Hearthpwn

Hey guys, I have a theoretical question for you. How would you feel about a card game which had absolutely no RNG in it, aside from the matchups you would queue into? (Since that is unavoidable)

When I say no RNG, I mean it. Imagine that every turn instead of drawing a card, you would search your deck for ANYTHING that you wanted. This would eliminate all bad draws, because you would control every one of them. Also imagine that your deck is limited to only ONE of each card. There are no multiples allowed, so every decision counts even more.

I know that I haven't given much information.. Maybe this sounds weird to you guys, but perhaps some would be interested? I had a project in the works that kind of got set aside.. But with the new expansion coming out, it's really been inspiring me to consider getting back into it.

So what do you think of this concept? I'm curious to see what feedback you have, whether it be positive or negative. I ask you please be constructive with your criticism though. 

Thanks for reading. :)

RNG is used when 2 players of equal skills are playing agaisnt each other.

Without RNG...

I suppose what you're saying is true. I understand that it could mean games would play out in the same fashion, which would make it stale.

But if you had only one of each card in your deck, could that make things different? I mean, you and your opponent are drawing exactly what you want each turn to try and counter each other. With only 1-of's, that could make decklists potentially look more different from each other.. In turn making games play out differently?

Maybe I'm just in over my head.

thats why games like hearthstone were invented

there are for kinds of games:

Imagine a coordinate system with "RNG" on the X-Site and "Skill" on the Y-Site

Bottom left you find a game like XXO (easy to master and not much Rng possible

Bottom right there is monopoly --> a lot of RNG not that much Skill

Top left is Chess --> much skill but less nearly no RNG ( thats why one of the best chess players once said, they should think about putting the figures of the second line random - to make the game more vversatile

and yet you have on the TOP right games like Hearthstone --> with much RNG and Much skill to master it --> so there is much more viability

Quote from Linklaters jump

thats why games like hearthstone were invented

there are for kinds of games:

Imagine a coordinate system with "RNG" on the X-Site and "Skill" on the Y-Site

Bottom left you find a game like XXO (easy to master and not much Rng possible

Bottom right there is monopoly --> a lot of RNG not that much Skill

Top left is Chess --> much skill but less nearly no RNG ( thats why one of the best chess players once said, they should think about putting the figures of the second line random - to make the game more vversatile

and yet you have on the TOP right games like Hearthstone --> with much RNG and Much skill to master it --> so there is much more viability

 

 

Not a bad way to analyze it, good post. :)

Yeah I've been concerned that this concept could get a bit stale. I suppose it's just the truth of the matter. Were it to be like this, the games would play out in a chess fashion.

Honestly, I wouldn't rule this idea out. Cards games don't inherently have to have RNG. And games that aren't random can be very fun. Chess is just a classic example of that. The key would be to think of what makes each matchup different. A wide diversity of cards, how complex you'd want it, how restrictions would interact with gameplay.... yeah. It might be hard to conceptualize, but what good games aren't?

Card games have RNG ingrained in it just because of draws. If you have a card game where you can search for everything, I wouldn't exactly call that a card game anymore, even if cards were the main vehicles. I'd be interested, but there's a lot of things you have to consider when you make a card game with no RNG. Without card draw, you pretty much throw deck consistency out of the window so people will just build entire decks around some crazy OTK combo that'll normally be impossible to pull off, unless you get absolutely perfect draws (which you can every single time thanks to no RNG. 

That is no longer a card game, other than it is using cards to indicate which abilities you are using.

How can a card game have absolutely no RNG? Seems to me RNG is an inherent part of a card game by its very nature. Of course, in Hearthstone's case, it has injected additional RNG elements in many ways, but I don't see how you can have a card game without at least some degree of RNG.

I think what you are suggesting is a game like chess  or go; a game that is without luck.

Card games inherently have luck due to the nature of shuffled cards being theoretically random. The enjoyment and strategy that comes from a card game is developing a play style and skill set that reduces the randomness of the game and increases your win rate. It is true that you will always have good and bad draws, but a good player will win more times than a bad player, even when luck is taken into account. Poker is a good example of this. A good poker player will be able to know almost exactly what is in the hand of their opponents, and thus plan accordingly.

In chess their is no luck, and the only constraint is recognising patterns and calculating the best line of play within the least amount of time. Chess benefits from its depth. If you develop a game that is completely balanced and free of RNG, but that has match ups, then it turns into a game of rock, paper, scissors. Only the addition of depth would then add strategy and enjoyment.

If you are interested in making a game without RNG, card games in their truest sense are not the way to go, but RNG is not an issue if it is controlled.

Basically an idea like this boils down to what the game would end up looking like. Sequencing would become the biggest part of the game and that's just not very interesting. Or rather, it can be interesting but often times it's not exciting. In Go you have joseki, which are basically "solved" patterns of play. They don't cover the entire game, but cover sequences of play that have been played out enough times that people know what the best option is through a series of plays. Chess has those too. You'd end up with a series of decks where everyone knows the appropriate sequences. "I open like this, then they go get this card, then I respond with this one, which makes them do this, and in turn I..." and so on.

Now in practice it wouldn't go exactly like that, because there would still be hidden information. You don't know for sure what is in your opponents deck, but you can make some assumptions. It would make tech cards obscenely powerful, certainly. If I could always just draw BGH or Kezan Mystic when I felt like it, then would anyone even want to play 7 attack minions or secrets? The tempo loss might be too much to recover from (obviously this is a Hearthstone example, your game would probably have to forego tech cards altogether or make their impact a lot smaller).

The real problem with an idea like this is that it's far more punishing to those with less experience. If you want to make a game accessible in the sense that it's easy to market, then putting a skill gap that's so high between new and old players isn't really the way to do it. People complain about losing to facehunter and the like but in games without rng you can play against the same person one hundred games in a row and literally lose every single game. If they're better than you, it's a lot harder for you to ever win. If you used a ranking system like Hearthstone does, you'd see a lot of stagnation in the ranks, with players just stuck until they finally manage to get good enough to progress a little. It would be a long process that didn't feel particularly rewarding. 

Now of course, this is true of games that don't have rng, and perhaps your game would attract the people who enjoy that kind of game. Your market would just be a lot different from the kind of people who come and enjoy Hearthstone, and assuming you were trying to market it I can't help but think you'd make a lot less money XD. 

This is an interesting idea. As Linklaters sort of mentioned, this would play more like Chess than a card game proper. However, that could make it pretty fun.

With nine classes and nearly infinite combinations of cards to fill various deck composition the games would be different but more strategic. You know what you have in your deck, though you can only assume what your opponent has based on their class. Some combos would be rendered nearly entirely useless while others would become extremely viable and very effective. It'd be a pretty interesting way to play.

You wouldn't be able to run pure aggro or pure counter effectively because your opponent will see exactly what you're doing and gauge their next moves accordingly. If you solely play the counter game you'll always be in a defensive position. If you always play the aggro game you'll miss out on other opportunities for victory through tactical defense. It'd be more direct overall, but with the game mechanics controlling mana flow and combat direction (taunt, charge, etc.) you'd still have parameters you needed to work within in order to win.

If anything I think it'd be a cool idea to try out. It's not fair to just discount the idea entirely when we can't play it out easily to see how it runs in practice. Really, if you went back about 5+ years and said "Hey, what if we turned WoW into a card game? Wouldn't that own?!" you'd probably be laughed at because the idea on its surface sounds preposterous but ended up turning out pretty damned fun.