Thought this was an interesting discussion in light of all the RNG debate happening around Goblins vs Gnomes (go to 7:40 minute mark)
In a nutshell, Brode feels that the idea that randomness is diametrically opposed to skill, with more randomness always resulting in a decrease in skill, is essentially bogus. In particular, Randomness has one big advantage in adding skill to games, and that's the fact that it introduces many more situations into games that players won't have encountered before--better players will deal with unexpected situations than worse ones, and on average this will raise their winrates.
He points to the example of Chess as how too little randomness hurts a game. Chess has no randomness at all, meaning games can play out identically to each other if players simply make the same series of optimal moves throughout the early game, and as a result Chess has essentially become a game of memorizing shitloads of openings (a problem which pushed the famous chess master Bobby Fischer to actually propose a version of chess which would randomize the positions of pieces)--at the highest levels it goes beyond that, but for the vast majority of players the number one thing they can do to improve their play is memorize openings and positions.
I think he makes some good points, and to build on them I'd say that there are good kinds of randomness and bad kinds of randomness in a game like Hearthstone.
Good kinds of randomness are ones where players can either influence the odds by their in-game decisions (so that the RNG becomes a calculated risk rather than a simple coinflip) and/or where the RNG gives them a different set of choices than I would otherwise have had, but they still have to choose when to play. Examples of good kinds of RNG would be cards like Webspinner or Ysera (give you random cards, but you still have to decide how to play those cards for best effect), and cards like Mad Bomber, Ragnaros and Sylvanas (where their effect is random, but extremely dependent on board state, giving players all sorts of ways to alter the odds of an outcome through in game decisions).
Bad RNG cards are cards which have an entirely random effect that players don't really influence in any way. For example, Nat Pagle. Its essentially flipping coins for you and giving you a benefit every time it lands on heads..
I can definitely see how a card like Webspinner will in the long run help differentiate good players from bad ones, because the good players will do a better job of incorporating and getting value out of unexpected cards. Whereas its hard to see how Nat Pagle does anything to add skill to the game.
In The Goblins vs Gnomes expansion, I honestly think they seem to have more good RNG than bad RNG. That is, the RNG seems designed to introduce more unexpected situations into constructed gameplay, but in a way that generally seems designed to reward players who make better decisions.
Unstable Portal, for example, is super random. It can pull anything from a wisp to deathwing to other class specific cards. Obviously on a game by game basis, that means sometimes you'll get lucky with it and sometimes unlucky (You'd much rather get that 7 mana deathwing than a wisp that effectively cost you 2). But it also means that over time, its going to be a lot more valuable in the hands of someone with a deeper overall understanding of the game, because they'll have a better idea of how to get value out of any given random card in whatever situation they happen to be facing. (Btw, I also think Unstable Portal is going to be a great and very competitive card--your odds of getting a 1 drop or wisp are pretty low, if it pulls a 2 drop its effectively a wash, and anything higher and the value is outstanding--90% of the cards in the game would be amazing if they were costed 1 less, and thats effectively what Unstable Portal gives you, with the randomness being the downside in exchange for the value--it may as well read "Draw an Undercosted Card" which is an obviously outstanding effect).
How hard can it be to understand that some limited RNG enhances the game, but a lot of RNG is just frustrating? This argument comparing "no RNG at all" against "some RNG" to conclude that "the more RNG the better" is immensely dumb.
There is some strategy to dealing with a situation in which webspinner gives you minion X instead of Y.
There is no skill involved in a Ragnaros coinflip winning the game, or a Deathlord summoning Ysera on turn 3. A lot of major tournament games were decided PURELY through Rag RNG. That's the bad kind of RNG.
Blizzard is making the mistake of releasing completely broken and overpowered cards, and then "balancing" them by adding RNG, which doesn't work at all.
How hard can it be to understand that some limited RNG enhances the game, but a lot of RNG is just frustrating? This argument comparing "no RNG at all" against "some RNG" to conclude that "the more RNG the better" is immensely dumb.
I don't think they've concluded that "the more RNG, the better". Brode specifically told Gabe Kibler that the cards they'd previewed were selected because they were especially random and crazy, and even so less than half of them have RNG effects. I mean, one of them is literally a vanilla 3/4, which is as unrandom as you can get.
But I do think that we should expect that every Hearthstone expansion will include a certain percentage of cards with RNG effects, and that Blizzard will try to ensure that some RNG cards also have enough built in value that they show up in competitive play (like Webspinner does).
Dunno I'm not that convinced. RNG is already plenty in the game, if they added 0 cards that involved RNG in the expansion the game would still have too much RNG on its cards. RNG from solely being a card game(starting hand, mulligan and topdecking) is more than enough to the game's health.
Dunno I'm not that convinced. RNG is already plenty in the game, if they added 0 cards that involved RNG in the expansion the game would still have too much RNG on its cards. RNG from solely being a card game(starting hand, mulligan and topdecking) is more than enough to the game's health.
How many cards with RNG effects even see much competitive play? Webspinner, Knife Juggler, Animal Comapnion, Sylvanas, Ragnaros, Ysera, Brawl, Lightning Storm, Soulfire...that's pretty much it. A lot of classes don't have any random cards at all in any of their competitive decks. I don't think a few more cards with RNG elements is going to turn the game into nothing but coinflips.
I still thin Ragnaros is a bad RNG card. For a card that costs that much, it can win/lose on coin flips too often
I don't mind Ragnaros, because its effect is heavily influenced by board state, meaning that for both the person playing him and the person playing against him there are a lot of different decisions built around playing the odds and taking calculated risks with him.
The argument that planning around RNG increases skill is correct (up to a point, of course). So over a lot of games, a good player will be able to use the RNG to their advantage more so than a bad player. The problem is variance. These types of cards add a ton of variance, and it makes things like a single Bo3 in a tournament setting much less meaningful. I think for a while it won't be a problem, it will take months and months for the meta to settle due to the number of cards. Once it does and people are operating on razor thin margins and reads far in advance like they are now, the randomness will be brutal.
I dont know if I like the poker and hearthstone comparison at the beginning.
In Poker(holdem) you can control your RNG.
In hearthstone you cant.
If I get a 7-2 I muck it, new hand new game next hand.
In hearthstone if you dont like your starting 4 cards, you muck it and then still have the chance of bad RNG after the muck, which forces you then to play the entire game with that hand. Now thats the beginning game RNG.
In-game RNG, and snowballing RNG is what makes this game frustrating. Simple example.
Board: you have a, Leper Gnome vs Knife Juggler. You opponent lays down a minion. This 50% that is about to happen will change the ENTIRE game. Your 2/1 has the ability to trade with the 3/2 next turn and therefore reduce 3+ damage.
I dunno more RNG cards, might make the game even more volatile than it was before. When I play Hearthstone, I feel like a gambler a lot of the time(repeating in the my head please no, please no)
When I play poker, I try my best to play AROUND the RNG, rather than playing WITH the RNG in Hearthstone. I think thats a pretty big difference
I'm actually kind of confused how they can make a card like Unstable Portal, yet think a card like Far Sight is actually decent. Maybe it's just a case where new cards are objectively better than older ones to make sure they're played.
On November 11 2014 07:48 killa_robot wrote: I'm actually kind of confused how they can make a card like Unstable Portal, yet think a card like Far Sight is actually decent. Maybe it's just a case where new cards are objectively better than older ones to make sure they're played.
Well, for one they are class cards so while comparable in terms of value, they are not direct alternatives to each other, and secondly on Far Sight a player pays the extra mana to have a certain amount of control on what they draw, in that it has to be from their deck.
On November 11 2014 07:48 killa_robot wrote: I'm actually kind of confused how they can make a card like Unstable Portal, yet think a card like Far Sight is actually decent. Maybe it's just a case where new cards are objectively better than older ones to make sure they're played.
Well, for one they are class cards so while comparable in terms of value, they are not direct alternatives to each other, and secondly on Far Sight a player pays the extra mana to have a certain amount of control on what they draw, in that it has to be from their deck.
Yeah, like Fireball will always deal 6 damage, and Mortal Strike won't. But in return, mages don't have weapons.
On Far Sight. The problem here is that Far Sight works kind of counter to the idea of overload in Shaman decks. Shaman has cards that can be really cheap because they have overload and they have some cheap spells in their arsenal as well. So with all the shaman decks running 2 lightning bolts and 2 earthshocks, and maybe even forked lightning or other cheap spells as well as Flametongue totem, etc., Far Sight becomes incredibly weak.
You're paying 3 mana to have a relatively high chance of drawing a 1 or 2 mana cost card from your deck. And you still have to pay for the added Overload of those cards.
A 2 mana, cost 2 less Far Sight would be much better. A 1 mana, cost 1 less Far Sight (like Flare, also OP) would probably be a staple in many Shaman deck.
There's another distinction that I think you miss, which is that good RNG is RNG that isn't critically important. RNG is bad when it instantly decides whether the game is win or lose, and although that will always be with us (key topdecks, for example), we don't need to increase it with cards like Ragnaros. Ragnaros is a huge offender, in my mind, because he rarely comes down to anything less than a 50-50 coin flip between hero and critical card. That's simply ugly, and it feels gross when you win or lose a game just because the odds didn't work out in your favor.
The best RNG by far is the different-types-of-positive RNG, such as you get from Ysera and Spare Parts and even just from the draw each turn. The worst kind is that which has obvious better or worse results, because then you can just end up cursing your bad luck.
On Far Sight. The problem here is that Far Sight works kind of counter to the idea of overload in Shaman decks. Shaman has cards that can be really cheap because they have overload and they have some cheap spells in their arsenal as well.
Yep, exactly right. Sure, the only thing more awesome than 1x Fire Elemental is 2x Fire Elemental in one turn, which the card makes possible (etc etc), but unfortunately it's just really unplayable with the overload mechanics meaning that already on average Shaman cards are lower mana cost when played than their actual worth. It's a card to allow a tempo swing later on, but Shaman already have this factor inbuilt.
I don't get this guys complaining about Ragnaros RNG. You can play around it, save a removal for big units or fill the board with small minions. It's not because in some games you get very unlucky that the RNG is bad. You should analyze the outcome of several games together. That's way different from "Battlecry: give your other minions windfury, taunt or divine shield (at random)". What's the point of such card?
On November 11 2014 10:27 MarcoBrei wrote: I don't get this guys complaining about Ragnaros RNG. You can play around it, save a removal for big units or fill the board with small minions. It's not because in some games you get very unlucky that the RNG is bad. You should analyze the outcome of several games together. That's way different from "Battlecry: give your other minions windfury, taunt or divine shield (at random)". What's the point of such card?
Rag will often 50/50 on the turn it is played and the game is decided on a coin flip. -> bad RNG where there is nothing you can do to win because it is a very large swing either way.
The battlecry will give you an advantaged depending on how it rolls out and how your adjust your strategy once you cast it. -> good RNG because you get control after the random effect and your strategy depends heavily on what happens and you are in control of how the game flows from there.
On November 11 2014 10:27 MarcoBrei wrote: I don't get this guys complaining about Ragnaros RNG. You can play around it, save a removal for big units or fill the board with small minions. It's not because in some games you get very unlucky that the RNG is bad. You should analyze the outcome of several games together. That's way different from "Battlecry: give your other minions windfury, taunt or divine shield (at random)". What's the point of such card?
Rag will often 50/50 on the turn it is played and the game is decided on a coin flip. -> bad RNG where there is nothing you can do to win because it is a very large swing either way.
The battlecry will give you an advantaged depending on how it rolls out and how your adjust your strategy once you cast it. -> good RNG because you get control after the random effect and your strategy depends heavily on what happens and you are in control of how the game flows from there.
You start your game decisions just when Ragnaros enters the field? When I said you can play around it, I'm saying that you can be already prepared to it when it is played. Instead of using a Hex in a Black Night save it to Ragnaros. If you are at 8 health and there is one minion on the field, the game is 50/50, of course, but you could had avoided this situation before. The random battlecry I mentioned is bad RNG because it is not that reliable to fit in some strategy of a deck, this card just exists to create "awesome" situations, but not in a solid strategy to win. About your argument of getting control after the random effect, what you would think about a spell that reads: "Fill the both sides of the board with random minions". Adapting to the outcome of that is strongly related to skill? Is this a good RNG?
On November 11 2014 10:27 MarcoBrei wrote: I don't get this guys complaining about Ragnaros RNG. You can play around it, save a removal for big units or fill the board with small minions. It's not because in some games you get very unlucky that the RNG is bad. You should analyze the outcome of several games together. That's way different from "Battlecry: give your other minions windfury, taunt or divine shield (at random)". What's the point of such card?
Rag will often 50/50 on the turn it is played and the game is decided on a coin flip. -> bad RNG where there is nothing you can do to win because it is a very large swing either way.
The battlecry will give you an advantaged depending on how it rolls out and how your adjust your strategy once you cast it. -> good RNG because you get control after the random effect and your strategy depends heavily on what happens and you are in control of how the game flows from there.
You start your game decisions just when Ragnaros enters the field? When I said you can play around it, I'm saying that you can be already prepared to it when it is played. Instead of using a Hex in a Black Night save it to Ragnaros. If you are at 8 health and there is one minion on the field, the game is 50/50, of course, but you could had avoided this situation before. The random battlecry I mentioned is bad RNG because it is not that reliable to fit in some strategy of a deck, this card just exists to create "awesome" situations, but not in a solid strategy to win. About your argument of getting control after the random effect, what you would think about a spell that reads: "Fill the both sides of the board with random minions". Adapting to the outcome of that is strongly related to skill? Is this a good RNG?
The turn rag hits the board it does 8 damage to something. Lets say you are fighting against someone else's rag, if your rag hits his, you win, if not you lose. There is nothing you can do otherwise. Rag is just going to 50/50 this shot. Everything else is prayer. Even if you have removal, its still a 50/50 on it. If your rag does get hexed your Ysera or Cairne does not. If your rag hits, you are so far ahead of the game it doesn't matter as long as your opponent doesn't get as lucky in some way. You have no control over what your rag hits so in that 1 play, you are relying on a 50/50 to win a game.
The other point is exactly it, you are given things to work with and your skill depends heavily on how you make use of it. To be in a situation with all these different things will give good players a chance to test their problem solving much more than praying for the 50/50.
@Awesomecalypse, Just wanted to say that i liked your input here. There's shit tons to talk about, but its probably best saved until the expansion is actually released. Anyway, just wanted to say that since the HS community basically likes nothing better than to crap on and disagree with every other persons input (or say nothing at all) that it would be worth it to say that for once, someone in the community agrees with you and appreciates your input and I think you made a good point. toodloo!
On November 11 2014 10:27 MarcoBrei wrote: I don't get this guys complaining about Ragnaros RNG. You can play around it, save a removal for big units or fill the board with small minions. It's not because in some games you get very unlucky that the RNG is bad. You should analyze the outcome of several games together. That's way different from "Battlecry: give your other minions windfury, taunt or divine shield (at random)". What's the point of such card?
Rag will often 50/50 on the turn it is played and the game is decided on a coin flip. -> bad RNG where there is nothing you can do to win because it is a very large swing either way.
The battlecry will give you an advantaged depending on how it rolls out and how your adjust your strategy once you cast it. -> good RNG because you get control after the random effect and your strategy depends heavily on what happens and you are in control of how the game flows from there.
You start your game decisions just when Ragnaros enters the field? When I said you can play around it, I'm saying that you can be already prepared to it when it is played. Instead of using a Hex in a Black Night save it to Ragnaros. If you are at 8 health and there is one minion on the field, the game is 50/50, of course, but you could had avoided this situation before. The random battlecry I mentioned is bad RNG because it is not that reliable to fit in some strategy of a deck, this card just exists to create "awesome" situations, but not in a solid strategy to win. About your argument of getting control after the random effect, what you would think about a spell that reads: "Fill the both sides of the board with random minions". Adapting to the outcome of that is strongly related to skill? Is this a good RNG?
The turn rag hits the board it does 8 damage to something. Lets say you are fighting against someone else's rag, if your rag hits his, you win, if not you lose. There is nothing you can do otherwise. Rag is just going to 50/50 this shot. Everything else is prayer. Even if you have removal, its still a 50/50 on it. If your rag does get hexed your Ysera or Cairne does not. If your rag hits, you are so far ahead of the game it doesn't matter as long as your opponent doesn't get as lucky in some way. You have no control over what your rag hits so in that 1 play, you are relying on a 50/50 to win a game.
The other point is exactly it, you are given things to work with and your skill depends heavily on how you make use of it. To be in a situation with all these different things will give good players a chance to test their problem solving much more than praying for the 50/50.
This is exactly right. What makes Rag so incredibly bad as far as these cards are concerned is that his effect is powerful enough to end games on its own and is totally random as to whether it does that or does nothing. He's basically a Pyroblast every turn attached to an 8/8. That's crazy good. He can finish off your opponent sometimes, or else destroy some gigantic minion and get a 2-for-1 or better off of that. But, if you flip wrong, he can be incredibly weak and only kill little minions before getting offed by some removal at far below mana cost (or worse, ignored while they smack down your face and end the game). He's a worse offender than Mad Bomber because of that, because although unlucky Mad Bomber rolls can 2-for-1 or worse yourself, they won't outright end the game. Mad Bomber is still an unpleasant card, though, for mostly the same reasons stated above. You shouldn't have to hold onto cards in hand thinking about whether you'll get unlucky and they'll outright lose you the game should you play them.
@Awesomecalypse, Just wanted to say that i liked your input here. There's shit tons to talk about, but its probably best saved until the expansion is actually released. Anyway, just wanted to say that since the HS community basically likes nothing better than to crap on and disagree with every other persons input (or say nothing at all) that it would be worth it to say that for once, someone in the community agrees with you and appreciates your input and I think you made a good point. toodloo!
Thanks! I agree that sometimes the community can get too bogged down in negativity, though I actually think that HS is a bit better than most other games in this regard.
I dont know if I like the poker and hearthstone comparison at the beginning.
In Poker(holdem) you can control your RNG.
In hearthstone you cant.
If I get a 7-2 I muck it, new hand new game next hand.
In hearthstone if you dont like your starting 4 cards, you muck it and then still have the chance of bad RNG after the muck, which forces you then to play the entire game with that hand. Now thats the beginning game RNG.
In-game RNG, and snowballing RNG is what makes this game frustrating. Simple example.
Board: you have a, Leper Gnome vs Knife Juggler. You opponent lays down a minion. This 50% that is about to happen will change the ENTIRE game. Your 2/1 has the ability to trade with the 3/2 next turn and therefore reduce 3+ damage.
I dunno more RNG cards, might make the game even more volatile than it was before. When I play Hearthstone, I feel like a gambler a lot of the time(repeating in the my head please no, please no)
When I play poker, I try my best to play AROUND the RNG, rather than playing WITH the RNG in Hearthstone. I think thats a pretty big difference
assuming you're talking about tournament poker since this would be categorically wrong about cash game poker. the way you 'control rng' in poker isn't by folding bad hands or pf selection or anything like that - its just about playing better than other people and chipping up so that when you have to take a coinflip, you'll have accrued enough chips so that if you lose you wont be out (or that if you win the power of your position is compounded and you can continue pushing small edges aggressively). there's also icm stuff at pay jumps but im pretty sure you didn't mean that either.
i think most of what brode said about comparing hs to poker is right. like poker, hearthstone is a skill game with a large variance component. all card games innately have variance (order of when you draw what). variance is compounded in hs because there are certain cards that, once drawn, can still provide a wide variety of outcomes ranging from situationally worst to situationally best. like poker, one of the edges comes both from knowing the appropriate time (or if you even have to) use said card, and hopefully having earned a big enough lead to the point that you'll still be in the game if you lose the coin flip (or to have given yourself an 80/20 through playing well where other people up to that point would have to be taking a 50/50).
hearthstone has a lot of variance. what that means for tournaments, if it is anything like poker, is that winning tournaments just isnt as impressive as it is in other competitive games. its impressive to be sure, and watching tournament hearthstone for me is exciting as i have a lot of people i like to route for, but anyone can beat anyone on any given day. nobody in poker really thinks that the person who wins the WSOP main event every year is the best player in the world.
i also agree that cards with random effects do produce new situations which better people will find better solutions to more often. having both played and coached a lot of poker, i always felt like the hallmark of a strong poker player was the ability to have never been in a specific spot before and to break down all the individual components quickly and find the best solution.
i think the devs have been pretty candid that this was part of their game design from the start and that the game will continue to go this way. to that point, the discussion of good rng vs bad rng is pretty important as far as the future of this game goes and will hopefully keep some serious offenders of 'bad rng' in check. i dont really want to weigh into which cards fall into which categories though.
the tldr of this all is that at the end of the day, hs is a skill game with an unapollogetically high amount of variance. just gotta buckle up for the swings
On November 11 2014 06:42 Eggi wrote: I dont know if I like the poker and hearthstone comparison at the beginning.
In Poker(holdem) you can control your RNG.
In hearthstone you cant.
If I get a 7-2 I muck it, new hand new game next hand.
In hearthstone if you dont like your starting 4 cards, you muck it and then still have the chance of bad RNG after the muck, which forces you then to play the entire game with that hand. Now thats the beginning game RNG.
In-game RNG, and snowballing RNG is what makes this game frustrating. Simple example.
Board: you have a, Leper Gnome vs Knife Juggler. You opponent lays down a minion. This 50% that is about to happen will change the ENTIRE game. Your 2/1 has the ability to trade with the 3/2 next turn and therefore reduce 3+ damage.
I dunno more RNG cards, might make the game even more volatile than it was before. When I play Hearthstone, I feel like a gambler a lot of the time(repeating in the my head please no, please no)
When I play poker, I try my best to play AROUND the RNG, rather than playing WITH the RNG in Hearthstone. I think thats a pretty big difference
Eggi, not a great example.
I am a semiprofessional cash game player. Of course you muck 2-7 off. However, if you're playing 8 handed on the button, utg raises 4x, and you're in a late position and see 3 people flat, depending on the characteristics of the table of course, you can play suited connectors, which in my estimation is playing with the RNG. You play the percentages. Holdem, like many other games, is not separable from RNG.
Randomness is what allows bad players to win. If there is less randomness, players who make mistakes will win less often. Poker is so popular because bad players can still win a significant percentage of the time. This allows those players to convince themselves they are better than they are. This is why people play poker even though they lose money. Without losing players, poker wouldn't be worth playing.
In Hearthstone, randomness can serve the same role.
With respect to the specific discussion I commonly see on this subject, I find it highly amusing that people don't acknowledge how randomness already plays a huge role in HearthStone. Sure, which minion Rag hits is random, but so too is whether you draw Rag on turn 1 or turn 8. Randomness is a large part of Hearthstone - accounting for that randomness is part of the skill in HearthStone. Taking the randomness out entirely makes the game easier.
On November 11 2014 05:19 MarcoBrei wrote: How hard can it be to understand that some limited RNG enhances the game, but a lot of RNG is just frustrating? This argument comparing "no RNG at all" against "some RNG" to conclude that "the more RNG the better" is immensely dumb.
There are card games with limited RNG.
You can find them on Google somewhere.
Why do people that play HS play it instead of those boring games?
There is some strategy to dealing with a situation in which webspinner gives you minion X instead of Y.
There is no skill involved in a Ragnaros coinflip winning the game, or a Deathlord summoning Ysera on turn 3. A lot of major tournament games were decided PURELY through Rag RNG. That's the bad kind of RNG.
Blizzard is making the mistake of releasing completely broken and overpowered cards, and then "balancing" them by adding RNG, which doesn't work at all.
And whats skilled about a ranom hitting a nut flush out on the turn and the river? Nothing, but Poker damn sure is a super popular game.
It has variance in it, get over it or play a game with none.
Or a game like Magic or YGO where all the top players cheat
What do you mean by that? I don't know anything about Yu-Gioh, but Magic players who cheat get caught and banned. And with all of the the top matches being recorded now, they will get caught. Pretty offensive to label the entire pro magic scene cheats dude.
On November 11 2014 05:05 awesomoecalypse wrote: He points to the example of Chess as how too little randomness hurts a game. Chess has no randomness at all, meaning games can play out identically to each other if players simply make the same series of optimal moves throughout the early game, and as a result Chess has essentially become a game of memorizing shitloads of openings (a problem which pushed the famous chess master Bobby Fischer to actually propose a version of chess which would randomize the positions of pieces)--at the highest levels it goes beyond that, but for the vast majority of players the number one thing they can do to improve their play is memorize openings and positions.
Hi, I've played chess for over 20 years.
To quote Brode, who did seem to know what he was talking about, "At the very highest levels of play, Chess is often about memorization." What Brode didn't say is that the "best" moves that are memorized actually branch at several points into alternatives that are considered to be of similar quality. That means that a top player picks and chooses various sets of moves to play, as their own judgement of which is the better guides their decisions. If that judgement and effort in pre-game analysis is stronger than their opponent's, it leads to an advantage in the game. Consider also that if you can predict your opponent's choices, you can more easily analyze the relevant moves before the game. Almost all top players try to be "moving targets" in this sense. You could say it's like picking a class and deck in Hearthstone, except that the decision is made gradually and with responsive awareness of your opponent's choices. At the highest levels of play, that is to say roughly the top 0.02% of players, these choices are likely to be similar and so there is a perception that no thought goes into it at all. Yet weaker players who copy these decisions find much less success because either the knowledge will shift (like a metagame), new moves might be discovered or old ones revolutionized, and even barring that, the player must understand all the reasons for a given move or else fail to respond correctly to their opponent's replies. But I digress...
In no way does memorization have anything to do with the quality of play of the vast majority of chess players. Indeed, there's more to chess for the top players than memorization, but that's where it is most and not least relevant. For at least 95% of players, memorization is one of the most useless and overestimated methods to improve their play; often cited as an excuse by weak players as the reason they lose games. Once you reach the top 5% of rated players, memorization begins to be a serious factor in success. It's fairly analogous to the RNG whines people constantly make about this game. Please correct the OP accordingly.
For those interested, the World Chess Championship has begun and continues until Nov. 26th. The current WC is Magnus Carlsen, 23, known for his refusal to play the memory game by avoiding the most popular variations. The challenger is ex-WC Viswanathan Anand, 44, comparatively known for his strong team of Grandmasters that help him prepare openings for games. The score is tied after 3 games.
On November 11 2014 06:42 Eggi wrote: I dont know if I like the poker and hearthstone comparison at the beginning.
In Poker(holdem) you can control your RNG.
In hearthstone you cant.
If I get a 7-2 I muck it, new hand new game next hand.
In hearthstone if you dont like your starting 4 cards, you muck it and then still have the chance of bad RNG after the muck, which forces you then to play the entire game with that hand. Now thats the beginning game RNG.
In-game RNG, and snowballing RNG is what makes this game frustrating. Simple example.
Board: you have a, Leper Gnome vs Knife Juggler. You opponent lays down a minion. This 50% that is about to happen will change the ENTIRE game. Your 2/1 has the ability to trade with the 3/2 next turn and therefore reduce 3+ damage.
I dunno more RNG cards, might make the game even more volatile than it was before. When I play Hearthstone, I feel like a gambler a lot of the time(repeating in the my head please no, please no)
When I play poker, I try my best to play AROUND the RNG, rather than playing WITH the RNG in Hearthstone. I think thats a pretty big difference
I heard his dumb argument before. You can't compare a competitive game to a non-competitive one(a cash game).
If you are going to compare HS with Poker, compare it to tournament play which has an extremely high amount of variance.
You keep "mucking" 7-2 over and over you're getting blinded off and are super far behind. Same deal as HS...you get a bad mulligan you are far behind. The difference is poker is extremely, extremely volatile and Hearthstone isn't.
If you get super far ahead you are probably staying ahead barring shenanigans where as in poker that lead can disappear extemely quickly and more brutally than any game in existence.
On November 12 2014 16:39 Zampano wrote: What do you mean by that? I don't know anything about Yu-Gioh, but Magic players who cheat get caught and banned. And with all of the the top matches being recorded now, they will get caught. Pretty offensive to label the entire pro magic scene cheats dude.
I got out of the TCG scene years ago but the entire scene was littered to the brim with slight of hand artists and "stackers".
The first thing they teach you when you become a major pro is "stacking".
This is basically manipulating the deck so that you move certain cards to your opening hand.
Especially in YGO where the game was completely broken and certain starting combinations of cards would literally nearly instantly win you the game, major tournaments were won entirely with this tactic.
Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
On November 12 2014 17:14 BillGates wrote: Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
On November 12 2014 17:14 BillGates wrote: Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
On November 12 2014 17:14 BillGates wrote: Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
It's literally a card game.
I've long since stop engaging in this argument because there is no logical reason to play a card game just to complain about variance. There is no card game that doesn't have some amount of RNG.
Hell, you can play boring ass Solforge which is way more complicated and strategic than HS and yet people still whine because they are bad.
People complain about RNG in Magic because they are bad.
And with all these bad players you'd think they'd play something other than a CARD game but my theory is simply they want to play the card games because then they can protect their frail egos and justify their lack of success.
Something that I haven't read anywhere and wasn't mentioned in this video either (when he talked about how to get goblin and gnome cards): What kind of booster are arena runs gonna give? Old, new, random?
On November 12 2014 19:06 FeiLing wrote: Something that I haven't read anywhere and wasn't mentioned in this video either (when he talked about how to get goblin and gnome cards): What kind of booster are arena runs gonna give? Old, new, random?
Only new, and there are already a lot of people complaining about it.
On November 12 2014 17:14 BillGates wrote: Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
It's literally a card game.
I've long since stop engaging in this argument because there is no logical reason to play a card game just to complain about variance. There is no card game that doesn't have some amount of RNG.
Hell, you can play boring ass Solforge which is way more complicated and strategic than HS and yet people still whine because they are bad.
People complain about RNG in Magic because they are bad.
And with all these bad players you'd think they'd play something other than a CARD game but my theory is simply they want to play the card games because then they can protect their frail egos and justify their lack of success.
I'm not complaining, I'm pointing out the obvious here. I'm the one telling a room full of blind people that there is an elephant in the room. I'm merely stating obvious and known facts.
I don't even play the game very much at all, in fact I usually play about 20 games per month, used to play more, but now those 20-30 games allow me to place 16-19 rank, get the card back, have some short fun and then if I want competitive and challenging and skill based game I play Dota 2 or SC2.
The fact that Hearthstone is a luck based game and that adding more randomness adds more randomness and not skill, should not be preventing of people talking and pointing out this self evident truth.
I'm talking to every person out there who thinks Hearthstone requires huge skill to play or you need huge skill to reach legendary, NO. You need huge free time, playing 8 hours a day Hearthstone to reach Legendary.
I've reached level 4 when the game was still in beta, it just takes time, not skill. I could have reached legendary, but it would have required me to play more than the 3 hours I was putting in it every day. It wasn't about skill, it was about how much time I spent grinding for levels.
You obviously need to have 55% win rate to progress, but because its a random game you win 50% of the time as a standard. If you add in highly tailored builds that excel at one thing you can achieve 55% or more win rate and consistently climb the ladder.
ZOO decks come to mind as easy way to climb the ladder, they excel at rushing down your opponents, if they don't draw extremely lucky and/or aren't tailored at countering ZOO decks, they will lose to zoo decks.
Another example is that "PRO" players can lose easily to average players. Like if you give the same deck to one average player and one "PRO", chances are the pro will win 55% to 60% of the time, but in games that are really skill based like SC2, average player has about 1% chance of beating a pro player.
I do like his argument that without variance, the gameplay becomes very formulaic; certainly this has been the case both pre and post Naxxramas. The question is how you introduce variance without RNG, with the relatively small card pool and in the infancy of the game.
Personally I'm excited by the new cards, and I hope it makes for interesting games both as a spectator and a player. I'll never be competitive player but I hope those that are, can still distinguish themselves from the rest.
On November 12 2014 21:42 BillGates wrote: I'm not complaining.......
When beginning a post with these 3 words, it's generally not a good idea to follow up with 8 paragraphs worth of complaints.
They weren't even good or reasonable complaints. You just made up a bunch of stats, stated that you barely play the game because it's not competitive or challenging, and that people need to play 8 hrs a day to make legendary status because there is no skill involved.
Brode's rationale only works for ladder, not tournaments. Sure it takes skill to make probabilistically correct decisions, but you only get rewarded over a large sample. In a tournament where you only get to make the decision once, the resulting outcome is quite meaningless.
I'm fine with introducing some randomness to enhance variance, as long as it just enhances and not completely defines everything. A 6/8 that deals 2 damage to a random enemy at the end of your turn introduces some variance. A 8/8 that can't attack but hits a random enemy at the end of your turn for what is nearly a Pyroblast is either awesome or aweful. Especially since it is at the end of your turn, so you cannot even play around possible outcomes, you just can set it up in a way where you have a 50% chance to hit what you want to hit or 100% chance to hit face. Those are your best options to play with the randomness that is Ragnaros. Claiming it benefits the better player is mostly rubbish, as the better player actually needs something to work with. A real coin flip does not benefit the better player, as there is nothing you can do to adapt to whatever side the coin lands on.
On November 13 2014 01:35 Glacierz wrote: Brode's rationale only works for ladder, not tournaments. Sure it takes skill to make probabilistically correct decisions, but you only get rewarded over a large sample. In a tournament where you only get to make the decision once, the resulting outcome is quite meaningless.
Any single tournament is always going to be relatively meaningless in a card game. Its not like winning the world series of poker means you're the best poker player in the world, or like whoever wins the Magic the Gathering world championship is automatically the world's best Magic player. Results over time can separate the better players, but any one match or tournament isn't going to be indicative.
On November 12 2014 17:14 BillGates wrote: Some small amount of RNG can enhance the game, but to claim that RNG improves skill and makes the game a lot more enjoyable is absurd.
Hearthstone is already 50% luck, 30% card build, 20% skill. Adding a ton more RNG and luck into the game will skew it even more from skill and even card build and into luck territory.
They should be focusing on removing RNG and not adding tons more.
It's literally a card game.
I've long since stop engaging in this argument because there is no logical reason to play a card game just to complain about variance. There is no card game that doesn't have some amount of RNG.
Hell, you can play boring ass Solforge which is way more complicated and strategic than HS and yet people still whine because they are bad.
People complain about RNG in Magic because they are bad.
And with all these bad players you'd think they'd play something other than a CARD game but my theory is simply they want to play the card games because then they can protect their frail egos and justify their lack of success.
I'm not complaining, I'm pointing out the obvious here. I'm the one telling a room full of blind people that there is an elephant in the room. I'm merely stating obvious and known facts.
I don't even play the game very much at all, in fact I usually play about 20 games per month, used to play more, but now those 20-30 games allow me to place 16-19 rank, get the card back, have some short fun and then if I want competitive and challenging and skill based game I play Dota 2 or SC2.
The fact that Hearthstone is a luck based game and that adding more randomness adds more randomness and not skill, should not be preventing of people talking and pointing out this self evident truth.
I'm talking to every person out there who thinks Hearthstone requires huge skill to play or you need huge skill to reach legendary, NO. You need huge free time, playing 8 hours a day Hearthstone to reach Legendary.
I've reached level 4 when the game was still in beta, it just takes time, not skill. I could have reached legendary, but it would have required me to play more than the 3 hours I was putting in it every day. It wasn't about skill, it was about how much time I spent grinding for levels.
You obviously need to have 55% win rate to progress, but because its a random game you win 50% of the time as a standard. If you add in highly tailored builds that excel at one thing you can achieve 55% or more win rate and consistently climb the ladder.
ZOO decks come to mind as easy way to climb the ladder, they excel at rushing down your opponents, if they don't draw extremely lucky and/or aren't tailored at countering ZOO decks, they will lose to zoo decks.
Another example is that "PRO" players can lose easily to average players. Like if you give the same deck to one average player and one "PRO", chances are the pro will win 55% to 60% of the time, but in games that are really skill based like SC2, average player has about 1% chance of beating a pro player.
1: If you don't play the game Blizzard doesn't care about you, nor does the community. Stop posting.
2: 8 hours a day is a joke. You can get to Legend in one or two days. If you need 8 hours a day it's because you are bad.
3: 3 hours a day is more than enough to reach Legend. I reach ranked 6 last season playing less than 20 hours. Im currently at rank 13 and about on hour 4.
4: No....YOU win 50 percent of the time. Because you are a bad player with no respect for the game or your opponents. I have never reached legendary and my winrate is still above 60 percent. Top legend players are over 75 percent
5: Yes there is variance, what is your point. It is a card game. The premise of your idiotic, useless post was that they should be taking out the randomness to apparently appeal to bad players that don't even play the game when "randomness" is an inherent quirk in the genre.
I could go on the DoTa forums and complain that the game requires too much coordination and not enough individual play, but I don't because I'm not an idiot.
Edit: Another hour. Ranked to 9 with 100 percent win rate. Much 50 percent
On November 13 2014 01:35 Glacierz wrote: Brode's rationale only works for ladder, not tournaments. Sure it takes skill to make probabilistically correct decisions, but you only get rewarded over a large sample. In a tournament where you only get to make the decision once, the resulting outcome is quite meaningless.
Any single tournament is always going to be relatively meaningless in a card game. Its not like winning the world series of poker means you're the best poker player in the world, or like whoever wins the Magic the Gathering world championship is automatically the world's best Magic player. Results over time can separate the better players, but any one match or tournament isn't going to be indicative.
Tournament play is usually whoever was the best that particular day.
Luck factors in too but mostly the former. We all know how good Kolento is but at BlizzCon he threw....but in the long run he will win because of his decision making instead of a few misplays here and there
On November 13 2014 05:48 TLCJR4LIFE wrote: 2: 8 hours a day is a joke. You can get to Legend in one or two days. If you need 8 hours a day it's because you are bad.
14 hours from rank 15 to legend, but only if a) you're Xixo b) play against rank 25 players as rank 1 player
On November 13 2014 07:32 TLCJR4LIFE wrote: What argument?
There was no argument. You said you had to be Xixo.
There are players who did that with limited experience simply because they were dedicated, studious and importantly, TALENTED.
"Get legend in 2 days" doesn't tell us anything. When did he play? (early beta?) In what metagame did he play? What deck did he play? Starting rank? Did he have all the cards? How many hours did he play during that time?
2 days is up to 48 hours. Xixo played 14 hours.
For example: In december last year, Reynad made legend in 4 days on a F2P account with an aggro warrior deck. That includes the time playing arena to get some cards. I do not know how many hours he played total.
25 to legend in 2 days isn't impossible even today. Some people are just that good at reading the meta which is what you need to ladder fast. You also need to be good with the decks you are playing of course. It takes some serious skill and some decent luck tho.
It is more reasonable to look at trump getting to legend with the f2p decks, which usually took like 200+ games. That is a lot of time investment for an average player. Even dropping your win rate by 1% would probably mean another 200 games to get to legend.
Anyways gwall probably played a good 30 hours or something when he got legend. He literally got the game and spent money building the druid deck at the time and got legend in those 2 days. It was before naxx and before miracle rogue. Thats all there was I think.
The "amount of days" to make legendary seems a pretty vague stat, the "amount of hours in game" probably would be best, or alternatively the "amount of total matches played" would be a good one.
But yeah, there are much better players than me at this game, but I have done the rank 6 to legendary in one session, way back in February or March... I think it was 4 or 5 hours to do that in the 14th day of the month or something, I wouldn't have lost many games at all that session to have done that. But if you play a fairly fast deck and avoid going on tilt, there's no reason why you'd need to play... 8 hours a day to get legendary.
On November 12 2014 10:58 Reason wrote: What about spectator mode? Seems to me like you can spectate the opponent and msg your friend on skype what they have.........
Take it a step further and you can spectate your own game -.- ??
On November 12 2014 10:58 Reason wrote: What about spectator mode? Seems to me like you can spectate the opponent and msg your friend on skype what they have.........
Take it a step further and you can spectate your own game -.- ??
For the first case, said opponent would have to have accepted or sent you a friend request already and have automatically-allow-spectating-from-friends turned on or give you permission to spectate them. But remember, in hearthstone it's not possible to friend a player (i.e. see their battle tag #) unless you just played against them or contact them out of game. What are the odds that you had the opportunity to friend your friend's opponent before they played them?
Also, from the videos at Blizzcon, it's clear that if you only spectate one side of the match you cannot see the other player's cards. So for the second case (spectating your own game), you wouldn't be able to see any more than you already can as the original player.
They did also say there will be a way to spectate both sides at once (see both hands, etc), but that will still require you to be on both people's friends list.
I play Hearthstone as well as MTG casually, for MTG i enjoy the Commander or EDH format. For those who don't know, Commander is a casual multiplayer format where each player chooses a legendary creature to serve as the decks general and then builds a 99 card deck for the general to lead. Other than basic land cards you are only allowed one copy of a card in your deck and each card must be in line with the colors of your general, for example, a red/blue commander can ONLY have red, blue, red/blue and colorless cards in the deck.
What this leads to is a high degree of randomness and variance....and fun!
No game of commander ever plays out the same, some players get a strong start with a good hand and win, some start slow and then suddenly take the game while the other players are going at it. This high decree of variance is what makes me coming back each week as games get random and crazy and often leads to laughs and stories to tell.
With that said, there is still separation of skill. The players that are able to build more direct and consistent decks reduces the variance, they play better politics/mind games and over time, win more often.
I wholly agree that a healthy dose of randomness makes games exciting with interesting board states and gives opportunities for the better players make the better choice when faced with these events. The problem is the current tournament format.
For a game like hearthstone you need a more round-robin style format where players play each and every other player at least once, this way, in a 36 player tournament each player will have played 35+ games in just the first one and the better players, over the course of several games, will have a better overall result and advance.
Reynad weighed in on this too, and drew a similar distinction between good and bad rng while acknowledging some RNG cards are good for the game
Reynad, too cool for wow i guess..... what a j***! Whats the difference between sitting with hearthstone or any other game 8 or more hours per day? You just made yourself a world wide enemy, Reynad!
Reynad's reasoning for animal companion being "bad rng" makes no sense at all. How does a minion that gives any minion of a certain mana cost in the game be less rng than animal companion, which does basically the same thing.
Being able to roll a vanilla 2/3 (Defender of Argus) vs a vanilla 4/5 (Yeti) off of Sky Golem is somehow less volatile than the 3 outcomes of animal companion? This is only true if one outcome of animal companion is extremely undercosted at 3 mana while another is extremely overcosted. All 3 animal companions are actually excellent value at 3 mana.
EPT
