Playing Hearthstone requires zero skill now. It’s been this way for a while, but it’s only worsening. The gameplay boils down to drawing your big, intimidating card before your opponent and securing an easy win. There’s no interaction on the board, no hand interaction—just none whatsoever. It’s all about who draws and plays the biggest, baddest card first.
Brann, Sif, Odyn, Nature Shaman, Shopper DH, Wheel Warlock, Helya—these are all examples of uninteractive nonsense cards/decks that ruin the gameplay. Frankly, I’d rather go to fatigue than endure this.
Take, for instance, my experience playing Rainbow Mage against Warrior. There’s virtually no interaction. The only semblance of “interaction” occurs during the Rat turn, which either leads to a concede or prolongs the inevitable. It’s simply a race to play the biggest card first. If you fail to draw it, well, it’s game over. Is this supposed to be gameplay?
Why is everything revolving around one-turn kills? How can the post-Rotation meta be worse than the one before it? This isn’t enjoyable in the slightest and will only worsen with the inclusion of future expansions.
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Almost every match I played I’ve known within three turns whether or not there’s even any point in continuing. Most games feel like a waste of time
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Exactly.
For me, it’s either the mulligan phase or the first 3 turns, as you mentioned, or as I explained in the original post; when the opponent plays their big card before I can.
People may criticize Curvestone, but honestly, it was countless times better than the current state of the game.
0 … skill … involved when the draw decides every game.
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I dont agree this is the worst state the game has been in. I suppose it might be a matter of perspective though. If you’re trying to grind rank 1 having to play DH / warrior or whatever all day is probably a chore but I’m finding there are many varied play styles and options over many different classes right now. For those of us who aren’t going the hyper competitive route I think theres a lot of entertaining things to do in hearthstone compared to some of the more boring options in times past.
There have been times in the games history where trying to play an off meta deck was an exercise in futility but so far thats not been the case for me at this point.
I’m not going to hit rank 1 with something like DJ manastorm mage or deathrattle shaman… but its definitely not a 0% winrate like it would have been in times past.
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Clearly you didn’t play when Genn and Baku were legal in standard. That was the worst the game ever was and it has ZERO competition for the title.
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I’ve said this before but the zero skill illusion is the unfortunate downside of skill-based matchmaking. When you are matched against an opponent of equal skill, luck of the draw is the only thing that sets you apart. It’s not that skill doesn’t exist or matter, it’s that matchmaking makes skill invisible because everyone you face is about as good as you are therefore the player who RNGs better tends to win. Try facing/spectating someone who tops out at the ranked tier below you, you will be astounded at how badly they play (while they may think they are doing everything correctly). Skill matters, you just don’t feel it because you are neither a better nor worse player than the vast majority of your opponents.
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Yeah, i don’t remember when the meta was in a worse state.
The OTK fiesta everywhere just ruins the pleasure of playing the actual game.
Blizzard seems to forget that the pleasure of one player doing an OTK in turn 5 comes at the expense of the other player at the receiving end. This is totally braindead approach for a game, you just lose your playerbase
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Game state has been same since united in stormwind, it hasnt changed since then
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people complain about brann but it doesnt work against death knight, plague’s stop this. dark knight is one of the most busted classes in this game besides that stupid wheel of death bs. at least pal and druids bs isnt unfair
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And worse than that.
Tons of things were nerf to make they really viable.
It is really fantastic How people still up to nowadays believe that kneejerk nerfs aren’t worse than anything blizzard already released.
Or try to ignore It Just because they were nerfs they wanted.
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Hasn’t been this bad since stormwind. The best metas, from worst to best have the best decks like: 1) turn 6-OTKs → 2) hyper control → 3)hyper aggro → 4)tempo/midrange.
I’d much rather have rogue or paladin as the best classes, although there’s no doubt that paladin needed nerfs to the windfury and lifesteal. DH is a good deck to be on top if it were only a tempo deck but, currently it’s much more of a scam deck.
Nerf the scam in DH and warlock, warrior’s armor, a bit of Hunter’s early damage and delay shaman and mage OTKs and we might have a good meta.
How did you manage to put these two in a same sentence? xD
One OTK-s you on average turn 5.5, the other on average turn 10.5
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I don’t particularly enjoy a meta filled with an overabundance of OTK style decks either. Especially when those decks are strong. TBH, I think it’s just poor game design for a ‘Fun gaming experience’, at least when the goal is for both players to have fun.
From a single player perspective it makes a lot of sense though. They probably want most games to be quicker and this is easier when you don’t have to interact as much. The player performing the OTK most likely enjoys it as well. That being said…
I hate examples like this. You take a premade deck, designed and refined by others over countless games to win as efficiently as possible, then complain how you can’t interact. If you want more interaction, add it yourself or pick a different premade deck that already has more interaction.
There are lots of tier decks and tons of off meta decks. The kind of interaction you probably want just isn’t optimal. For every deck a certain piece of interaction might be good against, there will be a dozen others where it’s poor. So unless a particular piece of interaction, let’s say Dirty Rat, happens to be good against a lot of the more popular decks then it isn’t worth running.
The game can absolutely be interactive if you want it to be, it will likely come at the cost of your win rate though.
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Well shaman is a much bigger offender but Sif isn’t much less of an “I win” card that can easily go off on turns 8-9. It has pretty good record in high legend even though unfavored against two of the best decks (DH and warrior).
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This is not true. The median OTK is probably turn 6, but there are more 7+ than 5. Average is going to be 6 point something.
Deck wouldn’t even bother running the Titan if it was 5.5.
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This game is bad, because it is not a serious gaming trying to be a serious game. Crap like plagues, dirty rat make the game miserable, but yet they keep making those cards. Good luck getting to legend without 11x stars if you are not playing a semi-decent deck. Back in the day a meme deck would get you there. Now you have to play this game like it’s a job not a game to get anywhere.
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That was also when standard and ranked were separate modes. I miss those days.
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I disagree. The thing that hides skill in this game is the fact that none of the decks that are competitive have much room for making mistakes. Every single deck is incredibly linear, have you played all the meta decks like wheel lock, shopper DH, Reno warrior, etc? Their game plan is established and well known before the game even loads. And the game plans themselves are nearly so simple to carry out a toddler could do it without error.
This is a far cry from what top decks used to be, where navigating a complex deck had so much room for error that the difference in win rate between a bad and good pilot could be ten percent or more.
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MoonUnit was right here.
It’s true what you said about game plans, but still that’s not what’s hiding the skill difference. If it was, a top legend player couldn’t reliably beat lower ranks, which is ridiculous. I can’t lose in lower ranks, like at all. It’s not possible with metadecks.
Besides, you’re playing one of the most complex meta-decks ever created (spell damage shaman). There’s a lot of room for error there, it’s literally impossible to play it perfectly.
But yeah, if we only take game plans into account, those ARE pretty linear in most popular meta decks, but then again, that’s what makes them so popular.
In many other meta decks, you actually have to be able to switch between multiple game plans in the middle of the game when your win conditions change or disappear
But when a deck is so one-dimensional as a shopper DH or wheel lock, then yeah, we have a problem, because those are either completely broken or completely useless.