Hacker News Reader

Comment by hypersoar | Hacker News Reader

Well, this guy was a #1-ranked MTG player, so it's not a fair comparison for most of us mortals. It took me hundreds of tries and some very good luck to beat A20.

View on HN

Note well the qualification of the "#1-rank":

Around twenty years ago, as a teenager, I was building decks for Magic: the Gathering pro tours, and proudly reached #1 in the world in constructed rank and #3 in the world in limited rank on Magic: the Gathering Online.

So that's world number 1 in M:tG Online. From experience, M:tG Online is (was?) a less competitive game than the physical-cardboard game and I'm not even sure that even in the cardboard game DCI rankings (the "rank" in the article) is exactly correlated with being one of the top players at sanctioned tournaments, like Pro-Tours and World Championships, or their qualifying events. I think it's possible, oddly enough, to have a high rank in DCI points without being a pro. For example I seem to remember Friday Night Magic tournaments conferring DCI points for wins (and taking them away for losses). But it seems the whole system has been discontinued by Wizards of the Coast so I can't easily check how it works anymore (or check my own rank...).

I called it good at ascension 2 and uninstalled, doesn’t the novelty and enjoyment wear off long before you’d hit ascension 20? I guess this is maybe why I’ve never really been an expert at anything just pretty good.

> doesn’t the novelty and enjoyment wear off long before you’d hit ascension 20?

I don't think it's a problem at all that you didn't enjoy it after A2. Some folks do (like Jorbs or your comment's parent) and some don't.

If your line of questioning was more along the lines of why it didn't wear off, I can give my own anecdote. I found that the increase of difficulty makes the game more interesting to think about because you have to be much more methodical in how you craft your deck and play it. There are a lot of variables to manage and account for too.

I kind of feel like by A2 I’d have figured out where the optimizations are, and it’s just a matter of finding them, not sure if I’d have the energy to actually try them in game.

Until you've actually played at A20 it's hard to understand how different the game is. There are picks for cards, relics, shop purchases, etc, that are absolutely crucial to get an A20 heart kill that you would never even consider picking at A2.

You could always "cheat" and skip straight to A20 (I assume there is a way to do so, at least). I find the difference between low ascension and A20 to be rather large, so while it's true that optimal play at A20 will work at A2, I'm not sure I was capable of that when I was at A2.

No, that's backwards. On low difficulty you can indeed force a strategy chosen in advance, but as the game gets more difficult you need to make choices that trade off the late-game power of your deck against the needs right now (so you can get to the late game at all)

To transliterate your comment into an equivalent context:

I feel like after 12 or so hours of chess I'd figure out how to not hang pieces. From there, how to find the best moves is just a question of dedicating energy into finding them in game.

I'm not sure why anyone plays more than 100 or so hours of chess. Doesn't it get boring?

Well, yeah. That’s exactly it. ;)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed with people doing it, but I don’t think I can.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com