At the highest level, many games are being decided by extremely RNG cards, most specifically Nat Pagle, Tinkmaster Overspark, and Ragnaros the Firelord. Among Blizzard developers and balance designers, is there a perceived problem with RNG relating to some of these popular cards?
You know actually I think the randomness can increase the skill required to play a game. If you imagine a game of Hearthstone except you ordered all the cards in your deck, then you could learn every game you play your 1 drop, you play your 2 drop, your 3 drop, your 4 drop, etc...but because it's random, the order you get your cards, you often see game situations that you've seen before or that no one's ever seen before. Really great players can figure out what to do in new situations better than other players. And so cards that increase randomness into the game state actually can increase the amount of skill required to solve novel game states. So I think randomness adds exciting new stories and suspense and it can make the game more skillful if you do it right.
As a followup, some tournaments in the scene are talking about banning cards such as Nat Pagle and Tinkmaster Overspark. Do you support this direction of this change, the community taking a more active role in determining how the game will be played?
I think specifically this change [...] even though these effects can be frustrating sometimes, they don't go your way, I think [the effects] do actually increase the amount of skill required to play the game in some cases. It's cool that people are taking things into their own hands and doing these incredible tournaments. But I personally like those types of effects and those types of cards.
