Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[lamaros]

Those are stats I would think Blizzard would work their ass off to hide.

Why? I'm not sure I get what you're reading into this? Priest sucks?

[jakonovski]

Welp, that Hearthstone Tracker I posted about earlier is pretty much useless. It misses about half of the games you play. I also noticed it hasn't been updated since March.

[Paelos]

Perhaps just looking at the classes is a bad way of doing it, but I'd expect a skill game to have better than a coinflip across all games.

[jakonovski]

It means either coinflip or perfect balancing. The latter is of course a complete fantasy.

[trias_e]

Not the brightest bulbs in the bunch, are you guys?

[Paelos]

Not the brightest bulbs in the bunch, are you guys?

I get that there are winners and losers in every game and if tracked perfectly it would be 50%. This isn't looking at the total data. This is just looking at self-selected data from my understanding. If it is total data, then it doesn't really tell us much of anything other than certain classes suck.

EDIT: What I'd really want to see if the stats on players by rank in casual games. Or the top players in general. Or a breakdown of win % by cash spent.

[lamaros]

Not the brightest bulbs in the bunch, are you guys?

I get that there are winners and losers in every game and if tracked perfectly it would be 50%. This isn't looking at the total data. This is just looking at self-selected data from my understanding. If it is total data, then it doesn't really tell us much of anything other than certain classes suck.

EDIT: What I'd really want to see if the stats on players by rank in casual games. Or the top players in general. Or a breakdown of win % by cash spent.

Your edit points might actually mean something. But the data there is indeed just taken from a broad bunch of players indeed. Thus meaning crap all.

[Margalis]

I played a bunch of this last night. It's very dull.

It's basically magic if the only spell was Grizzly Bears. In terms of gameplay it's no better than one of 50 TCGs you can find on Kongregate. It has nice presentation (I actually hate the presentation, I find it extremely affected and annoying, but I can see how Blizzard superfans would like it) and a bunch of meters to fill up, but the actual playing of the game is very bland.

The pacing is also glacial in terms of gold gain and XP and such. I'm already done. There's no way I'm winning 3 games for 10 gold when arena costs what, 150 or so to enter?

It's basically modern game design in a nutshell - slick presentation and a bunch of progress-quest stuff on top of a weak core game.

[jakonovski]

Man, maybe I'm finally ready to quit this thing. It just seems there's no point without paying that money.

Ragnaros (most often), King Krush, Leeroy, double Ice Block followed by Pyroblast (fucked up there myself tho, didn't foresee that eventuality when setting up), all in topdeck mode against me when I had lethal with card advantage. No chance to interact, just luck made possible with money.
 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Look at the win rates differently.  Each "class" in hearthstone has its own cards and is its own playstyle, can you imagine any card game where eight different style decks all perform equally well?  It's like some kind of balance nirvana unless....your deck doesn't really matter at all.

[lamaros]

Look at the win rates differently.  Each "class" in hearthstone has its own cards and is its own playstyle, can you imagine any card game where eight different style decks all perform equally well?  It's like some kind of balance nirvana unless....your deck doesn't really matter at all.

I'm sorry, what? That's not even what the stats say, let alone what it would necessarily mean if they did say that.

How do you explain Preist being poorer across the board? How do you explain Warlock being much better in constructed? These are both signs that cards matter in some regard.

If you were able to break it down further by the rank of players contributing to this then maybe we would see some interesting things and could make claims, but there's not much to go on here one way or the other.

[Margalis]

Balancing on that level isn't hard. If one class isn't doing well just buff some of their cards - done.

[dusematic]

Look at the win rates differently.  Each "class" in hearthstone has its own cards and is its own playstyle, can you imagine any card game where eight different style decks all perform equally well?  It's like some kind of balance nirvana unless....your deck doesn't really matter at all.

LOL, this thread is full of newb tears.  I love it.  It's a true fact that only THE BEST players think your class and deck don't matter at all.  There are so many problems with this " statistical analysis" it's desperately laughable.  The funny thing is it's all based off of some completely undefined subjective standard for how much variance there should be in a game.  No one knows what it is, no one knows the difference between it and some other game that meets this test, and how they relate to Hearthstone.  Nobody even has any good Hearthstone stats.  One guy who stinks at Hearthstone pulled 60% out of his ass with no sources and we decided to go with that.  

I mean guys, c'mon.  We get it, you're all terrible Hearthstone players.  Let's move on ok?  Might as well argue how Tetris is a bad game for babies because it's so random and all you do is fit shapes into similar shaped holes.  

[tazelbain]

Troll harder.

[schild]

I mean guys, c'mon.  We get it, you're all terrible Hearthstone players.  Let's move on ok?  Might as well argue how Tetris is a bad game for babies because it's so random and all you do is fit shapes into similar shaped holes.

Me: I tell you you're likely bad but are probably doing pretty well at Hearthstone due to its faults, and as both a stellar CCG player and experienced designer I am completely confident in my assessment due to your white-knighting of this shallow pile of bits.
You: You say "then play me in Hearthstone."
Me: I say "No, it's not a test of skill, it's a test of dice rolling."
You: "You just don't want to lose."
Me: Having no problem with loss, I remind you this has nothing to do with winning or losing, but rather, playing a game that's actually well-designed and favors those who are skillfull.
You: Continues trolling
Me: Still correct, just being trolled by an amateur.
You: Butthurt you like a shitty game, but cover it up with further weak trolling.

We done here?

[Margalis]

Whether or not the game is too random it's definitely pay to win. I don't have a single rare card, for any class. Meanwhile nearly all my losses come from the opponent busting out a rare.

In Magic a lot of the best decks rely on rare cards, but in Magic you can't play for hours and not get a single rare.

Arena is the the closest thing the game has to a skill-based mode, even though it's not as skill-based as a traditional draft mode. But it costs a ridiculous amount to enter. In the end it's exactly the "pay or the game is incredibly tedious" Facebook-style game I had it pegged as from the first screenshot. Really not worth playing other than as a dumb time-waster, but even then I don't see how it's any better than just busting out Flappy Bird or something.

[naum]

I didn't believe I'd like this, but it's been enjoyable thus far.

It's not MtG, more like Mtg Lite. With Blizzard flair. It's not a total "dice roll" RNG affair, as the more skilled player is going to win 70%+. And the games are short, 5-10 minutes (depending on how nimble your opponent is). The take that it's MtG sola "grizzly bears" might ring true for the basic cards, but it's deeper than that, with "expert" cards added in. No, it's not MtG :(

I actually bought a few decks too, though no crazy amount (40 packs for ~$50), like I linked to in a previous post. Only because I started looking at decks on Hearthpwn and decided to seed the collection a little bit. Figured I'd already spent a considerable amount of play time in F2P (and had already earned enough gold from quests and "play" mode wins for half-dozen packs, plus all the Arena entries to date), so what was the cost of an old-school, non-Steam sale game seemed OK, even if I bore of this soon.

Have just started, and Arena has been brutal to me -- went 0-3 again today (previously went 1-3 and 1-3). Last random hero I selected was Rogue, and I had no idea how to play it -- 2 of the matches were close, but I just flubbed it, even after looking at the icy veins spreadsheet. OTOH, I used the free cards (using Warlock Free "Token" Zoo deck) to ride a 10+ game winning streak in ranked mode. After I updated the deck with a few rares and epics, I've been losing some, though still winning more than losing. In Arena, I just haven't figured out how to do the "pick 1 card from the 3 random cards presented 30X" properly.  I'm not that good (yet) by any stretch, yet I've smacked down a few players loaded with orange and purple cards (yesterday one dude plunked down both Leeroy Jenkins, which I erased immediately, and Harrison Jones) with a deck solely comprised of free cards.

[Tannhauser]

naum, you started the same way I did.  The warlock deck was a great starter for me and I too beat some decks with epics and legendaries with it.  Also, I've never been a guy to do WoW dallies religiously, but I stay up to date on my HS quests.  Why not?  Every 100pts is a free pack.  I've amassed a decent collection now, have almost all of the non-orange neutral cards.   Crafting the Faceless Manipulator was a great idea, he's really messed some shit up.  My favorite was when I copied Garrosh. :)

They say Naxx will have a mechanism to let us get more legendaries, so that's good.  I'd love to play with some of the dragons or Cairne. 

[dusematic]

I mean guys, c'mon.  We get it, you're all terrible Hearthstone players.  Let's move on ok?  Might as well argue how Tetris is a bad game for babies because it's so random and all you do is fit shapes into similar shaped holes.

Me: I tell you you're likely bad but are probably doing pretty well at Hearthstone due to its faults, and as both a stellar CCG player and experienced designer I am completely confident in my assessment due to your white-knighting of this shallow pile of bits.
You: You say "then play me in Hearthstone."
Me: I say "No, it's not a test of skill, it's a test of dice rolling."
You: "You just don't want to lose."
Me: Having no problem with loss, I remind you this has nothing to do with winning or losing, but rather, playing a game that's actually well-designed and favors those who are skillfull.
You: Continues trolling
Me: Still correct, just being trolled by an amateur.
You: Butthurt you like a shitty game, but cover it up with further weak trolling.

We done here?

Your 'objective criticism' of the game is something a tard would come up with.  I didn't want to call you out earlier but the inferences you drew from those 'stats' were words indistinguishable from what a dumb person would say.

It's pretty obvious the game requires skill to play at a high level.  There are more random effects in HS vs. MtG, that's also obvious.  As such a stellar player and professional designer, you must realize this stems from HS being built from the ground up as a PC game.  You can't really have effects like "discard two random cards upon play" in MtG.  It would turn into a weird shell game.  

Funny that I'm supposedly trolling you in this thread for defending a ultra-popular game in a thread about the game from a guy who has spent 30 pages bashing it.  lol.

[jakonovski]

 You can't really have effects like "discard two random cards upon play" in MtG.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This thread delivers.

[Paelos]

I think my highest rank now is 15, but I can't remember. At some point after Naxx I'm actually going to play it more than 2-3 times a week to see how things go.

[schild]

I mean guys, c'mon.  We get it, you're all terrible Hearthstone players.  Let's move on ok?  Might as well argue how Tetris is a bad game for babies because it's so random and all you do is fit shapes into similar shaped holes.

Me: I tell you you're likely bad but are probably doing pretty well at Hearthstone due to its faults, and as both a stellar CCG player and experienced designer I am completely confident in my assessment due to your white-knighting of this shallow pile of bits.
You: You say "then play me in Hearthstone."
Me: I say "No, it's not a test of skill, it's a test of dice rolling."
You: "You just don't want to lose."
Me: Having no problem with loss, I remind you this has nothing to do with winning or losing, but rather, playing a game that's actually well-designed and favors those who are skillfull.
You: Continues trolling
Me: Still correct, just being trolled by an amateur.
You: Butthurt you like a shitty game, but cover it up with further weak trolling.

We done here?

Your 'objective criticism' of the game is something a tard would come up with.  I didn't want to call you out earlier but the inferences you drew from those 'stats' were words indistinguishable from what a dumb person would say.

It's pretty obvious the game requires skill to play at a high level.  There are more random effects in HS vs. MtG, that's also obvious.  As such a stellar player and professional designer, you must realize this stems from HS being built from the ground up as a PC game.  You can't really have effects like "discard two random cards upon play" in MtG.  It would turn into a weird shell game.  

Funny that I'm supposedly trolling you in this thread for defending a ultra-popular game in a thread about the game from a guy who has spent 30 pages bashing it.  lol.

As linked above, yea, Balduvian Horde, exists, but I'm going to say it more clearly:

There's nothing done in Hearthstone that can't be done in Magic. It is not pushing the envelope the tiniest of bits due to it being designed as a PC game. If it wasn't a step backwards in every conceivable way, I might agree with you. But not only is it not taking advantage of being digital only, Blizzard completely misidentified the complex parts that make Magic what it is. It is the soulless empty husk of Magic, rather than being something new, something better.

Anyway, tons of random card effects and shit like that exists in Magic, but people don't play them, because they're fucking awful. Except Hymn to Tourach, which is goddamn amazing, but that card afaik doesn't exist in Hearthstone.

Edit: Even Gelbin Mekkatorque could be done in Magic since he picks his "awesome invention" from a pool of 3 shitty ones and 1 good ones. They would just print all the possible results on the card.

Edit: This will help: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[random]

Edit 2: One more: It's possible 5 years from now when Hearthstone has 3000 more cards, that I'll concede I've been wrong this whole time and the "design window" for something with only shitty sorceries and creatures is larger than I think, but I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong and they really did fuck up the entire base design.

[dusematic]

I mean guys, c'mon.  We get it, you're all terrible Hearthstone players.  Let's move on ok?  Might as well argue how Tetris is a bad game for babies because it's so random and all you do is fit shapes into similar shaped holes.

Me: I tell you you're likely bad but are probably doing pretty well at Hearthstone due to its faults, and as both a stellar CCG player and experienced designer I am completely confident in my assessment due to your white-knighting of this shallow pile of bits.
You: You say "then play me in Hearthstone."
Me: I say "No, it's not a test of skill, it's a test of dice rolling."
You: "You just don't want to lose."
Me: Having no problem with loss, I remind you this has nothing to do with winning or losing, but rather, playing a game that's actually well-designed and favors those who are skillfull.
You: Continues trolling
Me: Still correct, just being trolled by an amateur.
You: Butthurt you like a shitty game, but cover it up with further weak trolling.

We done here?

Your 'objective criticism' of the game is something a tard would come up with.  I didn't want to call you out earlier but the inferences you drew from those 'stats' were words indistinguishable from what a dumb person would say.

It's pretty obvious the game requires skill to play at a high level.  There are more random effects in HS vs. MtG, that's also obvious.  As such a stellar player and professional designer, you must realize this stems from HS being built from the ground up as a PC game.  You can't really have effects like "discard two random cards upon play" in MtG.  It would turn into a weird shell game.  

Funny that I'm supposedly trolling you in this thread for defending a ultra-popular game in a thread about the game from a guy who has spent 30 pages bashing it.  lol.

As linked above, yea, Balduvian Horde, exists, but I'm going to say it more clearly:

There's nothing done in Hearthstone that can't be done in Magic. It is not pushing the envelope the tiniest of bits due to it being designed as a PC game. If it wasn't a step backwards in every conceivable way, I might agree with you. But not only is it not taking advantage of being digital only, Blizzard completely misidentified the complex parts that make Magic what it is. It is the soulless empty husk of Magic, rather than being something new, something better.

Anyway, tons of random card effects and shit like that exists in Magic, but people don't play them, because they're fucking awful. Except Hymn to Tourach, which is goddamn amazing, but that card afaik doesn't exist in Hearthstone.

Edit: Even Gelbin Mekkatorque could be done in Magic since he picks his "awesome invention" from a pool of 3 shitty ones and 1 good ones. They would just print all the possible results on the card.

Edit: This will help: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[random]

Edit 2: One more: It's possible 5 years from now when Hearthstone has 3000 more cards, that I'll concede I've been wrong this whole time and the "design window" for something with only shitty sorceries and creatures is larger than I think, but I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong and they really did fuck up the entire base design.

Fair enough.  Well let me ask you this: How many cards were in the first run of Magic?  300?  And was it considered balanced at that time?  I feel like comparing Magic to hearthstone is like comparing WoW to any new MMO.

[schild]

I errrr, uh. Wait, what?

First of all, every new MMOG is compared to WoW, fairly, since they could've learned everything they needed to from what WoW did. WoW is the gold standard for MMOGs.

Magic is the gold standard for CCGs. Blizzard, being lauded for their ability to streamline and learn from other peoples MISTAKES (of which Magic has thousands and thousands of articles describing not only how they design but what they've learned over the last 20 years), really did an amazing fucking job of IGNORING EVERYTHING.

Revised, the first widely available set of Magic, was 305 cards. It wasn't until Ice Age came out that they printed a card that was entirely broken. Necropotence (arguably Brainstorm as well, but it wasn't as good back then). That is to say, the sets back then were weak, but mostly balanced. They were not made for drafting, but then, Hearthstone was designed with ZERO drafting concerns in mind. By 2000, Wizards basically knew what the fuck was up and started designing around drafting AND constructed in tandem.

Basically, Blizzard tried to reinvent the wheel. Great for a cash grab, 8 steps back for a CCG.

[Hoax]

Wait wasn't Timewalk and Stasis in/before Revised? Lotus? The rest of power nine. Channel? Wheel of Fortune? Was Armageddon in revised or just Wrath of God?

ROFL Demonic Tutor??? That was in Revised I'm 95% sure. I remember playing with 2-3 of them and not realizing how stupid that was because I was in 5th grade so all I ever searched for was big dumb bomby creatures like Sengir Vampire (   ).

What's awesome about remembering the ancient days of mtg was nobody knew how to be abusive yet. I remember fully functional adults playing decks where their big reveal was cockatrice or lure with the assassin that killed tapped cards. Or a dude I played in my first mtg tournament that had a all blue deck that was like 115 cards because stasis or something. Shit early mtg was basically pre-internet. You couldn't even netdeck. My mind boggles.

[schild]

Timewalk wasn't in Revised. Stasis was but was nearly unusable. Channel / Fireball was no longer a thing because of no black lotus / moxen. Wheel of Fortune had no amazing way to be abused. Armageddon was fine because mana recovery wasn't yet a thing.

What was Demonic Tutor tutoring up? A hypnotic specter? Sure, have at it.

It wasn't that overpowered cards DIDN'T exist. They always exist. It's that it was balanced at that point, at least to a certain degree. Point being, this was TWENTY YEARS AGO. There was what? One other card game in 94-95 and it was also designed by Richard Garfield?

Edit: I used revised as the starting point because it was the first set that was printed enough to be easily obtainable. And completely replaced all the previous sets for what flawed legality existed back then.

[Ironwood]

http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Curse_of_Naxxramas

Have some cards.

[Hoax]

All I need to know is if there will be WoW items given away for doing HS things because every time that happens I am forced to play this shit game for my mom so she can get the WoW items.

[Paelos]

Lulz.

At this point I'm not even sure why they'd bother. WoW is so far behind this year, Hearthstone is their interim cash cow. Wow should be giving you Hearthstone things.

[eldaec]

 You can't really have effects like "discard two random cards upon play" in MtG.

At least when I was last playing magic (5 years agoish), they had pretty much decided to stop doing shit like that.

They stopped printing many random cards when they realized that card draw gives the game plenty of randomness, and it doesn't usually play better with more.

[naum]

Lulz.

At this point I'm not even sure why they'd bother. WoW is so far behind this year, Hearthstone is their interim cash cow. Wow should be giving you Hearthstone things.

~10M+ Hearthstone accounts, as of a few months ago.

WoW subscribers now sagging, but I believe around ~7M (at one point, was 10M+?).

Diablo 3 sold around ~3M expansions (not sure how many of the original release were sold).

I think the estimates on total global MtG players (paper cards) was 5-6M.

[Ingmar]

The 6 million comes from Hasbro statements around 2004. I believe they've grown fairly significantly since then at least in sales, but as far as I know there's no credible estimate available for the current player population.

[Morat20]

That Shade of Naxxaramas is going to be a PITA if it gets dropped early. A few turns after it's played, you can't even flamestrike it.

[schild]

The secondary market is many magnitudes bigger than what Wizards does. There will never be a proper number as the secondary market is more gray than black as far as markets go, but is still an untraceable cash pit.