My Twitch Channel and Twitter

If you want to see me in action, I occasionally stream on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/fangstruth and you can follow me on Twitter at @fangstruthow. Hope to see you around!

Hearthstone - Mean Streets of Gadgetzan New Expansion Announcement

It seems like the new 132-card expansion is themed around a three-way street gang war.

Here's the trailer:

Here is a list of all known cards.

This is a gameplay video showing off several of the new expansion's cards with new commander-style neutral legendary Kazakus stealing the show:

Overwatch - Sombra Revealed (Spoilers Inside!)

So here is a summary of everything we know so far (spoilers after the jump):

An animated short giving some new story tidbits, including that Sombra is working with Reaper and Widowmaker (and presumably Talon), but not all is at it seems...

Overwatch - The Elo Hell Problem

Playing Overwatch's competitive mode rarely feels competitive. It usually feels like a blowout win or a crushing defeat. The usual suspects are your terrible teammates. It is incredibly common for members of the losing team to lash out at each other for any and every perceived fault of their brothers- and sisters-in-arms while concluding that they themselves are the sole redeeming factors for team performance.

The tweaked Elo system used in Overwatch is designed to make teams relatively evenly matched in terms of skill level based on skill ratings assigned to each player and then averaged out for each team with a number of other individual performance factors thrown in the mix for good measure.

As game designer David Sirlin notes in his blog post on the ratings system, it is not necessarily a good idea to provide individual performance measures because it warps a player's incentives. Sirlin writes:

If we try to address this by rewarding you for your good individual performance and to get you to your "rightful" rank, we run into a couple problems. As stated earlier, if we reward you for number of kills, or K:D ratio, or damage done, we also introduce warped incentives. Now your incentive is something OTHER than just winning. Now you're fighting with teammates for kills, etc. So even if we wanted to help you out here, it's dangerous to do so.
But even beyond that, SHOULD we help you out? If we do, the result is that you are going to gain rank for doing things that...didn't help your team win? Yeah it SHOULD have helped your team win, but it didn't. It's a bit weird that you'll then keep playing the same, keep not actually making your team win (even though it's their fault), and we reward you.

While I agree with the points he makes here, it is his solution to Elo Hell that I have a problem with. He suggests that the way out of the lower ranks as a player who is over-skilled for their current ranking level is to adjust play style to match the needs of his teammates. Specifically, he states:

Here's the real truth about this Elo hell stuff I think. The example Reaper situation above really is good play, it really is something that should help the team win...if you were a higher rank. The higher rank all the players involved, the more easily your teammates can convert advantage you provide into a win. If your teammates are so bad that they can't convert the advantage you gave into a win, then you should do some completely different things. Yeah it sucks that the thing you did SHOULD help, but in truth, it didn't. Work with what you have. Work with your generally uncoordinated or lower-skilled teammates and provide them whatever they actually DO need to win.

In Overwatch, I think what players generally need in these situations is "babysitting." What I mean is, it's probably more important to have few deaths and to generally be on the payload than it is to achieve impressive stats that "in theory" allow your teammates to be on the payload. You have to carry them, so you'll have to refrain from strategies that, at higher rank, are very good, so that you can provide for the most basic needs of your team. You don't have to do that in the exact way I said, but the point is if you play in the (sometimes pathetic) way that your team needs, you can contribute more to your team's win rate than if you play in an incredibly impressive way that they are unable to capitalize on, because they suck. Yeah that's frustrating, but THAT is the way out of Elo hell.

I would argue that changing play style in the way he suggests could actually lower win rates by making your individual skill contribution count for far less. By deliberately harmonizing yourself with an inferior play style, you are lowering yourself to the level you wish to escape. In my opinion, Elo Hell is not so easily escaped.

The easiest solution, of course, is playing more and winning more. Essentially, get out of the lower ranks by investing more time. As I wrote in this reddit post, the time necessary to rank up can be substantial:

Now, a more realistic scenario for our all gold medals all the time candidate is if they have 30 or 40% more skill than their teammates. They are better and should probably be at a higher ELO, but aren't. Why? Taking 30 as an example - 6 players with 5 having skill of 1 and you having skill of 1.3. Enemy team has average skill of 1, you have average skill of 6.3 skill / 6 players = 1.05. That is 5% better than the other team or 5% better win rate than default - 1.05 x 50 = 52.5% win rate. Now factor in team dynamics problems, loss streaks, the fact that all other players are unlikely to have the exact same skill level 30% below your own and any other intangibles and you have an even lower win rate than 52.5%, or rather a high variance around said win rate. Any positive win rate is enough to climb, but it can be frustratingly slow. If you are placed lower than where you are "supposed to be" getting back up there will eventually happen, but the key word here is 'eventually'. With an adjusted win rate where you just can't get the lucky breaks going your way somewhere between 50 and 52.5%, it can take hundreds of games to climb to anywhere near where you are supposed to be (30% higher than where you are now).

In addition to this, remember that Overwatch's matchmaking system is trying to narrow skill rating points gained and lost the closer your win rate becomes to 50%. This means that in the absence of a substantial win streak, the Elo system makes your upward progress slow by design.

Sirlin claims that the way out of Elo hell means adjusting one's play style to "provide them whatever they actually DO need to win". Usually what this requires in my experience is to "kill kill kill" (to borrow a reaper meme). Is it any wonder then that people at lower ranks are more inflexible in what role they want to play and the vast majority of wannabes choose to be DPS instalocks? This mindset at lower ranks contributes to dysfunctional team compositions. Add to this that people do not coordinate, that toxic individuals demoralize the team, that team members will often refuse to change heroes even when faced with hard counters on the enemy team and that voice communication is often met with silence, complaining or trolling and it is easy to see why playing at lower ranks can be frustrating.

I was placed in silver and have clawed my way up to the mid range of platinum. It took me a month to get to 2300 skill from 1996. It took me 2 days to get from 2300 to 2650. The increased game awareness, coordination, communication and better team composition made all the difference in the speed of my climb when I began playing with more platinum level players. While toxicity is still an issue, I imagine it contributes to losses at all ranks. My point is that the way out of Elo Hell is not so simple as adjusting one's play style. I tried all sorts of different approaches - babysitting the payload and the team, flanking and killing, playing tank, playing support and none of it made a dent in my rate of progress until I hit 2300 skill. I am not sure if I have hit my skill cap yet at 2650 (I still think I can go higher), but the only real way out of Elo Hell in my opinion is, unfortunately, time played.

Hearthstone - Blast from the Past VLPS's Handlock 2.0 (fun deck)

Let me say from the outset that this deck totally destroys control variants of Warrior decks and potentially control druid decks as well, but does poorly against most other decks that run hard removal or finish games by turn 7. Still, it's extremely satisfying to play a deck that runs huge taunt minions until the enemy runs out of removal. The game plan, as always for handlock, is to tap early and often to get a big hand, then slam down your big minions and put up taunts via Faceless Shambler, Sunfury Protector and Defender of Argus. Twilight Drake is an automatic keep in your starting hand as it should usually be the first minion you play. Against aggro it is also advisable to look for your Hellfire early on and Sylvanas with Shadowflame for later in the game. Otherwise, good value comes from Mountain Giant with taunt minions and Twilight Drake with taunt minions. Refreshment Vendor and Earthen Ring Farseer provide some healing (though not as well as Antique Healbot, R.I.P. because of Standard format) while the long term plan is to use Lord Jaraxxus to finish off your opponent. Note that Emperor Thaurissan is often used to reduce the cost of Lord Jaraxxus, so keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to play the Emperor. A combo deck variant of this list takes out Sylvanas, one Shadowflame, and one Defender of Argus to be replaced with Leeroy Jenkins, Faceless Manipulator and Power Overwhelming. Your mileage may vary if you are relying on the 20 damage burst from this combo because even though you are tapping often, you may not get all the pieces you need before these combo cards become dead weights in your hand.

Sorry for the poor quality deck image below the cut, it was taken directly from VLPS's stream, which you may find here. Decklist:

Hearthstone - Zoolock and Aggro Shaman got you down? Taunt Warrior to the rescue!

Ok, so maybe not always Aggro Shamans. They just steamroll everyone. BUT! Zoolock gets absolutely wrecked by this deck.

There's nothing like getting a turn one Shieldbearer followed by turn two Coin into King's Defender. Nearly all of the minions in the deck have taunt, so Bolster is huge, especially in conjunction with Protect the King, but really as long as you have a board it's a good card to have in mid-to-late game. On top of that, all the decent body taunt minions make Y'Shaarj always get you a decent protective body on the board to shield himself unless he pulls Frothing Berserker or Ragnaros, in which case you aren't too badly off either. The dream of course is that Y'Shaarj not only pulls a Sunwalker, Bog Creeper, or Ragnaros, but also lives to see a second turn and pulls more bodies onto the board for free. The weapons in the deck are almost always used for efficient minion trading.

I am debating about whether to take out the Brawl for another Sunwalker or Mukla's Champion.

Here is the list past the jump:

Guild Wars 2 - Rising Flames (Possible Spoilers!)

I have played through to the newly released Ember Bay map and I must say I am highly impressed with the scale of the map, the visuals and the game play. However, as usual for me, the story is the most important and, though I haven't finished my play-through yet, this one has already made me very excited!

Hearthstone - Maly Druid with a Twist

This is my take on the recently popular Malygos Druid decklist. Instead of playing Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Raven Idols, Moonglade Portal, Arcane Giants and Yogg-Saron, I substitute in Enchanted Ravens, Stranglethorn Tiger, Druids of the Claw, Menagerie Warden and a Summoning Stone making my list somewhat more of a mid-range variant.

Hearthstone - Dragon Priest Redux and... Dragonlock?

I have been playing a slightly tweaked version of a deck by Vlps which includes the standard core "dragon deck" minions and incorporates Netherspite Historian (the real hero of the deck), Book Wyrm and Deathwing, Dragonlord. Here is the list:

Hearthstone - Need help with Tempo Mage list

This is the list I have been testing recently:

It's not that my record has been bad. I moved up several ranks with it. However, it seems to me that it relies very heavily on lucky RNG for me to win most of the time. I know that is kind of the nature of a deck with Flamewaker, Cabalist's Tome and Arcane Missiles in it, but if you can find a way to give the deck some more consistency without upsetting my current deck direction or curve too much (as in by tweaking a couple of cards rather than rebuilding the whole deck) I would highly appreciate the insight.

Guild Wars 2 - Living World Season 3

I am a huge fan of the lore behind this season's first episode. However, I find myself not even having finished the main story line and it's already been quite a while since it was released. I log in just for dailies and log out. It might be because of my limited playing time being used up on Hearthstone and Overwatch, but I find myself less and less motivated to play Guild Wars 2. I love the game and I love the story and I love everything about Guild Wars 2, I just find myself drifting in the goals department. It's not that I have no goals, it's more that I don't feel motivated to achieve them and I am not sure exactly why.

I honestly think I have been too focused on other games lately. I'll try to get back into GW2 when the second episode is released and see how it goes.

Overwatch - Competitive Season 2 Confessional

Confession: I blew my placement matches so badly that I ended in silver, despite having played at a "platinum" level in season 1.

Since my horrible placements, I have managed to claw myself up into the gold ranks and I must say that even when just crossing the threshold from silver to gold, there is an immediate jump in the quality of communication and teamwork. Silver felt like banging my head repeatedly on a wall and having to rely on myself more often than not to get the job done and progress. In gold, at

Overwatch - Sombra ARG

Sombra is (probably) a yet-to-be-released hero. Blizzard has been toying with its fans by releasing very cryptic information that led into one of the most frustrating ARGs of all time. The Overwatch community has been going nuts over this ARG for some time now and you can read a summary of the speculation over on Reddit here and here.

Sombra, whoever she is, speaks Spanish and is most likely involved with Blackwatch (the faction with Reaper and Widowmaker as its figureheads) who are the apparent bad guys in the Overwatch universe, although what each side represents and is fighting for isn't entirely clear. Neither are their motivations.

Personally, I am hoping that Sombra plays an effective defensive hero role, as all Defense Heroes are typically less useful than the current holy trinity of 2 tanks, 2 dps, 2 healers.

Hearthstone - One Night in Karazhan Wing 3 Released

Out of all the cards released so far, Barnes has probably received the most positive attention (the most attention - negatively - goes to Purify). However, the most underrated card thus far, in my opinion, has been Swashburglar. This card, along with a few other cards designed to increase card draw without resorting to Gadgetzan Auctioneer, has breathed new life into N'zoth Rogue for me.

Here is my current decklist - at the time of writing it has a record of 12 - 1, though this is at low ranks (since I have been using only experimental decks since Karazhan was released) and is also a small sample.

Overwatch: Competitive Mode is here!

I have been waiting for this since the game launched. Thusfar, the game's mainstay has been Quickplay Mode, which features fun gameplay but lacks a sense of progression. Once I learned all of the characters and map layouts and mechanics, I found myself with a frustrating sense of being unable to compare myself to others. Sometimes I would dominate matches and other times my opponents would wipe the floor with me and I'd be left wondering if it was due to skill, teammates, bad luck, one poor play leading to snowballing, pre-made teams and a host of other variables. With the advent of an MMR-rated competitive system, I can finally put a few of these concerns into perspective.

The new mode requires you to be level 25 to access and severely penalizes leaving matches as this game mode is meant to be more serious (you can be banned for an entire season for repeated offenses).

Pre-made teams will be matched more frequently against other pre-made teams rather than purely by MMR, which I think is a good thing given my experience under both types of systems through the evolution of sPvP in Guildwars 2.

Anyway, ten skill placement matches will determine your initial MMR and then you are set to rank up. The top 500 players will be listed on leaderboards for all to see. Maybe I can get myself up there. If I can tear myself away from Hearthstone laddering. I guess. Ahem.

You can read all the rest of the details over at playoverwatch.com

For Patch Notes go here.

Overwatch - Thank you for nerfing McCree

Blizzard's latest Overwatch patch has nerfed two often complained-about characters - Widowmaker and McCree. While I personally think Widowmaker was in a good place and nerfing her was unnecessary, McCree is a whole other story. His combo of stun and fan-hammer (complete unload of his weapon in half a second) was completely overpowered and uninteractive. There are always people who will argue that you just need to "git gud" to deal with him, but assuming he hits you with a stun, your controls are disabled and you just get to sit there while he unloads lethal damage with impunity in the flash of an eye. While landing the stun is not automatic, it is fairly easy to do given that it has a generous area-of-effect.

It will be interesting to see if he still sees competitive play but, in the meantime, thank you, Blizzard!

For the complete patch notes, see: June 14, 2016 update

My new favourite Hearthstone Deck - Pirate Warrior

YARRR

Hearthstone Decklists

So here are the non-meta decks I am currently running (I also have meta decks as well, but I prefer creativity or innovation to direct copying). Any constructive comments are welcome.

Overwatch

I did not see this one coming. I did not play in the beta, so I am a little late to the party, but this game has scratched an fps itch I didn't know I still had. What a wild ride!

At the moment, I am still digging into the feel of each character. So far, some early favourites are D. Va, Mercy and McCree.

I am also really enjoying the lore of the game. I've read all the Atlas News items, listened to Lucio's music, read Mei's journal, read all the comics and watched all the trailers and origin shorts. The story has me really intrigued.

Ok, so let's talk Whispers of the Old Gods

I have been very busy lately (as usual!). Unusually, however, this has been largely due to Hearthstone overload, no pun intended.

With their latest expansion to the Hearthstone universe, Whispers of the Old Gods, Blizzard has completely turned the game upside down. Not only have new formats been introduced to separate current card sets in the Standard format from being able to play any card in existence in the Wild format, but all the new cards brought in with the expansion along with nerfed cards from previous sets that were deemed too powerful have completely upended the meta game.

The Old Gods themselves C'Thun, Yogg-Saron, Y'Shaarj and N'Zoth are all powerful cards, and even meta-deck-defining in the case of C'Thun and N'Zoth. However, the entire set has introduced many other cards which have also had a strong impact. For example, the ever-controversial Flamewreathed Faceless has allowed the Shaman class to take a respectable position in top-level play despite the salty cries of downed opponents who claim it is overpowered to have a 7/7 for 4 mana.

Hearthstone - Byebye Mech Rogue (An Ode to Flying Machine)

Mech Rogue was my last favourite deck to play before the advent of the Blade Flurry nerf and the Whispers of the Old Gods Expansion. The soul of the Deck is an underused and under-appreciated card: Flying Machine.

This Meme Doesn't Apply to Older Gamers!

You'll pry my games out of my figuratively dead clutches. Unfortunately, I'm still firmly in the middle category.

A Response to Backlash against Devs in Guild Wars 2

Recently, Guild Wars series developers Arenanet have come under increasing fire from disillusioned players who believe that the company is losing its way in terms of producing new content. These current and some now former players contend that Arenanet has consistently under-delivered on their promises. It's an ugly list for those keeping track. Redditor DustyDemonNinja's observations about the HoT expansion summarize many of the issues concisely, but there are certainly many more as well.

Additionally, it appears that Arenanet may be undergoing some internal turmoil and restructuring as well (particularly the departure of Game Director Colin Johanson) in order to focus more on deliverable content as discussed here.

Hearthstone Low Ladder Blues

I love Hearthstone, but I have a confession to make: even in a month where I tried pretty hard, I have never made it higher than rank 11.

For a long time, this had been bothering me. My win rate was alright, though not excellent. I was winning more than 50% of my matches. For reference, pro players on the ladder win 60%+ depending on their decks. If you win over 50%, then over the long run it is statistically probable that you will progress on the ladder. I just... don't progress as high as I would like.

Gaming After 30

I used to be a Guild Wars addict. I would play for 8-hour stretches and sometimes longer. I'd sleep at 4:30am just so I could finish one more dungeon. I was a hardcore gamer all the way through school, university and graduate studies. 

Times change.

Introducing Myself

Hi, my name is Ryan.

I have been a gamer since the age of five. My first ever videogame was the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES. My uncle bought it for me against the wishes of my parents. It was awesome and I was immediately hooked. It didn't matter that I ran into the first hole in the ground fifty times before I figured out how to jump over it, this was the most amazing thing ever and I was going to master it no matter what. I moved on from there to other Nintendo games and early games on floppy disks for the Mac Classic such as Dungeon of Doom, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and other classics.

Despite this, I mostly played console games throughout my early childhood. One day, however, I discovered Doom. This was followed shortly thereafter by Duke Nukem 3D, Warcraft 2 and Diablo. These games ignited my now lifelong passion for PC gaming. This is not to say that I left console games behind, but the advent of Steam and budgetary constraints meant that PC gaming was far more attractive.

For many years, I was a competitive gamer. I played Counter-Strike from it's original beta days and played 1.6 all the way through the CS:Source era. I even played some CS:GO, but not competitively. I played DotA, I played Starcraft. As time went by, however, I realized that these games were stressing me out and required enormous amounts of my time to remain competitive and for very little payoff. That's when I branched out at around age 22 and discovered Guild Wars, which I played for its entire lifespan until the sequel came out. I have played Guild Wars 2 regularly since then (and continue to do so). Most recently, due to time constraints, I have also been playing Hearthstone

Despite my apparent single-minded loyalty to very few games, the games I just mentioned were all games which I focused on, but which I did not play exclusively. I have a good-sized Steam library (and backlog, sorry to say) and have enjoyed a huge variety of games. I am always on the lookout for new and incredible experiences. My son has just introduced me to Minecraft (which he tells me to play for him because it is "too hard") and to the Lego series of videogames. I love the Lego sense of humour!

If you have any suggestions for games I should check out or review on the blog, let me know and I will do my best to get it done. Keep in mind that, for now, I am limited to PC and Wii U, though this may change in the future!

Welcome to the Show

Welcome to Gaming After Thirty

This blog is about my experiences with gaming after age 30 which I hope to share with you.

I plan to cover a number of different topics:

- Thoughts on gaming, gaming culture and specific game communities

- Game reviews

- Youtube videos of my gaming sessions

- Contests and giveaways (eventually)

- Ranting and Raving