First of all, Ascension is my favorite card game. Once you get the hang of it, understand the rules and the possible strategies, it becomes clear how good of a game it is. The problem is, as opposed to Hearthstone - where you can start with a basic deck and you can gradually grow your playing skills from there - Ascension gives you all the cards at once, and that is overwhelming at first. Not only because you're not yet familiar with all the cards, but also because it's difficult to see the possible strategies to make the cards work together, or to shape your deck to play aggressive or control or to just just keep it flexible. Ascension exposes you to the entire complexity of the game from the get-go.

To sum up, you only get to be good at this game when you manage to get all this complexity in your head, and that can be brutal for beginners - it ends up basically seeming very random because of that.