I find it rather disingenuous of you to make a direct comparison to a playstyle in chess that you state explicitly is not more skillful than actually playing chess normally and isn't even hard to do - and then use that to claim that using RNG in hearthstone actually IS skillful and hard to do.
Surely you have to realize that this is not a fair comparison at all. In the chess example, you are (by your own admission) less skilled than your opponent. Therefore (if you're using that as an actual analogy), in the hearthstone example of RNG, you're also less skilled than your opponent. Analogy is analogy, good sir. If you don't like it, you should use a different analogy.
First addressing the analogy itself, perhaps my point here would benefit from being expressed in another way. We first have to consider what we even mean when we say someone is more skilled than someone else. That is something I attempted to define in my previous response, under the heading "But where's skill in all of this?".
Essentially, all we have to work with (or at least all I could come up with) are win rates. Of course these aren't perfect, especially in games like Hearthstone where decks can counter each other and skew them, but win rates should be pretty good in a game like chess where the two sides are equal (assuming each player goes first the same number of times).
OK, so my point is if I tried to play chess conventionally with my current ability (note I'm distinguishing between 'ability' and 'skill'), my win rate would be lower than if I inject some randomness. So by the only metric of skill I have, the use of randomness is increasing my skill. That statement is not invalidated by the fact that I could increase it more by learning to be good at playing conventionally. Mathematically you could crudely capture the idea with something like S = A + (A0 - A)B, with S = skill, A = conventional ability, B = bamboozle skill, and A0 is some reference value of A below which B is a net gain but above which B is a loss.
Put simply, being skilled in any game is about knowing your best route to victory, and that depends on your current ability. It is undoubtedly a skill to acknowledge your disadvantage against an opponent and to make unorthodox choices to help offset that, and that is what the bamboozle play is all about.
------------------------------------------------
Regarding "and then use that to claim that using RNG in hearthstone actually IS skillful and hard to do". To be clear, that is not actually what I said. I made a case that RNG in HS can require skill to navigate effectively, but I also point out that not all RNG is equal in this regard and I never tried to quantitatively compare skill in HS to anything else. I left it completely open as to whether HS is more or less skill-intensive than chess or MtG or Monopoly etc.
The entire point of the thread is that skill and RNG are not inherently connected to each other, and that it is a mistake to treat them like they are, which is what many people do. That works both ways: more RNG does not by itself say anything about whether more nor less skill is required. Different types of RNG will push it in different directions, and even the same type may go in different directions depending on the surrounding meta.
-----------------------------------------------
I want to add, that if you have a useful definition of skill that doesn't come from the win rate I'd be interested to hear it. It will then become a matter of semantics, where what I said above applies with my definition of skill, but might not with yours.
I hope so too. Being first or second is not even the real issue, consider that every person on the leaderboard has solved all clues, we both could even not be listed anymore if achievement accomplished datetime is not used part of the sort order.
EDIT: The reverse might also be an issue, meaning that if the leaderboard is 'full', the latest person to join the 64 clues found club will never be shown. I don't know which solution feels the least worse, but in this case I will be biased 😇
I remember catching out the possibility of roping your opponent when Bilgewater got released. Tbh, a card should not be nerfed just because they use it to play on the law's edge, most of the time. I'd say this combo didn't need this punishment.
Unless people found out a way to make the combo competitive.
Here's a breakdown of the numbers for anyone who's interested in grind-v-reward:
You have 27 days including today but not Nov 24 (event ends at 11am PST)
You get 2 hearts especially for your first PvP win of the day and a reoccurring epic quest for 3 hearts for 3 wins, so if you play for the normal 3 wins/day that's a total of 5 hearts/day from wins
The other epic quest is a chain with longer progress; it looks like there are 9 steps and they only give 7 hearts/each (63 total if that's true).
The final cards reward is 3x Give It All at Level 20 i.e. 190 hearts. That will require a pace of 7 hearts/day
The maximum level, 28, requires 270 hearts or a pace of 10 hearts/day
So far, it feels like a bit of a slog -- I've played 1-2 hours so far but only have 18 hearts and am ~25% up the 2nd quest of the chain. That said: if they refresh that epic quest chain on Patch 1.14 and allocate an additional ~60 hearts for the second 2 weeks, that should be a total of ~120 hearts that just happen "organically", meaning you'd only be left needing 50 hearts (10 days at 3 wins/each) for all the cards. Max rewards is a bit stiffer: you're short 150 hearts, which means at least 3 wins on all 27 days plus an additional 15 PvP wins.
I'm not trying to sound like a toxic hater back here, but a lot of people believe the same. I hardly see anyone who likes these K/DA events other than the target demographic.
I think the reason why everyone hates the recent K/DA events is because of Riot starting to focus more than K/DA than the League of Legends lore since Seraphine's debut. League of Legends already has deep, complex lore and all of a sudden it gets shoved aside because "hey, we should appeal to the k-pop fans" and they drop everything to appeal to them, including making a pop star champion. They focus more on cashing in to the trend than considering the ramifications of picking up the pieces, such as having no idea what to do when bringing Seraphine to the Runeterra canon so they just rushed her lore and left lots of plot holes.
Even worse, they made a Twitter account for Seraphine (the one in the K/DA AU, not the canon) so they could promote her K/DA Seraphine skin set. They recently came under fire by making posts of her anxiety, which got a lot of backlash since while it would be relatable for a real person, Seraphine is a fictional character owned by a large company and all of that effort will ultimately go towards selling her skin (and as I said before, she isn't the canon version to begin with).
I'm just rambling now, but the fact that Riot is putting so much effort in glorifying the K/DAverse shows how they're so eager to cash in to a demographic that they make ill-thought choices they don't foresee the consequences of.
Right now when looking at duels decks in the front page, it has duel decks. But when doing wild decks, some of the same duel decks appear. I think that duel decks should only appear when duels are selected and only wild decks for the wild format should appear when wild is selected. Right now actual wild decks are being diluted.
I like this card compared to Warmothers because it can make small champions into monstrosities, and so it doesn’t incur as much of a deckbuilding cost.
Oozefest
Okay, my last one:
To have a free Polymerization at hand at all times produces some truly grizzly results.
I´ve tried Evocation, Devolving missiles.. Maybe I´m totally off?
Any hints, please? :D
Oozefest
Oozefest
This helped me a lot, thanks :)
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
None of the guesses are getting warmer so I'll narrow it down a bit more: it's not a minion.
And @DestroyerR since you mentioned tokens, it's not one of those either. It is a collectible card.
RNG vs skill: a false competition
First addressing the analogy itself, perhaps my point here would benefit from being expressed in another way. We first have to consider what we even mean when we say someone is more skilled than someone else. That is something I attempted to define in my previous response, under the heading "But where's skill in all of this?".
Essentially, all we have to work with (or at least all I could come up with) are win rates. Of course these aren't perfect, especially in games like Hearthstone where decks can counter each other and skew them, but win rates should be pretty good in a game like chess where the two sides are equal (assuming each player goes first the same number of times).
OK, so my point is if I tried to play chess conventionally with my current ability (note I'm distinguishing between 'ability' and 'skill'), my win rate would be lower than if I inject some randomness. So by the only metric of skill I have, the use of randomness is increasing my skill. That statement is not invalidated by the fact that I could increase it more by learning to be good at playing conventionally. Mathematically you could crudely capture the idea with something like S = A + (A0 - A)B, with S = skill, A = conventional ability, B = bamboozle skill, and A0 is some reference value of A below which B is a net gain but above which B is a loss.
Put simply, being skilled in any game is about knowing your best route to victory, and that depends on your current ability. It is undoubtedly a skill to acknowledge your disadvantage against an opponent and to make unorthodox choices to help offset that, and that is what the bamboozle play is all about.
------------------------------------------------
Regarding "and then use that to claim that using RNG in hearthstone actually IS skillful and hard to do". To be clear, that is not actually what I said. I made a case that RNG in HS can require skill to navigate effectively, but I also point out that not all RNG is equal in this regard and I never tried to quantitatively compare skill in HS to anything else. I left it completely open as to whether HS is more or less skill-intensive than chess or MtG or Monopoly etc.
The entire point of the thread is that skill and RNG are not inherently connected to each other, and that it is a mistake to treat them like they are, which is what many people do. That works both ways: more RNG does not by itself say anything about whether more nor less skill is required. Different types of RNG will push it in different directions, and even the same type may go in different directions depending on the surrounding meta.
-----------------------------------------------
I want to add, that if you have a useful definition of skill that doesn't come from the win rate I'd be interested to hear it. It will then become a matter of semantics, where what I said above applies with my definition of skill, but might not with yours.
Oozefest
I hope so too. Being first or second is not even the real issue, consider that every person on the leaderboard has solved all clues, we both could even not be listed anymore if achievement accomplished datetime is not used part of the sort order.
EDIT: The reverse might also be an issue, meaning that if the leaderboard is 'full', the latest person to join the 64 clues found club will never be shown. I don't know which solution feels the least worse, but in this case I will be biased 😇
Oozefest
RIP your 1st place there bud! :D
And now I'm 4th when I technically solved all the clues 2nd :D
I'm sure Flux and his crew of awesome mods will fix it before the event it over ;)
Steve Rubin Hints at Shyvana Buffs, Trundle Nerfs, and More in Runeterra 1.14
I remember catching out the possibility of roping your opponent when Bilgewater got released. Tbh, a card should not be nerfed just because they use it to play on the law's edge, most of the time. I'd say this combo didn't need this punishment.
Unless people found out a way to make the combo competitive.
Honest Hearthstone Cards (Game)
Wish this was a card where I could lampshade the six-month necro...
NEXT:
K/DA All Out Event - New Cards, Event Pass, Quests, Boards, and More!
Here's a breakdown of the numbers for anyone who's interested in grind-v-reward:
So far, it feels like a bit of a slog -- I've played 1-2 hours so far but only have 18 hearts and am ~25% up the 2nd quest of the chain. That said: if they refresh that epic quest chain on Patch 1.14 and allocate an additional ~60 hearts for the second 2 weeks, that should be a total of ~120 hearts that just happen "organically", meaning you'd only be left needing 50 hearts (10 days at 3 wins/each) for all the cards. Max rewards is a bit stiffer: you're short 150 hearts, which means at least 3 wins on all 27 days plus an additional 15 PvP wins.
EDIT: apparently there's an additional small quest line for unlocking each of the cards; they are good for an additional 14 hearts/card = 70 hearts total. This reddit post does a better job explaining than I did: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/jkax9a/you_will_be_able_to_complete_the_kda_event_pass/
K/DA All Out Event - New Cards, Event Pass, Quests, Boards, and More!
I'm not trying to sound like a toxic hater back here, but a lot of people believe the same. I hardly see anyone who likes these K/DA events other than the target demographic.
K/DA All Out Event - New Cards, Event Pass, Quests, Boards, and More!
I think the reason why everyone hates the recent K/DA events is because of Riot starting to focus more than K/DA than the League of Legends lore since Seraphine's debut. League of Legends already has deep, complex lore and all of a sudden it gets shoved aside because "hey, we should appeal to the k-pop fans" and they drop everything to appeal to them, including making a pop star champion. They focus more on cashing in to the trend than considering the ramifications of picking up the pieces, such as having no idea what to do when bringing Seraphine to the Runeterra canon so they just rushed her lore and left lots of plot holes.
Even worse, they made a Twitter account for Seraphine (the one in the K/DA AU, not the canon) so they could promote her K/DA Seraphine skin set. They recently came under fire by making posts of her anxiety, which got a lot of backlash since while it would be relatable for a real person, Seraphine is a fictional character owned by a large company and all of that effort will ultimately go towards selling her skin (and as I said before, she isn't the canon version to begin with).
I'm just rambling now, but the fact that Riot is putting so much effort in glorifying the K/DAverse shows how they're so eager to cash in to a demographic that they make ill-thought choices they don't foresee the consequences of.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Parachute Brigand?
From a shattered world we came to plunder - Draenor. Plus, it's a pirate.
And tore the fragile peace asunder - The first and second war.
Alas, to spread the dark anew - Little iffy on this one.
We must recruit a whole new crew - It gets pulled from your hand with other pirates.
Out of Cards Now Supports Hearthstone Duels Deckbuilding and Guides
Right now when looking at duels decks in the front page, it has duel decks. But when doing wild decks, some of the same duel decks appear. I think that duel decks should only appear when duels are selected and only wild decks for the wild format should appear when wild is selected. Right now actual wild decks are being diluted.
Old Gods Control Warlock
no there is not
Vi and Ezreal Go Hard!
Thank you! I wasn't hot on the idea of K/DA cards in the game, but these are too fun not to build around.
Silas OTK Warrior
I second that <3
Fleethoof Pearltusk
''Guest interactions may vary over the duration of the visit.'' I laughed
Kripp's Tavern: Duels Tournament Survival Guide - 16 Streamers Compete for Doritos, Twitch Drops Enabled for Duels Access
Sounds about right ^^
Vi and Ezreal Go Hard!
Great writeup and interesting idea!
Old Murk-Eye
"Mrghllghghllghg!", I say.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Stowaway?
New Freljord Spell - Feel The Rush
I like this card compared to Warmothers because it can make small champions into monstrosities, and so it doesn’t incur as much of a deckbuilding cost.
New Paladin Spell - Day at the Faire
Pretty solid combo.
The only disadvantage is comes pretty late so your opponent has more time to counter.
New Demon Hunter Spell - Felscream Blast
For it feels like Eye Beam for tokens, better for wider boards.
Pretty niche use, will depend on the meta.