Hi everyone, I’m here to share a technique that I have seen countless players used to secure a gratifying win.
I present to you - rope burn.
Disclaimer: Before reading further, you acknowledge that this is a neutral discussion of a Blizzard feature. I am not endorsing nor discouraging it. This is merely to keep new players updated on an advanced psychological warfare method, deployed by many top notch players.
How it works: take your time for every turn. End your turn only when the rope is burning close to its end.
What happens next will shock you. That’s right, many of your opponents will simply concede and move on.
If you persist on this method, you might actually soon find yourself winning many games against players of your same standard.
Here’s why it works:
Psychologically, you are keeping your opponents distracted, anxious about their turn, they can’t turn away for long or they might miss their turn, and mostly, they get frustrated. This creates a gap for you to try and secure a win when they make mistakes in this distracted state.
Quite literally, you are keeping the vision of winning far away from your opponent’s mind. And if you can just counter their tactics twice or more throughout the game, along with this frustration of being countered and their vision of winning being so far away, it collectively just weighs on them and they might just simply give up.
Many working players are in a hurry and can only spare like 10-15 minutes per session. If you make it clear that you’re gonna waste their time, they simply concede to not waste their time.
I have conceded multiple times because of players who rope burn. And so I decided to do an analysis, and I am amazed by the influence of these unseen factors.
Should you do it? Probably not. But if someone uses it against you, should you hate them? Definitely not. It’s just a game feature that is allowed by Blizzard.
Just because it’s something that’s allowed by blizzard doesn’t mean I hate people who do this any less, the time is for thought and making decisions, not purposefully tilting your opponent. I mean it’s certainly your right to do it but I still think people who do this are a-holes and I would never want to play you.
also I don’t know what you mean by “top notch players,” almost nobody does this at high legend on ladder. I’ve only had this done to me consistently in dumpster wild ranks. Tournaments are completely different, but if you do this on ladder people will remember you and start roping you back and bming you.
Well, Blizzard apparently doesn’t think so, am I right?
And to prove my point, I just tested it out, just to provide you with an idea of how rampant rope burning has gotten. I used a fairly strong deck and won 5 out 6 games in a row, by countering the opponent’s moves 3-4 times in a row (each time letting them soak up in pain for 30 seconds). Within 5 turns they dropped off like nothing.
This play method sucks, but I am guessing that blizzard won’t do anything about it.
I rarely see this but I typically only play ranked wild which seems to avoid the whales and the jerks for the most part. But as soon as someone starts doing this I do it right back to them.
This does not happen in high end games. In fact the only reason this works where you’re at is because the people cannot lose stars. If there’s no loss, why would you continue with a game that’s annoyingly slow. However, past rank 20, you can lose ranks and therefore no one really plays games unless they have the time to finish it.
Form personal experience, if I start roping, people generally rope back and if someone else ever tries to rope me, I will rope them too. Sure… you’re wasting my time but you’re purposely being a dick so I’m going to waste your time too.
Also… legend is different from tournaments. There is in fact a psychological factor to roping but in general, higher ranked play is not played with the same level of competetiveness as tournaments. Tournaments have real rewards at the end, higher ranked play does not. Although people do like to use their turn to the best of their ability, they do not neccesairly need 90 seconds for every turn so they don’t use 90 seconds for every turn
And is that why Blizzard continues to allow (or encourage?) such rope burn play for non-ranked matches? I just don’t think this is a good idea, even though I use it often just to prove my point.
They allow it because some turns legit take 90 seconds. How are you supposed to shut it down? Sometimes, you have to use your turn carefully or you could legit throw the game though I’ve never heard Blizzard specifically saying that they support using rope burn as a strat
Absolutely! And I just got a 3 straight wins in a row from rope burning until my opponents conceded. I’m telling you, it’s powerful stuff! Blizzard is definitely supporting it in action, even if they didn’t say so explicitly.
You are right about two things. It is allowed for me to rope burn you and repeatedly press all the emotes I want. Second, I don’t want to play against you either. I would be happy to never play against another player again and still be able to finish my quests. Putting in a 10 minute limit would unnecessarily hinder those decks that actually need the time instead of people like me who rope-burn just because I can. I have said more than once and I will keep saying it time and again: If you want to never play me again, give me an option to finish any of the non-friend quests against the AI in one of the adventure options.
Let’s be clear though. The problem isn’t that rope-burning is so bad (because it isn’t higher at the higher ranks). There are more systemic issues.
There is no real interaction with your opponent. I mean, you might see them again in another game but really that’s it. There is absolutely no community penalty for acting like a jerk either. It’s not like you will stop getting to play with people. Any other game where you play against/with others has the very real possibility that if you act like a jerk long enough, there isn’t going to be anybody going to play the game with you.
Repeatedly the developers have put out cards that have become so demoralizing unbalanced that their attempts to balance have either negated any possibility that the card would be played or shunted the card to Wild as a way to appease the masses that are foaming at the mouth at how unfair the card is.
The matchmaking system is a big trash heap of a mess. In relatively quick order, new players who haven’t spent a dime on the game and are just learning get to face players with multiple legendary cards. Some of these are new just like them but have the bank-roll to afford buying enough packs to have these better cards. Some of them are more experienced players who know that if you concede enough, you get to play against ‘scrubs’ which means you don’t have to really try and can play those decks not favored by the most recent meta-game.
anon33600267 Hi! I do experience this. Now I am on rank Diamond 5, and I had 2 different players doing this, both with odd warriors control deck, so the game lasted almost 20 turns. Every round waited till the last second.
I just roped burned them back, and luckily got busy on my second Monitor. But this will result only, that I will quit playing the game. I am casual anyway.
And as for you, I just want to tell you that in my personal opinion you are a Piece of s…t Human being. I do not respect you to explain why. Obviously logic is more important for you than anything, so you can figure it out.