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by taurath 3256 days ago
At the same time, I've seen almost no PvP games based on randomness that really end up working. Hearthstone has a huge RNG element - which deck you're up against, what cards you get etc. People minmax their decks from rank 20 and below (out of 25), and while there is some difference in decision making it really doesn't fulfill the dream of having many different viable strategies and the ability to use them - usually 3-5 "meta" decks that everyone knows about are more powerful than most.

Thats why I think co-op games end up being far more satisfying, since they don't have to balance out a player vs player arms race.
2 comments
scottLobster 3255 days ago
For a physical example of one that does, I found I quite enjoy Magic The Gathering draft games (everyone's given 20 mana of their choice then forced to assemble a deck on the spot from a bunch of sealed, random booster packs that get opened and passed around in an orderly fashion).

In most cases you can still make a viable deck, but everyone will have to deal with largely mediocre cards they wouldn't have picked given the chance. Granted the system isn't perfect, but it seems to effectively level the playing field and encourage creative deck-building. Not sure if Hearthstone has an equivalent mode.

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taurath 3255 days ago
They do, and its called arena - It costs $1.50 to do a round and you're out after 3 losses. Its entirely luck based since the only people winning (its a tournament format) are those that get a lot of really good cards.
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kirkules 3255 days ago
This really just highlights to me that what it means for a game to "end up working" or for a game to be satisfying can be as subjective as what it means for it to be designed "correctly".

It's also interesting to me that the "meta" in Hearthstone not only can, but does change regularly, when people discover deck archetypes that beat the currently dominant ones. Especially when deck types that fell out of favor at some point show up again later because the decks that countered them too hard also fell out of favor (I think variants of Freeze Mage has done this twice?).

This kind of evolution of the meta happens in lots of games, but of course notably in the ones where players themselves refer explicitly to a meta amongst themselves and keep track of it.

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