“At some point, skill has to take over or at least knowledge of the deck has to take over, in order to be successful and not rely on RNG.”
Borrowing the above statement away from the original thread for a little sidetrack discussion.
If the RNG within the deck is able to ‘generate’ enough consistency to push it above 50%WR, a player can rely on RNG to do the hard work replacing the fundamental skills required of HS.
This creates a very ‘fun’ game where there are many surprises. Flipside, it also creates a very ‘frustrating’ game where skills can be made secondary.
Have you have experience of the above? State an example. e.g. a deck.
How well has RNG been kept in place in recent expansions?
What is still lacking? can be improved on? and How?
Bonus Qns:
If the WR is below 50%, but popularity is high (e.g. 30%), are you still welcoming it?
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Do you even play the game still, Reaver ?! I haven’t seen you online in months.
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I just am a little tired of the amount of really powerful cards you can just find more copies of (usually really easily). Like the 3rd or 4th Gaia discovered from tram gnome, amalgam, gorillabot, etc, or ANOTHER board clear after the 2nd or 3rd.
It just feels bad to play around cards you know they have, then get destroyed by cards that they didn’t have and just were given just because.
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it´s really always an odd discussion, as the opposite of 100% consistency in a cardgame would be the most devoid of skill possible, just repeating the same moves every game.
So RNG is a basic necessity in a game without any real hard execution to even allow for skill-expression.
That being said there´s definitely a point where it gets too much and just takes over for the player, and Rune of the Archmage certainly is at this point. That´s not saying the deck itself is though, as you still need to know when to roll the dice and when not to - but if you had 30 of those cards it certainly would be a disastrous fiesta.
ye i just faced a mechmage that had 6 mechasharks and 4 gaia
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State an example. e.g. a deck.
You mean like when thief rogue generates drakefire amulet off of Jackpot and coins it out on turn 3 with swiftscale trickster?
Those are the best games ever! Both parties always leave those game feeling totally satisfied. The rogue is happy because they win, and their opponent is happy because the match ended so quickly they get to queue into the next one that much faster!
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Sure…
What people differ mostly is at what point we should reach and this is a funny discussion to even think about have.
Because considering not every card can meet said criteria we also need cards that get far above the “healthy” so we reach a average in the deck itself.
So by defining what is too much RNG to a single card were also defining what is too little RNG for a deck.
Because any deck that needs that card with to much RNG to reach the average minimal actually has too little RNG in the other cards.
as always in complex systems like a deck of cards it´s very hard to find some fix receipt that just works and be done with it.
I´d say it´s better to analyse which structures enhance/diminish RNG so you get a set of tools with what you can fix stuff that either has too little or too much. And even then it´s complicated, as e.g. more cardraw makes for more consistency and therefor less RNG, but it doesn´t solve a card like Rune of the Archmage in the slightest (other than that if mage had more consistent draw/tutoring noone would play the Rune to begin with).
- but that´s mostly the devs job.
For us i think there´s no proper “solution” to this, other than talking about what irks us about specific decks in detail.
Which again, sth these (or any) forums do not excel at, as usually it just devolves into “but 2 12/12 turn 3” instead looking at the average cases and how the deck performs off the 1 in 400 highroll and if those patterns are engaging and to whom and so on.
Not to mention that “skill” is also a term that often gets used rather plainly underdefined…it takes a certain skill to play sth like Boar-Priest, but once you get the hang of it it´s mostly the same thing on repeat, so after the initial hurdle it´s “solved”, the problem for most people i assume is to get past the initial hurdle and visualize your wincon and the fastest way to it reliably.
It takes a very different kind of skill to play sth like Barrens Priest where you just roll with the punches and spend as little ressources as possible turn after turn to deal with them.
And then it takes another skillset altogether to play sth like UiS Shadowpriest where you just need to know your range exactly and how to set up the kill properly with what you have.
And none of those skills are better or worse than others, their just different - the problem with these discussion however is that usually people think their specific niche superior and everything else invalid.
So if you´re not good rolling with some RNG and you just want to play UiS forever you´ll complain about it no matter what, and vice versa.
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Skill can only take you so far.
I just played like 50 games as Quest Hunter and became super familiar with my deck, what to expect, and so on.
I RARELY, if ever, had draw issues with the way it’s built.
There was a point where I was desperately trying not to fall back down from Diamond 1. Wouldn’t you know it… 3 games in a row I lost because of empty hand and no draw. (Not saying rigged)
I’m saying, I don’t care how skilled you are. If RNG isn’t giving you your draw engine, let’s say, there’s nothing skill is going to do for you.
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yea, albeit that´s variance, not skill.
Which is a conceptual issue for many, a skilled Questhunter will probably win 4-5% more games than the average winrate over 200games, a lesser skilled 4-5% less. Skill in a Cardgame can´t make you hit every shot like e.g. in a shooter, it can just improve your average winrate, which is kinda underwhelming in terms of feedback compared to just landing a clean headshot on an enemy you only saw as 4 pixels around a corner…
If the game is not seriously broken no skill ever will make you win every game, not even close.
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good designed card games will always have an amount of rng.
gwent as an example died when the tutoring/thinning became so much that most decks in the game you could literally play all of your cards every game in the order you wanted to. This created the “experience” of knowing if you are going to win or lose solely due to match up. All moves were predetermined from the get go.
But as all things, there needs to be a moderation.
tbh, atm we are in a meta that has a lot of rng. Big spell mage, druid, and burgle rogue rely on pure rng to win. And they make up a big portion of the meta. Out of the three, i would say that the rogue is the least offender of the three and teh druid the biggest offender.
I sy that because in rogue there are matches you can win without the rng gods favoring you, and because the variation is not as wide as druid. Mage has the least variation but the most power out of the three but still solely relies on that rng to win, and druid has the most variation.
I do not really enjoy either of the three, either playing them or against them, because it really feels like you let chance control the vast portion of your games and there’s little you can do for that.
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I would say that if you play a card as your win condition and don’t know if it wins or doesn’t until some roll resolves, it’s bad for skill.
This is what happens with BSM and Druid atm. Their success depends on what they get from their rolls instead of their skill.
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i think mage isn´t all that different from Rogue in a sense, most big spell mage play with the wildfire/hero package, so if they get a good draw there they don´t need the rune - it´s just more inconsistent/less powerfull than rogues basic aggro gameplan, but both decks have a wincon other than RNG, while Druid has none…
so that´s probably one thing that shoudl be avoided when designing.
2nd difference between the decks are specifically the agency Rogue has over the RNG compared BSM - which has none whatsoever. Rogue has discovery on most spells, and as a secondary they can set up specific caches/tesses for their current gameplan, so while it all involves RNG, you still have a lot of agency over what you do with the RNG you´re delt - which is why you probably like it more than BSM.
So that´s probably the 2nd takeaway - RNG is fine, as long as it also involves some agency other than rolling or not rolling (thus e.g. jackpot is a fairly bad designed card compared to the other parts of thief rogue).
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depends on the metric for skill. sometimes winning after you miss is a skill. 
seems around this time of year this becomes an issue. would it be better if expansions swapped 1 for 1 on release, instead of 3 out 1 in once a year? i figure it would at least solve the shallow card pool every year, but i haven’t considered all the positives and negs.
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RNG is king on Ladder. Especially if you consider control deck RNG hoping your opponent mismatches creatures to control ratio. It would be good to bring back skill but thats not making the money.
With Dragon Druid they get an RNG deck of Dragons.
Does it take skill to get to Prestor? Maybe.
Once you have your RNG deck, does it take skill to play the right dragons? Probably.
If RNG fills your dragon deck with garbage dragons did you lose because of skill?
If you WIN with said garbage dragons produced by RNG, does that mean you have exceptional skill?
I have an actual dragon deck and I hate that card. I work really hard to get my dragons out, and here comes this guy who gets 3 Ysrea or Deathwing.
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If you say so…
It’s actually kinda funny how many people just refuse to play the blizzard variant of the deck.
It weaks your highrolls but as a experienced mage player i can say it also stabilizes the deck when those highrolls not happen so i actually win thanks to it very often.
You know…
Freeze the board for many turns in a row can give you time to setup many different types of comeback.
The big spell mage people run is basically their deliberate decision on depend solely on highrolling every single game to win.
That also explains why it is so well rounded matchup wise.
It’s not that I disagree with the statement itself. I don’t.
But “bad for skill” does NOT equal bad.
RNG of that type is bad for the game. I don’t put this in the same box with discover where a player can choose options. This is slot machine gambling.
If you want to play slots, go ahead, but I don’t think that approach is best in a game like hearthstone.
I would personally never play a deck with a wincon I don’t trust to actually win a game.