Category: Hearthstone

I think much of the appeal to randomness comes from shallow understanding/efficacy and this rubber duckie analysis. “Interesting things are in the sweet spot where they make enough sense you can form expectations and not so much sense that your expectations are wholly sufficient and the follow-through completely predictable.” The more you understand and can influence a process, the less desirable randomness is unless it is your only chance. The less understanding you have, the more random results fit your understanding while remaining unpredictable. The less control you have, the more random results are likely to be to your benefit (versus where others might push results).

When I was 12 and exploring D&D books, long tables of random values were awesome. It was a draw from a fixed pool of values, so I could have reasonable expectations but never be sure, with wild swings to make unlikely expectations occasionally viable. I had not really grasped that I could take the setting in my hands, as opposed to following what was laid out in the books, so adding randomness was closer to putting things in my control. It at least took it out of someone else’s control. Plus, young men seem bred to throw their fate to chance and hope for the best.

When I play games now, I like known conditions. I understand, plan, master. Rarely can randomness help me, at most foiling reasonable expectations. It is reasonable to have some range of expectation of how much damage your fireball might do; it is not reasonable that the fireball might cause the target to turn into a pink sheep, or whatever else a wild mage or wand of wonder might do.

Chaos is great for people with no long term plans. They have no intentions to foil, they can always insert more chaos if the results are bad, and at worst they can absolve themselves because they had little control over the outcome. Alternately, there is Littlefinger, who starts behind and inserts chaos to create new opportunities to get ahead. The young are revolutionaries who want to overthrow the current order; the old are invested in the current order, know how to get ahead under it, and have something to lose.

Go to a casino and observe who plays what. Some people study odds and think of themselves as masters of their own fate. They play card games with lots of decisions, preferably ones where you play against other people rather than the house. Some people trust to luck, the big win, the quick score. They are at slot machines or the roulette wheel, where the main decision is how quickly to lose your money.

Randomness prevents knowledge, foils plans, counteracts skill. That is a draw to some.

: Zubon

I remember having a work bowling outing, where every third frame had a different requirement like bowling with your off-hand, between your legs, or with your eyes closed. That was the great equalizer between league players and people who hadn’t bowled in 20 years.

I should probably stop playing Hearthstone, but it is a compelling trainwreck of randomness.

I have completed the dungeon run on five classes. It is frequently unwinnable because you were not offered any cards that work together, or you meet a boss that is overpowered or a hard counter to what you have built, or just random draws of the cards. You can even lose the first fight if Bink the Burglar gets the best possible draw and you get the worst (on some classes). But the dungeon run also offers powerful upgrades, fun combinations, and easy access to cards beyond the reach of new players. When it comes together, you get to do amazing and awful things like using Boots of Haste, doubled battlecries, and Coldlight Oracle to play multiple late game creatures on your first turn. I even had both sides come together: Thaddock the Thief got a perfect draw, completed her quest on turn 2, and cast Crystal Core on turn 3; I still won with an even more overpowered combo.

As a new player, it is hard to play the normal mode with the basic cards you are given, after seeing the dungeon mode. I suppose it could work as an advertisement for people who might drop money on card packs to get those cards they saw.

I played a round of Casual Play over lunch. It advertises, “Find an opponent of equal skill, and play for fun!” I was paired against someone with a golden hero, meaning they had won at least 500 ranked games on just that hero. I know Blizzard’s matchmaking algorithms have a wide margin for “close enough” on player rankings balanced against time to search for a closer match, but it paired “less than a week newbie” with “played at least 1000 games.” Look, maybe it is making a good assessment on “equal skill,” but it is not like my small box of imaginary cards has any chance against the deck they can field.

In this way, Hearthstone lets you feel good about your wins but wave away your losses. If you lost, it must have been an unfair match or a bad luck of the draw. While I might otherwise mock that like FPS players who always die due to lag and hackers, that is entirely valid in Hearthstone! The many stacks of randomness in the game mean you can easily get extreme swings with no difference in player skill or choice. But you can mostly ignore that when you win, because the things you were trying to do came together, and you reap the rewards. You did make some good choices along the way, and no absurd fortune happened to keep you from winning this time. And maybe you can observe some absurd fortune happening to your opponent, but it’s not like you can see their cards. If you had bad luck, it was pretty visible and you are not to blame; if your opponent had bad luck, that information was mostly hidden from you except the results, and it is easy to credit yourself for having won a fair-looking match.

: Zubon

I decided to give Hearthstone a little more time by trying out the dungeon run with each class. It seemed like a good way to unlock all the basic cards. And, well, see the screenshot. Either the Druid has an easier time, Hearthstone times rogue-like is as random as suggested, or I am just that good.

: Zubon

I doubt I am just that good.

The game of the weekend has been Hearthstone. I had never played before, but I was lured by the advertisement of the latest update and the surety that I had a bunch of free bonuses from various Blizzard promos. The new content is Hearthstone’s take on rogue-likes. It is a series of eight battles against increasingly powerful NPC decks, where the player accumulates cards and upgrades as he progresses. Rogue-like elements include facing a variable cast of foes from a set list, variable foe stats based on which “level” you find them, picks from randomized loot bags, and picks from themed, randomly selected pools of cards.

The good is that the design addresses many of the issues seen in rogue-likes. Each upgrade is a pick from three upgrades, and while you may not have the best upgrades on the list, you do get a chance to customize your deck around your preferences or a common theme. The theming of the content is good, a mix of kobolds, adventurers, and monsters.

The bad is that it combines the low-skill play Hearthstone is known for, minus most of the deckbuilding aspect, plus the randomness and degree of fairness you have come to expect from rogue-likes. Some of the NPC decks are vastly harder than others, or vastly harder for some classes or decks. Draw one of those and you will probably lose. Sometimes you will get several upgrade options in a row that build on one another, or maybe none of your three picks fits well with what you have. You may get the perfect options to go with your passive upgrade or few to none that work with it. And then there is the usual trust in the Heart of the Cards that comes with CCGs. The new mode claims massive replayability, which is to say there are many random variations (of varying degrees of difficulty) when you have several layers of randomization.

This leads to unproductive forum discussions where some people got through on their first try and others are hitting walls, or someone tried twice in a row and lost early then got really far without any real change. When the game stacks random enemies that can appear at different levels against several classes that get random items and seven picks from random card sets, plus randomization in the cards and some cards with random effects, the results can be explained at best statistically. All that randomization can even out to the expected experience or something radically off the rails. It needs to work out eight times in a row for the player to clear the dungeon run; the first two or three are free, the last two or three are a bit of a roll of the dice even under perfect play, just from the way some NPC decks are hard counters to player decks.

The dungeon runs are not dependent on which cards you own. The cards are provided along the way (and not kept). This makes it a good way for new players to see the game and be on even footing with veterans, and to unlock the basic cards for each class. To the extent that Hearthstone can be skill-based, this is more skill-based than standard CCG play, minus most of the deck-building aspects. As someone new to the game, it seems more compelling than entertaining. It is very slick and nicely done, with the sort of predictably mediocre gameplay we have come to expect from MMO PvE. It seems like a fine game for decompressing after work or to play absently on a bus. I feel like I have already experienced most of what Hearthstone has to offer after a mix of dungeon runs and normal games over a weekend. I do not suspect it is meant to have deep gameplay for me to discover.

: Zubon