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The matchmaking system ensures that you will win about half of your games--regardless of whether you
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
So could someone please explain to me how that constitutes "pay to win"? Pay to get into higher ranked matches, yes. Pay to have a slightly higher winning percentage on the way to those higher ranked matches, yes. But pay to win? With the difference between paying a ton of money and paying nothing amounting to a difference between winning maybe 55% and 45% of your matches if you don't play very much--and a smaller gap if you play a lot? That's not what "pay to win" has traditionally meant?
Yes, yes, someone who pays a bunch of money and has a deck that consists mostly of rare or better cards does have a huge advantage over someone using only basic cards. I get that. But the ranking system ensures that they'll only infrequently play each other unless the player with vastly superior cards is quite bad at the game so as not to quickly rank up.
For what it's worth, if you assume that your win probability in each match is independent of each other, the win probability that will on average keep you at the same rank is about 45.3398%. So you'll tend to win about that percentage of your matches in equilibrium, and more than that when below your equilibrium rank and ranking up. That's really not all that far away from 50%.
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Hence why I usually have a bottle of Coca Cola handy and a bag of popcorn... when shit starts getting stupid I just sit back and enjoy... unless it is between two women in which case I may curse myself for not having packed dried mud and a inflatable swimming pool.
What good is an MMR that is based on expected wins and losses if a portion of the player base manipulates it to achieve their desired matches?
I think the better question is why base an MMR on wins/losses if the main reward is (gold) and has nothing to do with a players MMR?
And how exactly do you manipulate it except by losing games that you could have won?
I really don't know the mechanics behind Blizzard's matchmaking system, but I will give you the reason why I stopped playing HS:
1) I consistently started running into people having multiple legendaries in their deck. My deck just simply wasn't as good.
2) I realized I needed to buy more decks to get better cards or craft them.
3) To get decks the 'free' way, you need to do dailies. Dailies can be fine but at the same time, a chore, especially if you are forced to play a class you don't enjoy. Even then, you have to save up a lot to get legendaries and epic cards.
4) I realized I was logging in ONLY to do the dailies...something I didn't even WANT to do in the first place. For that reason, I stopped logging in.
At first, I had a lot of fun just playing my Warlock deck in ranked. This is what I wanted to do. But what's the point of climbing the ladder when you know you are at such a big disadvantage? Eventually running into opponents that just had much better cards became too frustrating. Now that the game is officially released, I might check it out again but we'll see..
The problem is that you assume that you're supposed to climb the ladder. That's not necessarily the case, or at least not as far as you think it is. You're supposed to get to your equilibrium rank and then win about 45% of your subsequent games as you hover around there. You probably win more than 45% while ascending to your equilibrium.
Yes, your equilibrium rank does depend on your cards. The 45% figure after reaching equilibrium does not unless you're one of the top handful of players in the game.
The ranking system does NOT take into account cards only who is winning.
You can climb up the ranks with inferior cards based on good skill and knowledge.Eventually your skill will not carry you past the really good decks.The game/match system will never account for who has good decks,not until the very high ranks where obviously everyone has a solid deck or three.
Also you are missing two other points.You are looking at it only in one sense ,the one that players are matched equal,it ALSO stops you from moving into the GOAL ranks which is the upper echelon of Legendary for example.
Then there is the OTHER factor,when playing to quickly get gold to enter Arena you get there much quicker with a better deck,whilst the other players struggle and take hundreds of games to get that 150 gold.Not including bonus quests,150 gold would take 45 wins ,a poor deck that might be as i said more than a 100 games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yep you got it.
Their current MMR is a flawed design that assumes players only motivation is winning, but the fact is the main motivation for most players will be gold accumulation. I really wish they would open up practice mode to gold from wins and all dailies.
This is why I don't mind the game is Pay to Win. As long as you don't care about having a high rank, I still find it enjoyable to play opponents even if they have better cards than me, because I still have a good chance of winning as the system generally only matches me with such opponents if they play worse than me.
I am Always interested in what Wizardry has to say about a Blizzard game as I know from his past history he is one of those avid haters of the company.
"... whilst the other players struggle and take hundreds "(sic) of games to get that 150 Gold..." LOL
On average you gain 60 Gold per day by doing ONE daily and 6 wins. For the average player that's about 90 minutes fun card games per day.
That's 1800 Gold per month. That's 18 FREE booster packs per month.
In Magic that would set you back 70 dollars, in HS that's simply free.
I am going to near Gold cap within a few months after playing for around 6 months in beta.
That's 20.000 Gold or .. the equivalent of 200 booster packs for ... free. In that other Card game that would set me back ... 800 dollars...
LOL
When I play, one of the important things in game is to try to be better, and improve my skills. If I lose to someone, I want to be able to think that he was a better player, or had spent more time with the game, but that if I play more and practice I can improve, be better, and beat him one day.
But If I see that I'm already better than the player I lost to in everything that matters to me - skill and time spent in game - and that the other player won because he's better than me at using credit card. I lose my motivation to try to improve until I can beat him, because credit card usage is not something I want to excel in.
I've probably played in a little shy of 200 ranked matches. In that time, I've seen one player immediately forfeit upon the game starting, one go AFK the entire match, and a couple leave the game. So that's a rate of about 2% of players "throwing" matches--even if we assume that the thrown matches were intentional and not accidents such as computer trouble.
Since when is being ranked highly the goal? I thought the goal was to have fun. The matchmaking system pushing for relatively even matches is certainly geared toward that.
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If you have a strong deck, you get to high ranks and then win about 45% of your matches, or perhaps 50% if you can pretty consistently stay rank 5 or better. To go over 50% consistently, you have to be one of the top handful of players in the game so that the game can't find suitable opponents for you. If you don't have a strong deck, then you don't get to high ranks, but just win about 45% of your matches right from the start.
So maybe someone who pays a bunch makes gold from wins 10%-20% faster than someone who doesn't. But most gold from playing ranked mode comes from dailies, not from direct wins, so the gold-making speed per match for someone who pays a ton of real-life money is probably only a single-digit advantage over someone who plays for free.
And that's ranked mode only. If your goal is to play a lot in the arena, then you don't have any card advantage while in the arena (and hence no loot advantage), so that further diminishes the advantage of paying money.
All CCGs, computerized or not, have an aspect of pay to win. In order to get better cards, you need to buy booster packs. That's simply how companies which produce them make their money; the chance at a rare and powerful card keeps people shelling out seven bucks (or however much a booster pack is these days) a pop. Hearthstone is actually one of the few which attempts to minimize this aspect by providing other ways to obtain better cards. Yes it's pay to win, but much less so than other digital / tabletop CCGs.
Of course this is Blizzard we're talking about here, so irrational hatred is to be expected.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Quizz, it's the same situation that happens in every game where you are only going up against other players: How do you have fun? By making someone else feel NOT fun (them loosing). Whenever there is a no-coop way to win, there will be winners and loosers, and when the difference between a winner and a looser is how much money someone put into something, it quickly looses its fun factor. If Hearthstone had a story mode, then there might be some hope for it, depending on how repeatable it is... but as it stands the only "goal" in Hearthstone as it stands, is to get more gold to get better cards. And getting gold for free can only be done by manipulating the system... loosing on purpose to go down in ranks, then winning several matches in a row (since you get bonus gold for getting more than 3 in a row).
As it stands, HS is a waste of time, and possibly money, if you spend anything on it.
May I suggest that if you think losing about half of the time makes a game intrinsically not fun, then PVP isn't for you?
You have made a correct assumption. PvP is not for me. I never said it was. However, I would like to ask you, do you like loosing? Is it pleasurable to you? Or instead do you feel defeated?
Personally, I enjoy card games, and have spent countless hours making decks and developing strategies. When these don't work, I try others and so on. However, within Heartstone, it is not about "strategy", but more about how much gold you have been able to spend. The Legendary cards are way too out of whack, and they have been designed that way to push the players to attempt to get these. I don't blame blizzard for this, since they do need to make money, but that doesn't justify the game for me. I would rather have a physical card that I own, and gains/looses value, and of which I have full control to sell to someone else down the line. HS is just a cash dump where you own nothing, and by the next expansion, all your precious gold that you have earned/bought and changed into cards has absolutely no value...
Hence my prior opinion (which you can take or leave): Hearthstone is a waste of time, and/or money, if you decide to spend any.
If you dislike PVP, then why are you arguing that a PVP game ought to do... well... something or other differently, in which case you'd still dislike it because it's still PVP?
My likes or dislikes aside, my points are valid, and that is what you neglect (refuse) to acknowledge. Its the same as rejecting a doctor's suggestion only because he is not a specialist in your problem. Certain things are definitely a general knowledge situation, and many, like me, have played, and enjoy TCGs, and can see a cash dump a mile away.
I don't like your other points either, but the "losing intrinsically means not having fun" is the main one I wanted to quibble with. Do you really have to wait until after a game is over in order to know whether you were having fun halfway through?
You claim that the game mostly consists of people who pay money beating people who don't pay money. But someone who has a good deck will quickly get to higher ranks than someone who doesn't, so they'll rarely play each other. I'm pretty sensitive to unbalanced PVP, and this is the first PVP game I've liked since Infantry--whose heyday was 2000-2002. A solid matchmaking system that only infrequently gives you a match where it's obvious that you have a far inferior hand is a big reason why.
You'd like to see a PVE "story mode". But that doesn't really make sense given the structure of the game. It's kind of like going to a game that is theme park all the way right from the start and saying that they ought to change it to a sandbox game. Even if a sandbox would have been nice, it's the wrong game for the idea. Trying to write AI to carefully consider the complex strategies involved and act accordingly would be very, very hard. Try playing the "expert" practice mobs: they do really stupid things. A game where you win mostly because the AI is stupid would destroy the essence of a game that is all about complex strategies.
Getting "free" gold hardly takes manipulating the system. Play a decent amount and you'll do a lot of the daily quests without particularly trying to--and that's the main source of gold, at least if you exclude arena rewards up to the cost of playing the arena in the first place. The main exception are the "win games with one of these two classes" quests, which basically mean you have to switch to one of those classes and play some to complete the quest. Even then, you don't have to do the "daily" quests every day; you can have three unfinished quests in your log at a time.
You do also get 10 gold by winning three games. Contrary to your claim, there is no gold bonus for winning streaks. You do get an extra star for winning at least three consecutive games while below rank 5, but that doesn't give you extra gold. But intentionally throwing games hardly assists with that unless you immediately forfeit, as otherwise, losing takes time. Empirically, there isn't any rash of players immediately conceding games. If there were, it would be easy for Blizzard to detect that statistically and warn or punish the offenders.
First, to your main point "Do you want to wait till a game is over in order to know if you are having fun halfway through?": The nature of card games is that the fun comes from building strategies from the cards you have. The lack of fun comes from playing against unbalanced super cards that are only acquired either through heavy gold use, or phenomenal luck. True TCG are balanced in such a way that even the rare cards have use penalties of one type or another that balance the overall game. And in other digital card games, there are at least ways to setup duels where certain types of cards are limited or restricted. ... Not so in HS. This makes it so that heavy Legendary use is pervasive, and makes a culture that incentivizes seeking of such cards. To me, that made the battling not fun. I developed a strategy and deck that could effectively defeat most player strategies, only to be exclusively paired up against decks that won through pervasive use of Legendaries. When game balance is lost due to a mechanic that revolves around use of Money, I no longer have fun.
As for "Someone with a good deck will just move on"... this statement is false, and the reality is, since acquisition of gold is the main thing, those with superior decks find ways to game the system in roundabout ways to ensure quick wins. Check out the official forums, and you will see how pervasive this tactic is.
Third, you say that PvE is unable to be pulled off due to the nature of the game... Again, I disagree... I have played many DTCG that have a valid and full story mode. In fact, the one that Blizzard is currently copying, LoN, has a huge PvE story with many rewards along the way. Go look it up, its free. Once a week you get a free pack too...
Finally, it is true that getting free gold doesn't involve a lot of manipulating of the system... but getting a quick steady stream definitely does. As for the getting more gold after a certain streak, you are correct, and I overlooked that. I remembered that when I played, I enjoyed getting a streak because I got something out of it, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was. Yep, a Star.
You can reply at your leisure, but I am jumping thread. You can have "the last punch", since I made my points already.
WHat?
not true if everyone win about half their game everyone would be rank1.....
pay2win is pay2win, YOU pay to WIN(higher rank?)
..i read some of your other Post...you said "goal" is to have "fun"...FUN in the game is different between people. if u have fun staying in same rank ,nice for u.
BUT others might not feel that way, its fun for some to climb the ladder and winning more game then losing.(so..buy more deck..pay2win)
On the first point, that doesn't make sense. I don't think you know how the ranked mode works. Besides, I said about 45% after reaching your equilibrium rank, not half.
On the second point, unless you mean winning 50.1% is fun and 50% isn't, you're implicitly arguing that PVP intrinsically has to be not fun for most of the people who participate in it.
Quiz adheres to the Bredon code, winning or losing doesn't matter, as long as you play a beautiful game.
Having played Magic for years when I was younger and had oodles of time to spend constructing decks...winning is all there is to make CCGs fun to me. I had a necro deck for much of the time I played and nothing was better than quickly whittling down an opponents hand with Hymns to Tourach and Hypnotic Specters. Then killing them, and quickly. That's constructed though. Drafting can be as much fun and isn't nearly as cutthroat. Which makes Arena a lot of fun in Hearthstone, although you have to have the gold to play it. Not hard to get though, dailies will usually get me there for one arena run per day, or every other day., along with some ranked playing.
Damn, I haven't played Magic for like 12 years, and now I'm nostalgic. Hearthstone doesn't come close to touching the intricacy of Magic, even fairly early Magic.