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Ben Brode Dev Interview - RNG, ESports, Secretadin
Ben Brode sat down with Tim Clark of PC Gamer for an interview to talk about TGT, RNG, Esports, and more. We've recapped the important parts of the interview below, if you'd like to read the entire transcript head on over to PC Gamer.
Quote from Ben Brode
- Deck slots are officially on the to-do list. They want to do the best implementation possible - not the first thing that comes to mind.
- Not all Inspire cards were targeted for tier 1 decks.
- Had they of buffed some of the "bad" Paladin secrets, Mysterious Challenger may not have been able to be what it is today.
- Secret paladin isn't very concerning as it doesn't kill you in one turn - you see it coming.
- They aren't in love with Grim Patron gameplay but not only is it not being played much on the ladder, but it is a difficult deck to play correctly and the win rates aren't at the point of cards they've nerfed in the past.
- Power level reasons aren't why they nerf things, it's all about how fun cards are to play against.
- Poisoned Blade's intention was to bring back the original Rogue hero power in a more balanced form. It does seem less good if you didn't get to play with it during Hearthstone's beta.
- Dragons are in an awesome place right now.
Internal Stats
Ben talked about some of the internal stats they keep track of.
- Class breakdowns of grouping of cards.
- Individual card win rates.
- Groups of cards win rates.
- Individual players and their win rates of individual decks.
Strength in Numbers - Weekly Card Design Competition
This week's card design competition, Strength in Numbers, is now live! The entry theme this week is to design a card which has an effect that depends on the number of minions on the battlefield, such as Sea Giant or Frostwolf Warlord. It gets a little bit more complicated though, more details on which can be found in the submission thread.
So what are you waiting for? Winners get bragging rights and a fancy avatar border, so go submit your entry today! If you'd like to discuss this week's entries, you can do so as always in the discussion thread. Good luck!
Hearthstone Probability Guide
TheAnimaker has put together quite the thread which discusses probability in Hearthstone over on the forums. The thread details card reliability by turn, odds of getting that mulligan you wanted, individual card outcomes, and more! Go check it out, and leave a comment!
They have a lot more data than we do so they know the win rates and usage rates of Patron Warrior.
Once again, Ben Brode displays his incredible naiveté and obliviousness to the problems plaguing hearthstone.
"Deck slots are officially on the to-do list. They want to do the best implementation possible - not the first thing that comes to mind."
Well gee! Thanks for adding in something that people either didn't care about or people agree should have been added in a long time ago!
"Had they of buffed some of the "bad" Paladin secrets, Mysterious Challenger may not have been able to be what it is today."
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAaaaaaaa..... Oh wait you were serious about that? Let me educate you Mr. Brode. People play Mysterious Challenger because it is ridiculously OP, not because the other Paladin cards are underpowered, which they are not. In fact, I would dare to say that Paladins have some of the best class cards in the game, between all the healing, buffing, sticky minions, and the game's best legendary as their personal class legendary.
"Secret paladin isn't very concerning as it doesn't kill you in one turn - you see it coming."
1. Yes it does. 2. You can see it coming, but you can't do anything about it. Double Kezan Mystic? That's a turn 8 play, two turns after Challenger has been played. And even then it is a bad counter because they still have 3 secrets left and you have nothing left to do that turn because of all the mana you spent. Flare? That's a single class that can handle it. Taunts? I'm sure your 3/5 belcher will be enough to stop the now 10/9 Challenger and his army of 2/2 recruits and that one 3/2 defender.
"They aren't in love with Grim Patron gameplay but not only is it not being played much on the ladder, but it is a difficult deck to play correctly and the win rates aren't at the point of cards they've nerfed in the past."
Every statement made here is false. Yes it is played a lot on ladder, it is hardly that difficult considering how much card draw Warriors get, and the win rates are insane. I think only face hunter exceeds it's win rate.
"Power level reasons aren't why they nerf things, it's all about how fun cards are to play against."
This statement contradicts the previous one, and clearly has no foundation in reality. "Fun" is a relative term. One cannot measure how fun it is to play against something. In any case, it is clear that the people playing against the cancerous agro decks aren't having fun. Also, never before has Blizzard's logic for nerfing or buffing a card had anything to do with the "fun" part of it.
"Dragons are in an awesome place right now."
Debatable, but it's the most accurate thing that has been said here.
"They aren't in love with Grim Patron gameplay but not only is it not being played much on the ladder, but it is a difficult deck to play correctly and the win rates aren't at the point of cards they've nerfed in the past."
"Power level reasons aren't why they nerf things, it's all about how fun cards are to play against."
"Secret paladin isn't very concerning as it doesn't kill you in one turn - you see it coming."]
Firstly, the first 2 quotes directly contradict one another, with the 3rd quote also in the contradiction as being considered too powerful but fun to play against as you don't get OTK so it's fine.
Now, as game designers if you don't balance around objectively balancing the power level of the game and just do so for fun, and fun is a subjective concept relative to the individual, you basically say you just change or make what ever you want for no objective reason rather you just do what you feel like. Does that make any sense for a large gaming company that tries to sell you high quality products, at least at the high quality PRICE? If some random company took over and made tons of random changes because it was fun for them to play the game an evolving meta or certain stat lines that wouldn't make their design philosophy any different than Blizzard's. It hurts seeing even Blizzard saying they see imbalance but they don't care and even consider how a deck has to be so prevalent it's literally played every game at all levels to be considered nerfed just boggles my mind how they have such a big pro scene following.
The silver lining is Ben Brode is basically the spokesman and medium between Blizzard and the community, he'll probably be ballooning the idea and Blizzard will always follow the money. If enough people out cry or express their disapproval they will give into the demands of their player base as Ben Brode's word really has no staying power on the game's direction. He said undertaker wouldn't be nerfed and the outcry was so large that card even right after being said it wasn't going to be nerfed was nerfed in that time frame.
I'm not saying we ask to nerf all the top tier decks or every card, but there are a few cards desperately in need of balance changes (frothing for OTK, Mysterious as a cool effect but too big body, Piloted Shredder for future 4 drop design) and simple things like deck slots coming out without costing a fortune (expect 10$ like the hero portraits), less RNG, tournament mode, or other prevalent minor bugs (no dragon in hand orange borders, cards floating in place, hero power still shown on opponents turn even when used).
Also another note is please balance arena with rarity and card releases. Warrior is struggling right now to even be worth picking while paladin is cleaning house. Don't forget about your arena demographic too please. I used to love this company so much but I'm beyond merely frustrated right now with hearthstone, just more reasons to not do or change anything with the game like it's a perfect creation the way it is.
TL;DR
"Not all Inspire cards were targeted for tier 1 decks". 2 out of 21 is pretty good :)
"Inspire cards were not targeted for tier 1 decks, heck not even tier 2" Fixed that for Ben
Sorry TBV isn't good enough, murloc knight barely makes the good cut but mid range paladin is still worse than Ebola and Secret pally. Savage Combatant is still a poor man's fire elemental and Saraad/Paletress are both too slow and too RNG based to be consistently worth playing in top decks.
I always play around Rogue->Burgle->Twisting Nether. You just need to play more to gain more experience KAPPA.
I can tell that you're not a programmer, because that shit is easy to make.
Rebuilding a huge section of the UI is easy? ok
RNG is the name of the game, hearthstone is heading the wrong way
But RNG = skill and fun. A rogue burgled spellslinger into twisting nether and kept it until I dropped my molten giants. It was clearly him being better at the game than me. I should have been more skillful and anticipated the twisting nether rogues. See now that was fun and not completely ridiculous. Kappa (This is a ranked game on my grind to legend)
Kappa.
I think Ben brode should do to Hearthstone the exact same thing he did to Diablo 3, which means he should just leave Hearthstone to other people really worried about gameplay and what community ask and not all that rng thing he created!
What does Ben Brode have to do with Diablo? He never worked on that game.
[Insert hate Ben Brode comment here]
Dear Ben Brode
Please stop talking
Sincerely
Disheartened Hearthstone fan
Secret Paladin: Yep I see it coming. I know I'm dead 2 or 3 turns after mysterious challenger get played... I definitely see it coming.
I've always agreed with what Brode is saying about Patron Warrior. Though it can be annoying to be OTK'd by someone playing that deck I honestly beat more patrons than I lose to. It's all about making smart decisions and them not making extremely smart decisions.
I hope they fix secret paladin and patron. Most Cancer decks in the game.
This article said they will not touch either because being good at Patron is too hard and misplays keep the deck down, and that since Secret Paladin doesn't OTK you, they're fine with it.