Problem Machine

Hearthstone: Because what Magic really needed was F2P mechanics

Recommended Posts

You're maybe playing a non aggro deck vs an aggro deck?

 

Of course he is, but a lot of us don't have the time or dedication to know that and just want to play a fun card game where we have an alright chance of winning, and a good chance of enjoying the game when we loose. HS often struggles to provide either, especially to new players.  Think WiiSports balancing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Of course he is, but a lot of us don't have the time or dedication to know that and just want to play a fun card game where we have an alright chance of winning, and a good chance of enjoying the game when we loose. HS often struggles to provide either, especially to new players.  Think WiiSports balancing.

 

Pretty much what I was going to say. It also doesn't help that just about everyone has fantastic 8, 9 and 10 mana cards, but I'm just using shitty ones that you get when you just start the game.

 

I'm not saying hearthstone is a bad game, just that I'm not having fun.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant to say that 60% of the ladder above rank 20 is netdecked aggro decks. If you want a similar feeling to what HS was at the start, when the ladder wasn't filled to the brim with perfect net decks, you could check out Duelyst (maybe not anymore, I haven't played it in months) or TES: Legends (haven't felt being aggroed to death, or if I was it was a similar feeling to MTG where it's 100% an all in thing) or Faeara(?). I don't know anything about the last one, except that it's new so probably has a more beginner friendly multiplayer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The bigger problem to me is that the entire ladder has become homogenous through the ubiquity of meta-decks pulled from guides. There's tiny differences in what types you run into at what ranks, but even if I don't play for a few months, and get kicked back down to the lowest rank, I immediately run into N'Zoth Paladins playing every Deathrattle legendary from the original game.

 

So the even the bottom of the ladder doesn't provide a good place for new or returning players to start out again, and I'm not sure Casual or Wild are much better.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Casual is the worst. At least in the ranked games I occasionally come up against someone like me and have a good match. In Casual it's just a bunch of people using crazy powerful cards.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Too much dependence on luck, losing isn't fun*.

 

Yeah, the fundamental problem with most card games like Hearthstone is the luck of the draw can determine the outcome of a game. The key to enjoying these kinds of games is to accept the randomness in any given game and think more about being as consistent as possible over time. The randomness gives variety to each game and lets crazy things happen while the snowball nature of the game makes it so that a game you've already lost doesn't drag out too long. But you do never really get over the feeling of losing to what feels like one lucky moment.

 

Have you tried arena? It's not easy but you're as likely to have good cards as your opponent. If you can average 3-4+ wins then you're not really losing the extra gold value for the entrance free. I used to spend gold on arena exclusively when I first started playing to build up my initial collection, but these days I just don't want to play through that many arena runs.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The game feels like it's leaning into its randomness more and more now though, with Yogg-Saron probably being the worst offender (even though I love playing it).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The game feels like it's leaning into its randomness more and more now though, with Yogg-Saron probably being the worst offender (even though I love playing it).

 

Yeah, the fact that it's a computer video game gives Hearthstone the advantage that it can have more random effects than physical card games like Magic and they lean into that.

 

But I think the bigger problem with Yogg-Saron isn't that its effects are random but that it reduces the importance of the early game. The Yogg player just needs to play enough spells to survive in order to have a Yogg that is pretty likely to turn around the game. I guess that's how all control decks work, it just feels more annoying when you know that every removal spell they cast is making their Yogg better and you can't do much about it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I mean, at least Yogg is relatively "balanced" in that you risk being pyroblasted in the face by it, even if the effects tend towards the positive because a lot of spells have targetting requirements that make you draw cards and get secrets while enemy minions get blasted. It doesn't make it any more fun to randomly lose to it, but it also keeps it from being a dominant force in the meta.

 

N'Zoth feels more annoying to me in terms of how much value deathrattle decks get out of it if you can't win before they draw it, especially if your enemy has invested enough time and money to get all the classic deathrattle legendaries. As if Tirion, Sylvanas and Cairne weren't oppressive enough, now you'll have to kill all of them twice.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've had a similar feeling when playing hearthstone recently, and while I don't think the game is unbalanced I find myself winning and losing games based on which player hits a specific condition first.  The new cards are quite interesting, and they do create a kind of consistency in matches, but I think the other side of that is a reduction in the variability of counter play.  In particular this is baked into the design of the old gods, where the strategy for most of them is to simply play cards more so than focusing on how these cards are played.  Personally I think this is a problem hearthstone has always had to some degree, it's more that the addition of high value late game cards like the old gods make the discrepancies in decks multiplicative and highly dependent upon specifically timed plays.  I don't think this is a structural problem per se, but most likely dependent upon the designers' favoring of battlecry, deathrattle, and other instant-action mechanics. In my mind I imagine a game where a greater emphasis on "at the start/end of your turn, when you discard a card, when X do Y" style mechanics being a generally smoother and more varied experience.

 

For example, when I'm playing a N'zoth deck the fight tends to hinge on whether or not I have board clear in my hand within the next 2 turns, or a C'thun deck whether or not I have the appropriate single target removal within the next 1.  In other cases I've lost games after failing to draw C'thun 12 -15 turns in a row, and on the other side won them for the same reason.  To some extent I think this is the game's desire, especially when it comes to these late game bomb style cards, so I'm not certain it's a bad thing.  The developers seem keen to attempt to almost re balance the meta with each new expansion, but this tends to reinforce a particular structure in deck creation and play where cards are assessed on their individual value more so than their combinatory value.  As much as the game has changed with all the recent expansion packs, I don't think they've been as successful in redefining how the game is played so much as redefining the pace of play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That is an issue I have too. I often find that I can predict the win depending entirely on how I've had to play a couple of cards, or if my opponent has a counter to a particular card.

Mainly execute and frothing berserker. If those two are countered or used inefficiently, I've lost. The rest of the deck never seemed to matter.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The issue for me is that a specific deck archetype shifting and going up in the meta is as well connected to the question of how accessible that archetype is to new players. Traditionally, rush decks are one of the things new players could lean on to stay somewhat competitive: they don't tend to rely on legendaries so at most you have to craft a few epic cards to finish them. The late-game focused Old God decks are pretty much the opposite of that, legendaries comboing off of other legendaries.

 

My impression is that in making these polar opposites competitive with each other, the game ended up cutting out the middle of the curve. Midrange decks aren't really a thing anymore: you can't keep up with pace of aggro decks, and you can't whittle down these late-game decks before they activate. There have always been powerful late-game legendaries, but they didn't necessarily turn the game the instant they dropped on the board. These Old God cards can turn a game so quickly that they put a clear timer on it: if you're not running one of your own, and you might not have the cards to do so, rushing the enemy down feels like the only viable option.

 

I can certainly understand why anybody coming to the game now would feel their decision space is pretty limited. The gap between how much your deck can do late-game with these cards vs. without has become so huge.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm a weird hearthstone outlier apparently, in that I 1) love the randomness. Praise Yogg. Praise the hell out of Yogg best card in the expansion even when it's on the other side of the board and 2) feel confident in saying that the best players win more often and more consistently and that deck construction is very important but card rarity is much less important than it seems sometimes (except in Arena). There are people that consistently fight for top 100 legend every month running Zoo decks with only basic, common, and rare cards. Yes, sometimes deck archetypes revolve around either a particular card or set of cards, but the top players can and have played to legend on a consistent basis with a fresh f2p account.

 

I've fought back and forth with myself about this, but I've come to grips with the fact that not dumping money into the game limits deck variety, not deck viability.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's great and all, but 1) I don't even have all common cards, 2) I have no idea how to make an efficient deck and 3) that still doesn't make losing fun.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm a weird hearthstone outlier apparently, in that I 1) love the randomness. Praise Yogg. Praise the hell out of Yogg best card in the expansion even when it's on the other side of the board and 2) feel confident in saying that the best players win more often and more consistently and that deck construction is very important but card rarity is much less important than it seems sometimes (except in Arena). There are people that consistently fight for top 100 legend every month running Zoo decks with only basic, common, and rare cards. Yes, sometimes deck archetypes revolve around either a particular card or set of cards, but the top players can and have played to legend on a consistent basis with a fresh f2p account.

I've fought back and forth with myself about this, but I've come to grips with the fact that not dumping money into the game limits deck variety, not deck viability.

I also agree. I only play pretty casually, but I've been able to make it to ranks 3-5 with decks with easy to get cards. I don't have any legendaries (well I have Illidan which I got from my very first free pack and I have N'zoth, but I don't have Sylvanas or Cairne so I don't run it) and not even a lot of epics. It is annoying, before standard I couldn't run most priest decks because I don't have a single light bomb, but there are simple decks that are as good as anything else.

For me whether I enjoy or don't enjoy losing comes down to what deck I'm playing and what my win/lose conditions are relative to my opponents. If I'm playing against an OTK warrior and am shaman then it comes down to just playing my taunt minions at the right time and controlling his card draw. If I lose it's usually because I did something wrong, but it's no big deal. If I'm priest I don't really have a reliable way to win or any sort of objective to aim for so it's frustrating. If I'm playing OTK warrior I have to get the cards for my combo before they get an answer so I'm not really to excited one way or the other regardless of what happens because it's a brainless deck.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's great and all, but 1) I don't even have all common cards, 2) I have no idea how to make an efficient deck and 3) that still doesn't make losing fun.

You're going to lose at least 50% of your games, more when you're starting out. If you can't derive fun from those matches you won't like the game.

Personally I don't mind losing in Hearthstone and similar games because in almost every case there's something to be learned from the match. When I do get upset I know it's time to go play something else because I'm too tired to be in learning mode.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You're going to lose at least 50% of your games, more when you're starting out. If you can't derive fun from those matches you won't like the game.

Personally I don't mind losing in Hearthstone and similar games because in almost every case there's something to be learned from the match. When I do get upset I know it's time to go play something else because I'm too tired to be in learning mode.

 

That's kinda my point, I don't mind losing in other games, but I can't find fun and rarely learn anything when I lose a hearthstone game. 

 

Example: I lose in Splatoon, I can derive personal success despite my team sucking, I can see how another player was better than me by how they splatted me and try to either emulate their tactics or just appreciate their aiming skill.

Similar in Rocket League. Personal success. Marvelling at someone's incredible aerial goal or team work.

 

In hearthstone I just feel like I got fucked by RNG most of the time. That's probably not true, but because RNG is a factor it's hard to learn from losses, I'm left thinking was it me, or was it the luck of the draw? 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If I understand correctly you're saying that Hearthstone is not providing sufficient handles for you to start learning it?

I think that's probably a fair criticism (and one that applies to most of this kind of card/deck/combat games).

The RNG aspect I don't know what to say, because as someone who's played this kind of games since 1997 I'm kind of inured to it.

It's especially interesting to me to have badfinger involved in this discussion because if I recall correctly he started out pretty recently and also was suffering from this learner's cliff.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe that's the issue. Hearthstone is the only CCG I've ever even attempted to play, and as a complete novice, it does nothing to teach me how to actually play. I said I was "getting back into it" but that's not really much considering I didn't play a lot before.

Sure there are plenty of resources on the internet to help, but if I'm not having fun with the game, I have no incentive to look them up. 

 

want to like Hearthstone. It's just not making it easy. I love min-maxing things and considering minute changes like swapping card x for card y, but the game makes it really hard to do that because I don't have access to the cards.

Couple that with wild/normal modes and I have barely any clue what's going on. 

 

Weirdly enough, I had a lot of fun playing the brawl, where cards were given random mana values. That's insane RNG, and I won only about 30% of the time, but at least the losses were easy for me to understand - oh that player got a 10 mana card for 3 mana at the start of the game and I didn't. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've fought back and forth with myself about this, but I've come to grips with the fact that not dumping money into the game limits deck variety, not deck viability.

 

That's the same point I was trying to make though.

 

I don't doubt that you can climb to legend just by playing a fairly economic deck to perfection, even with my own clownish Yogg-Mage I find that the biggest obstacle to getting ahead is actually putting in the time to grind ranked. But for me doing well in the game isn't about where I placed among all players at the end of the month but getting to build fun and interesting decks that can still find some measure of success. That's getting much harder when the gap between a hypothetical card combo I come up with (or happen to draw in a pack) and the optimal late-game combos is this huge.

 

Who cares if you can win games, when the game pretty much limits new players to one playstyle that still feels like an unhealthy situation to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Who cares if you can win games, when the game pretty much limits new players to one playstyle that still feels like an unhealthy situation to me.

The only 'playstyle' a new player cannot do by your definition (if I understand you correctly) is the 'experiment wildly with a vast collection' one. To which I'd say, well, yeah, because it's a collectible game. You can like or dislike that, but unhealthy is not a term I'd use given previous and continuing success of this model.

If you're talking about aggro vs. midrange vs. control there's budget versions of all those playstyles available, though control tends to be somewhat more expensive.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't agree that there's only one style you can play with a limited card set.

 

https://manacrystals.com/articles/110-basic-decks-and-new-players

 

These are 0 dust decks that'll take people who internalize concepts to 15 if they click with the deck. There's only one aggro/face deck in the whole bunch and it's weapon warrior. There's a ramp deck, a tempo deck, a mid range deck, token, board control.

 

Almost every class has a reasonably viable C'thun deck out there that's cheap and synergizes. You can play an inexpensive deck of almost any archetype if you search hard enough and are patient enough to play it.

 

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/499199-standard-wotog-f2p-ramp-cthun-druid 1100 dust C'Thun Druid

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/573967-super-budget-cthun-druid 600 dust C'Thun Druid!

 

The thing about RNG is it's secretly also winning you games or turns when you're not thinking about it. Curving out perfectly with removal is RNG.

 

Yes, I was very much on the wrong side of the curve for learning how to play mid range shaman. I was so frustrated. I posted a 20 minute video where I won 1 game and it felt inevitable and lost 2 games where I felt helpless. And then I realized I wasn't playing all the deck's strengths. I wasn't using my weapon properly. I was trying to save up for a single turn wombo and flooding the board, getting it cleared and leaving nothing in my hand to reload vs. controlling and chipping away to put them into reasonable burst range. I watched someone very good playing bloodlust shaman and went "OH WAIT REALLY?!" in a way that someone just telling me what I was doing didn't illustrate.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Kinda demonstrates my point. The game doesn't help you learn, you've got to put in the effort outside of the game to learn. That's fine, there are lots of games like that, I just don't enjoy it enough to bother.

 

I played a couple of games at lunch, and yeah, I wasn't playing the random deck I had (I just picked druid because it was a quest) to its strengths, but I also have no idea how to build a good deck.

Lost 3 matches in what felt inevitable. Everything was countered and I had no counters. That feeling doesn't want to make me come back.

 

Yet I still keep trying, because the art, the design and the idea of the game all draw me in. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now