which one can be held accountable, the second as mere thought that should be safe. I'm not being an apologist for hate preachers here.)
And 3nnu1 continues to draw from their bag of tricks labeled "list of logical fallacies" and invokes Godwin's Law by dropping the n word. If your accusations is that people are demonizing the opposition, then bravo on your hypocrisy.
Seriously,the most dubious claim there is the first line "reading replies." Reading but choosing not to comprehend through, giving you the benefit of the doubt here, willful ignorance of they intent.
I didn't say "most players only play one class." But it's absolutely the case that only a tiny fraction of the playerbase plays all classes equally. Let's say in arguendo that the typical HS player focuses on 3 classes, that would still result in an easily detectable excess of mirror matches.
the game is hyper rigged.
Almost all my mage opponents are questline, depending on my deck.
if the deck value is like 10000 + dust , mage is ALWAYS quest in standard.