Why all of the hate for RNG oriented play in HS?

[StrawberryZebra]

The point is that as a good player you should be making the most optimal plays at every stage. In the above example you did your best to only give the opponent only a 12.5% chance to win. That's good odds which you should take every single time so that you come out ahead in the long run. You will win that game 7 times out of 8. I'm sure every game you ever won you had no luck go your way (yeah right). Let the luck take care of itself and stop moaning.

You forget those 7 times where things went your way and you won, but that 8th game where you did everything right and still lost anyway tends to linger in your mind for a while and it's precisely what people mean when they say they hate the RNG in Hearthstone. Unlike skill based games it's hard to really improve your play to accomodate for it, nor can you do anything to prevent it from happening again. I mean, how do you go about improving on it? You already did everything right, you just got unlucky and that is a bitter pill to swallow for the kind of players who take HS seriously.

For what its worth, I'm not someone who gets bent out of shape about this kind of thing. But I can understand why people do, it can be incrediably frustrating in the short term even if over a long enough timeline it will eventually even out.

[HisDudeness]

So? That's true for every game and sport, ever; the people who play the most also happen to be the best at it, or do you conceive yourself playing once a week and still make it to grandmaster in SC2?

In WoW, Yes, I could play great only playing once a week. I could raid to 100% of my ability playing once a week. Sure I played a lot but after a while it just became natural. RTS games? Same way. I was really good at those and could pick up on any RTS within a week because they are generally all the same. It's about micro and quick thinking. I could probably still go back to BFME1 one and 2 and still kick ass. Supreme commander? CoH. Etc. Hearthstone isn't a game that needs played a lot to master. It needs played a lot to reach the top. You never forget how to play this game? You don't have to be 100% focused. You can get up and take a dump or piss and not miss a thing. The guys who sit there focused so hard on the screen just make me laugh. Are they trying to pull some sort of "Maverick" move if anyone has seen the movie and magically draw the card you need? Give me a break with this comparison.

[Twoddle]

You forget those 7 times where things went your way and you won, but that 8th game where you did everything right and still lost anyway tends to linger in your mind for a while and it's precisely what people mean when they say they hate the RNG in Hearthstone. Unlike skill based games it's hard to really improve your play to accomodate for it, nor can you do anything to prevent it from happening again. I mean, how do you go about improving on it? You already did everything right, you just got unlucky and that is a bitter pill to swallow for the kind of players who take HS seriously.

For what its worth, I'm not someone who gets bent out of shape about this kind of thing. But I can understand why people do, it can be incrediably frustrating in the short term even if over a long enough timeline it will eventually even out.

You're talking about plebs moaning during the game when luck doesn't go their way. It doesn't explain the hate for RNG with regards to the state of Hearthstone.

[StrawberryZebra]

You're talking about plebs moaning during the game when luck doesn't go their way. It doesn't explain the hate for RNG with regards to the state of Hearthstone.

I consider them to be one and the same. Anyone moaning about RNG in a card game is a pleb

Maybe RNG has been a little bit too overused in HS, thats not really for me to say. For developers it lets them get away with creating cards that are both above and below the power curve so I can see why they keep creating more of them. It also means they can put some really, really crazy effects on them, like the Spellslinger for example, that can add some exciting moments to the game at the expense of consistency. I'm not a fan of those kinds of cards myself, I'd much prefer to have a card with a consistent and known effect rather than one like Yogg who could win you the game, lose you the game, do nothing useful and everything in between. I don't fault those who want as many unknowns as possible in their deck, it's just not for me.

[dacoolist]

To be fair deck building the hardest part of Hearthstone especially for casuals. Your best bet is to copy netdecks and tweak them.

I only netdeck and topdick when I play, knowhutimsayin.. no Really though, I just use hearthpwn.. look up TRUMP decks

[Twoddle]

I consider them to be one and the same. Anyone moaning about RNG in a card game is a pleb

They're not the same at all, one is about game design the other is about moaning over personal bad luck. People are winning tournament games with Yogg and still making protests about the stupidity of the card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxjlkZgXOS4

If a card came out in the next expansion that said "Win or lose the game right now with a 50% chance". Would you tell everyone to stop complaining and improve? Doesn't make sense.

[StrawberryZebra]

Chance is a fundamental part of all card games, digital or otherwise, if you remove it you end up with a game that resembles something like Chess or Go. When it comes down to it, personal bad luck is entirely a function of the game design. No one "gets lucky" in chess because the game rules don't allow it to happen. People would still "get lucky" in HS even if you removed every card with an RNG effect on it simply due to drawing cards in a random order every game.

I've not ever kept up with HS tournaments, but last time I watched one it was Single Elimination. And that is a horrible way of running a cardgame tournament, they should be round robin or best of 3/5 at the very least. Single Elimination works for games like Starcraft or shooters, but not ones where chance plays such a large role in the game. Look at Poker tournaments, pros there can play thousands of hands over the course of one which is plenty of time for their luck to average out. But I think this is probably a discussion for another time.

As for Yoggy, well... Yeah, he's a stupid card that probably should have never been made. Then again, I don't think it was every intended to see much in the way of serious play. The only time you really want to be playing him is when you're already losing badly and have no other options. If he loses the game for you, well you were losing anyway but he might just turn it around and win it for you. Reducing the entire game to a coinflip was a really bad decision overall.

[Spray]

They are for sure players who have a concept and Play strategicaly strong....but, i imagine they also do nothing else, or at least they invest a shitload of time in the game.

The season when i had my best rank, i easily also spent the most time playing. Im not saying i could reach what they even if i spent the time they do with HS (even we will never find out), but ist for sure a Major factor.

Which basically proves my point - if you play a lot HS, you become good at it, so RNG doesn't play that much of a role here.

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They're not the same at all, one is about game design the other is about moaning over personal bad luck. People are winning tournament games with Yogg and still making protests about the stupidity of the card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxjlkZgXOS4

If a card came out in the next expansion that said "Win or lose the game right now with a 50% chance". Would you tell everyone to stop complaining and improve? Doesn't make sense.

That's jumping to extremes.

Yogg requires setup, period. Both board-wise and spell-wise, it's not like you just drop him and win games.

[Twoddle]

That's jumping to extremes.

Yogg requires setup, period. Both board-wise and spell-wise, it's not like you just drop him and win games.

Yes a hypothetical extreme to explain that people complaining about their own personal bad luck is a totally different thing to complaining about RNG cards in Hearthstone.

RNG is crossing a threshold in Hearthstone. It's getting ever closer the the point where every few games you have no control over it whatsoever, you can't "improve" against that. That is what people don't like.

It's nothing to do with people crying over Rag hitting their face for lethal through 7 minions, "I'm never fucking lucky". That's not hate for RNG, that's people crying. That kind of luck takes care of itself over the long run, that's "good RNG".

"Good RNG" benefits the good and improving players eg. you play around Rag by spreading low cost minions. All "Bad RNG" does is bring the win rates of bad players closer to 50% through shit you can do nothing about or play around. Yogg is one example but there are others like Swashburgler which put totally unpredictable cards into your opponents hand.

[StrawberryZebra]

RNG is crossing a threshold in Hearthstone. It's getting ever closer the the point where every few games you have no control over it whatsoever, you can't "improve" against that. That is what people don't like.

The unfortunate reality is that there's only a limited design space they have to work with. They can't give you, say... Ranged minions because the mechanics just don't support it. The smallest increments of power they can offer are temporary stat buffs, and those get boring very fast even if they are perfectly playable minions on their own. Do we really need 4 different kinds of Dark Iron Dwarf? I'd say no, the effect is strong enough to be worth playing alone. Blizzard have more or less done all that they can here. It's why there are more and more random effects, that's all thats really left for them to work with at this point.

I don't like where HS is heading either, but at least for now there are a couple of small ways you can find as a player to tweak the RNG in your favour some of the time. It should really be all of the time, but they've moved away from semi-predictable outcomes towards higher variance ones over time. While its allowed them to make some really interesting cards it's also removed a lot of control the player had over winning or losing.

How to fix it is the issue. At least for the short term its here to stay, at least until some of the worst offenders are rotated out. Reprinting (or whatever the digital equivelent is) older cards could work as a stop gap issue, provided they choose the right ones. We really want more RNG like Discover going forward, where you get a predictable range of outcomes when you play the card, not ones like Spellslinger where you've got no idea what the end result is going to be. Leave the totally random RNG in taven brawl, where it belongs.

[Halyon]

Depends what kind of rng it is. I mean card games are to a point rng anyway, so, slightly moot... But when rng is a win condition, it starts to get into the stupid. Like if you specifically build your deck so that rng being in your favor will win you the game with no chance of retaliation, yeah, not particularly interesting. No amount of skill required to use, no skill that counters it.

I played YuGiOh for a time, and it had some rather...abusive decks... Still does I suppose, but I digress.

Either way, weather rng win-condition is the case or not, it's easy to blame for everything.

[McNeil]

Welp, just lost to a Yogg being summoned twice (he got returned the first time) while every single spell benefitted him greatly, and this was near the end of the game when I was obvious winning. Its just a stupid way to screw the game over.

Also that BM... totally not infuriating at all...

[BenBos]

No, I'm not kidding. Hearthstone was not intended for strong customizable gameplay that involves deep and drawn out plays or mechanics all of the time like other card games. HS doens't allow you to cycle through specific cards in your deck, graveyard/discard/removed from play pile, was not meant to allow players to specifically interact with choosing cards in the opponent's hand to affect. In general the game was meant to be affected by some player choice, but the smaller deck & hand size, along with massively simpler mechanics compared to Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc implies that a somewhat based rng playstyle was pretty much intended for HS from the start.

So I ask again, why do people hate it so much in HS?

Bear in mind other competitive card games still have their own elements/degrees of rng based play as well so please let's refrain from scapegoating HS as some unique outlier.

Simple. People play games for their challenge and evolving skills ....

Since HS is a joke of a game, the RNG decides EVERYTHING between equally skilled players and that simply is not fun.

When I play a REAL card game, be that the cooperative Lord of the Ring LCG or the competitive Star Wars LCG I see my skill COUNTS - besides "some" luck of the card draw.

But HS is decided purely on luck over the last 2 years and with each expansion it gets even worse.

As such HS became a complete and utter time waster where the more lucky guy wins over the equally skilled less lucky guy.

Good to play for 5 minutes on the toilet...



With all this ANOTHER huge thing is missing in HS: story and/or Lore. Lotr LCG and SW LCG are dripping with theme and tension, sometimes even a true story teller comes out of a session.

I NEVER can feel this in HS. My Milennium Falcon deck is a great story teller. I don't see this at all in HS.

HS is cut down to the most dry and bare bones luck element with hardly a thematic sauce put over it.

Typical for Blizzard these days. WoW was indeed a very atypical Blizzard game.

HS in game play skill and fun is down to 2 out of 10.

If you don't agree with the complete lack of theme: play the Lotr LCG adventures and then try one of these so called Hearthstone "Adventures".

A joke I say. HS lacks serious game designers that can bring a decent theme to a game.

They have no Eric Lang or Garfield in their HQ's, just ... video game developpers and ... very mediocre ones I have to say.

[BenBos]

I don´t think the "hate" you talk about is about there being rng in the game. We all know this isn´t chess where all the peaces are there in the same place and to the same thing every time and the player input is almost the only thing influencing the outcome. The issue isnt wether there is randomness or not, but rather a matter of how much.

The game cant be a rulette either, where only random chance defines the outcome. This would be the opposite end of the Chess metaphor, where everything is just chaos and anything could happen.

Cards like Yogg-Saron feel that way, where you just roll the dice and see where it lands. I´ve seen that card do all kinds of crazy things: wipe the board clear, finish off the one who casted it, leave the opponent with an upper hand and turn around the game. You can argue wether or not thats "good" but the undeniable fact is that its completely random and judging from the recent changes, its too random.

The game, as far as I can tell, tries to strike a balance and walks a very fine line in regards of randomness.

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I play most games because they are... fun?
HS is deffenetly not a joke CCG. Its just different. You can seat there are say MtG is way more complex and whatever but HS has its own complexities and its way cheaper and more fun (imo of course).
Skill deffenetly counts. Believe me, Ive seen people miss lethal (including myself) because they werent looking at their cards right. Understanding the meta and figuring out great plays is the thing that defines great players, not the "I spend hundreds of dollar buying cards so Im unbeatable" that is common in other games.
Lastly, it takes a very special kind of person to call Blizzard mediocre if you ask me.

HS is a joke compared to other card games I know because you forget 2 things:

1. Between equally skilled players only RNG will make a difference in HS. Even a HUGE one.

2. You better start playing the following Card LCG 's like Lord of the Ring LCG, Star Wars LCG or Netrunner from Fantasy Flight Games ... and then come back and see how these games differ from HS.

For one: in competitive play we had a World Champion in SW LCG for 2 consecutive years in OPEN tournaments. That's simply impossible in HS due to extreme RNG.

But the biggest difference is that these card games above were designed by BOARD/Card Game designers like Eric Lang or Garfield. The games Blizzard produces are video games. HS is really not a fully fledged developped board/card game in the traditional sense of the word.

HS is as hollow as most video games and in this respect the only relevant thing - besides the highly polished and animated graphics - is that the system thrives for 90% on pure luck with equally talented players.

Hint: start playing the games I mentioned above and see where they shine in their DESIGNS that FAR surpass simple RNG mechanics.

The fact you think because "it is Blizzard, so it can't be mediocre" is simple fanboy talk.

So play other card games and see the HUGE quality difference in DESIGN other than RNG mechanics.

[Pantalaimon]

HS is a joke compared to other card games I know because you forget 2 things:

1. Between equally skilled players only RNG will make a difference in HS. Even a HUGE one.

2. You better start playing the following Card LCG 's like Lord of the Ring LCG, Star Wars LCG or Netrunner from Fantasy Flight Games ... and then come back and see how these games differ from HS.

For one: in competitive play we had a World Champion in SW LCG for 2 consecutive years in OPEN tournaments. That's simply impossible in HS due to extreme RNG.

But the biggest difference is that these card games above were designed by BOARD/Card Game designers like Eric Lang or Garfield. The games Blizzard produces are video games. HS is really not a fully fledged developped board/card game in the traditional sense of the word.

HS is as hollow as most video games and in this respect the only relevant thing - besides the highly polished and animated graphics - is that the system thrives for 90% on pure luck with equally talented players.

Hint: start playing the games I mentioned above and see where they shine in their DESIGNS that FAR surpass simple RNG mechanics.

The fact you think because "it is Blizzard, so it can't be mediocre" is simple fanboy talk.

So play other card games and see the HUGE quality difference in DESIGN other than RNG mechanics.

HS and the random elements are not perfect, but you are missing what I said in the original post. HS as a game was NEVER intended to be as complex as the vast majority of physical CCG/TCGs and that is even with completely ignoring the random effects. The deck sizes are a very small 30 card limit and that is it. Hand size is 4 in the opening. Criticizers of HS forget how much a massive impact that plays on what you can really do with the game and card effects in general. We most likely aren't going to have deep and complex mechanics because even most control games would be over by the time those effects would start to shine if they were implemented in HS. The game also lacks interaction with cards that aren't already on the board or in your own hand. The game has barely started really pushing with interacting with cards in the deck with minions like Curator. This also limits design complexity, although I don't necesarily think having limits in what we can interact with as being a bad thing per say (Look at how broken cards like Delinquent Duo, Yata-Garasu, Return from a Different Dimension, and Metamorphsis affected the balance of player choice/interaction in Yu-Gi-Oh. Too much choice can be fun in other games, but it practically garuntees balance nightmares & the inevitable need for ban lists).

As someone already mentioned I'd say that all in all some random effects strike a balance of appropriate player choice for a very simple card game and what would otherwise be utter chaos if everything was random.

[Jester Joe]

Simple. People play games for their challenge and evolving skills ....

Since HS is a joke of a game, the RNG decides EVERYTHING between equally skilled players and that simply is not fun.

When I play a REAL card game, be that the cooperative Lord of the Ring LCG or the competitive Star Wars LCG I see my skill COUNTS - besides "some" luck of the card draw.

For games you praise so much, I've literally never heard of them.

And it's not like I don't pay attention to card games in general.

[Twoddle]

For games you praise so much, I've literally never heard of them.

And it's not like I don't pay attention to card games in general.

The more skill a game requires the harder it is for it to reach a critical mass in popularity. Few people these days want to use their brain everyone wants to play games on auto-pilot and easiest settings sitting on the bog.

[Jester Joe]

The more skill a game requires the harder it is for it to reach a critical mass in popularity. Few people these days want to use their brain everyone wants to play games on auto-pilot and easiest settings sitting on the bog.

And yet MtG and Yu-Gi-Oh are still really popular, despite having such complex mechanics/interactions.

[Deleted]

Games where you draw cards or roll dice are always random, people should have known that when they started playing a card drawing game.

I think that's not the main thing that drives people away from the game though. It's the lack of creativity in the community that does that, i've left HS more than a year ago because of that also. 99% of the games on ladder is against people who copypasta'd the same boring shitdeck from a selection that's strong at that moment. Hardly anyone creates their own decks. So the game becomes stale very fast if you play against the same decks all the time.

If you lose against those decks with RNG involved it might become even more frustrating for some people.

[Deleted]

RNG is for a Card game not so funny, if you try to play on a high skilled lvl. I said it once a time that we need a side deck, with the option, that you can choose out of this side deck. This improves the skill lvl alot, coz than you have to think much more for combos and so on.