Hello all,
This is going to be my first post in this community and I’m very happy to initiate a debate about these two topics, casual vs ranked.
The game itself had a huge improvement in the quality of cards, mechanics, synergies and overall gameplay. I play since Naxramas and remember feeling excited with the adventures especially when GVG arrived.
One thing I realised was that most of the players would respect this casual mode playing fun decks, experiment decks, trol decks and believe me this are the best games ever. In ranked, of course, you would battle proper constructive decks with very slight marge for error.
I’m a casual player, I do sometimes play and sometimes I stop for long periods of time. I recently come back and there are loads of expansions I didn’t catch. The mechanic of these new cards is completely out of control with this new heroes galakrons? ( correct me if I spell wrong) and very agro ish mid-range decks very hard to beat if you didn’t catch all the cards through the time.
I decided to play with my old decks in ranked mode ( they got smashed even more against this new hero Ilidan) kind remembers me a super face hunter from the past hehe, no chance at all, this new quest death rattle priest is also crazy, you have a general idea and you clearly know more than me about top decks in different classes.
So, I moved back to casual, and in casual I kind like to play with new fun decks or making crazy experiments and stuff. But after 10 games I was shocked because the players from the past would use also this sort of old decks/fun decks to play but nowadays everybody plays the same ranked decks in the casual mode and they feel the necessity of BM you all the time with their super-strong decks.
I had deep thinking and I decided to add some players in order to understand their motivation’s, 90% of the cases they said to stop crying, call me retard and deleted me before I say hi! But I was able to speak with the 10% that had the time to explain me, I don’t know the range of ages here but they always felt attacked when I said, why do you use a strong deck that is used on the ladder in a casual game? Isn’t that too easy? Do you have fun smashing fun decks?
I heard some answers, the most popular was, I need to do quests, my question now is, can’t you do the quests with those super strong decks on ladder too? At this time 5% deleted me and the other 5% say basically they were afraid of losing rank.
Is rank more important than having fun? After all the point of the game is having fun, the ranking shouldn’t be a problem, it’s good to have goals but deny your personal fun because of rank isn’t a bit absurd? Why everybody just thinks exclusively about wining? Why play all the top decks and play what everybody plays all the time?
Where is the creativity to follow their own instincts and don’t rely on others to build these super-strong decks? Where is the fun? What’s the point of having a casual mode then?
Sorry if my text was too big, this is kind of an Outburst, I really want to hear your opinion about it
Thank you very much for spending your time reading this post.
Have a great day
Sifu99/Serial99
About as absurd as worrying about losing in casual mode, I’d say.
Hi Madmax,
Thanks for the reply!
The issue for me is slightly different, I don’t mind to lose on causal, but, I would like to face a not overpowered deck or fun deck, because a it’s a friendly match, in a friendly mode.
It’s like, I’m going to a football match to play casual games with friends, and there’s this sem pro / professional team that challenges us for a game, you know you won’t have fun, and you’re going to be smashed, Am I making myself clear?
There is 2 game mode for a reason, players should respect that, so it becomes pointless, what do you think about it?
I don’t think playing top tier decks in casual is “disrespecting” the difference between Casual and Ranked. The only difference between the two modes are the rewards at the end of the season for one mode. Players who choose to play top tier decks in Casual aren’t disrespecting the mode, they’re playing what they consider fun (or most efficient, or fast, or whathaveyou). You seem to assume Casual is meant for meme and/or suboptimal decks, but it clearly isn’t. If that was the goal of Casual, there would be more deck restrictions built into the mode.
As for the fun element: when choosing which deck to play (and on which mode), I never take into account what would be fun for my opponent. Neither would I expect my opponent to do the same. Thus, “these decks are unfun to play against” is not a particularly convincing argument for me. People will play what they find fun, in the mode they find most fun. Not much you can do about it.
“Fun” is a very subjective term, experimental yes that does still happen, some use ladder deck as a frame but with some cards replacements or adjustments beacuse they don’t own the full list card by card.
Again having fun its very subjective if you lost and because of that and you’re not having fun then play solitare or practice mode I’m sure affter some time you can memorize the AI’s decks and always beat it.
Ok, I understand that there are no differences between them, only the rewards, but if there is no reward to play for why keep pushing the murloc shaman, the demon hunter’s and all this decks? Just to prove they got strong decks and they invest more time then other players who don’t? If they are going to target a reward in causal why keep playing these decks?
I agree with you, I always was thought a different perspective from players I met ages ago and the game was like that back in the days, you could see a big gap of quality decks in different modes. I know lots of players that left the game because of my argument, but in the past instead of facing demon hunter, was face hunter or whatever deck they pick
I get what you’re saying, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel I have to craft super-strong decks cards to be able to create decks that everybody plays and that follows the meta to win, I think playing what everybody plays all the time it’s very weird and lazy, but again it’s my opinion
oh boy. i understand your issue and i think i can help.
casual mode is just unranked. this means that the wins and losses aren’t officially counted towards your ranking for the season. that’s it. it isn’t a mode to play decks that aren’t optimally created; unfortunately team 5 hasn’t made a mode like that yet.
now, people choose to play janky decks in casual mode because of its name and i am 100% agreed that team 5 either needs to change the name of the mode to Unranked and/or create an actual Casual gamemode that is meant for janky decks and NOT standard decks.
but, as it is today, casual mode is where a lot of people go to test tiny tweaks to standard lists (mostly tech additions and the like) and many go there to farm gold without damaging their standard rank. they just concede from games they are going to lose and queue up for easy wins.
you don’t have to like it but currently that is the reality. my suggestion is to take your old fun decks to Wild - i am hearing all over the internet that Wild is the place to be right now. a lot of fun, engaging deck types and nothing stands out right now that’s just utterly broken and unfun to play against.
if you want to practice sometime with some older decks (i love the classics too) you can DM me and we can exchange battle.net usernames.
I totally agree with you, the concept of fun is subjective to everybody and you got to respect that.
Playing against AI is boring, well proper AI.
I’m a chess coach and player and I can tell you it’s almost humanly impossible to be a machine like Stockfish ( chess engine) because of the capacity of analyzing multiple lines and variants in a split second.
Hearthstone AI it’s a bit weaker and rely also on RNG, when Chess there is no RNG, you know or you don’t. In hearthstone this AI is bit rigged because sometimes they do optimal plays, tempo plays, and some of them just play the most horrible compilation of moves, I like to play with humans because there is this component of taking risks, making mistakes and of course play against a real opponent is always more challenging and fun.
I can agree with you on that but as a coach you know that can be trained by playing multiple boards at the same time (totally off topic really) in hearthstone i’d have noticed that I telegraph my next move quite a lot most of the times.
The real point that I want to make and don’t want to sound or come off as a prick, is that casual mode has not an unwritten rule of “in this mode you don’t play meta decks”
Hi there! serial99#2804, feel free you or another player who want to add me!
I agree with you, and I’m aware of casual mode = Unranked and so on. I’m a wild player also! I believe if you have a game that provides you cards, you should play with all the cards,
I also understand that’s the reality, but at my eyes, it’s not the right concept and changes need to be made, or not.
I wouldn’t mind playing normal decks or experiment decks or even against decks like Mill Rouge, the cheap mage , secreet mage, quest warrior you name it, but when people basically play on an Unranked mode ( which they don’t have anything to lose) those mega decks that every top player plays it becomes not only a big disadvantage but also as a new player you would lose your motivation.
I believe many new players ( and I know some) just got fed up with the process, we need to face reality, Hs is a p2p game and as a new player or a casual player you don’t want to invest money to make a super strong deck and be able to compete against the 10k-15k dust decks (not my case) but since I lost couple friends, I tried to bring new blood and in a question of weeks, they told me it’s not worth it and delete the game a game.
Players with similar mindset will leave the game they will speak their experiences through others and the game will start to have an imbalance, where only the old players keep playing, with that in mind the game will stop growing… maybe, I’m wrong maybe not it’s my opinion.
yea i hate that. but ya know i was thinking about the barrier to entry thing last night and the fact is that if i wanted to get back into paper magic the gathering it would cost me a LOT of money. a lot more than it would to catch me up in hearthstone’s current standard season.
the fact is that any game containing scaling properties for players over time is going to naturally lead to an advantage to those who stick around in the game versus those who don’t and it always hurts newer players regardless of genre.
i’m not smart enough to think of a solution that both rewards players for longevity but doesn’t create a system in which newer players don’t need to do a lot to catch up.
actually i just remembered team 5 is smarter than me, they give new and returning players a competitive deck now and a bunch of packs.
Just realise I had grammatic error there, impossible to beat a machine, not be a machine, only in Matrix that’ allowed 
True, chess and hearthstone have some difference but also some similarities 
For some reason, I already saw Forsen and Zalae playing chess, there is some correlation between them.
I agree with you when you say " In this mode, you don’t play meta decks" totally agree, but, if you could argue, and make some sort of appealing to the consciousness of the community I would, I know that probably would trigger hard on me, but I bet with you I’m not alone in this subject
Because some people having fun that way?. … if u dont like something that doesnt mean somebody else hates it too.
Bear in mind a lot of people are using casual mode to test their meta decks on the first few plays before they bring them into ranked. You’re gonna see some meta stuff there, but it’s probably because they don’t really know how to play the deck yet.
Hello Heal Bot
Of course! I’m not questioning that, but it’s my opinion, and I’m entitled one!
Many will agree with you, others will agree with me and that’s good people have different thoughts, otherwise, the world would be a boring place to live on!
I tried casual when I started this game and then finding out about cardbacks and that they are like card sleeves.
I like to collect, but I don’t care for the cardbacks that I missed.
Games in ranked takes longer, so if when farming gold, I try casual.
Hello Bullet.
That’s a clever point! But I had to play with them more then one time to see if you’re statment is accurate or not!
To a certain degree I do. And I wish my opponents would do the same. I’m one of those players that always play Yogg even with lethal because it might screw me over and give my opponent another chance. But I guess most people are rather what I would call “tryhards”. Oh, well…
There are players who would consider that unfun though. Not everybody likes being handed a free win just because your opponent decided to throw the game for funsies. And of course, there are people who would argue that Yogg (either minion or Box) are inherently unfun cards to play against, regardless of the outcome of the game. If enough people say so, would you stop playing Yogg decks?