I started Hearthstone this weekend on a friend’s recommendation. It’s free-to-play, with extra buys. If you don’t buy with real money, only way to advance is to finish quests for gold, and nearly all quests are in PVP.
But it’s like PVP everywhere. When I win I can look back at the mistakes the opponent made, and imagine that I beat a 10 year old scout into the ground, or sometimes to somebody gaming the system by taking a dive before the first card is played. And when I lose so far, it’s been to somebody with tuned deck with cards I haven’t seen before. I’m probably sounding arrogant, and the thread will probably get derailed with that. But…
The question is still relevant. It is almost impossible to get a straight up casual match in systems that force PVP. It either somebody you feel bad about beating, or someone scumming for easy marks.
Anybody that you play in PVP has voluntarily decided to participate. In most scenarios, I see no moral issues with your pixels beating up his pixels or vice versa.
I don’t know what you mean by morality in the thread title, but I understand your question about finding a casual PvP experience. I don’t think it’s possible to have a casual PvP experience. I can’t think of any games that allow such a thing through matchmaking. Sure, you can manage it with your buddy when you both agree to be cool beforehand, but that isn’t the same thing.
It was something that I wanted to add to the thread about women overtaking young men in demographic size after it had taken the inevitable ‘casual gamer vs hardcore gamer’ turn. I always figured a good test for ‘hardcore’ is whether or not you play person-versus-person modes, since those can’t be casual.
By PvP, I mean a direct person against person competitive multiplayer format. Not like ganking people in an MMO, which isn’t competitive.