Hearthpwn

Jaina just played hilarious Frost Nova + Frost Nova combo. That's what I call cool AI.

Of course packs are 100 gold. These people don't buy packs for gold, or mistakenly think that reward packs magically become cheaper when they come not from the shop, or maybe they bought enough packs already at the start of expansion and saying about next packs they don't need that much. Economically 2 wins average is ok, 3 is good, and 5 is great, almost soft-infinite level already.
Cards were in buckets based on their quality, yes, and how is it connected to balance?
Of course he never said that, and I never said buckets were synergistic within them too, I'm saying that decks you get at the end of a draft have more synergies this way. Let's say you picked elemental on pick one and was offered an option to get elemental synergy on pick two. With buckets you just pick it as three cards are about the same power level (at least if Blizzard were good at balancing buckets), without it you may very often not pick it because you was offered premium card without synergy at the same time. That's how additional synergies sneak in. Putting cards with the same synergy in the same bucket have nothing to do with it and only reduces this side effect.
Upd: Let me clear my first post, "synergy picks" were about adding synergies and buckets were about letting people draft the deck the way they like. Buckets were way better than synergy picks, synergy increase was not a goal in second case, they didn't harm arena that much, some players liked it, but still buckets pushed it in the direction away from pure "try to draft something worthy from trash and beat another trash".

Quote from C_A_W >>

The problem with the arena is that it has an entry fee that beginners don't want to pay and many streamers just don't want to play a draft mode (duels & arena), so the exposure for the format is very low. 

The problem with the Arena is not an entry fee, it is still the best way to farm packs/dust for beginners. When I was a beginner, I played mainly Arena because I'm F2P and couldn't afford good constructed decks. You need only 1 or 2 wins on average for it to be worth it already, get good and you can even become at least soft-infinite. You are motivated both to play and to improve your game. The entry fee/reward system (without MMR matchmaking) is great!
The problem is that Blizzard don't know what to do with this mode. Two times when they tried to do something major with it ("synergy picks" and "buckets"), it was about adding synergies and letting people draft the deck the way they like, when in reality the less synergies Arena have, the better it is, and fighting against inevitable flaws in the deck is a big part of what makes it fun. They just look at it from the constructed perspective every time.
Duels is completely different case. Duels is constructed. If you start the run with 20-cards constructed deck, first game is more constructed than Ranked, and you only go for additional synergies from there. That's why Duels are almost dead, they just can't compete with Ranked.

Quote from FortyDust >>

That cannot be "the" problem; if it were a good game, streamers would want to play. If it's fun and interesting, people will play it -- or at least watch streamers play it.

 Even in its current state it's not as dead as Duels, there are enough streamers who play Arena and people who want to watch Arena. When ShtanUdachi asks his chat which mode they want him to play (and he is a great constructed player too), it's Arena every time.

Quote from PetiteMouche >>

 What ? Rogue, mage, warlock, and warrior/druid to a lesser extent, can't draw cards endlessly ? Yes they can.

And if card gen shouldn't be used as a replacement for card draw, then... why should it be used ?

 They can draw their deck and that's it, resources over, card draw is dead in fatigue. It's fine when it used to generate something useful here and there, not as a way to be more greedy than opponent or even a win condition.

Quote from UltraJeeves >>

"As randomness in the game increases, the skill cap becomes lower. It becomes impossible to play around all the random outcomes, and the edge you can gain in the game becomes smaller."

You forget more important part, "When extraordinarily strong random outcomes exist, games are simply decided by them. It does not matter what the opposing player does when one player rolls high enough". Without that It's like saying "Poker is not a game of skill, just RNG".
Playing around something is a narrow definition of skill. What about roughly predicting which random outcomes you should play around and which you shouldn't care because you win or lose regardless, isn't it harder then just learning how every card works? It decreases tactics (playing around exact cards) and increases strategy (playing around the entire picture). I'm pretty sure Mad Bomber requires more skill to play correctly rather than Bloodfen Raptor. Randomness by itself is problematic only when swings are too high, not in general.

Thanks for the link btw, next statement is what I tried to say to PetiteMouche: "When significant resource generation exists, decks that use it get to play with near-infinite resources, which drives slow decks out of the meta as they cannot keep up. This makes the meta faster and more aggressive as a response". 

Quote from Hooghout >>

Quote from AndreiLux >>

It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.

 An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses. 

Not really, It's about not overcomplicating things. Classical "easy to learn, hard to master" formula. Exaggerated example: some people like 5d chess with multiverse time travel, but more people like normal chess and it's not like chess suffer from lack of depth. Part of the game I consider as made for the mindless masses is arts, animations, emotes etc, everything what covers the game of numbers with sparkles and shinnies, but it's the same for every digital card game and not enough by itself to hook up even casual players.

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

Very few decks AREN'T interactive.  Interactivity is actually fairly objective and easy to measure, and the most encompassing definition I've ever seen is as follows:  "Interactivity is the extent to which a deck's path to victory and/or avoidance of defeat is changed by the actions of the opponent".

 

Interactivity, by first definition from google (from "Oxford Languages"), is "the process of two people or things working together and influencing each other". So, in my opinion, both face decks and combo decks can be equally non-interactive, and the closer archetype to midrange, the more interactive it is.

It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.

Ok, and I'm fine with facing any aggro deck as long as it fights for the board initially and in general would like Rogue to be the worst class in the game forever as it doesn't looks fun or interactive for me. Should I promote my biased and unreasonable opinion as a thing that "make the game better" too?
Watch posts were one of the worst card designs in the entire history of the game and you want them to be OP again, it doesn't make any sense even for an aggro hater, only for a player who actually wants to make the game as non-interactive as possible.

Quote from M0res >>

I think it’s obvious to many of us that rng is to an extend controlled by the algorithm rather than random.

There are cases in both standard and bgs when it’s obvious that the way things go must be controlled by software rather than a coincidence.

regarding the tavern brawl, I have a spare phone with an alt account - I just play against it and job done in seconds 

Ironically, unlikely coincidences is a sign of true randomness. It's like Apple shuffle playlist algorithm, when it was truly random, people complained that it's not random so they adjusted it to feel "more random" instead of true random. Hearthstone is a competitive game so it's important to keep it truly random even if it feels not that random for conspiracy theorists. In reality it's just your brain searching for patterns all the time.

It's just different. I'm not enjoy all that much when I need to take actions on my opponents turn and when my turn isn't fully mine, that's why HS or, let's say, TESL (RIP) would always be better games for me rather than LoR or MTGA. Also as a viewer it's way more easier to watch HS streams, I would never watch LoR stream.
Visually HS looks way better (except for the cute guys in the corner of a screen and champions level up animations). Sounds and voices are probably better in LoR (at least in russian version), but who cares about that, I play muted 90% of the time.
In terms of economy LoR is of course a lot more generous, but i'm F2P in HS since I started at GvG and still have no big problems with being F2P.
Game modes, I would say, equal - HS have an amazing arena mode (I know my opinion will be unpopular, but for me it's the best game mode in the game) and Runeterra's expedition mode forces players to have synergistic decks, and that totally ruins spirit of "everything can happen" and "find a way to make everything useful, even if its garbage". Runeterra, at the same time, have a tournament mode, which I want from HS for years.
I don't care about Warcraft as much as I don't care about LoL, so lore was never a factor for me.
Deckbuilding isn't important for me at all and it's nice that in Runeterra you can netdeck best players decks straight from the client.
Overall, I would play LoR instead of HS only if Blizzard made economy system so greedy that it would be impossible to be F2P for me or if they make games even longer, like control only meta or something like that. It's far from that point. It's nice that we have a game to keep Blizzard not relaxed though.
Both games have their pros and cons, but LoR should be compared with games of its subgenre, like MTGA, not with HS, or it will come down to subgenre preferences (and maybe the money aspect) every time.

Yes, and Aquatic Form is fine and always was fine, no one is ever complaining about 0 mana tracking that makes all druid decks 28 cards and always have ramp. 

Quote from dmhWarrior >>

There are so many bots because the top decks are auto-pilot, skill-less Bull crap.   This is a FACT.  Druid, Warlock and Warrior along with Mech Rogue are the easiest decks to play in the  history of CCGs.  Hence, you can bot them easily.   If theyd fix the game then bots wouldnt be so prevalent  and do so well.  Another FACT.

 These "FACTS" sound like "bears, beets, battlestar galactica" to me.

Bots are not doing well. The bots are all stuck facing low bronze players because they can't win. If you spent the time to read this thread, you would have noticed that the only people who face a large amount of bots are players who have not played standard in a long time, meaning they have very low internal MMR.

Just delete that card.

 If you are stuck in bronze/silver rank playing against bots and you feel trapped and cut off from the "real challenge" you have to find a way of outsmarting those bastards, think like the bot. I'm sure you'll find exiting games very soon if you spend less time here and more time beating those little devils. And if you can't beat them, join them ;) 

side note: Not trying to discredit critique of the matchmaking system or people tired of AFK players. But isn't botting generally just a problem if you are an experienced player with no MMR and no time to play?

Quote from Mads2Chazz >>

Very true.

Here are some of the ways you'll know if you play a bot.

They usually appear in patterns, so first you might see a standard deck (well known decklist / cards) with some odd ones in between.

This opponent might be really good or really bad depending on your ranking / winrate.

They will often play very fast and end their turns in almost an instant when they spend their mana. They even coin, do nothing from time to time.

They also use alot of the card backs released since Revendreth / March of the LK, and that includes the new Lich King ones (most popular for bots) as well as Hakkar and others, again depending on your rank / WR.

 

In about 3 weeks I think I've played against real people 10% of the time, the rest have been bots.

If you wanna test this I recommend you do it late at night. It's absolutely insane how we've gone from 6-7 min queues in Duels to now having an opponent almost instantly or within 30 sec.

Nobody is playing this game, and I suspect Blizzard have been doing Bots ever since it's inception. Inflates numbers, looks good for investors. Twitter did the same.

 Please tell me you're joking.

"Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad, sometimes they play meta, sometimes off-meta, they use various cardbacks, they end their turns..."

Really?

Your matched opponents depend on your internal MMR.

Since you're playing a lot of Wild, your internal MMR is similar to the highest rank you achieve each month, hence, you meet no bots there. However, because you haven't played Standard in a long time, your Standard MMR is the lowest possible, which is why you meet a ton of bots. If you win a few games, you'll meet fewer, then none.

I'm still finding it really hard to comprehend things like snoop and spitelash siren getting nerfed instead of odyn. 

One change I found really weird was Scargil. It definitely needed looking at because the murloc package can miracle off in a turn: draw 1/3 of your deck+massive board+mutanus on as early as turn 4. And it still will happen this early in the game with clownfish. A 1 mana nerf is not going to stop the package being oppressive because it's just too good. I really would have preferred a 4 mana scargil that reads "Your Murlocs cost (2) less" or something, so that you can still use it for huge boards, just not the part where you enable gorloc and mutanus.

Losing to combo is a worse feeling than loosing to aggro, also wastes more time