by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

Hearthstone is a pretty fun game by itself, just the numbers and cool abilities, different heroes, and the ever changing metagame. Even if some might regard to it as “casual”, Hearthstone has enough meat to it to keep an avid theorycrafter busy for days. But ever since Blizzcon, I’ve become pretty interested with other side of Hearthstone, and that’s its E-Sport potential. I’ve spent plenty of hours not only watching and enjoying, but also analyzing every aspect of Hearthstone’s E-Sport aspect.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to give you my first review of a Hearthstone eSports event. I wasn’t really thinking on doing event reviews, mostly because I didn’t want to sound overly negative about the current scene. I’m pleased to say that House Cup #2 really changed my mind about the subject, I was floored with the overall quality of the event and I think it is super important to discuss why I found it so enjoyable and what can the scene take away from it.

The Great

First of all you could tell Viagame did its market research, the breaks were usually highlighted by music that was just “cancerous” enough to keep Twitch Chat engaged without outright alienating the outsiders. You could say that it was crafted by a master of the internets. Showing audience awareness like that is something that I was instantly a fan of. But that wasn’t the only positive from it, the House Cup also showed outstanding production values across the board, at least for Hearthstone Standards. The overlays were pretty appealing, the transitions mostly smooth, and the on-screen staff was absolutely fantastic.

The event was mostly anchored by hostess Rachel “Seltzer” Quirico and Caster Dan “Frodan” Chou, and IMO both killed it out there.

Frodan is a great speaker and has everything you want in a play-by-play guy. I don’t care that his HS Knowledge isn’t elite, it is good enough to not be lost out there, and that’s why they paired him up with pros anyway. Plus, having someone who isn’t that experienced with the game gives the audience at home someone to relate to. Personally I thought the overall quality of casting declined greatly when Frodan wasn’t on the trusty casting couch.

Rachel was superb handling the post-match interviews, and some other event transitions. While those have had a tendency to be absolutely awkward and cringeworthy during past Hearthstone events, Rachel completely owned them and managed to keep them flowing smoothly. Also, important to point out, I thought she and Frodan had very good chemistry together and I’d love to see that pairing revisited on the future.

The rest of the casters were a bit hit and miss, but that’s to be expected of guys who are there to play rather than speak. But I understand the value on allowing the players to connect more with the audience, even if I would have preferred to have Frodan casting with a well-speaking Pro all of the time.

I also loved that they showed us each players deck before the match up. Giving that extra information to us and the casters added a lot of value to the stream. Having the players lounge and the prison room were also very welcome additions, those two are pretty promising concepts that could be polished to be something great, and perhaps a staple of the genre.

Nitpicking:

Despite the overall great presentation, there were some small details to it. Lore-wise, I loved how they marked the number of victories as notches in their banners. Yet it was a bit confusing for the new viewer; often people on the chat were asking what the score was, and perhaps the casters should’ve mentioned how the wins were being tallied on the screen more often than they did.

Also I thought they could’ve explained the format being used a bit more often, and finally the Information section on the Twitch page was very lacking. Even when you clicked the link back to the Viagame Website, finding the relevant information took a bit of digging up to do.

Sadly, this event wasn’t without its tech issues. I think we had some internet hiccups, and a power outage. Usual issues such as the director cutting into the view of the other player before the turn was over, messing up the Player’s name, and showing the wrong deck were kept to a minimum. While there’s clearly still work to be done, Viagame proved to be head and shoulders above its competition.

But please, get writing cards. Giving the decklists to the casters in a torn white piece of paper wasn’t the most professional look. Also, the breaks were a bit on the long side, perhaps those could be kept shorter in the future.

The Questionable

Viagame came at us with a rather different Match Format, and I personally thought it was great for an EXHIBITION format, perhaps possibly the best for such a thing. But when it comes to a COMPETITIVE Tournament format I don’t really think it fits the bill. I have two distinct lines of thought to explain why I’m not a fan of this format for competitive tournament play and I’ll proceed to explain both.

Perhaps you might first want to read what I’ve previously said about existing tournament formats, and what I think could be decent new formats to try out.

Entry Barrier:

Basically you have to bring 9 decks to the tournament. This means that you have to build 9 competitive decks, this means that you have to get good playing with 9 different competitive decks, this means you need to know about a gazillion match-ups if you really want to be competitive. All of that means that a mostly free-to-play player like me could never dream to get into the competitive scene if this was the go-to format. I know that you are dealing with Pro’s that dedicate most of their time to this, but what about the people wanting to get there? Not everyone can afford to put all of their time into Hearthstone, specially if they are not getting money from it. The entry barrier to the competitive scene should be kept low so new players get a fair chance to make it into the big leagues so they can support themselves doing what they love, and that’s specially true for a sport as young as Hearthstone. The requisite to be a world class player should be being talented at what they do, not simply having more free time than the competition.

Quality of Play:

I believe in overspecialization, as a watcher I want to see True Masters of their art go at it. If you take a look at any team sport you have players that specialize on each position, and they strive to be the best they can at that. In Association Football you won’t ask your goalkeeper to be a killer striker, just like in Gridiron Football you won’t ask your Defensive Tackle to play Offensive Tackle as well.

The player of the year is not the most versatile player that can play any given position, but rather the one that makes the most impact on his particular role.

Even in individual sports, players are known for their style. They find what works for them in the ultra competitive scene and they polish it until perfection. Sure, they might have a plan B against certain types of match-ups. But more often than note they won’t change who they are and how they play.

Using a 9-deck approach you are asking players to be jack-of-all-trades, and you know what they say about them. Clearly, you couldn’t say that they guys you had there were “Masters of None” but you can’t really expect for anyone to be a master at EVERY deck, you can’t expect anyone to know every match-up like the palm of his hand. And understandably so, the same guys that you are telling me are the top players on the world are bound to make quite a bit of mistakes while playing decks they really aren’t that familiar with, at least not in a World-Class level.

The amount of time needed to be a true Top Tier player with a single deck is considerable. When you multiply that by 9 it just becomes insane, specially when you consider that the meta is ever changing.

I want to see World-Class level Hearthstone, not a World-Class Priest player improvising with Freeze Mage just because it would be a good counter against his opponent’s line-up.

And its not just quality of play, I want to see distinct personalities and contrasting styles. Forcing everyone to bring 9 decks kinda makes it so mostly everyone is playing the same old deck. Not really the most exciting endeavor.

The Bad

I think I covered all the bad stuff in my nitpicking subsection above; it is a testament to the quality of the tournament that the bad details are just that, tiny details. Perhaps we can say it is bad that the players didn’t ban Face Hunter earlier? That hyper aggro deck totally tore up the tournament.

Oh right, Dad didn’t win. But at least he didn’t Owlsen this time around, 0-6 never forget.

So what else was bad about this tournament?

I know! Frodan’s Hearthstone skills are pretty terri-bad.

Definitely bad is the fact that Viagame isn’t producing quality HS events more often, hopefully that will change in the future.

What did you think about the Viagame House Cup #2? Am I being too generous with them? Am I not putting enough emphasis on the quality put at display last week?

Let me know what you think using the comment section below, or hit me up on twitter @DannieRay23

Next week we will return to our scheduled programming and talk about the Hearthstone game client, the cards, and how they impact the eSports scene.