It can be a powerful finisher-esque (no Charge, but it's big and mean looking) minion in Aggro, basically a reliable Giant, and if your deck runs out of cards in Aggro, you probably lost anyway for taking too long. That said it's still hit or miss in some cases. Also, hello everybody! I'm late to the thread, but I too have been playing the hearthy stones for quite some time (as I'm sure some of you may have guessed).
if you're worried about spam, don't be. these guys never talk. or maybe theyre just ducking me to avoid getting a smack down. who knows.
I think I'm gonna go for Legend this month. I'm already on rank 8 just by doing dailies and whatnot, and I do want that cardback. Let's do this.
Good luck. I've been thinking about going for it now and then myself, I think I might try next month... but I also more often play casual, so I have no idea if I'll actually get it. Tangent: I'm really curious to see what the next Tavern Brawl will be as well.
Yeah, I never really went for it - the highest I achieved was #6 while playing OP Hunter Naxx, and at the time I was just playing a lot to get the Golden Hunter Portrait. I'll let you guys know how it went, I have one week. And yeah, Im curious to see which Brawl is next. I played only a few matches on last one.
On some sidenote: I really find Pedeguerra's constant "Hearthstone is so much better" nagging annoying. I think he is ignoring that it's an entirely different game with a much larger budget. I like you Ped, but you're quite negative ... For the comparison itself, my impression is this (and please correct me if I am wrong!): Hearthstone has a huge built in variance, whereas in Pox Nora, if you have the better deck or are the better player, you will almost certainly win. In Hearthstone on the other hand, if you are better or have the better deck, you will have a significant advantage, but nowhere near the odds in Pox Nora. Let's put it in a formal way to make things clear (or the opposite): Imagine two decks A and B in Pox Nora and A' and B' in Hearthstone, where A and A' both have a chance to win against the respective other deck of 60%. In Pox Nora, I would expect that deck A has a chance to win of something like 55% with a bad draw, and a chance to win of 65% with a good draw. In Hearthstone on the other hand, you would have something like a chance of 40% with a bad draw and a chance of 80% with a good draw. In effect, this random factor paired with the fact that Hearthstone has a huge playerbase, allows you to have a lot of fun even with weak decks. You will still win quite often due to the high variance! Because of this, Hearthstone is very easy to balance in comparison.
1) Ok, since I don't like being bashed at without a reason, I shall bash back. I'm not constantly saying "Hearthstone is so much better" - if you got that from my posts thats your interpretation. I find it better for me, because I really don't have the time or will to be checking Pox again. HS allows me log in for one or two hours a day, play until I'm satisfied and log out. Also, I'm not involved in the forums or nothing of that sort, so its a much less stressful environment. So, yes, for me, its better than Pox atm. I wouldnt be so naive to the point of thinking its strictly better, I used to play MtG a lot with real cards back in the day, those are much more complex games. I, however, have my joy with HS. I like you too iPox, but you are quite the **** for coming up with bs bgs. See, we both can play that game. In no way, shape or form I'm a negative person, don't make assumptions about my personality when you dont know me. 2) "For the comparison itself, my impression is this (and please correct me if I am wrong!): Hearthstone has a huge built in variance, whereas in Pox Nora, if you have the better deck or are the better player, you will almost certainly win. In Hearthstone on the other hand, if you are better or have the better deck, you will have a significant advantage, but nowhere near the odds in Pox Nora." LOLWHAT. Yeah, its not like draw wins decided Pox, or that people can build stupid abusable bgs. Jeez. Just FYI, I'm way better than my friends at HS, and we both have the same cards. I, however, have a win rate of something like 80%, whereas they have a winrate of less than 50%. So yeah, skill takes a great part of it. The better players will most likely always win. 3) "In effect, this random factor paired with the fact that Hearthstone has a huge playerbase, allows you to have a lot of fun even with weak decks. You will still win quite often due to the high variance!" The fun part is true. Saying "you will still win quite often" seems like a data pulled out from your ****. Try it out for yourself tough guy, let's see how well you do. 4) "Because of this, Hearthstone is very easy to balance in comparison." Well, this one is pretty obvious, since PN is a much more complex game. Doesnt mean its better or anything, they are different games. Lastly, I don't care how "annoying" you perceive me or anything like that. I'm not here to please you or anyone for that matter, I'm here to speak my mind on subjects regarding Pox Nora. If people don't like what I write, then just ignore me. I won't stop being who I am or speaking the things that are true to me. Have a nice day. Edit: rank 6 achieved. I had a real tough time staying there, though, I should probably think about switching bgs.
Let me rephrase then in order to clarify: I don't think that you are a negative person, but your posts are somewhat negative. I was not bashing you just to bash you. While I like you and I can understand your frustration with this game, I dislike the sheer number of negative posts you make. I was indeed under the impression that you like to compare Pox Nora and Hearthstone. But if I am mistaken, I apologise. You accept my conclusion while refuting my premises. It's not about winrate, it's about variance. You can have a 80% winrate with almost zero variance, and you can have 80% winrate with noteable variance. I don't doubt Hearthstone is a game of skill, but it has a lot of built-in randomnes, which makes it easier to balance, especially for the low ranks.
Ah, ok, I see what you are saying now, and I agree to an extent. Also, sorry for being rude on my post, on the earlier hours of the morning Im still getting my gears together. I just think that the randomness can be mitigated by good play, as very well put by Sok, and it doesnt bother me much. Either way, seems like people on my generation (30s) are more prone to games such as HS. With the amount of time people have reduced due to job, wife, kids, house, etc., playing anything competitively will be a terrible struggle. HS, however, allows that, since the games are no longer than 10 minutes and there isnt a chat lobby to bring people down. MtG and Pox would still be my all time favorite, but atm HS is there simply because, well, I can play it.
The thing is, variance equalizes over time. So it's not more or less balanced if one game has 80% winrates with a deck and the other game has 80% winrates with a deck. What I think is the more important factor here, is the RSP factor. In Pox, a solid BG will have some soft counters, but it won't have an 80% winrate vs. FW and a 30% winrate against IS, to use a hypothetical example. In HS, a Control or Patron Warrior deck might have a fantastic win-rate against Freeze Mage, but have issues against Handlock. Face Hunter might do great against Handlock but fail hard against Control Warrior. There's a lot more variance, yes, but it equalizes over time (with some drag on either extreme to a point), but that sort of counter-deck/revolving meta seems like it's the more important aspect of why HS can seem more balanced*. If you get one of your combo decks, there are often times suitable counters (no idea why people didn't reach for the Backlash in the face of your Pearl/Facilitator deck), but while some factions do have counters to mechanics (FW can hit up healing more so can punish FS/IS better in some regards for example) it's not nearly to the degree that it is in HS. The variance not of RNGs, but rather in how a given deck does against a wide variety of decks on average. That's the main difference, I think. *(Of course, some classes seem to show up more commonly than others, as far as complaints. Part of this is that some classes typify specific archetypes. Control Warrior. Combo Rogue. Aggro Hunter. Others have a large variety in potential playstyles. Mech(Aggro)/Freeze Mage, Zoo/Demon/Handlock, Combo/Ramp/Control Druid. Paladin also shows up relatively often with Midrange/Control variants, Priest is often locked into Control and overshowed by Warrior and Paladin. Shaman has Aggro and Combo variants, to the point that Shaman was the class of choice for cheating Bot users, but also slips in and out more often like Paladin. Whether this is an issue of counters, raw balance, or simply player preference is not always clear, but it does seem to be imperfect as far as classes go... personally, I don't care about having all classes be viable at all times, I think that's an unrealistic goal, what's more important to me is that all playstyles be viable at all times, which HS usually succeeds at... though I can't say the same for Pox, it's a very different game.)
But it might feel more balanced, especially to new players, because even they win from time to time. But you're probably right that the Rock-Scissors-Paper factor is more important. Addendum: I am glad that Pox Nora doesn't have many random influences.
I have had several conversations with iPox, so I understand that his interest here is largely from a Game Design perspective. All else being equal, it is 100% true that RNG factors will have the following effects: Create more variance in any particular individual or deck's performance Puts an equalizing pressure on the WR of players The first point has been discussed fairly heavily. And this is a particularly useful aspect of this from the Game Design perspective. As noted, it helps New Players acclimate to the game by allowing them to win sometimes, but also creates wonderful stories when you manage to topdeck something and win or you lose because your random cards just didn't hit the targets. Even tho you lost in the second case, it still becomes a story and a memorable game for you. Even for Pox players, with little randomness, their stories trend towards, for example, iPox or other combo decks because those are the outliers, like these games heavily influenced by RNG for one particular player. The second point depends a lot on how strong the RNG factor really is in a game. But the stronger it is relative to skill, the more likely that it pulls people towards a 50% WR. In such a scenario, having a 52% WR could be considered very good. Note that a game can have a high RNG factor, but still be very skill-based. For example, in Poker, 95% of online players lose money, that means just 5% win more than they lose (on average). As much randomness as there is in Poker, it is known to be a fairly skill-based game (tho you need to play a lot of hands to get the sample sizes) and the data backs that up. ~ In general, counters and RPS are much more readily available in card games simply due to the design space/nature of these games. But you guys are well aware that Pox really isn't a card game so much as a tactical game and decks play more similarly in Pox than they do in card games (because they all generally need to be able to do certain things), and this is generally why heavy combo decks aren't allowed to exist in Pox, because the ability to respond tends to be fairly limited due to its nature.
A lot of this goes to Arena in HS as well. Arena is probably the most random thing possible in HS, short of intentionally making a completely RNG deck (Randuim Wrynn as it's sometimes called IIRC) and even then it may be debatable. There are some players that, fairly consistently, get more than 3 wins in Arena. Part of that is no doubt the limited match-making algorithm, specifically that each arena run gets it's own individual MMing based on how many wins/losses you've had in that specific run (I think, it might not have any MMR at all but it feels like opponents get better the more I win, and I think I saw some official comments referenced on that matter, but don't take my word for it). But that only helps to reinforce how much skill has an impact in my view. Obviously, luck in drafting is important, but being able to consistently get 3 or more wins most of the time over many games is impressive considering the generally even playing field in terms of card availability.
The nature of Arena and Drafting in general has random elements, but I'd concur it is actually highly skill based. It's one thing to be handed a randomized deck, but totally another to be building one from choices. In general, this is how I describe the difference between luck-RNG and skill-RNG,, the former happens to you and doesn't typically change your probability space very much. On the other hand, RNG like drafting tends to be heavily skill-based because you are making choices, with each choice giving you more information for your future choices.
Speaking of which, any of you guys wanting to improve your Arena skills I shall reveal the greatest secret on how to succeed in it: watch Ratsmah (I think this is how you spell it) streams on Twitch. I've learned everything I needed to know from this guy. I always manage to get at least 7 wins in arena no matter what. This guy has just pulled a 6 times 12 arena wins in a row with Rogue decks. Yeah, he is good.
If pox is a tactical game rather than a card game, why is it being sold like a card game? It's a big deal. A game like hearthstone is all about what cards you have. So acquiring those cards is actually part of the game. If a game is supposed to be a contest of skill, that card availability issue works against what kind of game it is. The card game players aren't satisfied because their rank isn't directly proportional to their rune collection, and the tactical gamers aren't satisfied because without complete access to runes, it's not a true measure of skill. I think this is the niche that pox created artificially for itself by trying to appeal to both types. It should pick one.
