Edit: Wrong thread.
Fine, Brann then. A pox on Blizzard for hating fun though
Well, apparently Blizzard doesn’t care about Mages in the Arena and they’re going to remain a horrible Arena class this expansion.
Blizzard has decideded to give them a trash common minion Faceless Summoner (6 mana 5/5 with the battlecry: Summon a random 3 cost minion) to dilute their cardpool.
The poor Mage might actually get stuck with a free Warsong Commander! :eek: And what’s the best case? A free Spider Tank or Scarlet Crusader? Unplayable trash I say!
#ArenaMagesMatter /s
This message brought to you by the Committee to End Complaints about Paladins and Their Keepers of Uldaman.
And then there’s this insane mage card that was also just revealed.
They really shoulda just named this xpac Whispers of RNGesus. He is clearly the most powerful of the Old Gods.
I want the person who created Servant of Yogg-Saron to lose their job. Cards should be worth approximately the same amount as they cost to play them. As a class card with a variable effect, Servant of Yogg-Saron should be a card that gets you ~6 mana of effect for 5 mana. Instead gets you anything from -2 mana (5/4+opponent draws+casts a 5 mana spell) to 10 mana (5/4+draw+cast a 5 mana spell).
This is parasitic gameplay. Instead of being a card where both players have fun, somebody’s going to end up salty when they get Flame Lanced.
On a more positive note, the Challengestone ruleset is interesting, so I’m glad they finally used it. No giants, no silences, no BGH, no Flamewaker…
Yeah… This is really weak design. Just some of the most obvious examples:
[ul]
[li]Blessing of Kings on itself[/li][li]Fireball your own face[/li][li]Consecrate[/li][li]Flame Lance your opponent’s Dr. Boom[/li][li]Soulfire targeting literally anything but particularly itself[/li][li][/ul][/li]
The problem is how absurdly swingy it is. Trump did the math, and it turns out that well over 50% of the time, it’s okay or good for you (and if your opponent has a board, the odds increase dramatically), but the issue isn’t “is it good” - the sad part is that it probably is good enough to see some play if Trump’s figures hold any merit - but that it may in fact be the single swingiest random effect in the history of Hearthstone. This card could single-handedly and entirely at random win or lose you the game.
Meanwhile, not sure why people think the Faceless Summoner is bad. It’s a 5/5 (worth a little under 5 mana) that summons a random 3-drop (let’s be gracious and say worth a little under 3 mana) for 6. It’s slightly above-curve, and Mage doesn’t really have any good 6-drops.
Yeah, but when you look at Trump’s detailed breakdown a lot of his ‘okay’ results are basically the battlecry whiffing. Since 5/4s for 4 aren’t played in constructed without some big upside (I’ve seen Tomb Pillagers and the odd Savage Combatant, any others?) you only really feel good about paying 5 mana for this card when you get a ‘very good’ or maybe ‘good’ result . 5/4s may be getting slightly better in standard with Shredder rotating out but the 4 -> 5 HP breakpoint is still a big one.
But I pretty much agree with you. The card is too swingy, especially for a 5 mana. Yogg-Saron is obviously even nuttier, but is almost okay since it’s a) a one-of, b) 10 mana, and c) likely to result in ‘wipe both boards, draw me some cards, and I may have a new token or two on my side’ which seems almost alright as a Hail-Mary card. But turn 5 is way too early for a ‘I’m screwed, let’s just hope I win on this coin-flip’ card.
From an Arena perspective it’s not just slightly above curve, it’s at least 1 mana undercosted. Call a 5/5 worth at least 4.5 mana, maybe 4.75 (Tiger at 5/5 with steath for 5 is a premium drop, Clockwork Knight at 5/5 with a battlecry that usually doesn’t hit anything for 5 is still at least an average pick) a random 3 drop is pretty close to being worth 3 (Your worst cases are 2/2 with missed battlecrys, so worth slightly under 2 mana and Acolyte of Pain/Mana Tide/Alarm-o-Bot. You can get the odd negative card text like Dancing Swords or Deathlord but you are at least compensated with the bigger body and it’s balanced by potentially getting an overstatted drop without the negative battlecry: Arcane Golem, Injured Blademaster, King Mukla, and Felguard) I haven’t run through all the 3 drops to do the math, but 2.5 - 2.75 seems a conservative value. That makes the Faceless Summoner ‘worth’ about 7 to 7.5 mana for 6. Split over two almost always unpingable bodies (hi Magma Rager!).
Compare that to Silver Hand Knight (4/4 and 2/2 for 5 mana) ‘worth’ about 5.5 mana (3.75 mana for the 4/4 + 1.75 mana for the 2/2) with no variance is considered a premium 5 drop. Faceless Summoner is even more overstatted/undercosted and the main body at 5 HP is much more annoying to remove than the 4 HP on SHK.
So the Mage, an already premium Arena class, is getting an OP Class Common minion (you will see a lot of them with the Class and Newest-Expansion offering bonuses) in a mana slot that doesn’t compete with other premium cards, and just before Flamestrike’s turn. Think of how dominating Keeper of Uldaman has been in Arena during LoE. Now imagine it if Keeper didn’t have to compete with all of the Paladin’s other premium 4 drops. If this had been given to Priest, a class that needs a lot of help in the Arena, or a higher rarity in Mage (heck, make it Epic) I don’t think you’d be hearing anywhere near the same level of complaining.
NM.
Yeah, I can see that. Makes a lot of sense.
It’s funny. In their episodes on randomness, they explicitly bring up Spellslinger as a negative example - a card way less swingy than this.
Yeah, no kidding. In Arena, this guy is insane. Easily as good as Ethereal Conjurer in terms of value, probably even better because of the stats are. The 3-slot is a really good slot to pull a random minion from, all things considered. While there are worse cards, you’re never gonna get a complete dud like Doomsayer or Lorewalker Cho. I reckon he might even see constructed play - though probably not over corrupted Mukla in most tempo mage builds.
Ah yes, I love the Extra Credit videos. I don’t think they have any real connection to Blizzard though. They just like using Hearthstone as an example since it’s so wildly played and/or easy to explain the relative bits to non-players
Yeah, I just went through this analysis of Forbidden Shaping summons by mana cost. And for a fairly costed random summons (at least in terms of not-getting-screwed in the worst case) you want either a 1, 3 or 8 mana minion. All the other mana costs include minions that get most of their value from battlecries or have negative text that can mess you up.
Can’t really avoid randomness when the deck draw is random. And I think Trump and friends miss the point of high variance and that is to make the game have closer parity between players of differing ability.
That’s a good thing (or at least, a potential design goal) for the game designer, but for a player who wants to win, variance and closer parity between players of differing ability is a bad thing.
I’m not even sure if it’s a good thing from a design goal perspective. This is one of the reasons why I’ve basically stopped playing, but I suppose you would have to compare the market for a high variance game as compared to a low variance game to decide whether such a goal is worth it.
When I talk about variance, I make the point of distinguishing between horizontal variance and vertical variance. Animal Companion is an example of horizontal variance - it’s a 3 mana class card with a random effect, and in exchange for those restrictions, it gives you a 1 mana discount on one of three ~4-drops (A Wolfrider with +1/+1 and the Beast tag, a Grizzly with +1/+1 or a Warleader with +0/+2 and the Beast tag). You know you’re getting 4 mana of value for 3, so you have to try to put yourself in a situation in which you can use your new 4 mana minion no matter which one it is. I like horizontal variance, and it increases the difference between a player who just follows a “build order” and one who can plan around multiple outcomes.
Vertical variance is things like Imp-losion. 4 damage and 4 Imps is strictly better than 2 damage and 2 imps, so there is no interesting consideration of which is better - you pretty much always want the 4 damage Imp-losion, the 6 damage Crackle, the 8-10 drop out of Mindgames… It still has a bit of the advantage of horizontal variance in that it still rewards the player for having a Plan B in case it screws up, but it also increases the chance that the game will be decided not by who is most capable of using their RNG but the RNG itself. It’s possible that all you need to do to win a game is play two spells without dying before turn 9, and then Coin into Yogg-Saron for a triple Pyroblast. You clearly do not deserve to win just for not losing in turns 1-through-9, but you might. And if you’re going to pretend that this is a competitive game worthy of having tournaments, letting people lucksack their way to victory is terrible.
Hearthstone starts off from a better position than M:tG because it removes the most extreme forms of mana screw/mana flood by letting you always increase your mana base and always draw a nonland card each turn. I wish they’d taken advantage of that instead of doubling down on randomness elsewhere.
Those guys are hella good. 
I gotta say I question putting Bloodmage Thalnos in the “below average” category; same with Dire Wolf Alpha and a few others.
Right, but within reason. A huge random swing can be incredibly fun for one player, but is unlikely to be fun for the other. If I play coin->unstable portal->Edwin VanCleefe (who at this point is a turn 1 6/6), my opponent is probably not going to think, “What a fun game with tons of counterplay”, he’s going to think “Wow, that was super bullshit and I lost because he won the lottery”. Obviously card games necessarily have randomness, but particularly in a game where they talk about “12.k Bash” (as in “this player won $12,500 at a tournament because he played the right card”), it’s generally a good idea to keep the randomness within certain limits, and not have cards that can single-handedly and completely at random win you or lose you the game. Winning from sheer luck tends to be fun for one player at best. I’ve played a lot of games against Handlock, Control Warrior, or even Secret Paladin where I lost and thought “Huh, I got outplayed, but that was a hella good match.” Didn’t really get that from matches where I lose to a spellslinger or unstable portal drop.
Eh, in the context of Forbidden Shaping I can see how Bloodmage Thalnos could be a bit disappointing. As currently used Bloodmage is a cheap Spellpower/Cycle/Combo initiator; but if it’s the last thing you play on a turn then it’s just a 2 mana cycle that your opponent can likely kill for free. I’m not thrilled, but I wouldn’t regard it as getting screwed over too badly by RNG. Ditto for Direwolf, which is awesome with tokens and smart positioning; but as the last card you play on a turn somewhat underwhelming.
I think that if you’re summoning a random minion you want, and are somewhat turn-planning around, a vanillaish statted body with any text a minor bonus/penalty. And I think that if Forbidden Shaping is used in competitive decks that’s what Priests are going to want from it in the early/mid game; a okay statted body they have the flexibility to drop when they don’t otherwise have a good play (and lategame drop it for 8 mana for the awesome legendaries).
And even when I win with a crazy Unstable Portal I don’t really feel like I earned that win. I’m happy that I’m one game closer to completing my quest/ranking up/better arena key but if I wanted to purely pit my luck against someone else’s I join a Rock/Paper/Scissors tournament.
A little bit of RNG is nice for keeping things different from game to game, giving the player falling behind hope and a way out so they don’t just give up, and even for those amazing stories (or Trolden vidoes) when luck saved/killed you in hilarious ways. Too much RNG just turns games into overly-elaborate coin flips, and how much fun is that?
I play a ton of Hearthstone and I play a bunch of World of Warcraft. In each of those games Blizzard has taken the philosophy that letting a player with no uncertainty know that they are bad is not a good idea. I believe this is why Hearthstone’s stat tracking is so primitive. They don’t want you to easily know you have a low or losing record. And even if losing by luck feels bad, being consistently trounced because of less skill quite often feels worse.
Additionally, Blizzard faces the conundrum that no matter how much variance they remove if there is still variance the upper levels of that variance will be complained about by those who do not like it. So they went all in. How else do you explain the Shredders, Unstable Portal, Imp-plosion, and the up coming Yogg-Saron?
I’m surprised that Blizzard has thief cards in the game to be honest. Note they do not have mana or hand destruction and I’m not sure if they’d get rid of milling if it were slightly more effective and not just a relatively rare gimmick.
I get what you are saying but I think that the cards are meant to balance out over multiple games. Again, with drawing a shuffled deck to begin with you are already subject to a very high rate of variance just in card draw. What feels better? Being outdrawn with respect to playing on curve, assuming arena style decks where you try to play on curve a lot, or being on the wrong end of an implosion.
Speaking of arena though, the variance in the draft is more brutal than any card imo.
Now I’m not saying you guys are wrong. Just that irritation at variance is subjective and that one tends to be annoyed by the highest variance that does exist if one is annoyed by it at all. I’ve read game forums enough to know that no matter what the company does with regards to the design there will always be someone who is quite annoyed.
Right but assuming they got rid of that form of randomness people would still be irate that they didn’t draw as well. Playing and reading about WoW PvP and hearing complaints about 0.5% of a stat difference here and there was an eye-opener on how sensitive people are to losing. Keep in mind there are many reasons why people lose. Blizz is calculating, imo, that people would rather lose and bitch about variance than know for a fact that they are consistently outplayed by a majority of people.
Variance is one way to close the gap without having obvious odds-fixing or win scripting.
So I started playing Hearthstone again yesterday.
Man this game is addictive. Even though I hate it.
Maybe I’ll just play it on the side… It’s aggravating if you’re playing it as an actual competitive game, but as a crazy “yeah I’m playing aggro priest and beating your rank 18 ass, what of it”, it works for me.
I made a classic rookie mistake yesterday, and it was completely hilarious. I was playing a face hunter and dropped Leeeroy Jenkins for lethal (my side of the board was clear) while the opponent had a Juggler (of the Knife variety) on board. My in tent was to Leeeroy and UTH (I love that combo!). Both knives hit my Leeeroy and all I could do was sit there, stunned and emote an oops and a well played.
Luckily, I finished the opponent off the next turn, but it was one of those “Oh shit, what did I just do?” moments.