P.S. Sheesh, reading that RPS review was weird. Like congrats, man, you found a very linear netdeck and dunked on some scrubs, and yet somehow you’re still almost certainly at low ranks, given the budget deck your opponent is playing. That’s funny. Since the games don’t have any decisions you could have made differently, surely it can only be RNG that you’re still stuck in Silver, right? (Intense sarcasm)
I think a lot of what makes it hard to see the skills used in playing LoR well is that it’s not obvious when you screwed up. One source of skill expression, common in card games, is knowing what’s probably in your oppenent’s deck and hand, and playing around them. There are cases where you want to make a different play to play around a card that you will only see several turns later—I think this sort of thing happens more often in LoR than in MtG due to the importance of combat keywords, and the extra knowledge you have about your opponent’s deck. In reinforcement learning terms, noticing these cases is a hard credit assignment problem.
The spell-mana-storing system is a particularly unique offender here. If there was no spell mana, then every turn would be disconnected from the previous one, resource-wise. The addition of spell mana actually makes planning ahead much more complicated, in a way that’s not at first obvious. If you want to pull off a big combo on turn 6 that spends your spell mana, you might have to not play a card, several turns earlier, to bank the mana. A new player might never even notice the possible line, or at most go, on turn 6, “aw, I don’t quite have enough mana to do this cool thing. Oh well.” And even if they notice that they may have screwed up, we’re back to the credit assignment problem, where it’s hard to learn what to do differently without thinking it through.
This is not to say that LoR is super-long-term-strategic, especially not at the start of a new expansion when there’s a lot of aggro running around preying on people trying new things. But If you don’t think you’re making any decisions, then you’re probably not noticing some decisions.
Yeah, if you’re not making *any* decisions that’s definitely on you. If you think you’re not making that many interesting ones, that’s largely on the game, and you’re right.
I definitely see the case that ‘strategy’ involves knowing the common deck builds and playing around/against their exact cards. Don’t think the game justifies that level of cognitive load for me.
P.S. Sheesh, reading that RPS review was weird. Like congrats, man, you found a very linear netdeck and dunked on some scrubs, and yet somehow you’re still almost certainly at low ranks, given the budget deck your opponent is playing. That’s funny. Since the games don’t have any decisions you could have made differently, surely it can only be RNG that you’re still stuck in Silver, right? (Intense sarcasm)
I think a lot of what makes it hard to see the skills used in playing LoR well is that it’s not obvious when you screwed up. One source of skill expression, common in card games, is knowing what’s probably in your oppenent’s deck and hand, and playing around them. There are cases where you want to make a different play to play around a card that you will only see several turns later—I think this sort of thing happens more often in LoR than in MtG due to the importance of combat keywords, and the extra knowledge you have about your opponent’s deck. In reinforcement learning terms, noticing these cases is a hard credit assignment problem.
The spell-mana-storing system is a particularly unique offender here. If there was no spell mana, then every turn would be disconnected from the previous one, resource-wise. The addition of spell mana actually makes planning ahead much more complicated, in a way that’s not at first obvious. If you want to pull off a big combo on turn 6 that spends your spell mana, you might have to not play a card, several turns earlier, to bank the mana. A new player might never even notice the possible line, or at most go, on turn 6, “aw, I don’t quite have enough mana to do this cool thing. Oh well.” And even if they notice that they may have screwed up, we’re back to the credit assignment problem, where it’s hard to learn what to do differently without thinking it through.
This is not to say that LoR is super-long-term-strategic, especially not at the start of a new expansion when there’s a lot of aggro running around preying on people trying new things. But If you don’t think you’re making any decisions, then you’re probably not noticing some decisions.
Yeah, if you’re not making *any* decisions that’s definitely on you. If you think you’re not making that many interesting ones, that’s largely on the game, and you’re right.
I definitely see the case that ‘strategy’ involves knowing the common deck builds and playing around/against their exact cards. Don’t think the game justifies that level of cognitive load for me.