Hearthpwn

I had a 51% winrate versus priest. You have to try and stick a big board of Petting Zoo or a big Gossiper followed with strategic use of traps and you can win it. Don't underestimate pack tactics to deal with Hysteria. If the game goes long you will lose though.

I've been thinking about this for a long time now and decided to write something about it. It is basically my view of the game as it stands today, with the highs and the lows and why I think hearthstone should not be called a competitive game, but a fun one to pass the time with. Feel free to agree or disagree and point out where I'm looking at it from the wrong angle :)

As Hearthstone has aged and we've gotten access to more and more powerful cards, the game has become less about managing resources and more about three things: broken turns, RNG, and resource generation. I'll go over them all below and why I think it makes for a less fun game. I want to start out with a disclaimer that this will not be an "I lost to this", or an "I hate this type of deck"-post, I just want to share my thoughts. I got legend with what some might call the degenerate ramp paladin deck last month. It was my third time reaching legend. I've also played tickatus lock, rez priest and lots of home-brewed or "meme"-decks.

Broken turns: We all know the feeling, right? You pull off something so insane that you just instawin, and you get that nice kick of dopamine that starts out in your head and nestles its way down to your tummy. But is it really fun in the long run, or good game design to stray from the path of fighting for resources to "I drew this so I win unless you're playing this class and this card". The new ramp paladin is a good example. I can think of one class that can beat a turn four/five tip the scales and that's warrior, if he draws brawl. The chance for the warrior to draw brawl is about the same as it is for the paladin to get a tip the scales out at turn five. What do the other classes do? Nothing, they lose. 


The problem is prevalent in a lesser scale when you have decks that hard counter other archetypes. Tickatus into Y'shaarj versus a slow deck, most of the time you can't come back from it and there was nothing you could do about it other than play another deck. Rez priest throwing a grave runes on a convincing infiltrator versus a big deck. Mozaki mage is similar even though it's not doing as well on ladder. Sometimes they just draw the combo by turn 8 or something and you die. No counterplay. Yogg is another example: sometimes it does something so powerful you just win the game on the spot. The games have become less about resource management and more about having turns so powerful they win you the game. The problem is that while this might be fun for the player piloting the deck, it is less so for the player facing it.

But, you say, some decks should beat others. That's just the nature of rock-paper-scissors game design. Yes it is! But compared to MTG for example Hearthstone has no way to interact with your opponents win condition. In MTG you can counter their spells, use instants to disrupt chain of events, and make them discard cards from their hand. For a rock-paper-scissors game design to work well it has to feel like you could still have done something. Decks that rely on uninteractive win conditions like OTK, bomb warrior and to a lesser extent tickatus lock feels like shit to play against because you can't prevent them from playing the cards that screw you over. There is no targeted disruption in Hearthstone.

RNG and resource generation: Playing around stuff used to be a thing, right? Would you still say you do that? Maybe. I do sometimes, but an equal amount of the time I get screwed over by a card I could not have guessed my opponent would have. A druid with Murozond, a mage with five frostbolts in a row, the list goes on. Resource generation has removed a big layer of strategy from the game. Rogue and Mage are good examples of this. They don't draw cards from their deck as much as they create random cards. And random cards are unpredictable to a fault.

Now let's talk about RNG. Remember when that Reno hero power mashed out a Plague of Death at just the right moment? Or when it assassinated your own big minion just as you were going for the win? Remember when you played Yogg and it pyroblasted yourself in the face three times, making you lose? These are not outcomes you were in control over. They were completely luck-based, not just in the cards they generated but in what they targeted. RNG is a big part of the game now, and people (including myself) think it can be fun. But it is not competitive, at least not with the huge swings it can generate. I actually think discover is the lesser evil here compared to random targeting, random discard and the likes. It removes strategy, favouring "youtube moments" or whatever you want to call it.

And this is why midrange is mostly dead apart from arguably pure paladin sometimes. But that deck is both a midrange deck and a control deck all in one. Swing turns are simply too powerful for a deck to rely on curving out nicely and applying steady pressure. You either go balls out aggro or you go ramp, control or OTK. And sometimes you queue into a counter-deck and lose. I'd argue this is why netdecking is so prevalent, since the good decks just do such powerful stuff that playing anything else is a no-go.

Now I fully realise that the nature of card games is that they will be like this sometimes. Aggro can dump on you just as hard as an otk deck. But for a deck to be considered "good" in this game it should sport a win-rate somewhere around 52-55 %. It wins basically half the time. If you're good that percentage goes up to maybe 60%, or 70-80% if you're playing a broken deck.

With all that said, I still enjoy the game. It's fun most of the time, I like trying new stuff and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm just disappointed at the direction the game has taken since the start. I had more fun playing curvestone than I do playing RNG-stone, if you call it that.

Sorry if this was a bit incoherent, I wrote it just before going to bed. What are your views on the current state of the game?