Hearthstone

[sunrise089]

Horray for the "request new quest" option returning!

[Kuro]

Hooray! Maybe now I can get 60 gold quests more than once in my entire playing time.

[WilliamLP]

I don't even know how to compare Hearthstone and CIV. Is there even a single level that they can be compared on?

I don't see it. There are plenty of aspects similar to poker. Anyone can look at a big poker hand played by professionals and imagine they could make the same moves in that instance, but it's the aggregate of many slightly superior choices over a long time that wins in the end.

The only comparison I can make with Civ is perhaps certain situations in warfare where you have to evaluate your options, figure out what the opponent would do for each option, weight some probabilities for combat results, and finally pick the best option. But this would be a really weak comparison. (Bowling and basketball both involve sending a ball at a target accurately so they're very similar, right?)

[sunrise089]

If forced to try and make a civ parallel, I'd say RNG luck in very high leverage situations. Starting warrior vs warrior in capital isn't too different from needing a 1/8 Ragnaros proc onto the enemy hero to eek out a victory.

[yuris125]

M:TG, the most successful TCG by far, has more randomness. Its randomness is mostly in the form of needing to draw a reasonable balance of lands and spells, and winning the coin flip to go first. IIRC, the very best M:TG players have something like a 60% game win rate in the tournaments they attend, which translates to a 65% match win rate in the typical best of 3 format.

Yes, 65% match rate is considered to be the very top class. That's why it is said that it's impossible to win a Magic tournament without luck - you need to win 6 out of 7 matches to get to the top8 play-off - that's substantially higher than the win rate of the very best players

Hearthstone, oddly, has less randomness despite being much less complex and aimed at a broader audience. I imagine they think they can pull it off, in part, because they have great matchmaking. I'm sure though that the randomness they do have in the game is intentional and will not be removed.

The main problem here is that Hearthstone has much more randomness in spell effects. In Magic's Standard format (cards from the last 2 blocks are legal, current card pool = 1114 cards), there are only 9 that have the word "random" (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search...ced&format=|[%22Standard%22]&text=+[random]). In Hearthstone, I believe there are 300ish cards, 29 of them have the word "random". This randomness can have high impact, too - Mad Bomber can kill 2 opponent's creatures, or can deal 3 damage to yourself. Ragnaros can deal 8 damange to the player, or kill a 1/1. Etc.

I actually think that more consistent and predictable mana system in Hearthstone can be a problem here. They can't have Magic's random element of mana problems, so they have to get randomness into the game through other means. Which can be more annoying - when Ragnaros turns into a sniper and hits the exact targets he needs to hit turn after turn, or Nat Pagle draws a card 7 out of 9 turns, or even when Mad Bomber misses all 3 of his shots, I feel this is more frustrating than when a Magic player sits at the table stuck on 2 lands and can't do anything about opponent's onslaught

Magic players do get very frustrated about adding random effects to game play, however. A couple of years ago, there was a Miracle mechanic, which allowed to cast a card with this mechanic for a much lower cost when it was the first card you have drawn this turn. They said they wanted to make topdecks more exciting. Instead, they caused an outcry from players, who kept saying the games were going to be decided by topdecks rather than by skills much more often. Don't know how correct this claim is, but a topdecked Bonfire of the Damned winning the deciding game in an elimination match at a high profile tournament is a fact. I feel this is the kind of randomness Hearthstone has - and the kind of randomness Magic players hate

[v8mark]

A little late to this party, but:

Playing a card game and complaining about randomness is possibly the height of futility. If you don't like random elements, card games are probably not for you.

Trump winning 70-75% in arena is also not a fair reflection of 'pros vs randoms', as there is matchmaking in Arena. This is why all the pros' win rates dropped from 75-80% to 70-75% when arenas went from 9 wins max to 12 wins max.

[Gustaran]

@yuris125: Great post.

Playing a card game and complaining about randomness is possibly the height of futility. If you don't like random elements, card games are probably not for you.

That is not true. Nobody denies there have to be random elements in a card game, but the amount of randomness can very well be a valid topic for discussion. Otherwise we might as well have cards like "summon a 1/1 or 10/10 minion" and tell everyone who complains they have to live with the randomness because it's a card game.

In addition, all the community sites and guides put a large emphasis on the strategic aspect of Hearthstone. However, the more randomness a games incorporates the less important the strategic aspect becomes.

[v8mark]

Yes that's true, and my post was oversimplified, for which apologies. I guess my point of view is that the element of randomness in Hearthstone is far below what I would expect from a typical card game (and I also think SevenSpirits' point from earlier - that Hearthstone has less variance than MtG because you don't need to draw spells and land in useful proportions - is especially valid, and is one reason why MtG and Hearthstone are primarily differentiated by complexity rather than strategic depth). I think comparisons with civ or chess are futile, as are comparisons with esports, which have a large mechanical barrier to entry if you're looking to play at a high level.

[Gustaran]

I think discussing Hearthstone as an esport is interesting, because Blizzard will release Hearthstone on iOS as well. And if you look at the amount of revenue some popular apps generate (Clash of Clans generates 1 million $ per day (!), Hearthstone might become the new Blizzard cash cow.

And looking at other free2play games, pushing a game as esport with increased prize funds for rournaments/leagues seems to be one of the major ways to create additional publicity. So I would not be surprised if we are going to see some tournaments with large prize funds once the beta is over.

[yuris125]

...MtG and Hearthstone are primarily differentiated by complexity rather than strategic depth

This is just not true. The fact the you cannot do anything on opponent's turn reduces strategic depth hugely. This is why rush decks which always attack face cause so much unhappiness on Hearthstone forums. In Magic, if you play a haste creature, you need to get it through blockers, and opponent still can have a removal spell for it before it hits. In Hearthstone, a charge creature is guaranteed damage. Because of this, playing an aggressive red deck in Magic is a challenge, and you have to build your strategy right to be able to win. Playing a charge deck in Heathstone is a lottery - you either have enough damage, or you don't

I don't play control decks in Magic, so can't say anything about that. The general idea seems to be the same - survive the early game, draw a million cards, resolve a game-winning threat. If there's a blue Magic player amongst us, would be interesting to hear their comparison of control in Magic vs control in Hearthstone

But for me, even the number of lands in a deck creates an additional strategic layer in Magic which is missing from Hearthstone. Current mainstream Magic decks run between 18 and 26 lands. That means the number of spells can vary from 34 to 42. That is a huge difference, and you can vary the numbers depending on how expensive the cards you want to play are, how important it is to reach a certain amount of mana, and so on. In Hearthstone, you're stuck with 30 spells, whether you like it or not