I see this word being used often. I believe it is ‘defined’ as the limit or “cap” in which you cannot exceed because there is nothing more to exceed.
But the thing that confuses me is the term being thrown around and it’s association with weak references. e.g. Deck Tier 1 requires the highest skill cap at high legend such statement, etc
As such, please help me understand,
What is skill cap
How can the term be properly use/wrongly use
What are good/bad examples of decks that are consider requiring high skill cap
How to differentiate between high skill cap vs lower skill cap deck
Any misinterpretation I have portrayed, or any other things to add
Skill cap refers to the extent to which piloting skill effects the winrate results of a particular deck archetype. The “cap” part of the term refers to the theory that, if a deck archetype has a lowish skill cap, both a genius and a player of average skill would be able to play the archetype optimally, and you’d have to be particularly bad to play it suboptimally — or in other words, it “caps out” at the average player’s level. However, I don’t believe skill has hard caps like this in reality — I think it’s more like diminishing returns, an asymptotic relationship if you’re familiar with the term.
In previous threads, I have tried to objectively measure skill cap of various archetypes by breaking down all of a particular archetype’s matchups and seeing how matchup winrates change going from low ranks (assumption: lower average skill) to high ranks (assumption: higher average skill). That thread was controversial, as the results showed combo (in particular, Garrote Rogue, and to a lesser extent Quest Mage) at a significantly higher skill cap than some control archetypes (e.g. Big Priest). Although most people had a good chuckle at how low Pirate Warrior scored.
I tend to think of a deck’s skill cap to depend on how linear the gameplan is. The more linear, the less skill is needed.
Let’s take 2 decks as examples:
Quest(pirate)warrior is considered a low skillcap deck. This is because of how linear the gameplan is. There is little room for flexibility. Basically play pirates and then get juggernaut online if your opponent isn’t dead yet. Most of the pirates determine your curve for you.
Now look at Garrote Rogue. This deck has way more flexibility. You can play it several different ways depending on the matchup. Sometimes you play for tempo and win without the combo. Sometimes you play for a full on combo. Sometimes you have to shuffle bleeds and hope you get there. There are other lines and I’m oversimplyfying of course. The curve of this deck is a lot harder to determine. It isn’t always clear how and when you are supposed to allocate your resources.
Control decks are usually considered high skillcap as well. This is because you need to make sure that you use your resources, removal in this case, in a way that doesn’t leave you high and dry if more threats come down. That doesn’t mean that all aggro decks are “Brain dead” there are a lot of decisions that go into some. Vs control you need to make sure you don’t overextend and apply constant pressure. In an aggro vs aggro mirror things can get tricky when deciding how and when to trade.
In every matchup skill comes in when you are trying to determine if you are the aggressor or the one on the backfoot.(search ‘who’s the beatdown’ for an interesting article on this)
When I think of skillcap, the main thing I think of is how diverse a deck is in its gameplan. The more flexible a deck can be, the more skill it takes to pilot.
It probably means something different to everyone.
For me, it’s:
Skill Cap:
The theoretical “best” you can ever achieve in any given meta. Technically, no one ever reaches skill cap because it’s theoretically impossible to be perfect and make the perfect play every single time. Skill is constantly changing because every time a new card is introduced, it takes more knowledge on how that card performs. It’s also important to remember that skill requires knowledge of the meta and how each deck can find a win vs any other given deck.Knowledge is a major factor in getting you closer to the “Skill Cap”.
How can the term be properly use/wrongly use:
I think as long as people understand that skill goes up but never reaches perfection then everyone would be using it right.
What are good/bad examples of decks that are consider requiring high skill cap:
Theoretically, the more turns you have to play, or the more actions for a deck, the higher the skill cap. Reasoning: More actions = more chances for a mistake. Assume a deck that only needs to perform 10 actions to win. 10 actions means 10 chances for mistakes. They have a low chance of making mistakes and better chance that all 10 of their actions are “perfect” plays. Now assume a deck that normally requires 50 actions. That’s 50 actions that would need to all be perfect in order to be at the theoretical “skill cap”. It’s a lot easier to mess up once in 50 than it is once in 10. So, the more actions your deck requires, the more chances for a mistake, the less chance you have of reaching “Skill Cap”.
How to differentiate between high skill cap vs lower skill cap deck:
Someone who plays a deck closest to perfection for that deck. Let’s define a “mistake” as doing something that is not 100% optimal.
Let’s say I play Face Hunter and that it has 20 actions on average. I play the deck and only make 1 mistake. That’s a high skill cap.
Now let’s say I play Control Priest and that it has 80 actions on average. I play the deck, but I make 10 mistakes in the game.
Even though the Control Priest deck might have a higher “Skill Cap”, as a player I am much more skilled with Face Hunter because I am closer to the “Skill Cap” for that deck.
If I play both decks but I only make 1 mistake total in each game, I could say the Control Priest deck required “more skill” because I had to make 79 perfect plays as opposed to 19.
Well, this is something difficult, because it can be subjetive, i mean, for some people, some decks are difficult to play, but for others, that same deck is piece of cake to play, At the end, it all depends on the experience of the player, and his personal preferences.
What are good/bad examples of decks that are consider requiring high skill cap
Again, subjetive, read above
How to differentiate between high skill cap vs lower skill cap deck
If for you, a deck is difficult to play and master, it has a high skill cap, on the contrary, if the deck seems easy for you, it has a low skill cap
Any misinterpretation I have portrayed, or any other things to add
I believe your post has exactly one problem in general.
It breaks when we start talking about cards were the result not depends on it’s player decisions.
When gambling games in reality go from all ranges of skill to a point you can even proof that we already had decks with both high variance and high skill cap.
With that said it’s an actually good post and an excelent introduction to the theme that i would probably could not explain better.
Skill cap cannot exist alongside RNG. just not possible… and in this game there will always be some element of rng no matter how minute. People just use the word because it makes them sound smart in their own heads.
Garrote Rogue is a high skill cap deck that requires you to know how to play the deck to do well with it.
The higher you climb the ranks the bigger the increase in win % .
On the other side of the coin you have Quest Pirate Warrior a deck that the whole game plan is to vomit Pirates until you play the reward.
This is a deck that drops in win rate % the higher you climb.
Back in the day i realy enjoyed watching a Patron Warrior mirror because the better player always came out on top.
Another example of a high skill cap deck.
I remember really enjoying playing vs this deck when it was popular. There were some complicated turns when you would have the opportunity to clear a board of patrons and didn’t just die outright lol
If I made a deck of 30 vanilla weapons, well…I can only win by attacking face and I want to hit as hard as possible each turn. Even the worst Hearthstone player alive could play this deck at it’s fullest potential. That’s about as low a skill cap as I can imagine outside of 30 Sinister Strikes.
The more complicated your road to victory is, the higher the skill cap. Any deck that requires knowledge of your opponents deck adds to that as well. The more vulnerable your deck is to your opponents plays, the higher the skill cap. For example, a combo deck capable of performing an OTK for exactly 200 damage on turn 8 would likely have a lower skill cap than a combo deck that OTK’s for 28 or even 30 damage since armor is a thing.
It’s possible to have a very complicated game plan that’s fairly linear. Well, I don’t know if linear is the right word. Perhaps monotone is better. Garrote Rogue was a very difficult deck to play optimally, but it was not like you didn’t know how you were going to win. It was the steps to get there, and in which order.
Skill ceiling refers to the differnence to the median winrate a good player can achieve with a deck (or at a certain task)
Skill floor is the opposite, it´s basically the worst someone can do at a task compared to the median.
If the skill floor is high that means the baselevel of everyone playing the deck will be high, a good example of this was quest-pirate-warrior, where even if you played/built very wrong it still had been close to the median performance of the deck.
So If we have a theoretical deck with a low skill floor and it´s Tier 3, than it will be a Tier 3 deck for almost any player playing it with little variance in experience.
On the other hand if the Skill ceiling is high that means the more skilled you are, the more difference in matchup% you can get compared to the median for the deck. That means a deck with a high skill ceiling can be very good for players that are very good with it, but really perform lousy for a great many others.
So here if we have a theoretical T3 deck again it might go so far as being a Tier 4deck for the majority, but a Tier 1 deck for a very few masters of the deck in it´s performance.
and they kinda cancel each other out, it´s very unlikely to find a deck with a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling at the same time.
I disagree with this statement because the longer the game goes the more affordance mistakes can have. It’s usually more relevant to notice how many choices there are and how obvious the right choices usually are, if the choices are not obvious, but say an engine could calculate different win ratios based on your decision but we are limited by out ability to calculate so many moves ahead. So any move that won’t be capitalized on within 3-4 turns into the future in a pro game is totally fine and even then there are not so many scenarios where there are ways to do so and there are usually only so many ways to maneuvre and so many key cards to dodge/bait etc. I don’t believe hearthstone is a very complicated game overall because otherwise I’d not have such a relatively easy time getting highish ranks when compared to other games like league of legends where high rank players go through rigorous hours of training and practice set plays like how something so simple as taking a corner in soccer can be so simple yet so complicated, there is really nothing like that in hearthstone that requires enough interactivity that it can be trained and trained until you have such polish.
