Legend Mentality Versus Everyone Else

Community Discussion
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This post isn’t specifically about Hearthstone but carries over into competitive mentality in general and how different players interpret skill and skill expression.

Ryan Heart, multi-Guinness world record holder, revealed in an interview some years ago that the thing that separated him from one of his coaches during the time of Tekken 3 was his ability to do inputs. As far as he was concerned, his friend (the coach) was every bit as knowledgeable as he was, if not more. In fact, he had a lot of help along the way from many people.

So this idiom of “a broken clock is correct twice a day” can be true while at the same time there being a general acknowledgement that a player with more accolades is PROBABLY better than you (some outlier cases withstanding – ergo; context dependent).

But what happens when you cannot appeal to authority because two similarly skilled, high level players differ in their opinions of the game and its landscape?

Basically, what do you all think it takes to be a good Hearthstone player and what are some things you’ve learned from other people that have made you become better over the years. For me I think a pivotal learning experience for Hearthstone and card games in general was when one of my good friends got me to play face hunter years ago. I think learning face hunter and learning handlock were two of my biggest improvements to understanding decision making skills, maintaining aggro, and looking for opportunities for an end-game strategy instead of trying to stabilize the board and trusting your ability to race your opponent.

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Never and I mean absolutely never appeal to authority. The authority has to appeal to arguments.

Did you see Albert Einstein produce his theories without Papers?

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The only thing that makes a good HS player is to swipe the card as much and as fast as you can do it. Play as many decks as you can everyday like a job. After that you will be good.

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An appeal to authority is only a logical fallacy when no solution can be made through other means. It actually ends up boiling down to a gambit based on a history of prior successes when the consensus is making a shot in the dark. In a similar way, the slippery slope fallacy is only a fallacy when the jumps between sequential events is so large that it becomes outlandish (such as legalizing substances will result in the literal death of democracy). Slippery slope fallacies are related to non-sequiturs and false equivalence fallacies.

As far as getting good in competitive environments, there is something that these players do better overall than average players. It could come down to hours played, training resources (having friends to play with or watch who are highly skilled), experience in like-games (Tekken player switching to Smash, MTG player switching to HS), etc. I don’t think there’s a definitive demarcation, it’s more of a list of qualities that composite into success than it is something you can absolutely quantify.

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No, you still have to not appeal to authority; you have to appeal to ARGUMENTS; god is dead for a few centuries now; only a bad scientist will accept anything without arguments.

Be patient and wait for the arguments that may support authorities; yes Albert Einstein is now an authority; but he absolutely never had anything without his Papers.

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This doesn’t work in matters of urgency. If you, for example, have an invading force and multiple generals deciding on how best to defend your borders and no agreement can be made based on any kind of quantitative factors, you cannot just sit by and wait for a solution.

You can make an appeal to authority in gambits, as I’ve said. In this case, an appeal to authority between two chess players who are playing bullet chess, one rated 1400 and the other rated 2800, who are put in situations where they have to make plays that “feel” right, there is an argument for appeal to authority in this instance as well. It comes down to a likelihood of correctness. That’s not fallacious. Scholars also recognize instances where an appeal to authority is not immediately fallacious.

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You may be urgently wrong in urgent situations you use the fallacy. “Generals” have to prove their position of authority to get it which is a form of an argument in this context; “Scholars” should know the position that the appeal to authority tries to support may not be false but the method to support it is; the general theme is that you have to support it by more than saying they are an authority.

In Hearthstone practice your niche case of “having no time to think” has to consider “I need the authority that usually is the right decision”; it’s usually in the form “which card move usually worked?”; but since this is often WRONG you have to always later contest “did it work before because it was the same situation or do I have the delusion the move is an infallible authority in all cases?”

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I have been playing Hearthstone near daily for 10 years. I have never reached legend. I have reached Diamond 1 several times. Most of the time, I hover somewhere in Platinum, or Low Diamond. Why is this? How is this even possible? Don’t I know how to play by now? Surely even a monkey given a meta deck can reach Legend, right?

Exactly. For this reason, I have never had wish nor desire to reach Legend. It has never been because I am a worse player, or don’t know what I’m doing. On the contrary, I’m at least as good as the average Hearthstone player. And likely far better when I actually try or care. Therein lies the answer.

I have never tried or cared in this game. I have never copied a deck (meta deck) from online and grinded out the games needed to hit legend. I have only ever played my own decks (that are by and large still quite successful I might add). I have never cared to finish matches I know I’ve already lost via matchup or mulligan or draw, I will gladly concede and lose and I do not care.

All this to say…despite never reaching legend, I’m at least as good a player as whoever is reading this (with maybe some exceptions, in case you are really really serious about this game and have a better brain than I do, which is admittedly possible, albeit unlikely). And probably far better than average overall, and certainly far better than average with theorcraft and deckbuilding.

So yes. Just because someone does not care to do something, does not mean they are incapable, or bad. When it’s really quite the opposite. 10 years of Hearthstone experience playing nearly every day. Never legend. And likely never will be. And yet I am.

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https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy
It would be accurate to say: making a choice based on the fallacy of appealing to authority doesn’t necessarily make that choice the wrong one. As you said earlier, a broken clock is right twice a day. But fallacies are fallacious, by definition.

The hypothetical urgency situation is commonly used to advance the worst arguments. Somewhere on the Internet right now, someone is asking a question along the lines of “if you only had 60 seconds to live, and you had pages of paper with detailed instructions for an important task you needed to get done before your death, and the only people near you were a white stranger and a black stranger, who would you give the papers to?” The idea is always to take the standard of a clear chain of argument, the kind that proves or disproves things, and reduce that standard down to mere correlation, and an imperfect one at that. But even these correlations, to the extent that they’re legitimate, were originally established without a sense of urgency, using the kind of clear argument that DOES prove or disprove things.

In the heat of urgency, people have to guess. But it is slower, more methodical logic, free of fallacies such as the appeal to authority, by which it is decided whether or not those guesses were or weren’t accurate. You can invent whatever superstitions you like while you’re playing the game, but at the end of the day fallacies such as appeal to authority are not how we keep score.

By the way, regarding the question of the opening post, I think it’s important to distinguish between a very good Hearthstone player and a very great Hearthstone player. A very good person probably doesn’t take video games all that seriously and focuses on having fun and healthy relationships outside of gaming. On the other hand, if you want to know about how very great people are made, may I suggest the movie Whiplash, if you haven’t already seen it. I can imagine your voice when you write of Ryan Heart as I imagine Simmons’ Fletcher as he rambled about Charlie Parker.

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You are lying to yourself. A third of players with deck tracker installed finish in Legend every month. You might be above average in performance, but you are absolutely not far better than average, and a double digit percentage of serious players are significantly better than you are. You are mid. Tone down your Dunning Kruger.

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You almost certainly get tilted; you did it to yourself; it’s a psychological discussion. Here’s what I did; it’s something even the best players around here don’t know; they usually play for 8 hours a day which is frankly a bad way to play the game for my way of life.

Just stop playing when you lose; this is not just some a random advice I just gave; it’s how most smart people make money: they only “play” while they are winning.

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It’s not that she’s tilted. It’s that she’s been told her whole life that everyone she knows is better than average, as if that’s even possible. Trophies for everyone, avoidance of reality.

Please note that for purposes of Current Year decorum that when Anucksunamun says she is SuperCuddles’ female partner I dare not officially question this in terms of pronouns usage.

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Unreasonably selfish (though typical in gaming forums) to attack others as “bad players” without knowing anything about them. They said they went to Diamond 1 multiple times. It seems more psychological rather than skill related if they believe they can never just have 1 more win.

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I didn’t say they were a bad player. I said they were mid. Finishing the month in Diamond is totally normal, might even be better than average.

The problem is her ego.

No, when about a third of halfway serious players are better than you, there’s going to be LOTS of exceptions

No, not far better than average.

I normally don’t go around criticizing forumers for performing in the 60-70th percentile. That’s not my point here either. My point is that this is not elite but she is acting like she’s elite.

Btw I don’t even think being a great Hearthstone player is important, or a priority. Plenty of fantastic people suck at piloting Hearthstone decks.

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You know nothing about random people on a forum, and you personally attack them as “mid”. Someone else has to consider their ego.

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Smarter people than me have expounded on the “Casual vs Competitive” debate, as it’s nothing new relative to the human condition. But, the basic idea as I understand it is that when it comes to video games, prior to “Content Creator” streaming, the Venn Diagram was “Play for Fun” vs “Play to Win.” Like in fighting games, people would often “house rule” things like no cornering, no throws, no S-tiers, etc. Because they view those things as unfun to play against. Debates ensue all the time as a result - you’d have more “fun” if you won, what even IS “fun: definition of,” etc. But I’ve grown bored of those.

What I find far more interesting lately is that with the advent of the “Content Creator” streaming era, we have a third Venn Circle: “Play for Work.”

People now can literally make a living, in whole or in part, by playing games. And usually, this boils down to playing games professionally well. It doesn’t have to, I mean the Skyrim Grandma I don’t think was a “pro.” But typically, people aren’t watching random John Doe die every 5 steps in Elden Ring. Usually, people are instead watching LetMeSoloHer just straight up demolish these bosses while running around in a loin cloth and swatting them with a wooden stick.

I think regarding Hearthstone, more people play to win than they’re typically willing to admit, but few us - if any - are playing it for work. That means we’re basically lying to ourselves, pretending to not care (or not care “as much”) about the win when in reality, we just get salty and maldy when we don’t get the win.

And we don’t get the win, because we’re playing rando garbage and making bad calls and just generally not paying attention. Because “it’s all for fun” but then we get a loss to a Tier-1 meta and we go “THAT’S NOT FAIR” and we spew haterade all over the forums.

It’s true that is isn’t fair, but the person being unfair is US, to ourselves. I need to admit I care more about winning than I think I do. And I’m not alone on that.

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A factor most people aren’t aware of, is that humans in general are partly masochistic. They don’t like it too easy; if you get the cheat codes of a game you might have noticed you quickly get bored more often that playing it normally; if you sit on a couch 24/7 watching shows you will get the itch to stand up and work on something.

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Legendary mentality = sit through hours of clown fiesta RNG and I win cards

Everyone else = why am I playing this crap when I could play something else.

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This is a hidden oxymoron. If you DON’T play for hours then the randomness is the most pronounced.

If they play for hours then the law of big numbers kicks in and they go close to their “true win rate”.

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Not really an accurate description of what you don’t like.

But hey, the point is, why play it if you don’t like it?