this game is not fun after stone league

[Celestial Lexi]

so p2w and you need go with meta decks all the time. im really unhappy with this, thought it turn out to be a better game with vast strategies but really its all about the swarms

[Khazlariko]

It's not pay to win in the least. But people do get pretty competitive and low cost minions tend to have a bit of an advantage (in my opinion).

[Euphytose]

Just play draft. As soon as you have 1500 gold then you technically have all cards, and you will play against varied decks, and people of all skill levels.

In strategy games, there's always a "top" build, strat, etc... After each patch, the quest for the new meta begins, the sheeps are loose, and everyone copies everyone else, it becomes extremely boring. Without draft I probably would have stopped playing already.

[AlternateEnding]

git gud

[Celestial Lexi]

you can say git gud all you want. but if following the meta is the only way to progress then its pretty boring lol

[Leapphrog]

You can play fun and interesting decks and still be competitive. I just passed through bronze into silver and I saw about 20 different decks of varying degrees of strength. I find the random cards (Future Present into Colossus and Blind Date for monkeys come to mind) more annoying to play against than the "strong" decks.

I don't find the p2w argument valid. Most of the top or meta decks have a lot of the cards you start with. Sure, you have to spend 250 gems to craft one or two cards, but you get those from drafts and just playing. By level 23-25, you should be able to build nearly any deck you want. And if you don't currently have the cards you need, you have a collection large enough to shred to craft the 2-3 missing pieces.

Of course there will be people who dump cash into the game and craft 20 legendaries and supremes. But no good deck is made by only playing those cards. You need 2-3, at most. And they are reasonable to craft or just find.

[EtherIord]

I climbed to diamond 5 using my own deck. Here’s what I played:

• crossbow dudes
  
• plasma marines
  
• stun blast
  
• drone walker
  
• lightning bolt
  
• chain lightning
  
• divine warrior
  
• beam of doom
  
• cleaver
  
• last stand

I also used a rammer, a cannon roller and a whelp along the way instead of the last stand, stun blast, drone walker, but this is the deck I ended with. Ended, because I decided to surrender tens of games in a row just to go back to bronze, because I can agree games can be boring on higher ranks. My main issue would be that if I wanted to climb ranks and I would be matched against an opponent who kills me (is better and/or his deck counters mine), then I would have to stop playing, because the chance to be matched against him again was too high.

Not only this, but I felt like the most popular win conditions are cheap. There’s Ratbo and other swarm decks that are strong because of 2 win conditions: either swarm of weak minions or red golems with insane amounts of health, and there’s monkey business and other rush decks which just go face, and you have to keep countering opponent’s plays; you can succeed countering your opponent 5 times in a row and still lose the game, because that one time you just can’t instantly kill a monkey/rammer, and then enrage, stun, heal, stun… The game is designed so that you can recover from snowballing by using health resource when a minion damages you, but you can savely damage this minion by other minions, but if the minion is just going to kill you and your minions are going to be stunned, then this just doesn’t work.

So there’s mostly these 2 archetypes that I encountered in I think a majority of games, and there’s like a tier 2 decks by popularity (not by effectiveness): Settsu nestdeck, which just counters any play you do and the game seems one–dimensional (it feels more about the opponent being able to counter you or not, than about you being able to counter him as well), various demon warrior variations and C2A.

So that’s like 5 basic archetypes you keep playing against and it gets boring fast. I felt really happy when I would lose against another deck, like the one from Fnu or the one from ultrahiperdupersomethingboy, except the ultrahiperdupersomethingboy had a deck very similar to mine and our games would last very long and be very hard, which was cool the first time, but after like 5 games we were really fatigued and annoyed by still being matched against each–other.

As for P2W: yesterday I played in a tournament and I had to craft 2 cards (saved a lot of resources), but still lost, because I wouldn’t have a champion that I felt was strong in given ruleset and it was too late to buy the champion (what’t the point if you don’t know how to use it) – similar case with new cards really. I could use all my resources earlier, but that’s just not something that will work out for F2P way, because of how limited the resources are.

You have to understand though, that this is a collectible game. You can’t make a collectible game where collectibles affect gameplay, and you can buy them, and there’s absolutely no P2W factor. That’s just impossible. Devs really try hard to make the game pretty fair, like designing legendaries in a way that they aren’t objectively strong (see recent Collosus nerf and reasons for doing so), so it’s really the supreme cards that are a problem. Coming from Hearthstone I can say that Minion Master compared to Blizzard’s game is really like heaven and Earth in regards to P2W aspect. I think e.g. League of Legends is more fair, but it’s not a collectible game…

[Memfisto]

It's definitely not P2W to climb, and the only meta thing you need to worry about is how to play against the meta decks. By no means you need to have a meta deck to climb with.

[Euphytose]

Originally posted by Memfisto:

It's definitely not P2W to climb, and the only meta thing you need to worry about is how to play against the meta decks. By no means you need to have a meta deck to climb with.

Except the best decks against meta decks are often useless against other decks, so you have to hope you fight who you want. If I build a specific deck and I face the same deck over and over again I can potentially climb to the top spot, but obviously it never happens. Then you change your deck to a more versatile one, and you start facing meta decks again. This is why normal has no value to me, and draft is just better in every single way.

[CallMeBlackSh33p]

Originally posted by Super Alexa:

you can say git gud all you want. but if following the meta is the only way to progress then its pretty boring lol

People with non-meta decks make it into the top 20. "git gud" is infuriating however you must understand there ARE specific ways to outplay. A strong deck can take you far, but strong play can take your farther.

[Memfisto]

Originally posted by Euphytose:

Originally posted by Memfisto:

It's definitely not P2W to climb, and the only meta thing you need to worry about is how to play against the meta decks. By no means you need to have a meta deck to climb with.

Except the best decks against meta decks are often useless against other decks, so you have to hope you fight who you want. If I build a specific deck and I face the same deck over and over again I can potentially climb to the top spot, but obviously it never happens. Then you change your deck to a more versatile one, and you start facing meta decks again. This is why normal has no value to me, and draft is just better in every single way.

That's there deck building skills come into play. You make a versatile deck to counter/deal with meta decks which are played most often and which are among the strongest. If you can deal with them, you can deal with majority of the decks. There will always be a deck you're weak to, and in those instances you'll lose only if you are evenly matched in terms of skill (or your skills are inferior). If you play the game like that, you will most certantly climb really fast.

[Euphytose]

Originally posted by Memfisto:

If you can deal with them, you can deal with majority of the decks.

No, that's the problem. And that's exactly why "meta" decks are meta.

[Memfisto]

Originally posted by Euphytose:

Originally posted by Memfisto:

If you can deal with them, you can deal with majority of the decks.

No, that's the problem. And that's exactly why "meta" decks are meta.

Which is why you take an anti-meta deck and play. That gives you both meta and anti-meta decks to get to the top. You can still get really far using other decks as long as they make sense and you play good.

[EtherIord]

Let me describe a hypothetical situation.

Let’s say there are 8 absolutely insane cards, so that it is a no–brainer to build your deck. Let’s say these are minions of low cost, high health, attack both ground and air with high damage. One of these cards is even better than the rest, therefore everyone makes the same deck consistsing of 7 absolutely insane cards and 3 copies of an even better card. So this is an example of a meta, that cannot be countered and there’s no anti–meta.

So we already established that some cards can be too strong and uncounterable. This is not the case with Minion Masters, but it shows an opposite extreme to the perfect balance, and why an effort should be taken to not go in this direction.

To explain this more clearly let me show you a hypothetical scenario between these two extremes.

Let’s say there is a card “frost golem” for 0 mana, which is invincible, automatically kills any minion that attacks it and kills the opposing champion once it reaches him. The text on the card says “only fire golem can kill it. You can’t play both fire golem and frost golem in your deck”. The “fire golem” has exactly same attributes, except only the frost golem can kill it. Now, there’s an imbalanced frost golem deck, which is countered by the imbalanced fire golem deck, but they both become the meta. To try to counter such meta is ridicoulus – it’s simply impossible to counter the meta, there are no tools to do so.

So we established that a card or a deck can be uncounterable, and meta consisting of multiple decks can be uncounterable as well.

In fact, a mature, stabilized meta is a state of equilibrium, where decks are used in such proportion, that using any deck, assuming using it with the same amount of skill, will grant you the same chance of win. If there’s a “stone” deck, a “scissors” deck and a “paper” deck, then the meta will stabilize at ⅓ of the players playing each of them. If for some reason more people will play the stone, then scissor players will lose more often and switch to paper to counter the stone, but then scissors will become strong again, so eventually the meta will either go into the equilibrium or will just keep oscillating forever. In both cases, though, if all those three decks in stone—paper—scissors meta have 1 deck they win against, 1 deck they draw with (or have 50% chance to win or lose), and 1 deck they lose against, then if you counter only one of these decks with your own new deck, you are not countering the meta, because you win with 1 deck, but lose with 2, which is worse performance than of meta decks.

So you have to find out how to counter multiple decks at once, which gets harder and harder as meta matures and is the effect of more and more people already trying it before you. You just shouldn’t expect a newbie to be able to do that, therefore I agree with Euphytose, fighting the meta is like using your head to demolish a concrete wall.

[Memfisto]

Originally posted by Etherlord:

Wall of text

I thought I would agree with you, but the last example was left unfinished (partially wrong) in my opinion. In a rock-scissor-paper scenario that you have described, during my time playing the game, it was always possible to counter majority and lose against minory meta decks. So your 1 win 2 losses go into 2 wins 1 loss. Seeing how my own pool of strategies is very limited, I believe that a skilled player with a full pool of cards and masters would make even more such decks every time meta shifts.

[EtherIord]

I didn’t say the meta is matured and/or stabilized in MM. Pretty much the playerbase is too small for it to happen. Otherwise a deck that counters 2/3 of meta would quickly become meta.