Well, Heartstone strategy level is not on par with Magic. You do not have deep thoughts involved, low bluff ratio/guessing of cards... Ofc people watch wacky and crazy fun deck builders, because it is no rocket science piloting ANY HS deck, while you need quite a lot of time and insight to become good at playing even a single Magic deck. This translate easily into: HS is better for the show, Magic is better for the deep strategy. I won't watch a HS Tournament cuz I would never learn anything new or say WOAH what a play. At most, I would say: WOAH what a stroke of luck!
Sidenote: I used to play Magic for quite a long time at a competitive level.
Comparisons between magic and HS are always terrible. And the worst is, he knows, you can't even compare both games when it comes to RNG, magic hasn't printed a card with "random" written on it, excluding cards that put revealed cards back to the bottom of your deck in random order and non-standard valid cards for probably more than a decade.
Random effects are not part of magic at all, very rare exceptions, and all of them in formats that would equate to wild in HS.
I don't like Kibler, he's always saying shit I disagree with. If I'm not mistaken back when the boogeymonster was released and everyone was up in arms, he was like "yeah bruh, bad cards have a space, I like the card a lot", like, f$*& off dude, Gruul already exists, no need for a worst version :P
Random effects are not part of magic at all, very rare exceptions, and all of them in formats that would equate to wild in HS.
I would like to disagree with that. Ever heard of the keyword Miracle? (For those who you who don't know, Miracle is a keyword that allows a card to be much cheaper on the turn when it is drawn i.e. when it is topdecked.) For example, there is a card that allows you to take an extra turn for 7 mana. Taking another turn is OP as heck in Magic. However, this card allows you play it for TWO mana when you have drawn it.
There is also Cascade and Choas Warp if you are not convinced. (Cascade is a keyword that allows you to keep discarding cards from the top of your deck until you draw a non land card. Then, you can play it...FOR FREE.)
Yeah, I made a query on magiccards.info and was actually surprised to see some recent-ish fringe cards that actually had random on them. But all of them are so bad it's not even relevant.
About cascade and miracle like stuff, deck manipulation allows for them to be skill based cards, not random bullshit. Proof is decks that play those cards use these effects. Even Jund uses Sylvan Lybrary with Bloodbraided Elf.
Also, cascade only reveals cards from the top of the deck and then puts the non-casted cards back to the bottom of the deck, they aren't discarded.
Chaos warp is a commander card and is not valid in standard/modern, only eternal formats, wild-like stuff.
er.... that is not even comparable to the magnitude of a Yogg or even a PavellingBook. Seriously, the randomness in HS is out of scale. At least the last expansion didnt bring too much of it!
The examples above are of "good" randomness, that is ONLY linked to topdeck/card draws, that should be the ONLY variance thing in a card game.
Monstruosities like Yogg are only good for the fun effect, but they are very bad for the seriousness of the game. This causes HS not to be taken seriously by players, competitive or not. And this explains the topic of the video.
A better comparison for skill is poker. In tournaments, it's very largely luck based on an individual basis, but in the long run, luck will not save you.
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A better comparison for skill is poker. In tournaments, it's very largely luck based on an individual basis, but in the long run, luck will not save you.
Exactly. I think that Hearthstone is not as luck-based as we give it credit for, but regardless, it still holds a bit more luck than I'd like there to be. It's much more than Magic, that's for certain, but I think people might be exaggerating when they say that a new player has as much of a chance to win as an experienced player.
Despite this, I think that the point of the video was not to discuss the amount of randomness but rather to delineate how we respond to said randomness. Looking at how salty and pessimistic people get when they complain that they lost entirely due to luck rather than deckbuilding or in-game choices, I think it's safe to say that we may be a bit...too "negative" in polite terms and we don't give Esport competitors nor the developers the respect they deserve (I think they received enough "criticism".
A lot of players rant about how RNG ruins Hearthstone and compare it to the level of RNG in Magic. Magic and Hearthstone only share one randomness generating feature: what you draw off your deck each turn.
The big difference between Magic and Hearthstone is that in Magic cards with random elements/effects are almost entirely casual in nature and see little to no play competitively. As a paper-based game it is harder for Magic to incorporate random effects like those we see in Hearthstone, but Magic has a huge random factor already built into it in the form of lands. If you draw too many or too few then you will most likely lose regardless of how good the matchup is for you or how skilled you are compared to your opponent.
Hearthstone, on the other hand, as a digital game can easily accommodate the design space of RNG. People use the term "RNG" like it is some bad thing. Done properly and in an interesting manner it is good for a game (and I think Blizzard is finally honing in on the proper level after some missteps last year). Without RNG Hearthstone would be boring and Blizzard knows this. There is no built in mechanism in Hearthstone similar to lands in Magic. I gain one mana every turn like clockwork, meaning with a properly built deck I can be assured that I will be able to play my cards each and every game without fail. If there is no RNG present this causes the outcome of a particular match to be almost 100% ensured assuming both players are of roughly equal skill level. If that was he case we'd have all already quit from boredom.
In general, humans have a hard time understanding the effect randomness plays into their lives. When things go good we naturally attribute it to some kind of skill we must possess. When things go bad we look to blame the factors we can't control rather than ourselves. It's human nature. In an environment such as Hearthstone it leads to a culture of negativity when the easy way to make ourselves feel better is to assume we just always have bad beats instead of looking into why things didn't go our way. Sure, not every scenario is winnable, but many could be if we had done something differently.
TL;DR: All of this is just a long way of saying that in general humans have a hard time grasping how RNG affects them and thus we get salty really easily.
A better comparison for skill is poker. In tournaments, it's very largely luck based on an individual basis, but in the long run, luck will not save you.
Exactly. I think Hearthstone is not as luck-based as we give it credit for, but regardless, it still holds a bit more luck than I'd like there to be. It's much more than Magic, that's for certain, but I think people might be exaggerating when they say that a new player has as much of a chance to win as an experienced player.
Despite this, I think that the point of the video was not to discuss the amount of randomness but rather to delineate how respond to said randomness. Looking at how salty and pessimistic people get when they complain that they lost entirely due to luck rather than deckbuilding or in-game choices, I think it's safe to say that we may be a bit...too "negative" in polite terms.
I don't think anyone tries to make the case that a newbie is on equal footing with an experienced player, although it is possible that a newbie player defeats an experienced one once every 100000 games, like when amaz lost to that basic mage deck, lol.
And like, sure, Pavel is an excellent player, but no one will deny that those babbling books gave him a humongous edge, you don't even need to watch the rest of the game to know they were decisive. I don't know about other people, but I dislike that kind of thing a lot, honestly if I had been on the losing end of that game I would not take it lightly at all, there is no explanation for it, it's literally dumb luck. Not that I'd be angry at the guy, I'd be displeased with the game itself, and I think it's only natural to feel that way if you went out of your way to prepare and try to win a tournament and have this kind of bullshit happen to you.
I agree that if someone is saying "I high rolled my way through the tournament" he's probably downplaying his/her own effort, but... it's not necessarily an outright lie, nor is this an issue for the community at large, in my estimations. Like, yeah, whatever, 99,9% of the players have never played a tournament. IMO Kibler is just trying to help the competitive scene not to lose credibility because he makes a living out of it. He wants to make some bucks out of it, so it's better if people take HS seriously as a competitive game, which honestly... I don't think it is, at least not a prime example of a competitive game.
I wanted to add this:besides the crazy RNG effects, I think ( I even debated about this with Firebat in chat during a stream ) that the shallow card pool that plagues HS keeps the game quite stale and uninteresting apart from the first month after a new expansion comes out.
Here's the difference between MtG and Hearthstone. Hearthstone has tons of RNG built-in. This means that it's always possible to swing the game back. Unlikely, but possible. MtG has tons of RNG, but it's all front-loaded into the topdeck. This means that's it's significantly harder to swing the game back once the board is locked.
And Yugioh has almost no RNG because everything tutors everything. This means that there is no chance of winning the game if the board isn't in your favour and you don't have more answers in your hand than they have trap cards.
I'm not sure how anyone can make the argument that there -isn't- a problem of negativity in HS. It's pretty obvious that there is one. There are so many complaints, so few of which actually make sense, and none of which justify the resulting level of negativity in the player base. In regards to some of them:
A. The game is entirely decided by the opening hand and is over by turn 4:
Why does everyone think this? There are plenty of options in the game which allow you to come back from a losing position on board. Maybe it's true if you're using a cheesy all-in aggro deck that's designed to fail except in the event that it gets a lucky draw, but if that's the case, you forfeit your right to complain about it.
B. The game is entirely decided by RNG:
There is plenty of skill involved in the game and everyone knows it. As Kibler points out, people listen to and value the perspectives of pro-players more than others explicitly because they are very good at the game, a quality which would be impossible to have if the game did not involve skill. It's true that sometimes you find yourself in a position where you can't win because all of your cards do nothing to help, but RNG, especially in the form of card generation, does not diminish the significance of skill. If anything, it increases it.
C. Arena is in a problem state because there is too much random card generation:
What? Literally every card you encounter in arena is a random card. Discounting the fact that spells tend to hold higher quality over minions, there's basically no difference in arena between cards like Shimmering Tempest and Cabalist Tome and cards like Loot Hoarder and Nourish.
D. Decks like Quest Rogue and Jade Druid are broken and kill control:
While I get that beating these guys with control decks is very difficult, I don't get why the reaction to their existence is outrage. I play pretty much nothing but Control Paladin, and not only do I frequently beat these decks, I also find them to be by far my most exciting match-ups. They're the only match-ups where I feel like my abilities are being put to the test, and when I beat them it's so satisfying. I don't understand players who say they want the game to be more skill-driven, yet demand regular changes that make winning easier.
Like I said before though, whatever people's reasons are for not liking the game, none of it justifies the level of pessimism I've seen from some of these streamers and forum users. Auto-squelching, conceding on turn 1, demonizing aggro\budget deck users. The other day I watched a grown man punch his keyboard and scream Russian profanity because his opponent coined Wild Growth on turn 1. There is no rationalizing that. It's not only hurtful to your opponent to accuse them of being unskilled and only winning because they got lucky; it's hurtful to you too. It denies you the learning experience and makes you feel like you're wasting your time playing the game. You're not wasting your time. You've stuck with HS this long for a reason, and if everyone were to turn their focus away from all the negatives, they might remember what that reason is.
And Yugioh has almost no RNG because everything tutors everything. This means that there is no chance of winning the game if the board isn't in your favour and you don't have more answers in your hand than they have trap cards.
But this little guy aside, Yu-gi-oh is a game with multiple methods for winning on turn 1 with no chance for counterplay from the opponent. Nobody should ever defend Yu-gi-oh and bash Hearthstone in the same breath.
People have expressed their opinion about the negativity problem in hs. I agree on many parts with LordPikachuStarscream and especially with the last paragraph, that people rage for stupid things, this leading only to damage their own health and to offend others. However as people in this thread also explained - the RNG root in hs hinders tournaments to be taken seriously. My respect towards Pavel, he deserves to be called a champion, but Brian Kibler can't deny, that the spells he got from Babbling Book were more than helpful. They didn't require skill, because they were the right answers for the opponent's threats. I'm not offending Pavel - If they were in a form of another removal, then he would have showed his knowledge of using answers efficiently, the difference between a good and a pro player. Getting something good from RNG is inevitable, the same for getting something really bad (Bomb Squad from Firelands portal), but I just want to point out, that examples like this show why hs can't be taken seriously and Brian Kibler, no matter how hard he tries to defend competitive hs, he can't confront them. Or the most extreme case, originating with WotoG - Yogg, where both players stop confronting each other and start playing with/against RNGeesus, where the game loses its meaning and it becomes a hocus pocus show.
And my point - the negativity, that comes from this, is more than understandable. Things like these are to be expected, when RNG has an influence on the course of the game. And maybe pro players like Pavel aren't responsible for getting good answers and screwing their opponents, they certainly don't cheat, but it feels unfair, how you get hindered out of nowhere and the opponent suddenly gets an assistance. And this isn't a small dose of luck; it's the type of luck in hs, which is guilty for this behaviour [amm, maybe I can't name it correctly, but with the examples you will get what i mean]:
Here's the difference between MtG and Hearthstone. Hearthstone has tons of RNG built-in. This means that it's always possible to swing the game back. Unlikely, but possible. MtG has tons of RNG, but it's all front-loaded into the topdeck. This means that's it's significantly harder to swing the game back once the board is locked.
TheWamts talking about the 2 types of RNG - the natural one and the imposed one.
Other examples (in other sports) include e.g. the weather condition - like the path of the wind; after a rain did you happen to slip etc.
(kinda tl; dr) But this is what I'm trying to say - the imposed RNG makes people to rage and to disrespect their opponents, although they weren't responsible for the outcome, especially when people are so close in achieving a high rank in a tournament. It's the game design's fault for this.
The comparison with poker is a good one. In poker you learn that to play your odds, so as long as you do good plays you should think it's fine regardless of the outcome.. Because the outcome is beyond what you can do, but you can still do the best play with what you have. So yeah, you may get unlucky and lose on the river, but on the long run the outcome should be the sversge expected result, not a single dice roll..
Comparisons between magic and HS are always terrible. And the worst is, he knows, you can't even compare both games when it comes to RNG, magic hasn't printed a card with "random" written on it, excluding cards that put revealed cards back to the bottom of your deck in random order and non-standard valid cards for probably more than a decade.
Random effects are not part of magic at all, very rare exceptions, and all of them in formats that would equate to wild in HS.
I don't like Kibler, he's always saying shit I disagree with. If I'm not mistaken back when the boogeymonster was released and everyone was up in arms, he was like "yeah bruh, bad cards have a space, I like the card a lot", like, f$*& off dude, Gruul already exists, no need for a worst version :P
Randomness doesn't exclude skill.
If you rolled a die on every chess conquer, with the winner taking the piece... it would still be a skill-game. It would have higher variance, and being good would be a long-term measurement and not a short-term one, but that's irrelevant.
Note: I do not take any credit for this video. I just wanna share this with other people because I found it interesting.
So what do you think?
Well, Heartstone strategy level is not on par with Magic. You do not have deep thoughts involved, low bluff ratio/guessing of cards... Ofc people watch wacky and crazy fun deck builders, because it is no rocket science piloting ANY HS deck, while you need quite a lot of time and insight to become good at playing even a single Magic deck. This translate easily into: HS is better for the show, Magic is better for the deep strategy. I won't watch a HS Tournament cuz I would never learn anything new or say WOAH what a play. At most, I would say: WOAH what a stroke of luck!
Sidenote: I used to play Magic for quite a long time at a competitive level.
game is entirely determined by whoever draws better in the mulligan and first few turns. why shouldn't there be a lot of negativity?
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Comparisons between magic and HS are always terrible. And the worst is, he knows, you can't even compare both games when it comes to RNG, magic hasn't printed a card with "random" written on it, excluding cards that put revealed cards back to the bottom of your deck in random order and non-standard valid cards for probably more than a decade.
Random effects are not part of magic at all, very rare exceptions, and all of them in formats that would equate to wild in HS.
I don't like Kibler, he's always saying shit I disagree with. If I'm not mistaken back when the boogeymonster was released and everyone was up in arms, he was like "yeah bruh, bad cards have a space, I like the card a lot", like, f$*& off dude, Gruul already exists, no need for a worst version :P
Yeah, I know the miracle mechanic.
Yeah, I made a query on magiccards.info and was actually surprised to see some recent-ish fringe cards that actually had random on them. But all of them are so bad it's not even relevant.
About cascade and miracle like stuff, deck manipulation allows for them to be skill based cards, not random bullshit. Proof is decks that play those cards use these effects. Even Jund uses Sylvan Lybrary with Bloodbraided Elf.
Also, cascade only reveals cards from the top of the deck and then puts the non-casted cards back to the bottom of the deck, they aren't discarded.
Chaos warp is a commander card and is not valid in standard/modern, only eternal formats, wild-like stuff.
er.... that is not even comparable to the magnitude of a Yogg or even a PavellingBook. Seriously, the randomness in HS is out of scale. At least the last expansion didnt bring too much of it!
The examples above are of "good" randomness, that is ONLY linked to topdeck/card draws, that should be the ONLY variance thing in a card game.
Monstruosities like Yogg are only good for the fun effect, but they are very bad for the seriousness of the game. This causes HS not to be taken seriously by players, competitive or not. And this explains the topic of the video.
A better comparison for skill is poker. In tournaments, it's very largely luck based on an individual basis, but in the long run, luck will not save you.
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A lot of players rant about how RNG ruins Hearthstone and compare it to the level of RNG in Magic. Magic and Hearthstone only share one randomness generating feature: what you draw off your deck each turn.
The big difference between Magic and Hearthstone is that in Magic cards with random elements/effects are almost entirely casual in nature and see little to no play competitively. As a paper-based game it is harder for Magic to incorporate random effects like those we see in Hearthstone, but Magic has a huge random factor already built into it in the form of lands. If you draw too many or too few then you will most likely lose regardless of how good the matchup is for you or how skilled you are compared to your opponent.
Hearthstone, on the other hand, as a digital game can easily accommodate the design space of RNG. People use the term "RNG" like it is some bad thing. Done properly and in an interesting manner it is good for a game (and I think Blizzard is finally honing in on the proper level after some missteps last year). Without RNG Hearthstone would be boring and Blizzard knows this. There is no built in mechanism in Hearthstone similar to lands in Magic. I gain one mana every turn like clockwork, meaning with a properly built deck I can be assured that I will be able to play my cards each and every game without fail. If there is no RNG present this causes the outcome of a particular match to be almost 100% ensured assuming both players are of roughly equal skill level. If that was he case we'd have all already quit from boredom.
In general, humans have a hard time understanding the effect randomness plays into their lives. When things go good we naturally attribute it to some kind of skill we must possess. When things go bad we look to blame the factors we can't control rather than ourselves. It's human nature. In an environment such as Hearthstone it leads to a culture of negativity when the easy way to make ourselves feel better is to assume we just always have bad beats instead of looking into why things didn't go our way. Sure, not every scenario is winnable, but many could be if we had done something differently.
TL;DR: All of this is just a long way of saying that in general humans have a hard time grasping how RNG affects them and thus we get salty really easily.
And like, sure, Pavel is an excellent player, but no one will deny that those babbling books gave him a humongous edge, you don't even need to watch the rest of the game to know they were decisive. I don't know about other people, but I dislike that kind of thing a lot, honestly if I had been on the losing end of that game I would not take it lightly at all, there is no explanation for it, it's literally dumb luck. Not that I'd be angry at the guy, I'd be displeased with the game itself, and I think it's only natural to feel that way if you went out of your way to prepare and try to win a tournament and have this kind of bullshit happen to you.
I agree that if someone is saying "I high rolled my way through the tournament" he's probably downplaying his/her own effort, but... it's not necessarily an outright lie, nor is this an issue for the community at large, in my estimations. Like, yeah, whatever, 99,9% of the players have never played a tournament. IMO Kibler is just trying to help the competitive scene not to lose credibility because he makes a living out of it. He wants to make some bucks out of it, so it's better if people take HS seriously as a competitive game, which honestly... I don't think it is, at least not a prime example of a competitive game.
His hair looks good
Here's the difference between MtG and Hearthstone. Hearthstone has tons of RNG built-in. This means that it's always possible to swing the game back. Unlikely, but possible. MtG has tons of RNG, but it's all front-loaded into the topdeck. This means that's it's significantly harder to swing the game back once the board is locked.
And Yugioh has almost no RNG because everything tutors everything. This means that there is no chance of winning the game if the board isn't in your favour and you don't have more answers in your hand than they have trap cards.
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My mandibles which are capable of pressing down and tearing, my talons which are known to intercept and hold.
I'm not sure how anyone can make the argument that there -isn't- a problem of negativity in HS. It's pretty obvious that there is one. There are so many complaints, so few of which actually make sense, and none of which justify the resulting level of negativity in the player base. In regards to some of them:
A. The game is entirely decided by the opening hand and is over by turn 4:
Why does everyone think this? There are plenty of options in the game which allow you to come back from a losing position on board. Maybe it's true if you're using a cheesy all-in aggro deck that's designed to fail except in the event that it gets a lucky draw, but if that's the case, you forfeit your right to complain about it.
B. The game is entirely decided by RNG:
There is plenty of skill involved in the game and everyone knows it. As Kibler points out, people listen to and value the perspectives of pro-players more than others explicitly because they are very good at the game, a quality which would be impossible to have if the game did not involve skill. It's true that sometimes you find yourself in a position where you can't win because all of your cards do nothing to help, but RNG, especially in the form of card generation, does not diminish the significance of skill. If anything, it increases it.
C. Arena is in a problem state because there is too much random card generation:
What? Literally every card you encounter in arena is a random card. Discounting the fact that spells tend to hold higher quality over minions, there's basically no difference in arena between cards like Shimmering Tempest and Cabalist Tome and cards like Loot Hoarder and Nourish.
D. Decks like Quest Rogue and Jade Druid are broken and kill control:
While I get that beating these guys with control decks is very difficult, I don't get why the reaction to their existence is outrage. I play pretty much nothing but Control Paladin, and not only do I frequently beat these decks, I also find them to be by far my most exciting match-ups. They're the only match-ups where I feel like my abilities are being put to the test, and when I beat them it's so satisfying. I don't understand players who say they want the game to be more skill-driven, yet demand regular changes that make winning easier.
Like I said before though, whatever people's reasons are for not liking the game, none of it justifies the level of pessimism I've seen from some of these streamers and forum users. Auto-squelching, conceding on turn 1, demonizing aggro\budget deck users. The other day I watched a grown man punch his keyboard and scream Russian profanity because his opponent coined Wild Growth on turn 1. There is no rationalizing that. It's not only hurtful to your opponent to accuse them of being unskilled and only winning because they got lucky; it's hurtful to you too. It denies you the learning experience and makes you feel like you're wasting your time playing the game. You're not wasting your time. You've stuck with HS this long for a reason, and if everyone were to turn their focus away from all the negatives, they might remember what that reason is.
People have expressed their opinion about the negativity problem in hs. I agree on many parts with LordPikachuStarscream and especially with the last paragraph, that people rage for stupid things, this leading only to damage their own health and to offend others. However as people in this thread also explained - the RNG root in hs hinders tournaments to be taken seriously. My respect towards Pavel, he deserves to be called a champion, but Brian Kibler can't deny, that the spells he got from Babbling Book were more than helpful. They didn't require skill, because they were the right answers for the opponent's threats. I'm not offending Pavel - If they were in a form of another removal, then he would have showed his knowledge of using answers efficiently, the difference between a good and a pro player. Getting something good from RNG is inevitable, the same for getting something really bad (Bomb Squad from Firelands portal), but I just want to point out, that examples like this show why hs can't be taken seriously and Brian Kibler, no matter how hard he tries to defend competitive hs, he can't confront them. Or the most extreme case, originating with WotoG - Yogg, where both players stop confronting each other and start playing with/against RNGeesus, where the game loses its meaning and it becomes a hocus pocus show.
And my point - the negativity, that comes from this, is more than understandable. Things like these are to be expected, when RNG has an influence on the course of the game. And maybe pro players like Pavel aren't responsible for getting good answers and screwing their opponents, they certainly don't cheat, but it feels unfair, how you get hindered out of nowhere and the opponent suddenly gets an assistance. And this isn't a small dose of luck; it's the type of luck in hs, which is guilty for this behaviour [amm, maybe I can't name it correctly, but with the examples you will get what i mean]:
TheWamts talking about the 2 types of RNG - the natural one and the imposed one.
Other examples (in other sports) include e.g. the weather condition - like the path of the wind; after a rain did you happen to slip etc.
(kinda tl; dr) But this is what I'm trying to say - the imposed RNG makes people to rage and to disrespect their opponents, although they weren't responsible for the outcome, especially when people are so close in achieving a high rank in a tournament. It's the game design's fault for this.
The comparison with poker is a good one. In poker you learn that to play your odds, so as long as you do good plays you should think it's fine regardless of the outcome.. Because the outcome is beyond what you can do, but you can still do the best play with what you have. So yeah, you may get unlucky and lose on the river, but on the long run the outcome should be the sversge expected result, not a single dice roll..
Yeah, a toast!
this guy is a clown
caca