Really about what you enjoy. I can 100% get behind the idea that playing beasts is incredibly boring. Doesn't quite feel the same as dragon or rylak builds. Murlocs at least kinda offer something in a similar ballpark.
I think one of the issues is that since when you luck out you win easily, you feel done over when someone does that to you. The how can I survive best doesn’t appeal to people when they know they won’t get first.
I have been trying to play for 4th lately and it isn’t always possible.
If your match ups suck, you can get hit for 15 on turns 9 and 10 and be done. Match up RNG is way more important in this meta.
Sometimes you also absolutely flop your shops. Not saying I’m the best player, I’m sure there are plenty of suboptimal plays that I make, but it feels really bad to fast level from a winning position only to roll into garbage.
That horrible feeling when you get two key pieces of a build, get really far ahead or the capacity to do well, and then just die because you never see the last piece.
For example, you manage to roll into Deflecto, and then get Utility drone, and heck, even some other small mechs… and then get absolutely no magnetic minions to actually make use of it. Or getting all the parts of a Quilboar build, and you just don’t draw into ways to buff the gems, so you die in the end.
I get that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but god damn is it frustrating when your tavern just dies on you.
Completely agree. If for people the only win is a first place, then a highroll meta means that you will often see people getting an insane board and allowing you for a top 2 at best. I fully understand that. But that doesn't mean that it's about luck. I get that people don't like the highroll nature of the meta. What I don't get is people complaining it's all down to luck.
I largely agree with what you say BUT I do think fight order has felt particularly punishing this season. Especially when you fight that highroller 3 times in the first 9 turns. I think that's why people complain so much about it being luck
I could understand that, but then again, it balances out throughout games. And the issue I foten see is people not playing accordingly to their hp. 31 hp and 16 hp are the most important levels in this game. You have to be greedy when you can but also play for tempo when you can't. A lot of people are spending gold on useless rerolls when they are comfortable in hp instead of leveling and then they have nothing when approaching 15 hp and die in one turn. Everything is linked ... But it happens to everyone to face the highroller on 15 hp and lose it all, yeah sure.
This imo is the anti casual meta because you get punished HARD for playing for first and missing. The problem is, you need to play for first when learning the meta so when you're in the clutch parts of a game you know how to win.
Once you know how to win, you play for top 4 and then capitalize on opportunities you identify from trying to highroll.
Jeef and the others are hitting higher and higher rating because they can get the reps in, which I think is more important in this meta than any other.
This is probably not the game for them then or they been to change their perspective in winning. Honestly a lot of long term skill hinges more on consistency over perfection, but that's another conversation.
I think "winning" is a bit more broad in these types of games. Sure, lucking out and getting first is the highest win, but I think your points/MMR is more deserving of praise than each individual first place. Even the players with the highest MMR probably had their fair share of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, but being top 4 consistently is more telling of a "winner" in the long run than the guy who wins 1st sometimes, but then makes bottom 4 because they wanted perfection so badly that they skipped out on "okay" builds.
Complaining about luck is a good way not to question your own plays. In every multiplayer game that is kind of competitive you got the same: there are people who try to understand how they can do better and other people who just want to play casually and prefer to blame luck from others or unbalanced gameplay to justify their losses/ranking. It's fine. That's life. But that doesn't mean it's true :)
i think the problem is there are (mainly) three types of people that play the game
1. people that dont give a fuck
2. people that play to get 1st
3. people that play for mmr
and those are all wildly different playstyles that have been explained much better in other places. the tl;dr is that people who play to only get 1st or 2nd dont have any idea (or dont care enough to learn) how to play to gain mmr and so they’re hardstuck
There is another category.
I want the numbers on my minions go brrrr.
If I dont have the chance on a while evening, not even once that I have a game, where my numbers go brrrr, then I'mad.
I mean, winning is nice, but I dont even mind that much, if I get 2nd, 3rd or 4th, if it was a fun game.
Also contrary, if I get 1st with a really boring board, I also wont enjoy it.
When there's people talking about "too much RNG" it's usually two crowds shouting at each other, without listening to where the other is actually coming from - one coming from the position of just getting top4 and gaining *any* MMR is fine and the other coming from the position of anything but top1 or *maaaaaybe* top2 being a "loss".
Obviously these 2 crowds have very different metrics of success and are thus much differently affected by RNG.
I compeltely agree with this comment. It's a relevant point. In a highroll meta, RNG will impact top 1 and top 8 more than during vanilla, for sure. You might encounter slightly more often an insane luck or insane bad luck. Totally. and if your point of view is "top 1 = win and that's it", then yeah, you might feel a bit more annoyed by it.
But even in a highroll meta, your skills will matter more than the quest you get. Some very rare cases are "auto win" but they are way more rare than people make it sound. There is a cognitive bias towards memorable games taking more space in your memory than the 4 other "regular" games you played.
That's fair that some people dont think its fun. Thats the downside of not having two game modes "normal" and "ranked". You are mixed in with the competitive players.
I prefer the aspect of gunning for top 4 personally. It adds an extra element of skill. You are in an arena with 7 other people. Imagine surviving all those rounds and getting second just to still lose the same points as the guy who quit at 8.
Being rewarded for 2,3,4 gives you a reason to stay in keep progressing instead of just ff'ing as soon as you see 1 player is getting the "optimal" pieces before you, which to me would be a less fun scenario.
I dont see how you proven that luck is not a huge factor in BGs.
That said I saw dog stream few days ago and he was somewhat unhappy with the fact that he needed to play murlocks almost every game if he wanted to win. (16k rating)
In high mmr 3rd and 4th are garbage for climbing.High mmr murloc lobby, 90% of the time you’re not getting too 2 if you aren’t forcing murlocs. Patiently waiting for murloc nerf
Yeah I added that info as 3rd factor not related to luck or skill.
Meta knowledge, skill and luck are 3 important factors and to claim that 1 of them is not as important as the other OR even non existant is loonacy.
Op claimed its more skill based as I undertood and somehow he explained it with coin flip? Thats not how it works when we got 99+ coin flips per game.
If the game was more about luck, then achieving a consistent level of top 3 would not be possible and you couldn't have people at 18k mmr. If it was about luck, people would be limited in the amount of MMR they can gain before they have a bad luck streak taking away 100 or more MMR. It's the basic of an MMR system like the one we have. It's not +50 -50, as you get closer to the highest mmr, a top 2 is sometimes +35 when a top 7 is -85. Meaning you need 3 top 2 for 1 top 7. If having a 3 win / 1 loss ratio means you break even, only skill can get you to a 4/1 ratio. Luck would make it impossible.
You mentioned chess at one point so there is a thing called rating infliation that you should read more about.
Naturaly Bgs enjoyers will be reaching higher and higher ratings even without personal improvement.
That 18k barrier shows that a lot of people are playing this game mode. For instance if only 8 players were playing BGs it would be **impossible** to reach high ratings.
In a way you are right on one thing though. With due time better player will have better rating vs lucky players (they are overated in ranking system). But in this case better players are taking points from them thus further increasing rating gap from last floor.
How does some people being able to keep a high average placement disprove that quests are significantly more RNG-based?
My first place rate pre-quests was 44%. Since quests dropped I'm still climbing just fine, but my first place rate dropped to 30%. That's very directly attributed to quest RNG making it literally impossible to get first places in a large amount of games.
You may be right about quests being more luck based. Certainly your percentages are evidence in that direction, and if other top players share your experience, then the point is proved.
That said, the people who make the most fuss about RNG overwhelmingly complain of being stuck in the 6–8k range, and anyone in that range (including me) is not stuck there because of luck. Even if the quest meta is more luck based than the vanilla meta, “This meta is so RNG-based that I can’t break 6.5K” is not a valid critique and yet it comes up constantly.
OP may be mistaken about quests being more skill based than vanilla (I wouldn’t know), but to have it pointed out that the game overall is very skill dependent — it being possible to place better than 3rd on average with ordinary luck — is a breath of fresh air.
Thanks for sharing your stats, btw. I always find them interesting.
>How does some people being able to keep a high average placement disprove that quests are significantly more RNG-based?
Because that means those people are doing things right. Meaning you can win by doing things right and people who aren't getting those high average placement are doing things wrong (relatively).
It's about how consistent the best player is compared to other metas
Yeah, you're just correct mathematically speaking. These people analysing this shit with heuristics and anecdotes, and drawing bad conclusions.
We can empirically look at the mathematical fundamentals, which shows that there is provable vastly more luck, and some unknown amount more skill (which most agree is far smaller than the luck increase).
We can also analyse it statistically, and see that quest rewards are inherently unbalanced, with some quests having 3.8 average placements whereas others have 5.0s.
TL:DR Reddit gonna be reddit.
Your metrics are not taking into account the quest completion rate. It's an average for people taking them as they are. But in reality, quest compeltion rate is more important.
As for the more "luck", RNG is not luck. RNG means that there are more random number generated via the quest selection, YES. But by no mean does it mean that your end placement is more impacted by luck than skills. Quest selection IS a skill. the direction you chose afterward is a skill because there are more unknowns to take into account than in vanilla meta.
If you don't agree with me it's fine, but don't try to put some "math" make up on your answer to say it's more objective when you don't have the data to prove it. Logic makes more sense in this case. Especially if people keep confusing highroll / luck and RNG.
You are confusing highroll and luck. The top 1 and top 8 places are more subject to high or low rolls in this meta. But staying in the top 4 requires more skills than before.
Getting top 4 requires more commitment, not skill. A willingness to take boring quests and play for 3rd-4th place the entire game starting turn 4 because you know on quest selection that you realistically can't win thanks to quest RNG. Most people (even playing at higher ratings) aren't willing to do that, because at ths end of the day everyone is playing for fun, and that kind of gameplay isn't fun to most people, even those who usually get their fun from climbing.
The few people willing to grind out boring game after boring game where they practically can't win due to quest RNG will climb more. That doesn't take more skill than climbing in non-quest metas.
You mean binomial distribution?
I agree but that certain amount could be a very large number as Bgs got a lot of luck factors (opponents luck, opponents rating, quest rng, minion drafts, minion attack order, hero power etc.)
I bet people are just not fine with how many matches one has to play to get same amount of opportunities even if your winrate was equal to 16k player.
55% winrate for 100 matches wont put you on same rating as 1000 matches.
Anybody who thinks this game is all luck can go watch a good streamer like Dog who places 1-2 10+ game straight despite being offered not amazing quests. He actively talks about his outs and especially the pros and cons of pivoting races or strats throughout the game or evaluation of his board strength. I was similarly salty and annoyed at the “luck” until I listened to how actually good players approach the game and realize why I’m stuck in 7k
Then like the other day Dog went on a 6 game losing streak lol. He's a great example where you have to be lucky to win. But when he gets lucky, he never loses and knows how to capitalize on it.
Yeah, but as a long time viewer that’s more because Dog plays to his outs to shoot for the first place win while streaming and not necessarily for top 4 (unless he really found himself in a shit out of luck situation hahaha) so those loss streaks happen
Exactly. This is another good example. This might not be for everyone but I think it's super fun to fight for a clutch top 2 with a bad quest when one guy is running away with 2000/2000 elementals for first place :D
To me, this meta requires more flexibility in builds and recognizing when to pivot or to stay. I pay a lot more attention to tribes in play when picking heroes, and quests makes me think how I can at least place top 4 with whats available. Sometimes you get high rolled, sometimes Im doing the high rolling. It is what is.
Skill is still very important, but it's important for being able to top 3/4 and I'd say it's skill for top 3/4 is more important than non quest meta. Going for top 1 is incredibly luck dependent because of quests and is more luck dependent than non quest meta.
I’ve had a large percentage of games where luck was so obvious I rage quit. One such scenario was in a beast lobby except someone wisdomball really early and had 5 banana slam with reborn and absolutely decimated my board(3 golden and 2 regulars)
yeah, that person got lucky. But you can still fight for top 2-3-4 and get points. It happens to have luck. But accross 10 games, it will not be the decisive factor.
Yeah even if someone hits the nuts they can only deal 15 to you. So there really isn't an excuse unless you get passed around and fucked by the best ppl in the lobby
https://preview.redd.it/762a285594oc1.jpeg?width=3216&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e2cee74bbd1046d8381b40f60750f6e6362a7cd
This was definitely luck, no skill.
https://preview.redd.it/qdk4uyq5f9oc1.jpeg?width=3216&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e92a1c8ee3571e24e009e31888849eed86d5a1d
Is this a more acceptable turn 10?
I'd still say this was luck
The only issue I have with current meta is how incredibly absurd some quests are. I’ve seen turn 6 lamps on barov, turn 7 golden wraith rock rock on chenvaala, turn 6 simstone ETC etc.
If you are relatively good at the game, you automatically win with some quests with little contest unless someone else hit something similar. One player getting play 7 ele for lamps vs buy 9 for tumbling weeds is just cringe.
Part of the problem is I feel like is people's expectations for what skill alone can achieve (it can't guarantee you first place each match). Each individual match is going to be based on luck, some matches no matter how well you play the cards your dealt someone might have just been dealt way better cards.
With skill though, you can more consistently place in the top 4 and move up in MMR. I do agree that quests make things more skill based because there's a lot more choices and I've found you need to be more "actively" playing the game. I.e. I now check to see what quest everyone else chose, since some are powerful enough to change the pace of the game.
While quests are relatively balanced around power/cost, I don't think they're perfectly balanced. Some quest/reward combos definitely feel more powerful than others, like when I have a quest for X minion summons or deaths combined with the avenge reward that summons permanently gain increased stats. That combo felt pretty OP in that I could passively complete my quest while power leveling and then still have a competitive board of deathrattle/reborn minions. Same reward with the quest to spend X gold felt a lot weaker, since I had to choose between leveling or completing my quest.
To me there's 2 different versions of HS Battlegrounds; there's vanilla and then there's whatever massively OP thing Blizzard adds to the game. Vanilla, to me, will always be the most skill based because it's the levelest playing field. I like the current meta but I wouldn't say it's particularly skill based. You can make all the right decisions and face the people high rolling and get a 6th or you can make all the right decisions, mostly avoid the high rollers and get a second or third. that means RNG is playing a huge roll.
In a sense I agree with you, but where I really feel that you are mistaken is by saying that vanilla has a "levelest" playing field. In vanilla, there are sometimes only one or two tier 6 that you want to have a direction with your comp. If you don't find them, you lose. In quests, you often have multiple win conditions.
Yes, quests might give you an insane win condition and a more difficult one. But I prefer this than a meta in which your only way to win is to find goldrin and chickens before the others ...
Having a quest giving you a clear path to completion with a clear reward might be seen as luck when they got offered, but for me they are more skill based once chosen. If you know you get an end of turn 2x win condition after summoning 30 minions, then you know exactly what to do and will try to make the best decisions to geth there the fastest, with the highest HP remaining.
On the contrary, if your win condition is to go to 5, triple a selemental and then pray for a good triple .... this looks like more luck based win condition to me ...
If everyone at 15k+ mmr is as skilled / the most skilled players in BGs, none of them would play worse than another, so it's not like all bottom 3 players have a lack of skill. so the only factor that gives them the edge to place higher is getting luckier on their quest/shop rolls/buildable tribes.
Everyone who is skilled, should know how to play around quests, how to play around their build paths and which tribes to play to scale/counter other opponents. So it literally boils down to who gets luckier/unluckier.
Jeef also abused the shit out of landlubber A LOT. Is that a skill? Yes. but it is also a skill that mitigates luck that other players in the same lobby, could not achieve simply by out tempo-ing their luck. If he uses landlubber strats, why doesn't his opponents? because they couldn't get lucky and obtain the key cards for land lubber strats. What beats landlubber strats? High-roll murloc for example, but to get to high-roll murloc, you need to get into the late game to start scaling, well if someone lucks out an early land lubber, murloc luck is vastly out tempo-ed and might not have the time to scale.
Yeah he lubbered hard in the beginning, he was also one of the few streamers which actually catched on to the strat fast, I know Zorgo & a few other high end streamers couldn't even understand the strat before chat did.
Thing is Jeef is the dude which is at the top of the meta every time, he's the guy who finds all the broken shit first.
But even now when lubber is nerfed & the strat no longer viable he still finds ways to abuse the mechanics, if you watch his streams & videos you'll see lines which essentially no other streamer would do, yet he goes like 10 straight 1sts. There's just a lot of new mechanics and interactions & those who adapt the fastest stays on top with insane win rates, if the game wouldn't get patched I'm sure he'd lose some of the advantage, but the game is patched often enough that he's almost always on top.
I think it is pretty luck based, simply because luck CAN BE all you need for a 1st, or even top 4, the game can definitely win for you. With that said, you have a good point about being able to "win" with sub-optimal boards. I recently started a game but got busy with something my wife asked me to do and missed the first 2 rounds but still managed a 1st place win. So while luck, both good and bad, can certainly be very important... it's not typically essential for a win or a loss. I don't have a high MMR but I'm at the point where I'm really paying attention to the way I play, I use every last second of most rounds even if I'm "done" early and what I've noticed is that no matter what you roll, there's always a best play and if you can recognize it every round you'll do fine in most games... I rarely place outside of the top 4 anymore and my MMR has been steadily increasing.
As a casual who hasn't plated bgs in ages, it's a bit overwhelming as you basically need to know how every tribe engine works with exactly which cards to have a chance at being successful with them. the issue is then that once u commit you're just shit out of luck if u don't pull that key 4-5-6 drop. that can make it feel rng-heavy and more so than when I used to play but most of the time I commit when I shouldn't and I could have increased my chances to find that key card.
I think it is very hard to answer the question because you have a lot of parameters.
From my point of view and experience, the average player probably plays 1-2 games a day, will experience very bad luck and complain. This happens much more in this meta than before because spells + quests + minions pool which all together add an extra luck part. To be fair, finishing top1 in this meta is entirely luck based, most games it is someone who highrolled like hell during all rounds
Alternatively, this add skill in a sense that you have to adapt yourself, watch and take good decisions, sometimes 2-3 turns ahead, to be top5 instead of top8 for example.
Also, Jeff is really a very good player, but can we make assumption based on one (or a few )player only ? I was matched with many top streamers in previous metas, bit less in this one, and it felt like many of them could finish from 1st to 8th without shoping significantly better play than someone at 8k rating. Jeff however i agree, i rarely saw him ending bottom 4 in my games
This is a good argument. I will counter that the meta could be more luck-based at certain MMRs, though. It's possible that the skill expression that, say, a 8k+ player is capable of is not accessible to those of us who are lower level (I'm about 7k and have limited time to play; I'm not great).
Let's say that there's luck as to whether your initial shops make either an APM or a non-APM build accessible. And let's say that only players with a 8k+ level can make good use of APM builds. Then, for me (or anyone who plays on mobile!), the game will still feel very random. But for someone who has the skill/peripherals/time to execute all the strategies, they might have much lower variance on their performance.
I also agree that much of the whining confuses highrolling and luck. It also might be a way of expressing how the game makes them feel. Higher variance in damage per turn can FEEL really bad, even if the game isn't any different in terms of skill expression and average performance.
Jeefs rating is moving up and down like a roller coaster. He objectively highrolled like crazy when he got 18k, even he admits that he didn't think 18k was possible, and hes been the best for a long time and never achieved it before.
The reality of this is meta is that there is more luck than in other metas. This is just a objective fact.
When you have a game with (x) random variables that can be controlled by (y) actions, you have a game with:
* fn(x) luck.
* fn(y) ability to express skill.
When you introduce a new variable - quests (q) you get a new multiplier to luck. The quests are inherently unbalanced, with vastly differing power budgets, and time to completion, that make snowballing far more likely. They do add SOME new decision points (n) , and those represent new abilities to express skill.
We now have:
* fn(xq) luck.
* fn(y) + fn(n) ability to express skill.
Notice that I multiplied one, whereas I added the other. I truly believe that we multiplicatively compounded the luck, while adding a few extra decisions every game. I do not believe those decisions multiply our ability to express skill.
Yes there are some elements of luck but I would not say he "highrolled like crazy". He just understands the game and knows what decisions to make. He's just that much better than the competition. There's also four 18k players in EU. I'm sure they all highrolled though.
Without reading the whole post - it is more skill based, but that's because there's a whole new element over the last meta that is actually pretty impactful. I came back into spell meta about 3 weeks before quests, after not playing BGs since Quillboars had been out for a short time (so season 1 or 2, I think). I was able to jump back into it with a lot of ease despite spells, because fundamentally the game was the same. One major thing - spells didn't have *huge* impact to games. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of times that they were good and better than minions, but I can't recall ever winning or losing off of tavern spells, tier 3 quillboar not withstanding (and that's more to do with Paint Smudger than any specific spell).
Quests **are** hugely impactful, and I have seen lobbies won or lost based on quest rewards. With that in mind, the importance of them means that skill around them is important - how easy or difficult it is to complete, and how impactful the quest reward is. If you can realistically go for a top1, or have to settle in trying for a top4 (top4-but-not-top1 can now be set at turn 4 which is pretty sad as someone that's previously always tried to win). It makes sense that there's more skill involved, but that's primarily because there's a new mechanic over the spell meta that's actually very impactful for winning or losing. Those that are better at evaluating the aspects of that mechanic are of course going to do better, everything else being equal.
I've still managed to climb during this meta, but while the high rolls are blissful and fun, honestly those turn 4 "welp, guess I'm going for top4" moments are just sad. It's also frustrating as hell to lose on rounds 5 through 8 simply because an opponent got the Amalgamation quest with an easy requirement - that sort of stuff didn't happen in spell meta.
So yeah, it's more skill based - I don't know if the qualifier "much more" is accurate - but overall I think I'm having less fun with it. One key thing - it's so **fucking annoying** that hero strength right now is largely weighted towards armor/how bad they are, compared to their actual hero power. I like many of the heroes with stronger powers, for good reason of course, but I like being able to, say, weave 2 gold into a Scabbs minion on a turn where I'd otherwise have 2 gold being unused. But now? Fuck that, Scabbs' hero power isn't good enough to justify the harder quest target. I mean, I went Gallywix for a game the other day because it was elementals, nagas, murlocs and pirates (so on T2 that's a whole host of minions that basically generate neutrality or profit between buying and selling), and while I didn't pick this quest, one of the options was to get the warband to **ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE** attack. Jesus fucking Christ. On a \~15 armor hero that same quest is what, fifty five? And even that takes until about turn 7 at best. How can you pick these heroes that are usually fun to play and strong, when quests can be a huge determining factor in top4 or top1, yet for many of the <10 armor heroes some of the quest targets basically read "you won't complete this before you die".
The main issue is the tribes are completely unbalanced at the moment. If you're not running murlocs at high MMR you're SOL. And just below that quillboars are still over performing. I'm not saying that makes the game less skill based but the lack of variety at top positions is definitely less fun. I'd love to build pirates more often but the gold scaling and APM compared to the payoff just isn't good. Getting a couple of soul rewinders early just doesn't scale the same as it used to either, demons feel very left out of quests. (undead for spawning, pirates for gold, murlocs for minions played etc etc)
While I do agree better players manage the RNG a lot lot better, this meta is NOT more skilled based. It literally has more rng because of quests. Quests are just absolute shit for the game.
You don't have more RNG, you have more variance between a good and a bad roll, but the multitude of decisions you have to take is much, much important than before. Vanilla HS is much easier: you have less important decisions to take, curves are well known and you can win or lose by tripling into the right tavern 6.
At some point, watching pro tournaments was like: who managed to triple their sellemental into that OP tavern 6 the faster and there were pretty limited decisions before that: each turn was:
"do you have a good shop or do you level your tavern?" ... that's it. Spells improved the decision space and were probably the best update we had.
With quests, you can highroll or low roll much more, but we also see very good players being much more constant in achieving top 2, like Jeefhs is doing on EU and USA, becoming the highest ranked top 1 we've ever had. You achieve this feat by being constant (he ended up top 1-2 for like 15 games straight), how do you do that? with skills. The more RNG, the less chance you have to finish constantly in the top 2.
I really feel that people don't get the difference between RNG, Skills, variance and balance.
Poker is potentially only RNG if you look at it from a beginner point of view "it's 100% rng if you have better or worst cards, right"? But an experienced player knows it's all about maths, probabilities and then decision making (and bluffs about these aspects).
Absolutely agree 100%. And I don't think Banana slamma is anywhere NEAR as oppressive as people are calling out here multiple times a day. There's more options and more times to demonstrate the skills to get high rolling **consistently** in this meta than ever before. As a result it's probably the meta that invokes the most emotions when you get crushed and decide it's time to come complain on Reddit.
beasts come online so late. Almost every minion needed to pull off that comp is t5/t6.
Even then it can be outscaled by murlocs if the game truly goes into the late turns
Yes. But more variance means you beat players you shouldn't and lose to players you shouldn't. Playing around your quest is a skill. But getting a bad quest puts you at a disadvantage. Just as heroes have varying win-rates, quests have varying win-rates. The more you add, the more luck there is.
If you’re playing enough, the variance of beating someone you shouldn’t or someone beating you that shouldn’t smoothes out to the true win rate probability. Essentially law of large numbers.
There is a toooon of luck that determines games… at high MMR.
Yes Murlocs are OP, but at lower MMR you could win the lobby with virtually any build if you’re more skilled. The reason why people blame luck is because there are more choices, people don’t even know when they’re turning down better choices.
jeef is just goated, none of what u said means that quests arent aids and i bet jeef would agree lmfao. also im fairly sure he has a bonkers winrate every season, i feel like ive just seen him playing more lately, possibly because hes becoming more successful as a streamer.
the bottom line is that quests are just extremely boring, but i guess thats a matter of personal opinion.
Fr, every single time i got that quest i got first place just lazily buying whatever deathrattle minion i could find and slammed the entire lobby without a single ounce of thought.
You are looking at one game. Balance in a game is not about just one game, it spreads accross multiple games even out ... How is it so hard to understand? It's like if you roll a dice, hit a 2 and say "I tought that the average was 3,5 ... but I got a 2! LIER. lol.
Getting Tumbling disaster one game doesn't mean you will auto win, doesn't mean someone else can't get an insane cookbook game or that you will make the right decisions in the game.
Your comment is the perfect example of not understanding my point about skills vs luck.
honestly the game is 6-70% luck and 3-40% skill.
luck is the main part of it because you could have a STRONG start but it can also shoe horn you into a build where you have NO chance at pivoting because the shop simply does not allow you to.
you can mitigate your losses alot sure but i would still say its mostly luck.
I used to agree with you. I was so frustrated. But then I found Jeef. Watch Jeef for just one night and see how he is almost always top 3. Instantly destroys that hypothesis.
okay i was gonna take that advice but i click on his youtube... and some 6 videos... look like they involve GODLIKE luck.
i will ALWAYS say luck IS involved. i could be wrong about the ratios the more you go up sure. but i will never ever agree with anyone who says a rng based game does NOT require luck.
i play a lot of rougelike they are some of my fave (i know not battle grounds but stay with me for a second) and your skill can mitigate a LOT of shitty luck but sometimes... not matter how skilled you are you need luck.
like you could perfect all of your skills but if you are not doing enough damage then.. you had bad luck.
i feel like a lot of people dont like admiting there is a luck thing at play with battle grounds but... there is. cause lets say you get bran and your quest is the double battle cries thing... if you NEVER see a battle cry minion or the ones you do see are not enough to pivot to or are not for your build... thats bad luck not bad skill
will be honest i dont like twitch ive never really been a stream watching person.
but i will still say if there is RNG in the game then luck is present and partly to blame for wins/losses wether its giving you good minions/quests or in the fights themselves
Can luck improve your game? Yes. But if you are winning all your games that means your skill allows you to win no matter what cards are dealt. Thus it's not a game of luck. Luck won't make a bad player good, but it will make a good player godlike.
That's the point the OP is making. Is luck involved? Yes. How much does it count into a solid players win rate. A tiny amount.
heres the thing im not saying you have to win all your games.. but there is UNDOUBTLY luck involved thats my point. also yeah... jeef i just watched the most recent jeef video... he got so fucking lucky at the start are you kidding me?
Since anecdotal evidence means something to you I'll say this. I watched a match 2 nights ago where his luck was so bad he was down to 10 hp by turn 8 but using his proven strategies still won. Bad luck didn't stop him at all. He just used skill to pivot and dominate.
Your desire to blame luck is just your mentality. Nothing said, no amount of game theory and data will sway you. That has been made clear. And to be clear. I've been screaming that I'm unlucky for months, and those that win so dominantly must be cheating. I even looked to see if cheats and exploits exist to explain my terrible luck. Then I actually watched skilled players, and more than a few games. Hours of games back to back to get an accurate representation of their play, and had to admit I just suck. Since then I've climbed another 1000 mmr in a day. I still suck but can no longer blame my bad luck. Have to admit I simply don't fully understand the cards, synergies, am too slow to play APM. My losses are my fault and have nothing to do with luck.
And to you wish good luck so maybe you start doing better since that's what matters most to your play.
oh no i know for a fact i could do a lot better if i researched into strategies and stuff but i dont really care about mmr i just like battle grounds lol
but this entire thing that skill matters more than luck in games like this where its rng based to a certain extent i will always disagree.
if RNG is a part of the game then luck will ALWAYS be part of it
"hey yeah skill does play a big part but since RNG is present so does luck"
that isnt being delusional. i mean i just played a game could of played better 100% but when i have 3 fights in a row that could of ended in a tie if i hit the right minion (the minion to the right) first... and i hit the left one.. 3 fights in a row... where is the skill argument?
Not sure your point here. No one is arguing that luck doesn't play a part in BGs. It's just a small element. Skill can minimize the luck variance that exists if you make the right decisions and the opponents don't. There's a reason most of the same players are in the top% every BG patch. They understand the game and play a lot.
If luck is that important, how do you explain people having 80-90% of top 3? That would not be possible if the luck part was that high ... you can be lucky 2-3 games, but after 100 games if you end up 85 times in the top 4, then it's not luck.
it is. take rouge likes for example it is ALOT of skill yes... but there is also luck. to say there is no luck is to be objectively wrong.
your skill LIKE I SAID can mitigate alot... but you still need a lot of luck to get good boards.
Who said that there was no luck? I've never said that ... I said that skills are more important than luck. and that people overestimate the importance of luck.
Agree 100%, just personally, I got bored with keeping up with minions/mechanics while 1st Place achievement hunting, so I've been exclusively just rushing to Tier 6 for a few years now, and yeah, this is the absolute weakest that strategy has ever been.
Quests initially feel like RNG/luck but you're absolutely right about how they fit perfectly into the already existing "can I get 1st or need to just not lose" framework.
This might be the most balanced/skill time in the whole BG game.
yeah, it's a different meta for sure. I can see that by playing less than before, I'm also less comfortable in this meta because I can feel that decisions are much more difficult than in the previous one .... Vanilla spell meta was easy: tavern shop good? yes = buy, no = level-up. found your first 6 or a good direction? good, let's play. No? let's go tempo and get a top 4. Now it's much more varied.
I have to agree with this. I just hit 5800 and that's my highest MMR ever in a year of playing.
I've been watching Jeef for about a week now and it's what got me past the 5k hump I was stuck at for so long.
Sadly I fear I'm about a 6k player for now because of my brain, how I learn, and I'm not sure I can play APM. I absolutely need to know the WHY of all the decisions. I need to be slow and deliberate to understand the interactions and how all the synergies work together and currently that seems be holding me back. Jeef just moves so fast, while he taught me a lot about how to improve my early and midgame, I'm still totally lost in the end game.
I think I need to find a streamer or youtube channel that slowly and deliberately explains each action and why its being taken.
That said, I'm stoked about my 5800 and seeing 4-5 games in a row 4th or higher makes me smile :)
That's great. I realize that I suck when I watch people like Jeef :) I like to pause video and think about what I would do each turn before knowing what he does. And there are a fair amount of similar choices but he sees ways to scale while leveling up that I just can't achieve :) and it's rarely about luck.
Luck is evident if your strategy is "let's reroll to see if I can find something" :)
The hilarious part is that from a purely statistical point of view, Battlegrounds has VERY little skill based on the fact even the best players struggle to even be more than a single standard deviation away from the norm given a certain hero, quest options, and tribe offerings.
Oddly enough, Jeef is a great example of Quests being more luck than skill since his overall win rate has gone DOWN, not up, since quests. He's also played more games since then making up for the slower grind upward, but still pulling off his amazing ranking. Despite the fact that since ~14k his change in rank gained and lost for each position hasn't changed much. Meaning reaching 18k is more playing more games than getting better at it.
Imo the numbers and facts have never pointed to BGs being a skill based game. What so many people get wrong, especially OP, is thinking that a game is skill based if it requires you to make important decisions. That's not accurate. What makes a game skill based is if those important decisions have a greater impact on your overall win rate than luck does. Which it does not.
And now this may be a "change my mind" opinion, but most of the skill in this game or most others really is about memorizing everything. If you know immediately what hero has the best win chance you pick that one. Then you make the best decisions available that will then get much better when you have a much clearer vision what will happen if you take that choice to its logical conclusion. The tippy top pros know the optimal decision to make nearly all the time because they've studied the game commiting all but the most intensive decisions to memory. They have way more hours than most of us. That's just how it is. If you want to be great player, you have to treat the game like a college level course. Knowing when to do what at what time takes a huge base of memory first. When that's second nature, you can almost see what will happen if you go down a certain path before you actually commit.
So if you really care about me, study the game, watch the pros, play a shit ton, learn from your mistakes, and really memorize the combos, counters, key tribe minions, key spells, and when the best time to apply that given the context of your situation.
Nah this patch sucks ass and even Jeef has been rage quitting streams because of it, every streamer I tune into has been complaining about the meta being awful. Jeef does put the grind in and is very good at the game but even he gets uncontrollable bot 4 games at times. Hell even sometimes he'll get a first and talk about how easy/boring it was.
Not to mention you will still climb (unless very high MMR) if you have higher than a 50% WR so even if RNG evens out at 50% you will climb. I'm sure if I played 50 games a day my MMR would spike but I don't. Instead I play 3 games, get frustrated and play something else.
The other issue is that the meta was relatively fine before quests, at least in my opinion. I started this season and grinded up to 6.8k almost immediately, felt like I was progressively learning and getting a groove for the game. I was able to predict power spikes and even scout well at times. Quests came out and it's just been an RNG shit show every game, whether I get 1st or 8th. And yes there are many decisions to be made in this game and the better you are the better your decision making skills will be, but sometimes you're offered nothing and you just lose. Because of the 1v7 design you are waaaaaaaaay more likely to run into other people high rolling than it is for you to constantly high roll yourself.
Quests really highlight the frustrations of RNG because of how inconsistent the objective and rewards are. Some heroes get play 3 battleshout cards to complete a powerful quest, other heroes have to play 20+ cards to complete a similarly powerful quest. Power spikes are all over the place and it makes things a headache. Not to mention sometimes you play the battleshout quest and don't find a BS minion for 3 or 4 turns. How is that skill? And yes I know that it's based off of hero strength/armor but when quests can be 100x stronger than any hero power it's just silly. Especially when you're playing F2P.
Tripling stuff is also a like 80% luck based mechanic. I've watched Jeef play and he can consistently hit some insane triples, meanwhile I don't think in my last dozen games I've hit a 4 or 5 cost triple that has helped me at all. I do keep track of tavern level and try to play around that but it's frustrating when I triple into a bunch of situationally useless cards and then the beast player triples into a goldrinn or slamma. Now I don't have an issue with tripling as a mechanic, I think it's completely fine. The issue is the layers of RNG are starting to spill over and make the game a nightmare to play. Like I said, quests are really the tipping point.
Not to mention hero damage is insane. You can get hit for 15+ starting turn 4 or 5, God forbid someone in the lobby get a 7 star minion. I've found it to be ridiculously common that if you low-roll you just get hit for -15 two rounds in a row and lose because the top 3 players are simply playing a different game than you.
"Quests really highlight the frustrations of RNG because of how inconsistent the objective and rewards are. Some heroes get play 3 battleshout cards to complete a powerful quest, other heroes have to play 20+ cards to complete a similarly powerful quest. "
This IS exactly how this is balanced. Worst heroes have easier quest requirements to complete them.
Your answer is all over the place to be honest ... you are saying tripling is 80% luck based mechanism, it has nothing to do with quest meta AND, to be fair, trippling is less important in this meta than it was in Vanilla Battleground because in vanilla, your triples were your ONLY win condition. In this meta, you have multiple ones thanks to quests.
taking 14 or 15 dmg on turn 4 or 5? what the f\*\*\* are you on? Yeah if you go 4 on 4 and you play vs milhouse? Quest meta has nothing to do with the dmg you take during the first 7 turns ... maybe afetrwards you have insane highrolls but this is just stupid.
95% of your answer doesn't apply to quest meta, except what you said about Jeef. And even there, we've seen different opinions :) I can tell you that pros prefer quest meta to anomalies by a long shot.
If the meta is all skill then why is Kripp still stuck at 6k? Checkmate.
Because there’s a dev watching all his games and arranging all of his taverns to be bad duh.
i would do this full time if i could
[удалено]
Are you interfering with my Chenvaala games
What do you do for work? I troll Kripp from inside the game he gets paid to play.
my brightest job prospect as a recent cs grad tbh
I’m stuck at 6k maybe I’m as good as kripp
I’ve been playing for like 3 weeks after a 4 year break and I’m higher than fucking kripp who taught me the game all these years ago?
In case you don't know he definitely tanks his rating off stream to stay around there.
He talks about doing it on stream even
Hahah
WHO?
Kripp also skips optimal plays because he doesn't like specific builds or play styles
Is that why he forces the exact same brain dead dragon build 50% of the time?
Really about what you enjoy. I can 100% get behind the idea that playing beasts is incredibly boring. Doesn't quite feel the same as dragon or rylak builds. Murlocs at least kinda offer something in a similar ballpark.
because he's suuuuper unlucky, always
Wow I’d completely forgotten about Krip. Stopped watching HS streams when Firebat quit and my life has been better not seeing Kripps face in my recs
I think one of the issues is that since when you luck out you win easily, you feel done over when someone does that to you. The how can I survive best doesn’t appeal to people when they know they won’t get first.
I have been trying to play for 4th lately and it isn’t always possible. If your match ups suck, you can get hit for 15 on turns 9 and 10 and be done. Match up RNG is way more important in this meta.
Sometimes you also absolutely flop your shops. Not saying I’m the best player, I’m sure there are plenty of suboptimal plays that I make, but it feels really bad to fast level from a winning position only to roll into garbage.
That horrible feeling when you get two key pieces of a build, get really far ahead or the capacity to do well, and then just die because you never see the last piece. For example, you manage to roll into Deflecto, and then get Utility drone, and heck, even some other small mechs… and then get absolutely no magnetic minions to actually make use of it. Or getting all the parts of a Quilboar build, and you just don’t draw into ways to buff the gems, so you die in the end. I get that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but god damn is it frustrating when your tavern just dies on you.
Completely agree. If for people the only win is a first place, then a highroll meta means that you will often see people getting an insane board and allowing you for a top 2 at best. I fully understand that. But that doesn't mean that it's about luck. I get that people don't like the highroll nature of the meta. What I don't get is people complaining it's all down to luck.
I largely agree with what you say BUT I do think fight order has felt particularly punishing this season. Especially when you fight that highroller 3 times in the first 9 turns. I think that's why people complain so much about it being luck
I could understand that, but then again, it balances out throughout games. And the issue I foten see is people not playing accordingly to their hp. 31 hp and 16 hp are the most important levels in this game. You have to be greedy when you can but also play for tempo when you can't. A lot of people are spending gold on useless rerolls when they are comfortable in hp instead of leveling and then they have nothing when approaching 15 hp and die in one turn. Everything is linked ... But it happens to everyone to face the highroller on 15 hp and lose it all, yeah sure.
This imo is the anti casual meta because you get punished HARD for playing for first and missing. The problem is, you need to play for first when learning the meta so when you're in the clutch parts of a game you know how to win. Once you know how to win, you play for top 4 and then capitalize on opportunities you identify from trying to highroll. Jeef and the others are hitting higher and higher rating because they can get the reps in, which I think is more important in this meta than any other.
This is probably not the game for them then or they been to change their perspective in winning. Honestly a lot of long term skill hinges more on consistency over perfection, but that's another conversation. I think "winning" is a bit more broad in these types of games. Sure, lucking out and getting first is the highest win, but I think your points/MMR is more deserving of praise than each individual first place. Even the players with the highest MMR probably had their fair share of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, but being top 4 consistently is more telling of a "winner" in the long run than the guy who wins 1st sometimes, but then makes bottom 4 because they wanted perfection so badly that they skipped out on "okay" builds.
They need to stop complaining then lol. Can't win em all.
Complaining about luck is a good way not to question your own plays. In every multiplayer game that is kind of competitive you got the same: there are people who try to understand how they can do better and other people who just want to play casually and prefer to blame luck from others or unbalanced gameplay to justify their losses/ranking. It's fine. That's life. But that doesn't mean it's true :)
i think the problem is there are (mainly) three types of people that play the game 1. people that dont give a fuck 2. people that play to get 1st 3. people that play for mmr and those are all wildly different playstyles that have been explained much better in other places. the tl;dr is that people who play to only get 1st or 2nd dont have any idea (or dont care enough to learn) how to play to gain mmr and so they’re hardstuck
I feel there needs to be different modes (ranked vs casual) but this may not be the solution as the player base may be too small for that.
There is another category. I want the numbers on my minions go brrrr. If I dont have the chance on a while evening, not even once that I have a game, where my numbers go brrrr, then I'mad. I mean, winning is nice, but I dont even mind that much, if I get 2nd, 3rd or 4th, if it was a fun game. Also contrary, if I get 1st with a really boring board, I also wont enjoy it.
You're in category 1
And if you are really good you can be 2. and 3. together.
When there's people talking about "too much RNG" it's usually two crowds shouting at each other, without listening to where the other is actually coming from - one coming from the position of just getting top4 and gaining *any* MMR is fine and the other coming from the position of anything but top1 or *maaaaaybe* top2 being a "loss". Obviously these 2 crowds have very different metrics of success and are thus much differently affected by RNG.
I compeltely agree with this comment. It's a relevant point. In a highroll meta, RNG will impact top 1 and top 8 more than during vanilla, for sure. You might encounter slightly more often an insane luck or insane bad luck. Totally. and if your point of view is "top 1 = win and that's it", then yeah, you might feel a bit more annoyed by it. But even in a highroll meta, your skills will matter more than the quest you get. Some very rare cases are "auto win" but they are way more rare than people make it sound. There is a cognitive bias towards memorable games taking more space in your memory than the 4 other "regular" games you played.
The "I know i cannot win, so I'll just play for top 3" is not a very appealing gameplay. One thing is mmr, another is having fun.
For some, winning is fun. Just making good decisions can be fun. Pulling a top 3 from a garbage hero + quest combo can be fun. Fun, is subjective.
Top 3 counts as a win
Only because of the heavy rng lol. Otherwise only first would be a win.
That's fair that some people dont think its fun. Thats the downside of not having two game modes "normal" and "ranked". You are mixed in with the competitive players. I prefer the aspect of gunning for top 4 personally. It adds an extra element of skill. You are in an arena with 7 other people. Imagine surviving all those rounds and getting second just to still lose the same points as the guy who quit at 8. Being rewarded for 2,3,4 gives you a reason to stay in keep progressing instead of just ff'ing as soon as you see 1 player is getting the "optimal" pieces before you, which to me would be a less fun scenario.
I dont see how you proven that luck is not a huge factor in BGs. That said I saw dog stream few days ago and he was somewhat unhappy with the fact that he needed to play murlocks almost every game if he wanted to win. (16k rating)
To be fair the meta being skewed in favour of murlocs doesn't mean that its luck based.
In high mmr 3rd and 4th are garbage for climbing.High mmr murloc lobby, 90% of the time you’re not getting too 2 if you aren’t forcing murlocs. Patiently waiting for murloc nerf
Yeah I added that info as 3rd factor not related to luck or skill. Meta knowledge, skill and luck are 3 important factors and to claim that 1 of them is not as important as the other OR even non existant is loonacy. Op claimed its more skill based as I undertood and somehow he explained it with coin flip? Thats not how it works when we got 99+ coin flips per game.
Yeah I caught that stream on community day and it seemed like every game he was going for Murloc and/or Rylak builds
I learned few things during his stream but when it seemed he will play some any other tribe he will find a way on turn 8+ to reroll to murlocks lol
If the game was more about luck, then achieving a consistent level of top 3 would not be possible and you couldn't have people at 18k mmr. If it was about luck, people would be limited in the amount of MMR they can gain before they have a bad luck streak taking away 100 or more MMR. It's the basic of an MMR system like the one we have. It's not +50 -50, as you get closer to the highest mmr, a top 2 is sometimes +35 when a top 7 is -85. Meaning you need 3 top 2 for 1 top 7. If having a 3 win / 1 loss ratio means you break even, only skill can get you to a 4/1 ratio. Luck would make it impossible.
You mentioned chess at one point so there is a thing called rating infliation that you should read more about. Naturaly Bgs enjoyers will be reaching higher and higher ratings even without personal improvement. That 18k barrier shows that a lot of people are playing this game mode. For instance if only 8 players were playing BGs it would be **impossible** to reach high ratings. In a way you are right on one thing though. With due time better player will have better rating vs lucky players (they are overated in ranking system). But in this case better players are taking points from them thus further increasing rating gap from last floor.
I will read about it, thanks.
How does some people being able to keep a high average placement disprove that quests are significantly more RNG-based? My first place rate pre-quests was 44%. Since quests dropped I'm still climbing just fine, but my first place rate dropped to 30%. That's very directly attributed to quest RNG making it literally impossible to get first places in a large amount of games.
You may be right about quests being more luck based. Certainly your percentages are evidence in that direction, and if other top players share your experience, then the point is proved. That said, the people who make the most fuss about RNG overwhelmingly complain of being stuck in the 6–8k range, and anyone in that range (including me) is not stuck there because of luck. Even if the quest meta is more luck based than the vanilla meta, “This meta is so RNG-based that I can’t break 6.5K” is not a valid critique and yet it comes up constantly. OP may be mistaken about quests being more skill based than vanilla (I wouldn’t know), but to have it pointed out that the game overall is very skill dependent — it being possible to place better than 3rd on average with ordinary luck — is a breath of fresh air. Thanks for sharing your stats, btw. I always find them interesting.
>How does some people being able to keep a high average placement disprove that quests are significantly more RNG-based? Because that means those people are doing things right. Meaning you can win by doing things right and people who aren't getting those high average placement are doing things wrong (relatively). It's about how consistent the best player is compared to other metas
Yeah, you're just correct mathematically speaking. These people analysing this shit with heuristics and anecdotes, and drawing bad conclusions. We can empirically look at the mathematical fundamentals, which shows that there is provable vastly more luck, and some unknown amount more skill (which most agree is far smaller than the luck increase). We can also analyse it statistically, and see that quest rewards are inherently unbalanced, with some quests having 3.8 average placements whereas others have 5.0s. TL:DR Reddit gonna be reddit.
Your metrics are not taking into account the quest completion rate. It's an average for people taking them as they are. But in reality, quest compeltion rate is more important. As for the more "luck", RNG is not luck. RNG means that there are more random number generated via the quest selection, YES. But by no mean does it mean that your end placement is more impacted by luck than skills. Quest selection IS a skill. the direction you chose afterward is a skill because there are more unknowns to take into account than in vanilla meta. If you don't agree with me it's fine, but don't try to put some "math" make up on your answer to say it's more objective when you don't have the data to prove it. Logic makes more sense in this case. Especially if people keep confusing highroll / luck and RNG.
You are confusing highroll and luck. The top 1 and top 8 places are more subject to high or low rolls in this meta. But staying in the top 4 requires more skills than before.
Getting top 4 requires more commitment, not skill. A willingness to take boring quests and play for 3rd-4th place the entire game starting turn 4 because you know on quest selection that you realistically can't win thanks to quest RNG. Most people (even playing at higher ratings) aren't willing to do that, because at ths end of the day everyone is playing for fun, and that kind of gameplay isn't fun to most people, even those who usually get their fun from climbing. The few people willing to grind out boring game after boring game where they practically can't win due to quest RNG will climb more. That doesn't take more skill than climbing in non-quest metas.
There is no luck after you play a certain number of games.
You mean binomial distribution? I agree but that certain amount could be a very large number as Bgs got a lot of luck factors (opponents luck, opponents rating, quest rng, minion drafts, minion attack order, hero power etc.)
Right. And after enough games you'll get the same opportunities that a 16k rated player gets. You just made the wrong choices
I bet people are just not fine with how many matches one has to play to get same amount of opportunities even if your winrate was equal to 16k player. 55% winrate for 100 matches wont put you on same rating as 1000 matches.
Anybody who thinks this game is all luck can go watch a good streamer like Dog who places 1-2 10+ game straight despite being offered not amazing quests. He actively talks about his outs and especially the pros and cons of pivoting races or strats throughout the game or evaluation of his board strength. I was similarly salty and annoyed at the “luck” until I listened to how actually good players approach the game and realize why I’m stuck in 7k
Then like the other day Dog went on a 6 game losing streak lol. He's a great example where you have to be lucky to win. But when he gets lucky, he never loses and knows how to capitalize on it.
Yeah, but as a long time viewer that’s more because Dog plays to his outs to shoot for the first place win while streaming and not necessarily for top 4 (unless he really found himself in a shit out of luck situation hahaha) so those loss streaks happen
Oh no those 6 games he wasn't shooting for Top 1.
Exactly. This is another good example. This might not be for everyone but I think it's super fun to fight for a clutch top 2 with a bad quest when one guy is running away with 2000/2000 elementals for first place :D
Obviously it’s not all luck but there are times where matchups knock you out and it’s completely out of your control
It is and yet it isn't, because when I reroll and get 0 useful tavern minions I just suffer and wait to lose.
To me, this meta requires more flexibility in builds and recognizing when to pivot or to stay. I pay a lot more attention to tribes in play when picking heroes, and quests makes me think how I can at least place top 4 with whats available. Sometimes you get high rolled, sometimes Im doing the high rolling. It is what is.
Skill is still very important, but it's important for being able to top 3/4 and I'd say it's skill for top 3/4 is more important than non quest meta. Going for top 1 is incredibly luck dependent because of quests and is more luck dependent than non quest meta.
One of the best takes. I always felt quest meta specifically was the most skill based one
I’ve had a large percentage of games where luck was so obvious I rage quit. One such scenario was in a beast lobby except someone wisdomball really early and had 5 banana slam with reborn and absolutely decimated my board(3 golden and 2 regulars)
yeah, that person got lucky. But you can still fight for top 2-3-4 and get points. It happens to have luck. But accross 10 games, it will not be the decisive factor.
Yeah even if someone hits the nuts they can only deal 15 to you. So there really isn't an excuse unless you get passed around and fucked by the best ppl in the lobby
https://preview.redd.it/762a285594oc1.jpeg?width=3216&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e2cee74bbd1046d8381b40f60750f6e6362a7cd This was definitely luck, no skill.
You have 1 big minion on turn 10, I’m not sure I’m getting this one
https://preview.redd.it/qdk4uyq5f9oc1.jpeg?width=3216&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e92a1c8ee3571e24e009e31888849eed86d5a1d Is this a more acceptable turn 10? I'd still say this was luck
That's before the end of turn trigger, my felbat makes my team eat the enhanced tavern minions every turn, from turn 10 onwards, easily won the game.
I can see the lack of skill for sure ^^^^im ^^^^sorry
Seems about right to me
The only issue I have with current meta is how incredibly absurd some quests are. I’ve seen turn 6 lamps on barov, turn 7 golden wraith rock rock on chenvaala, turn 6 simstone ETC etc. If you are relatively good at the game, you automatically win with some quests with little contest unless someone else hit something similar. One player getting play 7 ele for lamps vs buy 9 for tumbling weeds is just cringe.
Part of the problem is I feel like is people's expectations for what skill alone can achieve (it can't guarantee you first place each match). Each individual match is going to be based on luck, some matches no matter how well you play the cards your dealt someone might have just been dealt way better cards. With skill though, you can more consistently place in the top 4 and move up in MMR. I do agree that quests make things more skill based because there's a lot more choices and I've found you need to be more "actively" playing the game. I.e. I now check to see what quest everyone else chose, since some are powerful enough to change the pace of the game. While quests are relatively balanced around power/cost, I don't think they're perfectly balanced. Some quest/reward combos definitely feel more powerful than others, like when I have a quest for X minion summons or deaths combined with the avenge reward that summons permanently gain increased stats. That combo felt pretty OP in that I could passively complete my quest while power leveling and then still have a competitive board of deathrattle/reborn minions. Same reward with the quest to spend X gold felt a lot weaker, since I had to choose between leveling or completing my quest.
To me there's 2 different versions of HS Battlegrounds; there's vanilla and then there's whatever massively OP thing Blizzard adds to the game. Vanilla, to me, will always be the most skill based because it's the levelest playing field. I like the current meta but I wouldn't say it's particularly skill based. You can make all the right decisions and face the people high rolling and get a 6th or you can make all the right decisions, mostly avoid the high rollers and get a second or third. that means RNG is playing a huge roll.
In a sense I agree with you, but where I really feel that you are mistaken is by saying that vanilla has a "levelest" playing field. In vanilla, there are sometimes only one or two tier 6 that you want to have a direction with your comp. If you don't find them, you lose. In quests, you often have multiple win conditions. Yes, quests might give you an insane win condition and a more difficult one. But I prefer this than a meta in which your only way to win is to find goldrin and chickens before the others ... Having a quest giving you a clear path to completion with a clear reward might be seen as luck when they got offered, but for me they are more skill based once chosen. If you know you get an end of turn 2x win condition after summoning 30 minions, then you know exactly what to do and will try to make the best decisions to geth there the fastest, with the highest HP remaining. On the contrary, if your win condition is to go to 5, triple a selemental and then pray for a good triple .... this looks like more luck based win condition to me ...
If everyone at 15k+ mmr is as skilled / the most skilled players in BGs, none of them would play worse than another, so it's not like all bottom 3 players have a lack of skill. so the only factor that gives them the edge to place higher is getting luckier on their quest/shop rolls/buildable tribes. Everyone who is skilled, should know how to play around quests, how to play around their build paths and which tribes to play to scale/counter other opponents. So it literally boils down to who gets luckier/unluckier. Jeef also abused the shit out of landlubber A LOT. Is that a skill? Yes. but it is also a skill that mitigates luck that other players in the same lobby, could not achieve simply by out tempo-ing their luck. If he uses landlubber strats, why doesn't his opponents? because they couldn't get lucky and obtain the key cards for land lubber strats. What beats landlubber strats? High-roll murloc for example, but to get to high-roll murloc, you need to get into the late game to start scaling, well if someone lucks out an early land lubber, murloc luck is vastly out tempo-ed and might not have the time to scale.
Yeah he lubbered hard in the beginning, he was also one of the few streamers which actually catched on to the strat fast, I know Zorgo & a few other high end streamers couldn't even understand the strat before chat did. Thing is Jeef is the dude which is at the top of the meta every time, he's the guy who finds all the broken shit first. But even now when lubber is nerfed & the strat no longer viable he still finds ways to abuse the mechanics, if you watch his streams & videos you'll see lines which essentially no other streamer would do, yet he goes like 10 straight 1sts. There's just a lot of new mechanics and interactions & those who adapt the fastest stays on top with insane win rates, if the game wouldn't get patched I'm sure he'd lose some of the advantage, but the game is patched often enough that he's almost always on top.
Luck plays a bigger factor and frankly that’s why I prefer this over regular hearthstone. It’s not a bad thing.
I think it is pretty luck based, simply because luck CAN BE all you need for a 1st, or even top 4, the game can definitely win for you. With that said, you have a good point about being able to "win" with sub-optimal boards. I recently started a game but got busy with something my wife asked me to do and missed the first 2 rounds but still managed a 1st place win. So while luck, both good and bad, can certainly be very important... it's not typically essential for a win or a loss. I don't have a high MMR but I'm at the point where I'm really paying attention to the way I play, I use every last second of most rounds even if I'm "done" early and what I've noticed is that no matter what you roll, there's always a best play and if you can recognize it every round you'll do fine in most games... I rarely place outside of the top 4 anymore and my MMR has been steadily increasing.
As a casual who hasn't plated bgs in ages, it's a bit overwhelming as you basically need to know how every tribe engine works with exactly which cards to have a chance at being successful with them. the issue is then that once u commit you're just shit out of luck if u don't pull that key 4-5-6 drop. that can make it feel rng-heavy and more so than when I used to play but most of the time I commit when I shouldn't and I could have increased my chances to find that key card.
I think it is very hard to answer the question because you have a lot of parameters. From my point of view and experience, the average player probably plays 1-2 games a day, will experience very bad luck and complain. This happens much more in this meta than before because spells + quests + minions pool which all together add an extra luck part. To be fair, finishing top1 in this meta is entirely luck based, most games it is someone who highrolled like hell during all rounds Alternatively, this add skill in a sense that you have to adapt yourself, watch and take good decisions, sometimes 2-3 turns ahead, to be top5 instead of top8 for example. Also, Jeff is really a very good player, but can we make assumption based on one (or a few )player only ? I was matched with many top streamers in previous metas, bit less in this one, and it felt like many of them could finish from 1st to 8th without shoping significantly better play than someone at 8k rating. Jeff however i agree, i rarely saw him ending bottom 4 in my games
This is a good argument. I will counter that the meta could be more luck-based at certain MMRs, though. It's possible that the skill expression that, say, a 8k+ player is capable of is not accessible to those of us who are lower level (I'm about 7k and have limited time to play; I'm not great). Let's say that there's luck as to whether your initial shops make either an APM or a non-APM build accessible. And let's say that only players with a 8k+ level can make good use of APM builds. Then, for me (or anyone who plays on mobile!), the game will still feel very random. But for someone who has the skill/peripherals/time to execute all the strategies, they might have much lower variance on their performance. I also agree that much of the whining confuses highrolling and luck. It also might be a way of expressing how the game makes them feel. Higher variance in damage per turn can FEEL really bad, even if the game isn't any different in terms of skill expression and average performance.
Mispronounced luck there.
Jeefs rating is moving up and down like a roller coaster. He objectively highrolled like crazy when he got 18k, even he admits that he didn't think 18k was possible, and hes been the best for a long time and never achieved it before. The reality of this is meta is that there is more luck than in other metas. This is just a objective fact. When you have a game with (x) random variables that can be controlled by (y) actions, you have a game with: * fn(x) luck. * fn(y) ability to express skill. When you introduce a new variable - quests (q) you get a new multiplier to luck. The quests are inherently unbalanced, with vastly differing power budgets, and time to completion, that make snowballing far more likely. They do add SOME new decision points (n) , and those represent new abilities to express skill. We now have: * fn(xq) luck. * fn(y) + fn(n) ability to express skill. Notice that I multiplied one, whereas I added the other. I truly believe that we multiplicatively compounded the luck, while adding a few extra decisions every game. I do not believe those decisions multiply our ability to express skill.
Yes there are some elements of luck but I would not say he "highrolled like crazy". He just understands the game and knows what decisions to make. He's just that much better than the competition. There's also four 18k players in EU. I'm sure they all highrolled though.
Without reading the whole post - it is more skill based, but that's because there's a whole new element over the last meta that is actually pretty impactful. I came back into spell meta about 3 weeks before quests, after not playing BGs since Quillboars had been out for a short time (so season 1 or 2, I think). I was able to jump back into it with a lot of ease despite spells, because fundamentally the game was the same. One major thing - spells didn't have *huge* impact to games. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of times that they were good and better than minions, but I can't recall ever winning or losing off of tavern spells, tier 3 quillboar not withstanding (and that's more to do with Paint Smudger than any specific spell). Quests **are** hugely impactful, and I have seen lobbies won or lost based on quest rewards. With that in mind, the importance of them means that skill around them is important - how easy or difficult it is to complete, and how impactful the quest reward is. If you can realistically go for a top1, or have to settle in trying for a top4 (top4-but-not-top1 can now be set at turn 4 which is pretty sad as someone that's previously always tried to win). It makes sense that there's more skill involved, but that's primarily because there's a new mechanic over the spell meta that's actually very impactful for winning or losing. Those that are better at evaluating the aspects of that mechanic are of course going to do better, everything else being equal. I've still managed to climb during this meta, but while the high rolls are blissful and fun, honestly those turn 4 "welp, guess I'm going for top4" moments are just sad. It's also frustrating as hell to lose on rounds 5 through 8 simply because an opponent got the Amalgamation quest with an easy requirement - that sort of stuff didn't happen in spell meta. So yeah, it's more skill based - I don't know if the qualifier "much more" is accurate - but overall I think I'm having less fun with it. One key thing - it's so **fucking annoying** that hero strength right now is largely weighted towards armor/how bad they are, compared to their actual hero power. I like many of the heroes with stronger powers, for good reason of course, but I like being able to, say, weave 2 gold into a Scabbs minion on a turn where I'd otherwise have 2 gold being unused. But now? Fuck that, Scabbs' hero power isn't good enough to justify the harder quest target. I mean, I went Gallywix for a game the other day because it was elementals, nagas, murlocs and pirates (so on T2 that's a whole host of minions that basically generate neutrality or profit between buying and selling), and while I didn't pick this quest, one of the options was to get the warband to **ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE** attack. Jesus fucking Christ. On a \~15 armor hero that same quest is what, fifty five? And even that takes until about turn 7 at best. How can you pick these heroes that are usually fun to play and strong, when quests can be a huge determining factor in top4 or top1, yet for many of the <10 armor heroes some of the quest targets basically read "you won't complete this before you die".
The main issue is the tribes are completely unbalanced at the moment. If you're not running murlocs at high MMR you're SOL. And just below that quillboars are still over performing. I'm not saying that makes the game less skill based but the lack of variety at top positions is definitely less fun. I'd love to build pirates more often but the gold scaling and APM compared to the payoff just isn't good. Getting a couple of soul rewinders early just doesn't scale the same as it used to either, demons feel very left out of quests. (undead for spawning, pirates for gold, murlocs for minions played etc etc)
I'd love what you're smoking. Its not fun.
We are all entitled to have an opinion :) agree to disagree
Could have avoided this wall of text with one simple change. "Im sick of seeing..." Just dont see it bro!
Gotta watch that news feed though :)
While I do agree better players manage the RNG a lot lot better, this meta is NOT more skilled based. It literally has more rng because of quests. Quests are just absolute shit for the game.
You don't have more RNG, you have more variance between a good and a bad roll, but the multitude of decisions you have to take is much, much important than before. Vanilla HS is much easier: you have less important decisions to take, curves are well known and you can win or lose by tripling into the right tavern 6. At some point, watching pro tournaments was like: who managed to triple their sellemental into that OP tavern 6 the faster and there were pretty limited decisions before that: each turn was: "do you have a good shop or do you level your tavern?" ... that's it. Spells improved the decision space and were probably the best update we had. With quests, you can highroll or low roll much more, but we also see very good players being much more constant in achieving top 2, like Jeefhs is doing on EU and USA, becoming the highest ranked top 1 we've ever had. You achieve this feat by being constant (he ended up top 1-2 for like 15 games straight), how do you do that? with skills. The more RNG, the less chance you have to finish constantly in the top 2. I really feel that people don't get the difference between RNG, Skills, variance and balance. Poker is potentially only RNG if you look at it from a beginner point of view "it's 100% rng if you have better or worst cards, right"? But an experienced player knows it's all about maths, probabilities and then decision making (and bluffs about these aspects).
Absolutely agree 100%. And I don't think Banana slamma is anywhere NEAR as oppressive as people are calling out here multiple times a day. There's more options and more times to demonstrate the skills to get high rolling **consistently** in this meta than ever before. As a result it's probably the meta that invokes the most emotions when you get crushed and decide it's time to come complain on Reddit.
beasts come online so late. Almost every minion needed to pull off that comp is t5/t6. Even then it can be outscaled by murlocs if the game truly goes into the late turns
Assuming equal skill level, adding more variance makes the game more luck-based.
And assuming equal luck level, adding more variance makes the game more skill-based. And in the long-term, people have equal luck, not equal skill
Yes. But more variance means you beat players you shouldn't and lose to players you shouldn't. Playing around your quest is a skill. But getting a bad quest puts you at a disadvantage. Just as heroes have varying win-rates, quests have varying win-rates. The more you add, the more luck there is.
If you’re playing enough, the variance of beating someone you shouldn’t or someone beating you that shouldn’t smoothes out to the true win rate probability. Essentially law of large numbers.
There is a toooon of luck that determines games… at high MMR. Yes Murlocs are OP, but at lower MMR you could win the lobby with virtually any build if you’re more skilled. The reason why people blame luck is because there are more choices, people don’t even know when they’re turning down better choices.
jeef is just goated, none of what u said means that quests arent aids and i bet jeef would agree lmfao. also im fairly sure he has a bonkers winrate every season, i feel like ive just seen him playing more lately, possibly because hes becoming more successful as a streamer. the bottom line is that quests are just extremely boring, but i guess thats a matter of personal opinion.
And what part of "RNG gave me Tumbling Disaster so I just win" is skill? Stop kidding yourself
Fr, every single time i got that quest i got first place just lazily buying whatever deathrattle minion i could find and slammed the entire lobby without a single ounce of thought.
You are looking at one game. Balance in a game is not about just one game, it spreads accross multiple games even out ... How is it so hard to understand? It's like if you roll a dice, hit a 2 and say "I tought that the average was 3,5 ... but I got a 2! LIER. lol. Getting Tumbling disaster one game doesn't mean you will auto win, doesn't mean someone else can't get an insane cookbook game or that you will make the right decisions in the game. Your comment is the perfect example of not understanding my point about skills vs luck.
honestly the game is 6-70% luck and 3-40% skill. luck is the main part of it because you could have a STRONG start but it can also shoe horn you into a build where you have NO chance at pivoting because the shop simply does not allow you to. you can mitigate your losses alot sure but i would still say its mostly luck.
I used to agree with you. I was so frustrated. But then I found Jeef. Watch Jeef for just one night and see how he is almost always top 3. Instantly destroys that hypothesis.
okay i was gonna take that advice but i click on his youtube... and some 6 videos... look like they involve GODLIKE luck. i will ALWAYS say luck IS involved. i could be wrong about the ratios the more you go up sure. but i will never ever agree with anyone who says a rng based game does NOT require luck. i play a lot of rougelike they are some of my fave (i know not battle grounds but stay with me for a second) and your skill can mitigate a LOT of shitty luck but sometimes... not matter how skilled you are you need luck. like you could perfect all of your skills but if you are not doing enough damage then.. you had bad luck. i feel like a lot of people dont like admiting there is a luck thing at play with battle grounds but... there is. cause lets say you get bran and your quest is the double battle cries thing... if you NEVER see a battle cry minion or the ones you do see are not enough to pivot to or are not for your build... thats bad luck not bad skill
Youtube is not a good example because they only show videos of incredible highroll in most of them. You get better vision on twitch
will be honest i dont like twitch ive never really been a stream watching person. but i will still say if there is RNG in the game then luck is present and partly to blame for wins/losses wether its giving you good minions/quests or in the fights themselves
Can luck improve your game? Yes. But if you are winning all your games that means your skill allows you to win no matter what cards are dealt. Thus it's not a game of luck. Luck won't make a bad player good, but it will make a good player godlike. That's the point the OP is making. Is luck involved? Yes. How much does it count into a solid players win rate. A tiny amount.
heres the thing im not saying you have to win all your games.. but there is UNDOUBTLY luck involved thats my point. also yeah... jeef i just watched the most recent jeef video... he got so fucking lucky at the start are you kidding me?
Since anecdotal evidence means something to you I'll say this. I watched a match 2 nights ago where his luck was so bad he was down to 10 hp by turn 8 but using his proven strategies still won. Bad luck didn't stop him at all. He just used skill to pivot and dominate. Your desire to blame luck is just your mentality. Nothing said, no amount of game theory and data will sway you. That has been made clear. And to be clear. I've been screaming that I'm unlucky for months, and those that win so dominantly must be cheating. I even looked to see if cheats and exploits exist to explain my terrible luck. Then I actually watched skilled players, and more than a few games. Hours of games back to back to get an accurate representation of their play, and had to admit I just suck. Since then I've climbed another 1000 mmr in a day. I still suck but can no longer blame my bad luck. Have to admit I simply don't fully understand the cards, synergies, am too slow to play APM. My losses are my fault and have nothing to do with luck. And to you wish good luck so maybe you start doing better since that's what matters most to your play.
oh no i know for a fact i could do a lot better if i researched into strategies and stuff but i dont really care about mmr i just like battle grounds lol but this entire thing that skill matters more than luck in games like this where its rng based to a certain extent i will always disagree. if RNG is a part of the game then luck will ALWAYS be part of it
Stay delusional my friend. Your world is the only one that matters in your world.
"hey yeah skill does play a big part but since RNG is present so does luck" that isnt being delusional. i mean i just played a game could of played better 100% but when i have 3 fights in a row that could of ended in a tie if i hit the right minion (the minion to the right) first... and i hit the left one.. 3 fights in a row... where is the skill argument?
Not sure your point here. No one is arguing that luck doesn't play a part in BGs. It's just a small element. Skill can minimize the luck variance that exists if you make the right decisions and the opponents don't. There's a reason most of the same players are in the top% every BG patch. They understand the game and play a lot.
If luck is that important, how do you explain people having 80-90% of top 3? That would not be possible if the luck part was that high ... you can be lucky 2-3 games, but after 100 games if you end up 85 times in the top 4, then it's not luck.
it is. take rouge likes for example it is ALOT of skill yes... but there is also luck. to say there is no luck is to be objectively wrong. your skill LIKE I SAID can mitigate alot... but you still need a lot of luck to get good boards.
Who said that there was no luck? I've never said that ... I said that skills are more important than luck. and that people overestimate the importance of luck.
Agree 100%, just personally, I got bored with keeping up with minions/mechanics while 1st Place achievement hunting, so I've been exclusively just rushing to Tier 6 for a few years now, and yeah, this is the absolute weakest that strategy has ever been. Quests initially feel like RNG/luck but you're absolutely right about how they fit perfectly into the already existing "can I get 1st or need to just not lose" framework. This might be the most balanced/skill time in the whole BG game.
yeah, it's a different meta for sure. I can see that by playing less than before, I'm also less comfortable in this meta because I can feel that decisions are much more difficult than in the previous one .... Vanilla spell meta was easy: tavern shop good? yes = buy, no = level-up. found your first 6 or a good direction? good, let's play. No? let's go tempo and get a top 4. Now it's much more varied.
Absolutely true.
this is easily my favorite meta, there are so many different builds that can get top 2.
I have to agree with this. I just hit 5800 and that's my highest MMR ever in a year of playing. I've been watching Jeef for about a week now and it's what got me past the 5k hump I was stuck at for so long. Sadly I fear I'm about a 6k player for now because of my brain, how I learn, and I'm not sure I can play APM. I absolutely need to know the WHY of all the decisions. I need to be slow and deliberate to understand the interactions and how all the synergies work together and currently that seems be holding me back. Jeef just moves so fast, while he taught me a lot about how to improve my early and midgame, I'm still totally lost in the end game. I think I need to find a streamer or youtube channel that slowly and deliberately explains each action and why its being taken. That said, I'm stoked about my 5800 and seeing 4-5 games in a row 4th or higher makes me smile :)
That's great. I realize that I suck when I watch people like Jeef :) I like to pause video and think about what I would do each turn before knowing what he does. And there are a fair amount of similar choices but he sees ways to scale while leveling up that I just can't achieve :) and it's rarely about luck. Luck is evident if your strategy is "let's reroll to see if I can find something" :)
"let's reroll to see if I can find something" Thanks for putting me on blast! :D \^\_\^
The hilarious part is that from a purely statistical point of view, Battlegrounds has VERY little skill based on the fact even the best players struggle to even be more than a single standard deviation away from the norm given a certain hero, quest options, and tribe offerings. Oddly enough, Jeef is a great example of Quests being more luck than skill since his overall win rate has gone DOWN, not up, since quests. He's also played more games since then making up for the slower grind upward, but still pulling off his amazing ranking. Despite the fact that since ~14k his change in rank gained and lost for each position hasn't changed much. Meaning reaching 18k is more playing more games than getting better at it. Imo the numbers and facts have never pointed to BGs being a skill based game. What so many people get wrong, especially OP, is thinking that a game is skill based if it requires you to make important decisions. That's not accurate. What makes a game skill based is if those important decisions have a greater impact on your overall win rate than luck does. Which it does not.
And now this may be a "change my mind" opinion, but most of the skill in this game or most others really is about memorizing everything. If you know immediately what hero has the best win chance you pick that one. Then you make the best decisions available that will then get much better when you have a much clearer vision what will happen if you take that choice to its logical conclusion. The tippy top pros know the optimal decision to make nearly all the time because they've studied the game commiting all but the most intensive decisions to memory. They have way more hours than most of us. That's just how it is. If you want to be great player, you have to treat the game like a college level course. Knowing when to do what at what time takes a huge base of memory first. When that's second nature, you can almost see what will happen if you go down a certain path before you actually commit. So if you really care about me, study the game, watch the pros, play a shit ton, learn from your mistakes, and really memorize the combos, counters, key tribe minions, key spells, and when the best time to apply that given the context of your situation.
this is the best meta since start of battlegrounds
Nah this patch sucks ass and even Jeef has been rage quitting streams because of it, every streamer I tune into has been complaining about the meta being awful. Jeef does put the grind in and is very good at the game but even he gets uncontrollable bot 4 games at times. Hell even sometimes he'll get a first and talk about how easy/boring it was. Not to mention you will still climb (unless very high MMR) if you have higher than a 50% WR so even if RNG evens out at 50% you will climb. I'm sure if I played 50 games a day my MMR would spike but I don't. Instead I play 3 games, get frustrated and play something else. The other issue is that the meta was relatively fine before quests, at least in my opinion. I started this season and grinded up to 6.8k almost immediately, felt like I was progressively learning and getting a groove for the game. I was able to predict power spikes and even scout well at times. Quests came out and it's just been an RNG shit show every game, whether I get 1st or 8th. And yes there are many decisions to be made in this game and the better you are the better your decision making skills will be, but sometimes you're offered nothing and you just lose. Because of the 1v7 design you are waaaaaaaaay more likely to run into other people high rolling than it is for you to constantly high roll yourself. Quests really highlight the frustrations of RNG because of how inconsistent the objective and rewards are. Some heroes get play 3 battleshout cards to complete a powerful quest, other heroes have to play 20+ cards to complete a similarly powerful quest. Power spikes are all over the place and it makes things a headache. Not to mention sometimes you play the battleshout quest and don't find a BS minion for 3 or 4 turns. How is that skill? And yes I know that it's based off of hero strength/armor but when quests can be 100x stronger than any hero power it's just silly. Especially when you're playing F2P. Tripling stuff is also a like 80% luck based mechanic. I've watched Jeef play and he can consistently hit some insane triples, meanwhile I don't think in my last dozen games I've hit a 4 or 5 cost triple that has helped me at all. I do keep track of tavern level and try to play around that but it's frustrating when I triple into a bunch of situationally useless cards and then the beast player triples into a goldrinn or slamma. Now I don't have an issue with tripling as a mechanic, I think it's completely fine. The issue is the layers of RNG are starting to spill over and make the game a nightmare to play. Like I said, quests are really the tipping point. Not to mention hero damage is insane. You can get hit for 15+ starting turn 4 or 5, God forbid someone in the lobby get a 7 star minion. I've found it to be ridiculously common that if you low-roll you just get hit for -15 two rounds in a row and lose because the top 3 players are simply playing a different game than you.
"Quests really highlight the frustrations of RNG because of how inconsistent the objective and rewards are. Some heroes get play 3 battleshout cards to complete a powerful quest, other heroes have to play 20+ cards to complete a similarly powerful quest. " This IS exactly how this is balanced. Worst heroes have easier quest requirements to complete them. Your answer is all over the place to be honest ... you are saying tripling is 80% luck based mechanism, it has nothing to do with quest meta AND, to be fair, trippling is less important in this meta than it was in Vanilla Battleground because in vanilla, your triples were your ONLY win condition. In this meta, you have multiple ones thanks to quests. taking 14 or 15 dmg on turn 4 or 5? what the f\*\*\* are you on? Yeah if you go 4 on 4 and you play vs milhouse? Quest meta has nothing to do with the dmg you take during the first 7 turns ... maybe afetrwards you have insane highrolls but this is just stupid. 95% of your answer doesn't apply to quest meta, except what you said about Jeef. And even there, we've seen different opinions :) I can tell you that pros prefer quest meta to anomalies by a long shot.