Hearthstone

[Schfifty Five]

Isn't Hearthstone supposed to be free to play?

I believe so yes.

 

[Zeze]

Like any card game, luck is predictable. Nobody can ever win 100% of the time, but that doesn't mean skill isn't a factor.

Of course. Again, luck is too big of a factor, whether it can be mitigated or not.

If I get the right combo 1-2-3 mana cards at start, I go full-on snowballing. They can't do anything.

It's laughable if you compare Dota's RNG luck factor on same pedestal and Hearthstone.

 

[lupi]

While I haven't watched I have heard that they've gone through matches with almost all legendary decks and have had trouble winning some matches.

 

[Zeze]

While I haven't watched I have heard that they've gone through matches with almost all legendary decks and have had trouble winning some matches.

Yea, I like the 'balance' aspect of it.

The legendary cards are certainly great, but they're not auto-loss. Any deck, you should be wise to have at least 2 of the following: silence, hex, polymorph, and insta-kill.

 

[waggy]

Yea, I like the 'balance' aspect of it.

The legendary cards are certainly great, but they're not auto-loss. Any deck, you should be wise to have at least 2 of the following: silence, hex, polymorph, and insta-kill.

exactly. I love polymorph (or hex). i was playing and some dude brought out his legendary. i morphed it and killed it.

he rage quite..lol.


free to play? guess i will get it hehe. $2.99 for 2 packs (i think that was the cost) ain't bad. lord knows i used to spend more then that damn near daily in M:tg lol still have box's full of those fuckers.

 

[Aikouka]

free to play? guess i will get it hehe. $2.99 for 2 packs (i think that was the cost) ain't bad. lord knows i used to spend more then that damn near daily in M:tg lol still have box's full of those fuckers.

If I remember correctly, it costs you about $1.50 per arena run, and you get a free pack out of it. So, it's more effective to just run arena rather than buying card packs... unless you want lots of packs.

 

[Chiropteran]

It's laughable if you compare Dota's RNG luck factor on same pedestal and Hearthstone.

With a properly built deck I think you can have a shot at winning 70-80% of the games you play, if you play perfectly. Watch trump stream sometime.

In DOTA, it's really just barely more than a 50% win rate that you can push out, if you are really great. The "RNG" of the other 4 players on your team has far more effect on your win/loss changes than any RNG of the cards in hearthstone.

 

[Zeze]

With a properly built deck I think you can have a shot at winning 70-80% of the games you play, if you play perfectly. Watch trump stream sometime.

In DOTA, it's really just barely more than a 50% win rate that you can push out, if you are really great. The "RNG" of the other 4 players on your team has far more effect on your win/loss changes than any RNG of the cards in hearthstone.

What.

You do know that Dota, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2 and all employ similar ELO ladder algorithm?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Having a proper built deck & good skill will get you to climb the ladder until you hit your appropriate skill level. Then it'll be 50%.

This is no different than a properly built team in Dota winning matches until they all collectively hit their skill level, then it'll be 50%.

Of course the only exception is that you're so good (top 0.001%++), that you have no choice but to have 55-70% winrate because you're actually at the apex. This applies to both Hearthstone and Dota 2 (and many competitive games).

(winrate is not skill):
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35618457&postcount=1993

 

[lupi]

so I just found that playing in just play with a default char selected doesn't keep you from playing against constructed decks. after getting a nice 6 wins in a row I came across a pally with a legendary and a couple of rares. I had a pretty good minion lead with him but when you start playing cards that heals you for 8 and draws 3 cards you start to fall behind.

 

[Chiropteran]

What.

You do know that Dota, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2 and all employ similar ELO ladder algorithm?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Having a proper built deck & good skill will get you to climb the ladder until you hit your appropriate skill level. Then it'll be 50%.

This is no different than a properly built team in Dota winning matches until they all collectively hit their skill level, then it'll be 50%.

Of course the only exception is that you're so good (top 0.001%++), that you have no choice but to have 55-70% winrate because you're actually at the apex. This applies to both Hearthstone and Dota 2 (and many competitive games).

(winrate is not skill):
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35618457&postcount=1993

Yes, thanks for repeating a lot of stuff I already know.

However, there is a massive incredible flaw in your reasoning. A large part of how Elo works (it's not an acronym, don't write it in all caps) in Dota & League and such is that to keep your Win/Loss as expected it can put you into a basically un-winnable game, where your entire team is lower Elo than your opponents team, and even if you play perfectly the Elo system will give you your loss, one way or another.

Hearthstone is not really subject to that, because it's a 1 vs 1 game. It can set you up against someone you are expected to lose against based on predicted skill, but that game will still be completely winnable if you play correctly.

As well, currently the only competitive hearthstone format is Arena, which doesn't use Elo in any way shape or form to my knowledge. It matches based on your current win/loss ratio for the current arena run, it doesn't take elo into account at all. A skilled player can win a lot more than 50% of the time in arena. Again, I repeat: watch trump play.

(winrate is not skill)

Agreed, and RNG doesn't remove the need for skill.

 

[Aikouka]

so I just found that playing in just play with a default char selected doesn't keep you from playing against constructed decks.

Isn't Arena the only way you can avoid constructed decks?

 

[lupi]

I thought at least it'd keep you closer to an equivalent deckpower. I ended up from having a 26-18 health advantage to 0-24.

 

[lupi]

card draw was sooo bad had to concede with 20 health left.

 

[lupi]

lol, first match as a druid against a guy with almost all blue bordered cards.

 

[lupi]

but I got redemption next game against a priest. had 3 of my first 4 cards give me either current or empty mana so I managed to lay a 6 cost ogre down after his 2nd turn, one attack with it and my other ones and he quit.

 

[lupi]

Haven't done any arena yet, still leveling all my chars up, but I have crossed 500 gold from quest so far. Had my first battle against someone running a mostly rare shammy deck, a much more potent opponent once all those cheap totems are planted and then you start playing cards that buff them.

Did come across a newb player, dropped a card that swaps attack/health on my stormwind charger making him a 5-2. Was then expecting something played to kill it but nothing was done that round so I then hit his hero with it for five.

Have seen 2 of the legendary goblins so far, both times I won the battle. Second time was last night in which he also played some "dark knight" card that I need to look up later. He held that one longer than he probably should, imagine that he wanted to use its special ability but I drew almost no taunt minions that match.

 

[smackababy]

Did come across a newb player, dropped a card that swaps attack/health on my stormwind charger making him a 5-2. Was then expecting something played to kill it but nothing was done that round so I then hit his hero with it for five.

I can usually tell when I am playing against a new (or bad) player because they do silly things like that.

Or they won't try and kill off minions and go for straight damage or their attack order for my guys with taunt is bad so they end up losing more minions than they should have.

 

[Aikouka]

I finally played my first match against another player, and I am happy to report that it was a sound victory in my favor! I think I ended with somewhere in between 25-30 health. My deck mostly favors low-end cards at this point because I just lack a lot of the nice high-end cards. I think my best high-end card is the Stormwind Champion (7 cost), and that's the only decent 7-cost card that I have. I have the 6-cost spell damage minion, but I'm not sure if they're worth using. I guess they're okay if you can keep them alive cross turns, but since you can do Kobold Geomancer + Flamestrike in one turn (9 cost I believe), why not just do that?

 

[smackababy]

I finally played my first match against another player, and I am happy to report that it was a sound victory in my favor! I think I ended with somewhere in between 25-30 health. My deck mostly favors low-end cards at this point because I just lack a lot of the nice high-end cards. I think my best high-end card is the Stormwind Champion (7 cost), and that's the only decent 7-cost card that I have. I have the 6-cost spell damage minion, but I'm not sure if they're worth using. I guess they're okay if you can keep them alive cross turns, but since you can do Kobold Geomancer + Flamestrike in one turn (9 cost I believe), why not just do that?

Because if you put him out and have board control and a taunt or two, you can easily put out the Kobold and flame strike the next turn anyway. And then you've for some minions to attack with!

 

[Aikouka]

Because if you put him out and have board control and a taunt or two, you can easily put out the Kobold and flame strike the next turn anyway. And then you've for some minions to attack with!

In other words, it's all situation, and I lack high-cost taunt cards. My best high-cost one is the Lord of the Arena. It's okay, but I'd rather have something like a 3/8 than a 6/5. I do have a few Tazdingos!

 

[lupi]

With a few more rare cards and having a warrior/pally quest today, went through and tweaked my pally play deck. Have almost no minions under 3 mana, so if the other player has a sweet low level minion draw they could hurt me, but once I get a couple minions up, I've got so many buffs for them it makes it difficult to do anything other than respond, which usually lets me bring out one or two heavy hitters with an on the field minion advantage and then it's game over. just went 3-0 getting the quest and one more for the gold reward.

 

[lupi]

this is the one the guy held awhile last night before playing on me.


http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/396-the-black-knight

 

[lupi]

Had to play several games as druid for quest, don't really like the class so far.

Although one game I did give a guy a nice WTFBBQ moment. On initial and 2nd round I got +2 mana cards. So on the third when I got a core hound I was abe to deploy it with 3 mana. Was able to use the minor minions I deployed in the first 2 rounds to wipe out the taunt he tried to play at the start of the fourth, then did a +2/+2 on the hound and nailed his warrior even though he had just dropped a couple +armor cards on it, went through both of those and put a couple points of actual damage on him. So even with 20+ points left going into round five he bailed the match.

 

[Madia]

Does anyone know what goes criteria goes into matchmaking? I'm assuming win/loss and the number of cards you own matter but how much? For example, how much would a new player immediately buying $50 worth of cards affect his matchmaking? Does deck construction affect it at all (such as the number of rare/epic/legendary cards)?

 

[Wardawg1001]

Does anyone know what goes criteria goes into matchmaking? I'm assuming win/loss and the number of cards you own matter but how much? For example, how much would a new player immediately buying $50 worth of cards affect his matchmaking? Does deck construction affect it at all (such as the number of rare/epic/legendary cards)?

My understanding, which may be incorrect, is that there are two different matchmaking systems.

The 'Play' mode which uses constructed decks has an MMR system (think Starcraft2/LoL/DotA2). I assume that much like any other MMR based system, your rating starts somewhere in the middle, and your first few matches adjust it heavily, and from then on each match continues to adjust it but by smaller margins. I very much doubt that your MMR is affected by ANYTHING other than wins and losses. I've not read anything on the forums to hint otherwise, and using controllable parameters like number of owned cards or the makeup of the deck would open the system up to numerous abuses.

The 'Arena' mode does not use your MMR at all. Each match you join puts you up against someone else who has the same number of wins as you. So if you have 0 wins, you can potentially be matched up with anyone else who has 0 wins, regardless of their MMR or previous arena records. Again, as far as I know there is no other factors in this equation.