I can not seriously be the only one tired of discover stone?

Multiplayer Discussion
41

So you’re telling me that players don’t gravitate towards decks that win more? Because it seems to me pretty obvious that having a rank system along with a cost to change from one archetype to another has a somewhat obvious effect on deck popularity, especially in higher ranks.

And I get that it’s hard to assign a number directly to irrational motivations. But if Deck X is more popular than Deck Y despite the fact that Deck Y wins more AND Deck Y costs less Dust to build, I think it’s safe to say that there is some factor related to popularity but unrelated to optimal play that is larger for Deck X than it is for Deck Y. While we might not have the units for qualification, we know that this factor for X > same factor for Y.

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42

Discover has been out of control for a while now, and it only continues to get worse as the devs continue to add cards with the effect. It’s not that the mechanic is intrinsically broken. The issue comes from how it permeates every single nook and cranny of the current format. While some RNG is healthy for the game, too much of it can make matches feel pointless, especially if you’re allowed to CHOOSE which randomly generated card you get. In my opinion, the only way to fix this issue would be to increase the cost of the current meta Discover cards so players have to pay a premium for the effect, and then eventually rotate them out with new expansions.

43

Who cares? Have you played recently?

Warrior, dont care what you discover. Hit face and buff chargers.

Warlock, doesnt care. Plays slime cheats thaddius, hits you in the face.

Druid, doesnt care. Either draws their deck and kills you with fatigue or gets an 11-12 armor/damage hero power aaaaand…hit yiu in the face.

Demon hunter hits yiu in the face, draws cards, hits you in the face, scams mana clear your board hit you in the face hit you in the face hit you in the face.

Rogue see demon hunter but with astalors and ghosts.

Hunter ooops doesnt exist.

Shaman Taking a break waiting its turn to play.

Where do you find the time to discover and how much does it matter vs half the meta decks? If at all?

44

I complain about the direction of the game all the time.
That should not indicate I never have fun.
I think all of the effects have gone too far, for too long.

45

You can have a theory that there’s a factor, but you can’t name it without measuring it… otherwise you’re basing your entire conclusions on assumptions about motivations.

You called it fun, and without measuring player opinions, you’ve made a conclusion based on assumptions beyond the collected information.

There is no dispute here - you are wrong. You have a theory, but you don’t have any data on player opinions.

46

You are at this point just disagreeing out of spite.

He reframed the argument from “fun” to “irrational”.

We didn’t even have to get there. Using your logic if we have an older Disney World ride with a consistently longer line and shorter ride duration than the average older ride; we couldn’t say it’s popularity is due to it being more fun.

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47

The reason Neon won’t agree to let us pin down what fun is, is because then he’s no longer able to redefine it at whim to attack whatever mechanic he decides shouldn’t be permitted to exist tomorrow. DARVO.

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48

I’m correct, though. I am factually and unequivocally correct in my assertion that motivation for playing or not playing a deck is not able to be inferred from play/win rate without making assumptions.

This fact is not in dispute except for people that don’t understand inferences.

No, he moved the goalposts after he lost.

My logic is that we have to ask people why they did something before we can make causal inferences.

Looking at their behaviors tells us what they have done, not why they did it.

No, that’s not what I have said. I said we don’t know why people play or don’t play decks and there are lots and lots of reasons. You want to neatly categorize them into a binary of rational/irrational, and that’s not what the data we have even remotely involves.

It only shows you behaviors. Nothing on HS replay is related to motive. We can be certain there is a motive, but you can’t make assertions about motive without data about motive.

And you don’t have any of that data. None.

49

Your conceit is incredible. I haven’t lost anything. Your incorrectness is clear to all but yourself.

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50

This sentence is undeniable proof of your utter ignorance of how data analysis works.

It’s rivaled only by your lack of comprehension and knowledge in the current topics.

As you just gloss over the topic and attack me, lol. Seriously.

We started out with fun, then mid discussion you moved on to some other definition when you realized that fun couldn’t be directly derived from your data.

Factually, nothing about player motivations can be derived from the data you are using.

Do you even understand what an assumption is? In this case, you are making an assertion of causality and that can’t be done from the data. It’s not possible to state people play X deck because of Y from looking at the data on HS replay or VS.

If you’re disputing this as wrong, then you clearly have no idea, none, about data analysis. If you’ve ever taken any higher level courses in these topics, the first thing you learn is to understand the limits of your data and your design.

Why do you think blizzard surveys our opinions instead of just looking at what we play in the game? This is super basic and shouldn’t even be disputed.

You’re just making stuff up and telling everyone you’re smarter because you made it up. It doesn’t work.

51

That’s not correct.

People are very often unreliable on answering what they think is fun.

People are conditioned to provide answers to fit agendas, rather than the truth. How many closeted phobic people are there? You think they will tell you they preferred those types of relations if you asked?

This is why it’s better to look at what it is they actually did for fun.

Playing Hearthstone is done for fun.

52

Where? I’ve never taken a survey. Anyone else here taken a survey?

And you think that surveys are a better indicator of customer behavior than actually measuring customer behavior? :joy: We can see what decks are popular. We can see what decks have high winrates. Therefore we can see what decks are popular despite not having high winrates.

It’s not even so much that they are inclined to lie about it. It’s more that they literally do not know. Neon is acting like the deeper parts of our subconscious are so transparent that we can just look inside ourselves and see directly what will make us happy. The entire field of psychology would cease to exist overnight if this were the case. The average gamer has only the slightest inkling what gaming experience will grant them a previously unfelt satisfaction until and unless they live that new experience directly. They don’t know how to make it. They don’t have the vocabulary to describe it, at least not clearly. It’s undiscovered territory to them.

It’s a lot like the patient/doctor relationship. As a patient, you can point to where it hurts okay enough. But when the patient starts getting involved if determining their own diagnosis or their own treatment, that’s where any ethical doctor draws the line and insists on relying on their own measurements and expertise to make their own determination, instead of just rubber stamping whatever the patient thinks.

Although idk maybe it’s no longer considered acceptable to challenge a patient coming into a psychiatrist practice knowing exactly what is wrong with them and exactly what treatment is called for, regardless of the patient’s level of psychiatric knowledge and/or general life wisdom. Maybe this is some kind of weird, archaic opinion that’s no longer on the right side of history, and the future is one where you select your own diagnoses and your own prescriptions to customize your social media bio to your whim, and if the experts dare challenge the notion that you know more than they do then they can say bye bye to their license to practice. Power in the hands of the consumer, may expertise be damned, and may Big Pharma reap all the profits.

Maybe I’m being alarmist, but what I see in the future is a world where we are increasingly protected from any voice that would do us the courtesy of challenging our choices with reason and wisdom. And in that pessimistic sense, perhaps Neon is the Hearthstone player of the future.

53

Yep, and Limie reminds me of Selwynn, with the same posting habits/habits/likes/dislikes, with a similar departure and arrival times. Suspicious to say the least.

I was fairly sure (80%) within Neons first 10 posts he was Selwynn/LimeBeast. He only increases that with every post, as of now I’m 97% sure.

54

Please realize people have a better ability to identify psychological issues without professional training.

The information is more readily accessible.

The reality is that in the past only people with very high differentiating symptoms from the general population would even go for assessments and treatments.

Nowadays at the infant level of care, well trained staff will be able to determine unusual development at much lesser level of severity. At that point it’s up to parents to follow up, but it wouldn’t have even been brought up to parents just 30 years ago. Hence why we have an apparent explosion in ADHD, ASD, and other neurological disorders.

These were just the “weird but functional” people of the past.

55

I’m far less confident. But I nevertheless share your suspicions.

56

You aren’t telling me they are popular, you are making assertions about why they are popular. You can’t tell that from the data you have.

Yes. Twice, actually.

Got a survey from blizzard, contained questions about a subscription service for Hearthstone : r/hearthstone (reddit.com)

You aren’t talking about their behaviors, you are saying their reasons for their behavior are irrational without any data to support that conclusion because you don’t actually know why they are behaving in a certain way.

This is some arrogant bullpucky right here, my dude.

So now you’re asserting the people who don’t play the decks you call optimal are mentally ill? And you can determine all this from popularity and winrates? Dude, you are clueless.

But here you are telling us we are irrational for not playing the decks you call optimal and fun. Can you see what’s wrong with your world.

Social desirablility is a thing, for sure, but most good quality investigators are looking to control for this in how they design questions and formats. It can’t be eliminated, but it’s at least actual data from actual people that specifically shows what they believe about something.

I think you’re overstating the level of social desirability in gaming preferences, though. It’s not an apples to apples comparison.

In general, this is correct. But there are reasons to play certain things over other things besides fun.

So let’s look at this again.

You have a ride that is one of the most popular in the park and one that is the least popular.

Park A takes out the least popular ride and replaces it with one similar to the most popular one. The following year their annual pass base is down 10%.

Park B seeks feedback from customers and finds something interesting. The least popular ride is a favorite of park goers, who are typically families, but it’s located in a far corner of the park with a long walk and the minimum height is higher than any other ride in the park, meaning families can’t all ride if they aren’t all tall enough. Parents aren’t going back there if they can’t all use it. So park B puts in a new path to get there faster and drops a new kiddie ride near it. Their annual pass base goes up and people are excited about the shorter lines across other parts of the park.

This is a direct example of you don’t know motivations from popularity.

Maybe in expansion X deck Y contains two of the five most common legendaries to drop from packs, making it cheaper for people due simply to chance and that’s why they play it - it’s the best they can make F2P.

Any inference you make about “fun” from population stats isn’t valide without accepting assumptions about people.

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57

This is a terrible argument. Telling people to get over something because the developers consistently make terrible design decisions is only going to get people to leave the game. If it isn’t going anywhere what incentive do people have to continue to play? Also, it may be fun for the player searching but it creates a negative experience for the opposing player. It creates a polarized gameplay system and its not just isolated to discover. I don’t really care if my opponent is having a great time if I am having a bad time myself.

It is also irrelevant if it feels good in the moment to use discover. What matters is the effect it has on the game as a whole.

The same can be said for you responding to comments.

It isn’t flawed as a mechanic, but rather how its implemented. Originally it was quite limited and not as impactful. The first discover cards were “Discover a beast” or “Discover a 1 cost card”. The card with the most variance in the initial League of Explorers was Raven Idol to discover a spell or minion. The very next set, Whispers, added in a whopping 2 total cards that discovered. The same for Karazan, and only 6 in Gadgetzan. An entire years rotation worth of cards and there were a total of 10 discover cards.

Currently in standard there are over 60 cards that use the discover keyword. Some are restricted to specific cards like the new ETC, but there are far more of it in current times and its causing problems. It can be a fun mechanic but it needs to be kept in check.

You can use as much data as you want, you still can’t certify something that is purely subjective.

How about accessibility? If certain decks or cards are not easily obtainable it doesn’t matter how much fun or powerful it is, people will be forced away from it. Old versions of control warrior were powerful but expensive decks to get. So with your example of thief rogue, I wonder how many players would gravitate toward it because of how accessible it was, especially when a bunch of their foundational cards are free in the core set.

It’s good to note there is also a difference between discover and generation. Discover is multiple options, so with player choice involved they will of course aim to take the best choice available. Purely random generation can still do that, but its far harder to get exact responses to the situation. It will end up likely feeling far worse when they do get the exact response necessary, but it will also occur far less often than discover.

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58

Huh. And here I thought there was something wrong with me for always being on the opposite end of a discussion with Neon. Turns out he’s just this way with everyone.

I’m still trying to figure out how he decided I’m not allowed to have an opinion on Control Priest because I played it for a week. But look, nobody is allowed to have an opinion when talking with him.

How boring.

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59

I didn’t say that. You have your opinion and you’ve shared it.

What I said was your defense of certain things was rooted in your bias favoring those things more than any objective view of the wider game.

And yet again you’ve expressed your opinion.

The debate in this thread isn’t about an opinion.

I have no idea what you are talking about or who you are. I assure you I am only me.

60

You don’t really need to point such things out. Just sounds like you disregard things because someone who plays the game isn’t allowed to have an opinion on the things they personally experience.

Go tell Sig he’s biased on Warrior. Go tell Shyla he’s biased on Priest. For me, I play a variety of decks and classes. I may talk about my experiences of playing such classes recently, but it’s not a bias.

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