I find it very annoying that card draw is not completely RNG based. Obviously, cards needed for lethal are computed after each move and it's okay, but when it affects the top-deck or discover results I think that's not good. I think there's even a punish/reward algorithm that triggers this effect. You will start feeling it after a couple thousand games.
Opinion: If there's RNG, let it be pure RNG.
Before my kids were born i used to play physical MTG. I played competively, even made to 100 in the world at one point. Thousands of games over years. So I had a pretty good sense of what random felt like.
When I first found hearthstone, I was overjoyed. Sure the game was simpler, but it was fun, it was deep enough and I decided to take it up. First I was limited by my collection, so I would not get past rank 8-10 in a given season. But then I crafted Dr. Boom and soon was knocking on the door of legend.
But around that time I started really noticing funky things going on. The game giving me the worst possible hands and topdecks it could find time after time if I played too long. I would have a rush deck and get my 3 high casting cost cards in my opening hand, mulligan them away and then have them come back like boomerangs.
I actually came on here years ago and asked the same question you were asking and I was met with a storm of insults, tinfoil hat memes, recommendations to git gud etc. At that point I did a lot of research into game design, reading about frustration plateaus and how they increase spending (candy crush is famous for this). I was also playing a phone game called clash Royale that had a card collecting mechanic. I could see how gaining cards in that game was not random, which made me question whether it was random here.
What I came to realize is that hearthstone is engineered like all the other micro transaction games. Activision has patented methods that have proven successful to inspire spending. Blizzard gives symposiums on how to tinker the matchmaker to maximize 'player engagement'. What that really means is that they want to keep as many players playing and spending as possible. All parts of their game are built around this.
With the discover mechanic in general, and zephry's in particular. You can see they are perfectly capable of manipulating the results in a myriad of ways. And if you wanted to take a fair look at it, as a corporation with a responsibilty to their stockholders, they would be fired if they were not doing these things. So to me, it is simply common sense to assume that they do. And it is their right.
The only part of it that bothers me, are the people here and on reddit etc. who will just act insanely aggressive if you talk about this stuff. They will try to get mods to ban it, they will try to engage you in a flame war simply for asking a legitimate question.
Now i am sure you will see a bunch of answers in this thread about perception bias, you will see some answers saying that you cannot assume that hearthsone isn't random because you have not spent thousands of hours running tests, you will see all kinds of attempts to shut down the discussion. Which is really troubling because kids play this game, and they should know the reason that they are having such insanely bad luck is that the game is trying to make them buy cards.
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