Design Philosophy Behind Generated Tokens on Cards Which Can't Complete Their Effects
Max was out on the forums responding to the question of why Small-Time Recruits doesn't give you tokens should you be unable to fulfill the condition of the card unlike Sense Demons. The real answer may shock you!
The Two Philosophies
- Cards should progress a game towards a conclusion when possible.
- Card text should do what it says.
TL;DR
- Early on, the first philosophy was favored for cards like Wild Growth and others in the Classic set. If it wasn't able to fulfill its goal, you'd get something in return (Excess Mana).
- Things have changed since the early days and now they're okay with the occasional card not being able to complete its effect.
- Though they lean towards the second philosophy, they still evaluate it on a per card basis.
- In the case of cards that give Mana Crystals, they've accepted the precedent of Wild Growth and tend to give you Excess Mana as it feels like a bug otherwise.
- Ideally they'd have a better solution to letting you know about the fringe cases; It's not being prioritized at this time.
Quote from Max McCallWe have two competing philosophies about corner cases for cards like Small-Time Recruits that sometimes don’t do anything: first, cards should progress the game towards a conclusion if at all possible, and second, cards should do what their text says. In the early days of Hearthstone, we tended to err on the side of favoring the first philosophy. More recently, we’ve seen that our concerns about games lasting too long because of situational cards haven’t been confirmed, so we usually lean towards the second philosophy. We keep both ideas in mind, and tend to evaluate cards like Small-Time Recruits on a case-by-case basis.
Hearthstone is boring when neither player has stuff to do. The situation where neither player has minions or spells to play is rare, but does happen occasionally. Fatigue will end those games, but having to sit and wait around for fatigue isn’t fun. So, our general preference is for cards to do something to help end the game, even when they’re otherwise situational. That’s why, for example, Sense Demons grants players Worthless Imps, and why you get a Shadow of Nothing when you cast Mindgames and your opponent’s deck contains no minions: getting those 1/1s forces the game to a conclusion.
On the other hand, we think cards should generally do what they say.* It’s weird when you have a card that says it does one thing, and then when you cast it, it does something else. Wild Growth is the most famous offender of this philosophy. When you have ten mana crystals and cast Wild Growth, instead of an empty mana crystal, you get a copy of Excess Mana, which you can then cast for a card. This is in keeping with the idea of ‘cards should do stuff’ and definitely prevents the feel-bad moment of drawing Wild Growth when you’re capped on mana and not being able to do anything with it. On the other hand, card text secretly changing in that way is weird and is contrary to the idea of Hearthstone cards as physical objects.
We were most worried about games bogging down with do-nothing cards when making the Classic set. Before release, we thought that Hearthstone games would generally be fast-paced, but we couldn’t be sure. So, the Classic cards tend to have more safety valves to make sure they still have an effect in corner case situations. We’re now more confident that the presence of a couple of situational cards won’t bog down games too much, so we don’t feel as compelled to make sure that cards like Small-Time Recruits always gives you something. For cards that grant mana crystals, though, we have accepted the precedent of Wild Growth – people have grown so used to getting Excess Mana that it feels like a bug when they do not. Ideally, it would be more obvious when cards are in their corner case phase that’s caused their effect to change, but because we’re talking about solutions to corner case issues, we haven’t prioritized finding an elegant solution for those cases.
*I’m not going to open the Molten Giant can of worms, which is more of a templating question as opposed to a functionality one.
Is it just me or does anyone else hate how Blizzard is so against changing any of the cards from the basic and classic sets to be more clear? I know we've driven Druid of the Claw into the ground, but it would be such a simple change to fix both that card and wild growth, and this change would be so much better. If any of you have played Tf2, you'd know recently they updated all the weapons to actually say what they do. Instead of saying this would be a change that was "unfriendly to new players" like Blizzard is, they acknowledged the truth, which is that it would actually be way easier. Take a hint pls.
This is a nice, thorough answer to the question. It makes lots of sense that their concerns would shift over time. I'd love to see them, somewhere down the line, have a method of indicating when the alternate effect is active, as they've done with conditional cards like the "no duplicates" set. Maybe a shining golden text appears below the regular text once the condition is met?
Because you lose "Excess Mana" if you do it that way, and that's a nerf. Also, getting into semantics with cards (like everyone is saying) makes cards ridiculously long for no reason. Those couple cases (Mindgames, etc.) don't say that you get something if it misses. So originally when I first started playing and that happened, I was actually kinda irked. The card didn't state you got anything, so why did they? And it was a hard lesson to learn but I dealt with it. Granted, they're just 1/1's, but it's better than nothing lol. I like that, going forward, the cards are flat out easy to understand. The only other thing they could do is add a new Keyword for it. "Miss:(x)", x would be the amount of 1/1's you get. But that's just too stupid lol. If you're gonna include a card that draws 1 cost minions, try to have a decent amount in your deck so they're not all gone when you play the card. It sucks when I topdeck Emperor Thaurissan or Grimestreet Outfitter or Smuggler's Run, but I don't get 1/1's if I play it with no minions in hand. They're doing the right thing and moving on. The couple old cards out of the hundreds we have now being fringe cases is not a big deal. For example, this would be just too long lol.
How else could you interpret "redistribute one by one to random players"? I can't come up with an alternate interpretation of that statement. Nor does it matter HOW you randomize them, as long as each permanent is randomly assigned individually ("one by one"). The original card text also doesn't specify HOW you choose a player at random, just that you do it.
I always find it funny when my opponent casts Small-time recruits and gets absolutely nothing lmao
I never even thought about the Small-Time Recruits vs Sense Demons comparison until this post; and now I'm annoyed that it doesn't give cute little 1/1s when it fails.
From a balance angle, getting Worthless Imps is a consolation prize when you run out of demons in your deck. Whatever you were hoping for was undoubtedly better than the imps. If Small-Time Recruits put 3 1/1s into your hand if you had no 1 mana creatures in your deck, it would be marginally less powerful, potentially better with all the Goons buffs. There would be nothing at that point to keep people from playing it in a deck with no 1 mana creatures, which would functionally change how people played the card. But you don't see people playing Sense Demons in a deck with no demons.
That being said, I don't agree with the failure conditions not being part of the templating.
Which is a card that was never played..
besides it's a PALADIN card so if paladin really wanted to play 3 1/1's they can play standing against ddarkness for 5.. or in wild an actually good card, muster for battle.
don't see why nt make 1/1 silver hand recruits pop up if this effect fails thjere's really no downside to that this card is already not so good.
Call me dumb but this shit just got confuse to me, did he said that cards with generally the same text will do diferent things based purely on designers feelings?
Thats was clarifying, thanks.
it says "empty mana crystal"
Anything that does not have any other effect, will give an excess mana card
Wild Growth / Pilfered Power - The only thing they do is provide empty mana crystals, therefore they give excess mana to prevent the card being completely useless
Jade Blossom (summons a jade golem) / Nourish (Provides full mana crystals - only relevant with fandral) / Darnassus Aspirant (gives a 2/3 minion) - All have additional effects
Nevermind
Astral Communion gives you an Excess Mana card as well if you already have 10 mana in your tray.