No, it doesn’t.
I think we need to go back to basics here. A psychographic is a classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research.
“I want to win” is not a psychographic at all. It contains everyone. It has no utility in the field of market research.
If a Spike is defined simply as “someone who’d rather win than lose,” then Spike isn’t a psychographic because everyone is a Spike.
A Spike wants to win at all cost. That’s not everyone.
it literally has a trigger warning
it’s fine
yes, it does.
Look at the popularity tab.
“other” for all classes combined across all ranks is lucky to make up 5% of the meta combined.
Thats not what we would expect if it wasnt a spike dominated game.
So let me see if I get this straight
You’re telling me that if you play any archetype popular enough to be picked up by HSReplay as a distinct Archetype, then you’re a Spike?
The article didn’t even need to include the term scrub. They did a fine job explaining what they were talking about. The term was just inserted to be attention grabbing in a negative way to get people to buy into it more readily.
I am saying that when “spike” decks make up more than half of the meta, across ALL ranks, that they are no minority.
You are wrong because piloting an established archetype doesn’t make you a Spike.
Here’s what Rosewater, who basically invented the term “Spike” (he credits Magic R&D, but they don’t publish content to the internet, or at least didn’t then), said when he introduced the term:
“Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory.
Spike cares more about the quantity of wins than the quality. For example, Spike plays ten games and wins nine of them. If Spike feels he should have won the tenth, he walks away unhappy.
R&D makes plenty of cards for Spike. Unlike the Timmy and Johnny cards, Spike cards are relatively easy to make. Spike plays what wins, so if R&D makes a card good enough, Spike will play it. Good examples of Spike cards are Call of the Herd, Shadowmage Infiltrator, and Fact or Fiction.”
I believe this is a combination of core attributes and false stereotypes. He says Spikes are competitive and that they seem to outplay their opponents, and I think those are core to Spike. I agree that the Magic card Fact or Fiction is designed for Spike (in Hearthstone terms, the card would be an aggressively costed spell reading “Destroy the top 4 cards of your deck. Your opponent chooses 2 of them. Choose one: add the cards your opponent chose to your hand, or those they didn’t.”), because it’s very much about a mini mind game with your opponent.
However, he also included a lot about netdecking etc, but this is from, what, two decades ago? when netdecking was less common. He says Call of the Herd was a card for Spike, when it was the Hearthstone equivalent of a 5/5 for 4 with “Battlecry: Add a copy of this to your hand and Silence it” — aggressively costed, sure, but not really skill-testing. Worst of all, he makes Spikes out to be sore losers, which gets a “you’re not nice” from my inner Guff.
Later on, in Timmy Johnny Spike Revisited, Rosewater writes:
“So why does Spike play? Spikes plays to prove something, primarily to prove how good he is. You see, Spike sees the game as a mental challenge by which he can define and demonstrate his abilities. Spike gets his greatest joy from winning because his motivation is using the game to show what he is capable of. Anything less than success is a failure because that is the yardstick he is judging himself against.”
That sore loser nonsense again. But at least it’s toned down a bit, and he is a bit closer overall in my opinion, focusing on using game experiences to demonstrate ability. He details several subcategories of Spike (not quoted) that he sees as essential to the netdeck creation process — again, I think that’s silly, because it’s Johnnies who want to express themselves by creating new decks. But eventually he gets to the following in the same article (by the way, by Limited he basically means Arena):
“Nuts & Bolts Spike focuses his energies in perfecting his own gameplay. He believes that the ultimate key to victory is flawless play. As such, Nuts & Bolts Spike spends his energy looking within. He tries to understand his own internal flaws and works to improve them.
Because of this focus, Nuts & Bolts Spike tends to spend more of his time on Limited formats, as it allows the most opportunities to improve his general skills. (This by the way, is mostly due to the fact that Limited has more variety and a wider level of power variance.) Some Nuts & Bolts Spikes do focus on constructed but it is the minority of this subgroup.
The most important thing to understand about Spikes is this. To them Magic is a means to test themselves. As such, their enjoyment comes from marking their own progress. While that often means winning, there are Spikes who measure their success in other ways. For example, some Spikes measure themselves not against winning or losing but by how perfect their play was.
The last thing I want to stress before I move on is that Spikes are neither limited to organized play nor are necessarily good. There are Spikes who play casually. There are Spikes who are downright horrible. Being a Spike is measured against why you play not where or how well you play."
Now if you ask me, only Spikes who measure success by how perfect their play was are true Spikes. Again, everyone likes to win. A player who doesn’t believe skill exists in Hearthstone, and thus isn’t looking for opportunities to outplay his opponent at all, still wants to win. Wanting to win doesn’t provide any relevant information regarding why a player plays, hence it’s not psychologically relevant.
But can we at least agree that a minority of Hearthstone players are “Nuts and Bolts Spikes?” I’d just call them Spikes, but if you want to get all semantic on me, let’s get official.
Actually I’d already covered in detail why Timmies might pick Pirate Warrior and why Johnnies might pick Pirate Warrior. Heck, there’s even a pretty strong Vorthos reason to pick Pirate Warrior — that Cap’n Garrosh skin is sweet, not gonna lie. I actually think the psychographic least served by Pirate Warrior is (Nuts & Bolts) Spikes who want to show their piloting skill off.
You have literally just described the majority, not minority of hs players.
No, I have no interest in continuing a discussion when you will only do what you always do - change the criteria to suit you.
Most players are spikes, you agreed. I don’t care how you manipulate what you said to fit your argument one iota.
Go have the last word, its all there in black and white above.
Wow. Well, right back at ya.
Yep, thanks for agreeing.
Spikes are the majority not minority.
Cheers.
This is it. Well not this one, but at the end of the next sentence.
Remember, you promised.
I didn’t promise anything.
You agreed that spikes are no minority, then have to jump thru hoops to state they are by creating the "nuts and bolts " spike. This is traditionally known as moving the goal posts.
Hello there, fellow scrubs!
An interesting anecdote about Bee.
I told him I was messing around with Quest DH. I was being another kind of player you haven’t mentioned; the Troll. One Rosewater never considered.
The Troll is angry about something and goes out of their way to make those people they’re angry at miserable. Even if they’re just conceding or losing every game against most opponents just to make miserable those players they are targeting.
My Quest DH was a horrible experience for Quest Warlock players.
I queued up against him, his deck was Shadow Priest; an impossible matchup; so I conceded turn 2.
Bee was upset about my concession.
MTG at some point coined a psychographic called “Dave” I believe which covered the player who wasn’t really playing the actual game, they were playing in such a way to inflict as much misery on the opposing player as possible. It wasn’t a psychographic they really designed for, because they never intended for players to play the game in that manner.
Scrub is just an unnecessary derogatory term. Scrub infers they’re ‘bad’, but they could be good players playing off meta decks for fun.
It’s a bad article with the intention to incite.
Its not derogatory. I wear the scrub badge with honour. Dont speak on my behalf.
You are right about a few things and wrong about a few other things.
I have been the best player in several niche games during my long gaming career so i know the perspective the best players have. I know what perspective it takes.
The thing you are wrong about is that the goal of the best player is to win. This isnt true but to see this you have to be best in something yourself. The mindset from the absolute best in class,in any game or even in real life professions and the scientific world,is very rarely to win. It is something different.
Playing to win and doing everything that is neccesary to win is actually the mindset of a scrub. It is the mindset of the sub top players and everyone below that who tries to reach the sub top. Players at the middle and the bottom of the pack who dont do everything to win are a different type of players. Players who generally enjoy the game and who dont care about winning to much. I would call this class of players “tourists”. As opposed to the scrubs , “patzers” (a term from chess) or tri-hards that qualify the sub top players.
People who are truly the best in a game rarely care about winning. When playing the game winning is not on their mind. Even the goal of getting better is rarely on their mind.
Winning and getting even better,when already beeing the best in a game, is merely a by product of the process. This is a subtle but important difference.
Players who are truly the best in a game only care about the game (or math or whatever profession) itself,they dont care about winning or even getting better. They want to explore everything,they want to understand everything possible. Not because it helps them to win but because they absolutely love the game,they are literally living the game. These players very often experiment and innovate.
And this is also how you can recognize the best in class in any game or profession. The best in class are not the people who do everything to win,they are the people who absolutely love the game (or profession) and who want to learn and understand everything. Not because it helps them to win or even the desire to get better results. But from a desire deep within to understand everything.
So ya. The players you call scrubs are actually tourists who simply enjoy the game. And the players you call top players are actually sub top players which i would call scrubs. Not meant as an insult or anything,but just to give some insight in what is going on in the mind of people who are truly the best in something.
This is also how you recognize people who are truly good in something,who are above the people who simply have good results because they do everything to win. It is about the motivation. With simply wanting to win very badly and doing everything to achieve that you can go a very long way and you can get very far,top 10 or maybe even top 5. But the absolute best very rarely have this mindset.