Hearthstone
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brekk
Dancing Dino Superstar
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What a weird fucking game. Opponent is Evo Shaman, I'm Jade Druid.
He Evolves up to a Lyra, but I have Frostmourne and kill/steal it. Between a pair of Earthen Scales and an Innervate I was able to pump some quick priest cards. Never even drew a UI.
He Evolves up to a Lyra, but I have Frostmourne and kill/steal it. Between a pair of Earthen Scales and an Innervate I was able to pump some quick priest cards. Never even drew a UI.
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General Antony
Vyemm Raider
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Problem will always be that you can't disrupt what you're opponent is doing. There is every incentive to have the least amount of interactivity possible and just pursue your gameplan while ignoring the opponent.
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Lusiphur
Peasant
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TBF the same thing applies in MTG (for example) to a large degree. Control has more tools there but Combo, Mid-Tier and Aggro are still all over the place. It is always going to be a viable strategy to go all in on your own approach; that's never going to go away in any game like this. A game where every round is always control vs control would be atrocious.
That being said, Blizzard do need to inject more variety and better testing into their designs. The last few expansions have always had one deck clearly on top. That's not good. Should be 2 or 3.
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Hearthstone HCT 2017 Europe Summer Playoffs results, deck archetypes, spotlights, and analysis • r/hearthstone
interesting Tidbit. Pavel was the only one in top 8 with either a Shaman or Warlock. There was no Rogue or Hunter in top 8.
Actual analysis sucks, but the stats are a little interesting
interesting Tidbit. Pavel was the only one in top 8 with either a Shaman or Warlock. There was no Rogue or Hunter in top 8.
Actual analysis sucks, but the stats are a little interesting
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Enzee
Trakanon Raider
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It's not even remotely the same problem in MTG due to instants and abilities you can use on opponent's turn. Depending on your deck, it's best to simply react to whatever your opponent does in many situations. You don't have that luxury in hearthstone.
Plus, the ability to block is huge for preventing snowball situations. An opponent getting out a 20/20 without evasion doesn't mean much if you have a few 1/1s laying around to stall till you find a removal spell.
I'm not even talking about pure control decks. Except for a handful of super linear combo/aggro decks, most mtg decks will have more interaction then a pure control deck in HS does. Even super aggro red decks still have burn to clear blockers away. Midrange decks play plenty of creature removal.
There are other things HS does better then MTG, but it's the core rules lending themselves to non-interactive play that will always cause tilt. When your opponent plays Rock cards and you just have Scissor cards in hand, you lose and feel like they just got 'lucky'. It rarely feels like anyone ever outplays another person. It's more about playing percentages and guessing correctly.
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Origin
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I think this is flawed logic to a degree.
The macro game in hearthstone is the meta and playing decks with more rock cards than the meta decks.
The fun factor comes with the variety of meta decks, and if the play style is fun or not.
Right now druid is king, but priest is also a very powerful and unfun deck to play. So every other deck needs to play rock cards against these... which is insanely difficult, so it boils down to rest of meta being aggro.
The Un'Goro meta was super fun for a while, with mainly quest rogue as the most unfun deck, but their winrate wasn't even good... now we have 2 unfun meta decks with great win rates.
The reason they are unfun is different.
Druid is way too fast now, ramps fast and draws fast, it's stupid.
Priest is not interactive.... but not in an OTK way, it's just free damage every turn while they keep controlling board and whittling you down. It's unfun because you watch it happen for like 5 turns straight and feeling rather helpless at the same time.
I don't think any mtg answer is the key, it's just balancing and ensuring there is a level of interactivity. Aggro decks are the epitome of non interactive at the low end, but now jades and priest are at the top end.
But also judging things at a micro level won't work, maybe your deck is bad, maybe you aren't taking into account the meta or you made some bad decisions... it's whatever, just a loss, but the big picture is if the meta has a variety. More variety usually means more fun
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I seem to only enjoy troll decks. My current deck is control N'zoth warrior with 2 dead man hands my goal is to run the other player out of cards after half an hour of play! I am having great success but if you do play it be sure to add that 4/6 card that kills 1 mana spells.
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Molten Core Raider
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I re-read your post multiple times to try to understand exactly what you're trying to say and while i don't disagree with what you're saying, at the level that you're saying it, i don't think you understood fully what was said in the post that i quoted and why i agreed with it.
I wasn't quoting the post for the reasons you argued. I couldn't care less about meta decks, micro or macro aspects of the game.
The core of the two games is different - among other things - in the sense that:
1.) HS is designed heavily to be a tempo based game as opposed to a control/counter-play game,
2.) HS being a digital game does not have any physical limitations that MTG has.
The second point is particularly powerful as MTG couldn't have random effect cards like Yogg, like Dr.7 bombs, like Flamewaker, like Evolve, like Ysera, etc. This ties into the first point because there is no way for you to affect what effect your opponent will get (and neither can he). And, perhaps more importantly, there is no consistent way for you to counter your opponent's play through the fact that there is no "off-turn" counter play. The majority of HS counter play is not actual counter play, but rather only tempo. Your opponent played a 5/5, you played a 6/6; he played a 7/7 you played an 8/8; he played a 9/9, you played SW
and played a 6/6 etc. There are a very few instances of true counter play in HS.This part ties in to the previous in the sense that: Card draw games will dictate that you will inevitably have a bad run and have scissors for your opponent's rocks. This is part of card draw and can be largely influenced by deck design. However, HS exacerbates this issue through the fact that, a lot of the time, even if you have paper for your opponent's rocks, his rocks will turn into scissors through random effects. This is the part that tilts me the most.
This is the most striking point of the post that i quoted because it ties in all of the elements together. The lack of proper counter play, the fact that counter play is in fact tempo, and the presence of too many RNG elements just make it that the best course of action is to play based on percentages and hope your guesses were correct. Unfortunately, this also turns HS into a solo game a lot of the time.
There's a whole different range of reasons why HS is, at its core, different than MTG, and why it's worse off for it, but i don't want to go off on too many tangents at this point. I will sum up though that if it wasn't for the Warcraft universe, i'd never be playing Hearthstone.
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Quineloe
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Looks like the average evolve game to me. Doppelgangster into Thrall is bound do shit legendaries on the board given at 7 mana you have mostly legendary minions.
It just lasted slightly longer due to devolve into taunts.
Thankfully twitch now also has speed x2 playback so you don't have to endure their slow turns that much.
in other news, the coffee maker at Blizzard tweeted again
Looks like the Jade nerf is coming - jade idol 2 mana
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Ravishing
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I re-read your post multiple times to try to understand exactly what you're trying to say and while i don't disagree with what you're saying, at the level that you're saying it, i don't think you understood fully what was said in the post that i quoted and why i agreed with it.
I wasn't quoting the post for the reasons you argued. I couldn't care less about meta decks, micro or macro aspects of the game.
The core of the two games is different - among other things - in the sense that:
1.) HS is designed heavily to be a tempo based game as opposed to a control/counter-play game,
2.) HS being a digital game does not have any physical limitations that MTG has.
The second point is particularly powerful as MTG couldn't have random effect cards like Yogg, like Dr.7 bombs, like Flamewaker, like Evolve, like Ysera, etc. This ties into the first point because there is no way for you to affect what effect your opponent will get (and neither can he). And, perhaps more importantly, there is no consistent way for you to counter your opponent's play through the fact that there is no "off-turn" counter play. The majority of HS counter play is not actual counter play, but rather only tempo. Your opponent played a 5/5, you played a 6/6; he played a 7/7 you played an 8/8; he played a 9/9, you played SW
This part ties in to the previous in the sense that: Card draw games will dictate that you will inevitably have a bad run and have scissors for your opponent's rocks. This is part of card draw and can be largely influenced by deck design. However, HS exacerbates this issue through the fact that, a lot of the time, even if you have paper for your opponent's rocks, his rocks will turn into scissors through random effects. This is the part that tilts me the most.
This is the most striking point of the post that i quoted because it ties in all of the elements together. The lack of proper counter play, the fact that counter play is in fact tempo, and the presence of too many RNG elements just make it that the best course of action is to play based on percentages and hope your guesses were correct. Unfortunately, this also turns HS into a solo game a lot of the time.
There's a whole different range of reasons why HS is, at its core, different than MTG, and why it's worse off for it, but i don't want to go off on too many tangents at this point. I will sum up though that if it wasn't for the Warcraft universe, i'd never be playing Hearthstone.
The gist of what I'm saying is that I don't think the game mechanics hold it back. And I dont think having "instants" or whatever would actually be an improvement to the game. Granted, I never played mtg, but I just feel like sideboard/instants/etc would require the game having greater than 30 card decks and other stuff.
I'm also saying that the solution proposed probably doesn't effect the current non interactive decks. Due to the 1 legendary rule, if you could play your instant to counter raza or whatever other key legendary, that is a whole nother kinda cancer and unfun mechanic.
And you are talking about rock->scissors games but without context of the decks in question. If you stick to meta decks, your win rate would be at or above 50%. When not an auto lose, I can normally spot a few mistakes in my other losses.
So what I'm saying is the meta is shit... rng is always pretty shitty, but hearthstone is not suffering due to inherent mechanics, it suffers from balancing decisions
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Enzee
Trakanon Raider
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No offense, but then you really shouldn't be making this argument. If you've never even played MTG, I don't think you are qualified to make statements about what is, or isn't, better about the mechanics between the two. I mean this in the most non-flame way possible.
The difference is that you have options of when to use your instant speed effects for greatest impact. If sw: pain were able to be cast on your opponents turn, and you held up the 2 mana for it, this gives you way more options about how to influence the game. You can have a bigger 'tempo' swing. Imagine if they cast a wolfrider, but before it can trade with your minion you then SWP it, which saves your viscious fledgling to then hit next turn. Now, you had to hold up 2 mana, which means you didn't play a 2 drop or something, but from your end it's worth the risk to potentially save your better minion. There are more decision points overall, which naturally leads to skill being more important to the outcome of the game. Using arena examples here as that's what I play more.
Alternatively, the ability for you to choose your blocks gives more decision points on your opponents turn as well. Do you go down to 1 life to potentially setup a lethal counter attack? Or, do you chump block (letting your minion die for no value, just to save life. sort of like playing a 0/1 taunt into a 10/10) just to stall and hope to find an answer for their board? Do you block with lots of creatures just to take down one big creature you couldn't otherwise deal with?
HS is about thinking ahead and presenting a problem that is hopefully hard for your opponent to deal with. 'Good' HS play is about going 'well, if he has X, I lose, but that's only one card so if he doesn't have it I win'. Then, some % of the time they do have it and you lose. That just feels unfun and not skill testing at all. In MTG, you instead have situations where you say 'if he has X, then I am in a real bad spot but at least I have Y to stall a few turns and hopefully get to Z to try and win again'. The percentages are more gradual and not as swingy as in HS. One card, or play, rarely wins the game by itself. It's instead more about getting small edges that accumulate to an overwhelming advantage at some point. There are exceptions, of course, but speaking in a big picture sense.
The skill in HS coming from evaluating the meta and picking the right decklists is totally true, no argument there, but that same skillset exists in MTG as well. It's just that the in game skill tests are less, and different, in HS. In game decisions are more important, proportionally, in MTG then in HS. If deck/in game skillset is like 80/20 split in HS, it's 50/50 in MTG. When your opponent actually outplays you in MTG, you don't feel as tilted (at least I don't). You have respect for their play and want to improve to not make that kind of mistake again.
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Yea, more actions do make it more skillful, but it's no guarantee the game will be more fun. People will still complain. "Omg he Poly'd my Antonidas before I could get a single fireball!"
So many Legendaries would become trash, the whole game would be flipped upside down. I don't really think it solves anything. Skill isn't the issue here, it's "fun". We had a fun meta... briefly... balance just didn't hit the mark this time. Hopefully the Druid nerfs they are hinting at will shake out. Hopefully Priest doesn't dominate next. I think they will. Priest meta has notoriously been the worst meta. It's often short-lived but talk about unfun when it's here.
People want to play their cards. That's what makes the game fun. Implementing what you suggest would deny a lot of fun.
More competitive, sure...
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I do think the sideboard idea that has been brought up before could be a much better feature to implement, and could be made to work within the current framework... limit it to 2 cards, preset which cards they swap with, and pre-mulligan you have 3 seconds to decide to use them in the match.
So for example I could put black Knight and geist in my sideboard which swaps with golakka and ooze.
Some shit like that would go far imo. Not getting ass fucked by aggro cause you have geist in your opener would be nice
So for example I could put black Knight and geist in my sideboard which swaps with golakka and ooze.
Some shit like that would go far imo. Not getting ass fucked by aggro cause you have geist in your opener would be nice
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