Hearthpwn

Was playing a different list for quite a while and doing fine, but your list has been doing much better for me.  I replaced 1 condemn with a second Shard of the Naaru.

Quote from user-18143276 >>

Its so blatantly rigged it blows my mind. Playing 2 games as the panda hero. It consistently offers the worst hero powers in the game such as Edvins, Cariel, Kitty and Nozdormu. No way that shit is random. Its scripted. 

Extremely rare to get Reno for example on that hero. 

 

 If it's scripted you should know what you will get and can plan accordingly.  If you know what you are getting and can't take advantage, you need to improve.

If it's not scripted and you are getting poor results with a solid tier 2 hero, you need to improve.

People: They rig it to keep everyone at 50% and you can't change it!

Also people: When you pay to have access to more heroes you win more!

...

I can understand people get frustrated when they have poor RNG and jump to conclusions.  The whole "They force a 50% winrate and even admitted it!" argument just baffles me though.  One guy said earlier 

"Where they literally said that they basically rig it to make it so you're either matched up with people with a higher skill or lower skill to keep the win rate at around 50%"

This is literally how any MMR system works.  If you are at 6k rating and the people you get matched against are less skilled than you, you are more likely to win and gain MMR.  If you get to 8k rating and the people you get matched against are higher skilled than you, you are more likely to lose...until you improve as a player.  You aren't being forced to stay at 8k or lower.  If you gave your account to a 12k player, they would absolutely climb past 8k, even though you couldn't.

My anxiety doesn't go away from winning though.  Reaching a ranked floor helps slightly, but really the only solution for me is to play something I find fun.  If I succeed, great!  If not, oh well.

You claim to know when a game is lost due to reasons beyond your control, so that is when you should take a break.  Even if for just a few minutes.  That being said, I find it hard to believe that every one of those losses has nothing to teach you.

I like to watch streamers and these people play more games in a month then I might in a year, so they clearly know a lot more about the game.  Despite their vastly superior skill and experience, they still question their own decisions and take time to consider the options.  Even something as simple as which cards to mulligan in a matchup they have played hundreds of times by now.  Why?  Because they are likely taking a lot more into consideration than I would think to.

My point is that there is ALWAYS room for improvement.  Yes, some games are 100% beyond your control and will be lost despite making zero mistakes.  That doesn't mean there is nothing to take away from these losses.

These nerfs are barely out, you can't claim they didn't work yet.  I didn't read anything saying that Deck of Lunacy shouldn't be competitive, just that it was too strong at turn 1 & 2.  The deck will likely lose more often against it's bad matchups and will do a little worse in the favored matches.  I personally don't think Deck of Lunacy is good for the game, but just because people are still playing the card doesn't mean the nerf was a failure.

Sword of the Fallen is still a very strong card.  It will likely continue to be the best card in any paladin deck that runs secrets.  I would personally like to see the meta develop for a couple more days before calling the nerf a failure, though I'm inclined to agree Paladin needed more.  The goal of any nerf is simply to lower the cards/decks win rate, hopefully we see it.

As of typing this, according to HSReplay, Hunter has overtaken Paladin and Mage has dropped to 7th best class overall with No Minion Mage just above 50%.  Just give it a little bit of time for things to play out.

Quote from 1xbenx1 >>

IIRC isn't it a known bug that Fist will summon Reliquary an unnaturally high amount of the time on a 1-mana spell?

 It is well know that Fist will spawn Reliquary on a 1 mana spell.  I have faith that blizzard will reduce it's summon rate by at least 50% when the next expansion is released.  Until then I wouldn't expect this to change.

Quote from wg15 >>

Quote from SlydE >>

Quote from SirJohn13 >>

Government priorities w.r.t to regulation:

a) Regulate financial institutions whose irresponsible actions once led to a global financial crisis with far-reaching consequences
b) Regulate gaming companies whose actions may have led to my opponent discovering DQ Alextrasza off a Draconic Lackey and causing me to lose a game I should have won

Sounds about right...

This made me lol!

Card packs and loot boxes which be bought  for real money are actually regulated afaik. They have to inform well about the rng of what you get.

I can't believe how butthurt and paranoid some players are about in-game RNG. Our brains are not well put together to understand true randomness, but we are great at assuming patterns where there are none or the dataset is too small. 

Reposting this great video about RNG by numberphile:

https://youtu.be/tP-Ipsat90c

 Yeh, but randomness in programmed stuff is NOT random. And you guys don't understand it. The randomness in programmed stuff is man made. Best example are gaming machines. They are completely regulated yet the chances are there that everyone is able to win and who wins is completely random. Nothing to do with randomness. You know, if one single bit is not completely functional on a server machine everything is changed completely already.

Yet, in germany for example, they have to give out 80% of the income yet they can only give prices of maximum 1000€ per hour.

So in the end it's completely random by not being random at all. Sounds wierd, right?

Who says Blizz$Activision is not using such an algorithm? They make no secret of their main goal to get a 50% winrate in literally every game mode. And to repeat again and again and again and again...THEY OWN A PATENT FOR THIS.

Is it through matchmaking like they use in CoD (where they match players with less ingame buys with players that are better and have shiny skins etc!) or by controlling random effects.

If we don't get all the numbers from all games we can't say anything in particular. But alone daily Highlights on Youtube have multiple low chance clips each and every day that are against all odds to happen that often. Yes, it's highlights, but again, 0,000003% chances every here and there....no way in a true randomness.
And I repeat myself, my games alone have so much game deciding RNG  stuff with such a low percentage of possibility happening I simply won't stop believing that it is controlled RNG. This combined with my knowledge from being a game dev 5 years ago until I changed my job I won't trust Blizzard anymore. It is so easy to keep something random with a slight influence of the dev that keeps it "random" yet controlled.

Still i won't exclude that the coding is just very bad.

 I certainly wouldn't rule out bad coding either.  The only aspect of hearthstone that I have found suspicious over the years is from repeated effects.  Stuff like knife thrower triggering 7 times from an unleash and all hitting the same target.  Or more recently, a single puzzle box casting the same spell multiple times(3 bogbeam casts in a row!).  I don't assume rigged game play as a result, at worst I suspect a possible bug.

I'm sure I've said it in one of these threads already, but people really need to take a step back and think before assuming they were hit with a RNG outcome that shouldn't be possible.  Yeah you lost and the string of RNG effects that led to it might be really low, but there were probably a hundred different combination of possible RNG outcomes that would have resulted in a loss as well.

I also love how most of the bad beats people talk about have them easily crushing their opponents(all skill of course), only then to be undone by the most absurd RNG the game has ever seen.  Is the entire game rigged then?  Does the rigging algorithm only kick in when the already rigged MM failed to produce the desired outcome?  If it's all rigged, why would the suspicious RNG ever be needed in the first place when their advanced algorithms could simply control the draws for perfect 50% winrate manipulation.

There is no consensus on what's rigged and what isn't.  Someone earlier said it's clearly rigged cause he nearly always faces his worst matchup first game of the day and also the game after he hits the concede button.  Is this really what he's using to base his accusation on???  WOW, pretty strong evidence I'll admit.  I'm probably the anomaly here having not experienced this myself, but I'm sure EVERYONE else does.

If the game is rigged, I would obviously want to know and I'm sure Blizzard has the ability to do so.  All I ever see put in these threads are complaints about losses though.  Always bad matchups, bad draws, bad rng caused me to lose.  New flash people, you aren't perfect and you certainly aren't playing perfect either.  If you think Blizzard is deliberately keeping you at your current rank, that's probably as far as your current skill will take you.

I'm not going to say that anything you could do would guarantee zephyr offers the card you want, but understanding how it works goes a long way.  Bugs aside, if you want a silence effect, try to get to 1 or 0 mana for earth shock or silence, relying on a poly or hex leaves a ton of options for zeph to throw at you. 

Why doesn't he offer hex or poly against teron?  It's a small minion with a deathrattle, so not much of a threat.  Zephyr has no idea what teron's card text says or what his deathrattle will do.  He only knows it has a deathrattle.  Similar to Kalecgos, Zeph  has no idea that it makes your first spell free and as such is unlikely to offer a perfect spell for lethal.

You need to really spell it out for him, which sadly means sometimes settling for a slightly less perfect card is some situations, at least for the moment.

Discussion is fine, but the people claiming that any part of system is without a doubt rigged are just salty.

The game has been around for a while now with no clear evidence.  Given how much of it the player base is able to track, it's a little odd that something hasn't been proven yet.

Quote from 3nnu1 >>

Quote from Geoff >>

Quote from Teuuun

Still not even close to a remotely significant sample size. Sorry, but you are just frustrated and therefore biased. Unless you have data from literally hundreds of thousands of games from thousands of players, you are very ignorant to say "something is up".

OP on the other hand might have a point simply due to it being a general one:

1) We know Blizzard/Hearthstone Team (and other companies) has a history of manipulating odds of some things happening in the game, when they were meant to be completely random (heck, even pity timer when opening packs, even though it's a generally good concept, is an example of such manipulation).

2) Thanks to Zephrys we know that Blizzard has ways to affect not only objective metrics (like the amount of Legendaries opened in the packs), but also the gamestate itself. Would it be impossible for Blizzard to implement an algorithm that would affect the cards drawn from the deck or given by a random effects? Zephrys pretty much shows that only if they wanted to - they could.

Now the question is - do they? 

P.S. Remember about tournaments - I know the thread was created in regards to the ranked play, but assuming Blizzard does use some gamestate-affecting algorithms, how does it make the biggest tournaments legit? For example if they wanted a certain person to win Blizzcon (a woman for political purposes or someone from China, because this is where $$$ fly to them or just someone they would consider a good ambassador for their Brand - good looking, charismatic etc.) - do you think it would be hard for them to simply "pick" a winner?

I am just dropping it here, not implying anything.

 As to the question of: Do they? 

1.We know that they can

2. We know that that many games that use microtransactions use all kinds of manipulations to inspire spending,

3, We know that Activision has patented some methods: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-to-buy-microtransactions/

4. We know that corporations exist to make money once they reach the size of blizzard/activision.

5. We know if the data shows that using such tactics increases revenues, Activision has a responsibility to their shareholders to use such tactics.

I could go on but you get the point. It is quite reasonable to assume all aspects of the game are manipulated in such ways. 

 

As to your question about would they fix a tournament? I dunno, a lot of pretty intelligent geeks play this and pay close attention. If something like that were to be proved it would invalidate hearthstone as an E sport and possibly set them up for fraud allegations. 

 

As for the implied question of tournament RNG. Personally, I think the game has at least 3 game states. 

1. Golden: you just crafted a new deck or bought packs and used the cards you opened, your mana and draws will line up perfectly, and if possible you will win. This is the system rewarding desired behavior. I think you can also trigger golden after coming back from a long layoff, the game is trying to draw you back in. 

2. Fun: this is blizzards ideal gamestate. The game itself will try to match you with close games and will give players outs if they exist in their decks and the games will feature as many wild swings as possible. This has been a stated goal of the blizzard design team in interview, they think it is more entertaining and engaging to the player and viewer. I think this is the gamestate where tournaments are played. Everyone remembers the Pavelling book as the prime example of this, but now i think players are quite used to the catch up mechanisms in hearthstone. You have a game on lock down, the opponent keeps topdecking/discovering an out. This is not by chance. I think top players and streamers inherently understand this and take it into account in their decision making.  One thing that held back my gameplay over the years was my years of experience of playing physical MTG where such mechanisms cannot exist and pressing an advantage with aggro was key. In hearthstone, if you press your advantage, you lose because blizzard does not think winning from an advantageous position is fun. 

Hate: this is the game telling you to stop playing or go spend some money. This is game after game of horrible matchups, horrible mulligans and horrible RNG. Anyone who has played this game for multiple long sessions has felt this. If you come on the forums and bitch. People will tell you that it is tilt and that you should stop playing, take a break etc. And there is truth in that, you do play worse when titled. But for years I have avoided tilt by understanding what the game is doing, being perfectly satisfied with the rank 5 floor. If I play for a long stretch (listening to music, tabbed out watching NBA stream etc.) I still observe the same thing. So yeah, it is not all tilt. Tilt does not que you into your worst matchup and give you horrible draws while he gets the nuts. Something else is doing that. 

 This 3 game state system would be easily proven.

Golden State.  Would obviously have to turned off on release day, can't have everyone winning on day 1 after all.  Plus all those people winning, who play the best deck from the previous season with no new cards(later in the year of course) would throw this off.

Fun state.  MTG is not hearthstone.  MTG is great, but it's not the same as Hearthstone.  If you played Hearthstone for years, never treating it as a different game, all those losses do not prove anything about the game being fun or not.  Many tournaments are Streamed with plenty of games being blowouts.  Top players and streamers almost certainly do take into account what cards the opponent would have access to that could turn around the game, that's why they are top players.  They don't ignore years of experience.

Hate state. Just no.  Multiple long sessions WITHOUT playing my worst matchups, WITHOUT having horrible draws and WITHOUT my opponent ever having the nuts would be far more suspicious IMO.  Are you suggesting that if you don't stop or spend money, you will never queue into a favorable matchup again?  Probably not, because that would be very easy to disprove.  Then what though?  Did the system give up on you and let true RNG takeover when you eventually get that good matchup again?  Does it just do you the 1 favor to throw us all off the scent?

People have win streaks and losing streaks, it happens.  Again, I think discussion is fine and the OP has a somewhat valid point that Blizzard could in fact rig it if they wanted to.  People claiming it absolutely is rigged after getting unlucky though does nothing for the argument.

The most played list is currently at 65% win rate.

The 2nd most played is currently UNDER 47% win rate.

Given how many DH Vs DH games are probably going on, better lists are preying on weaker ones.  Give the expansion a couple days before crying at least.  The more games are played the lower their win % will drop.  We don't know where it will level off.

Until lists get a little refined in all classes, nerfs would be pointless.  Yea, the flashy cards that won them the game might seem unbeatable and impossibly OP(HOW DID THIS GET PAST TESTING OMG?!?!?), but after a week the data might point to seemingly less broken cards contributing far more to wins.

I won't be surprised if and when DH receives a nerf, but complaining it's unbeatable after losing a few games on day 1 is laughable.  Let people play with their shiny new toy a little.

Looks like a good expansion but they keep doing the same mistakes .The main problems of the games are mana manipulation (mana gain,mana reduction to 0 mana cards ) and too much draw ,specially draw is no sense..New cards will change few things ,we still going to see Kazakusan druid decks , maybe not in 4-5 turn but Kazakusan is ridiculous at normal 8 mana too.Decision doesnt matter so much ,you just draw and draw and draw till you win ,most of the times is that shit 

Token: 

Man...some people are toxic.... it's just for fun.

People are taking time to do this, give them some respect

"I want to be able to beat any deck with any other deck, is that too much to ask?"