Netdecking and the real problem it brings

Netdecking is the hot topic and has been since netdecks became a thing. Everyone says they hate it and don't do it yet I can guarantee that 90% of those do with the caveat that they changed a few cards to make it their own deck. That's still netdecking.

In my opinion and I speak only for myself, netdecking is fine. It's a good way to get a deck up and going and jumping into the ladder.     When there is a healthy meta netdecking is fine as there is enough variety of meta decks out there and it's entertaining. The problem we have now is a very limited amount of decks in the meta so it is stale and the real issue - very predictable. We know exactly what cards the opponent has and what order they will be played and we can easily counter that.  Netdecks are an issue now as there aren't many of them and we're playing the exact same decks over and over and know just what's going to happen. It's the argument Kibler used for the issue with Odd and Even decks. This may not even be a netdecking issue but just the overall issue with Hearthstone now. We have a lot of months till the next xpac comes out and the buffs aren't all that great to shake anything up.

The only issue I have is virtually all creativity is lost in HS now. Remember when the first few weeks of an expansion yielded tons of new decks? Now that they give streamers cards a few days before everyone else a lot of the “experimenting” becomes copy-pasting starting day 1 rather than later down the road

Why a separate topic when you are talking about the very thing the other topic is ..err talking about?  

We don't need 10 threads of the same topic.

tried to react here, but it will only show my first sentence and then it stops.

"Everyone says they hate it and don't do it" what? No. It's just a vocal minority who keeps complaining about netdecks because the homebrewed decks they come up with aren't strong enough to compete in the meta. Rather than actually trying to improve their decks they go for the easy way out and complain that everyone is an evil, scum of the earth netdecker.

Netdecking happens in every card game. It is something that is inevitable and cannot, nor should, be prevented.

A stale meta isn't the fault of these scummy netdeckers either. That's entirely on Blizzard and their balancing qualities. If there's only a few decks out there that see play, it's because those are significantly stronger than the rest. That's not the player's fault.

Quote From Dakarian

Why a separate topic when you are talking about the very thing the other topic is ..err talking about?  

We don't need 10 threads of the same topic.

Cause if you read the post you would see that it deals with predictability in the current meta and not overall so was more of a post of the current meta and the limited amount of decks currently in the meta. But thanks for your complaint and adding so much to the discussion. 
And as MProdigy said it is just that; lack of creativity or maybe the player base has diminished and we are just left with netdeckers.

Love to destroy netdeckers with my own decks ^^. But it´s frustrating and hard work ;-).

When the options of truly viable strong decks are limited to less decks than you can count on one hand, netdecking is inevitable.

That said, it is also inevitable in any game where players compete and want the best possible chance of winning. Hating netdeckers in a game like this is the same as hating Bodybuilders who cheat by going to the gym, or hating football teams who use scouts to get the best players instead of the manager looking for them himself.

It's nonsensical at best, naive at worst. :-D

Quote From Marius

Quote From Dakarian

Why a separate topic when you are talking about the very thing the other topic is ..err talking about?  

We don't need 10 threads of the same topic.

Cause if you read the post you would see that it deals with predictability in the current meta and not overall so was more of a post of the current meta and the limited amount of decks currently in the meta. But thanks for your complaint and adding so much to the discussion. 
And as MProdigy said it is just that; lack of creativity or maybe the player base has diminished and we are just left with netdeckers.

It still feels rather similar, but still I apologize for the post.

As for the topic, I don't think it's anything new.  The meta grinding down to just a few top tier decks is about as common as multiplayer in general.  People played pirate warrior about a year ago, tempo shaman before then, secret paladin before then, miracle rogue before then.  It's why Ryu fireball spam is so common, and why Dio and Sieghart left a bad taste in my mouth.  It's why certain old timely RTS players hate M&Ms and why too many people loved Donatello at the arcade. 

People.. will ALWAYS.. netdeck. Even when a net didn't exist. 

I don't believe it's gotten worse because it's always been bad.  Secret Paladin took less time to be netdecked than it did to actually be a good deck: people were willing to spam a bad aggro version of it until the better tempo version was found.  Folks screamed about how everyone was C'thuning for the first week, then quickly jumped into aggro Shaman with 'Four mana 7/7s'. 

There has been a change in that the quality of decks have pushed up faster, but that's because the actual innovators have gotten a lot better.  You could take advantage of the population playing bad C'thun decks and horrible aggro paladins.  Now the decks are quicker to get.. not perfected, but good enough for ladder and we have a lot fewer people without enough of a collection to run them with.  You can't even rely on F2Pers not having enough.  Jeesh I opened the packs I plan to open and I still had 8k dust wasting away and more than enough cash to spend on the single player content. 

So that's changed.  But the majority of the playerbase jumping on trends and fads.  That's always been there.  Not sure how people haven't noticed it until now.

It's mroe than just 'is it a bad thing or a good thing'.  The whole concept of 'meta' is the assumption that most players play the same way and copy each other. If they didn't a 'meta' wouldn't exist.  The whole point of 'beating the meta' is beating those netdecks either through countering them or doing it better. It's a basic requirement to showing you can compete in a competition.  

Netdecking isn't a curse or a bad thing, or good thing.  It's just a thing. It's the 'surf'.  You don't rage against it. You just grab a board and ride it.  Or drown.  

Netdecking always happens even when there wasnt a net, any sort of communication about what people are playing will do it.

The only solution is something that blizzard could do but probably wont, and thats check to see if you're using a netdeck (easily done) and make sure you're in the queue with others doing the same.

If you're not using a netdeck then it could prioritize playing somebody who isnt also.

Quote From chaosprism

Netdecking always happens even when there wasnt a net, any sort of communication about what people are playing will do it.

The only solution is something that blizzard could do but probably wont, and thats check to see if you're using a netdeck (easily done) and make sure you're in the queue with others doing the same.

If you're not using a netdeck then it could prioritize playing somebody who isnt also.

How the hell can Blizzard tell if a deck is a netdeck or if it was built by the players themselves? Makes no sense at all. There is such a thing as independent discovery and development. But more importantly, once you face someone with your "original deck", your opponents can then just build and queue up the deck they just faced. As more people do this, the faster a new deck archetype spreads. Netdeck sites just accelerate this natural process.

Quote From chaosprism

Netdecking always happens even when there wasn't a net, any sort of communication about what people are playing will do it.

This is SO true.  During the early days of M:TG at local shops and/or tourney's, people would watch to see what the players that were winning were playing.  Then play those cards, and maybe add their own little twist to the decks.  Maybe to change it up a lil, maybe they didn't have all the needed cards.
The "Net" just made this process much easier.

The new buffs definitely WILL shake up the meta. They did some serious buffs to the cards they targeted. There is no way that competitive decks fail to emerge using those buffed cards. Particularly Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Pogo-Hopper

Quote From sto650

The new buffs definitely WILL shake up the meta. They did some serious buffs to the cards they targeted. There is no way that competitive decks fail to emerge using those buffed cards. Particularly Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Pogo-Hopper

Oh that's true. However, the issue is, if I get it: "we're playing the exact same decks over and over and know just what's going to happen."

The new buffs will change which cards and decks we play, but it won't change the frequency.  That is, instead of the current decks played over and over we'll play a new set of decks over and over.

And that's sort of the point when I get ranty again, because if your issue is that you want a wide variety of decks to show up then there's nothing that can really be done to change the issue, if 'issue' it can really be called. 

Because honestly, wanting lots of varied opponents requiring differing strategies to solve is exactly the point of Dalaran Heist.  Not only do the opponents change but also the decks used.  You're given different 3 different starting decks and a random deck in each class AND 3 different hero powers to swap and change things up and 5 wings with different room effects.  It even will change special effects if you unlocked all of the wings.  

If the desire is variety, this is exactly the mode you are after.  Not some hypothetical insanity of trying to get a mass of people driven through multiple scientifically researched mentalities to follow trends successfully proven by innovators and leaders.  

Note if the issue isn't the frequency but the type of decks: that you don't mind seeing the same decks over and over so long as either you like the decks you face or you want multiple ways to deal with such decks, then the buff session might help things out by knocking down the decks you dislike or allow for a lot of tier 2 decks.  But neither of them are netdecking issues either.

Quote From iWatchUSleep

"Everyone says they hate it and don't do it" what? No. It's just a vocal minority who keeps complaining about netdecks because the homebrewed decks they come up with aren't strong enough to compete in the meta. Rather than actually trying to improve their decks they go for the easy way out and complain that everyone is an evil, scum of the earth netdecker.

Netdecking happens in every card game. It is something that is inevitable and cannot, nor should, be prevented.

A stale meta isn't the fault of these scummy netdeckers either. That's entirely on Blizzard and their balancing qualities. If there's only a few decks out there that see play, it's because those are significantly stronger than the rest. That's not the player's fault.

Marry me.

I've always thought that Team 5 could do more cards like [Hearthstone Card (Curious Glimmerroot/card] which mildly punishes those who use predictable decks. 

At the very least, it might encourage people to be a little bit more experimental with their deck choices…

Netdecking is just another form of min/maxing, which you will never, ever get rid of in video games. Someone is ALWAYS going to crunch the numbers.

Quote From GiantHaystacks

I've always thought that Team 5 could do more cards like Curious Glimmerroot/card] which mildly punishes those who use predictable decks. 

At the very least, it might encourage people to be a little bit more experimental with their deck choices…

 

Need to make aggro decks less prevalent for control/otk/some midrange decks to carry such a card. And it would probably just give you a treant, murloc or minor to useless buff.

A lot of useful tools don't get put in decks because we need more board clears, taunts, etc., which is another reason I really hate swarm aggro.

Think how freaked out the new mech paladins would be if silences would be run more instead of techs against token decks.

Netdecking has been happening for the entirety of CC games existing. It is just more efficient now with the internet which means it settles faster and the game is solved faster. When I was a kid playing MTG when new cards would come out local tournaments would be chaos for a short period but then it would settle and everyone was playing similar decks. This was before the internet. 

If you don't want to net deck, play wild. There are so many possible combination of cards that you can really play your own version of every archetype. Yes, even big priest.

I personally almost never copy a list from the net. For me, the pleasure of this game is deckbuilding more then everything. I get bored easy, so for me HS is build a deck, see if it runs, repeat.

I will never go to legend with this mindset, but whatever :P