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As someone who has played quite a bit of Hearthstone, I wish he had released his machine learning tool, even though I probably wouldn't use it myself. Such a to
by NickM 12y ago
As someone who has played quite a bit of Hearthstone, I wish he had released his machine learning tool, even though I probably wouldn't use it myself. Such a tool would basically punish people who copied a pre-existing popular deck verbatim, and reward people who creatively designed their own decks to be different from the mainstream.
I think it's worth mentioning that high level players can already do a pretty good job of predicting the cards in peoples' decks. The best players will often experiment with modifying existing decks or building their own from scratch, partially because there's a significant advantage to not using a popular deck that your opponent already knows how to anticipate.
Hearthstone has a funny kind of a sandwich pattern, where the best and worst players tend to create their own decks, but the vast majority of the middle is largely dominated by the same few decks that you'll see over and over again. It would be nice if a tool like this could help break that pattern.
- Retric 12y agoYour assuming a reasonably balanced game. There are plenty of examples where card games Basicly* just had one winning solution at some point. Granted, these types of games tend to be fairly fluid as new cards are added all the time. *aka, there was a type of deck that is dominate even if it allows for various minor changes within that theme.
- NickM 12y agoTrue, but in practice Hearthstone has been relatively balanced, and allows for a lot of different winning strategies that are all competitive. Right now I can think of at least seven very different decks off the top of my head that have been really popular in the last couple weeks, and it's pretty common to see people hit the top ranks with totally new deck ideas that nobody has seen before. It's possible that tomorrow someone will find a game-breaking deck that beats the pants off of everything else out there, but it seems unlikely. The thing is, the game is somewhat self-correcting. The more popular a certain deck is, the more other decks will evolve to counter it.
- nacho_weekend 12y agoGood point. At the same time, when you have a person add/remove even one or two cards to a popular deck it can RADICALLY change the playstyle due to the 30 card limit. Every top player has their own twist on the meta decks.
- scrollaway 12y ago> Such a tool would basically punish people who copied a pre-existing popular deck verbatim, and reward people who creatively designed their own decks to be different from the mainstream. At the lower levels, maybe. High level players are doing the exact same thing this tool is doing, except in their head and potentially a lot better (taking into account variables the tool could not possibly know). Yet people still play the same old decks at high level and just rotate between them to try and have the upper hand. I don't think HS has enough room for pure creativity rewards at a high level yet. Maybe after the first expansion; after all, every card released increases the number of potential combos exponentially.