Finally, since a long time I have a feeling I'm playing something competitive. What I'm saying is, if you lose a game of Gwent, you know exactly why you lost, which might also be true for Hearthstone, but what I'm saying is, not only do you know why you lost, but it's usually basically always due to your mistakes.
Because you usually don't lose that many games that you played perfectly, which is by the pretty much impossible. So, what I'm saying is the games you lose are the games where you blunder, where you did mistakes, which can definitely not be said about any game of Hearthstone. In Hearthstone, just today I have a direct comparison, you play really well, extremely well, and you can lose a lot of games, or you play very crappy and you win a lot of games.
In Gwent, you have nearly 90% that's nearly unloseable (sic), if you do the same in Hearthstone – 60%. But, the funny thing is, if you play extremely well, you might have 65%, and you if really, really play bad Hearthstone that day, it doesn't matter, you still have 50-55%. I'm not even kidding here, yeah?
You can play like crap and you can still have 50%, it doesn't even matter, it's not even that important how you, it's like coin flipping with a little bit of strategy. So, maybe how you rotate the coin so that it flies through the air at a specific angle so that you can have a 10% higher chance of having this head outcome or tail outcome.
The RNG effects don't help; the super impactful swing-cards don't help: Kazakus, Patches, and such. It also doesn't help that there are cards which are obviously included in every freaking deck. Complexity?
JJ: That's my team.
Lifecoach: The only way how complexity is in the game, yeah, when Complexity is playing.
JJ: (laughs in German) That was a good one.
Lifecoach: They basically deleted all the interesting mechanics from the game. I wonder what happens next. They mentioned publicly that they want to get rid of the Charge mechanics. They want to get rid of direct damage mechanics. They want to get rid of combos.
JJ: (laughs, but not in German) They can just delete the game.
Lifecoach: They want to get rid of OTK combos specifically, but also force combos, they want to take away all cards which might take create sick combos, which might be too powerful, they nerfed all the cards which had interesting effects: Molten Giant, Blade Flurry, Patron, whenever there was something which had another effect than stats - removed from the game.
What am I even saying? What I'm saying is this lock and this lock that is my latest run but at the same time it will also directly be my last run. You will never see me talking about Hearthstone ever again, from this day on, because I'm just fed up. I thought about it, and I just realized - hey, since three years they are doing nothing for the competitive scene, rather the opposite, they are always going in the wrong direction, and at this point I really have to assume that they are either not capable of changing that or that they are not willing to do that.
I'm playing Gwent now, yeah? And Gwent is a great game, the competitive scene is really being taken seriously and also the playing fun is above. Then don't say, "Hey, we simply try everything, so that even the last dude can understand everything from the game", they say, "OK, our game is complex and competitive, but we also have something for you guys to begin the game."
"We also have some kind of mechanic which are easier, and it's also free-to-play, so you get some cool incentives to play, but at the same time we also don't skillcap it, so we say it's perfectly fine if someone who spends 100 hours a week in the game, or if somebody plays the game way, way better than another player, if this guy can own or get better than the guy who doesn't play the game or plays the game very casually, gets the better of him, also by playing card which the weaker player cannot really (understand)."
Patron would be a good example, like Patron was such a mechanic, somebody who was extremely, or who was very good at the game, could take these Patron mechanics and could be really successful with it, but on the other hand, the numbers indicated that people were doing less than average, it wasn't even a strongest deck on the ladder, at least not over all levels, and the reasoning for that was, because it actually took certain playing strengths to even utilize the Patron mechanic, because if you didn't have the certain playing strengths, Patron was not a deck for you. It was just way too weak.
This is a very good example of why I think Hearthstone doesn't have the future, at least...
JJ: Competitively.
Lifecoach: ...competitively. I hope even with me not focusing on Hearthstone you will still enjoy us playing different stuff. There are also interesting things I enjoy. (inaudible) Team League. It's great, yeah? You have different decks, skill-heavy decks, and you have a good format, there are still patches classes, sure, but it's way, way better than this ladder system. (??? didn't get what LC or JJ said here)
You won't see me on the ladder, unless the game is prolonged longer than 5 minutes or 7 minutes on average, I don't have time for that, yeah? I want to have a challenge, mental challenge. I want to improve myself, in whatever stuff, but if I am passionate about it or I like it, then I would like to improve. And if some area doesn't give me a challenge, I'm actually really sad.
That's not for me, if the game is not competitive, that's boredom for me, and I'm really happy we have found something. Not only does it have a very high skillcap, but is also extremely rewarding, which means mistakes become punished and good plays become rewarded and this is also how it should be.