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.
3 mana 0-12: At the start of your turn destroys all minions. Deathrattle: Destroy all minions
I really wish everybody would stop being so up-tight about this post not being extremely relevant to "the current issues." I for one, was actually intrigued when the question was posed because it wasn't something I'd thought too much about before, and if they had a legitimate reason for this inconsistency then I was willing and interested to hear it out.
Not every developer insight's post needs to be about the state of the meta. Yeah it's not great, But they've already established this. They've already made posts addressing these issues MULTIPLE times, so there really isn't a valid reason to complain that it isn't ANOTHER post about aggro shaman, or the pirate package. If we hadn't been getting updates on the meta's situation and there plans the complaints would be extremely legitimate. But we have gotten updates. Plenty of them. They told us their plans already as well.
I'm glad we are getting interesting information behind the design philosophy of these kinds of cards. It helps us see more of why they do these things, that there is some reason for these inconsistencies. This is, after all, a post on exactly that: Design Philosophy. Coming here and expecting anything other than that is just unintelligent.
issues with games lasting too long... nice one blizzard
"We were most worried about games bogging down with do-nothing cards when making the Classic set." - the article you just skimmed over
As in years ago. Before the game was even fully released.
As in not now. games WERE a lot slower back then.
Good to see more developer response to the real issues at hand. Oh wait..
Nobody cares about these cards, 90% of them do not play, do not play and will not play! When you already take care of the real problems of the game ?!
Emperio is right here. Regardless of if these cards do or don't see play (Which if paladin was any good at all STR WOULD see play because it's actually really good), That isn't what it's about. It's about this TYPE of card. We are guaranteed in the future to get more cards with conditional effects as such, so even if this isn't relevant to these two cards, It very well may be relevant to future cards printed, and the game later on.
And like Emperio said, this shit has been addressed already. as I said in my comment, not every single comment the design team shares with us HAS to be about the pirate shit going on, or the meta, especially considering they already have addressed all these issues in detail.
How often do you wear a helmet? Asking for a friend.
Yeah. The fire truck has been called and is on it's way. They told us when it'd be here, so now we have to be patient (a quality so many seem to lack) and wait until it gets here.
Despite Team 5 being slow and conservative with changes, that doesn't mean they are sitting around waiting for the sake of waiting. Most likely changes are being tested and finalized. Not to mention that this upcoming patch is VERY likely to change cards other than STB, and it's likely better that they release all the changes at once as opposed to 6 or 7 small single card changes over the course of 2 weeks because it will legitimately confuse people, and make updating a pain in the ass.
So yeah, the house is on fire but help is on it's way, and continuous bitching won't help it come any sooner.
Not to mention that there are people who have asked these questions and DO want to know, because consistency in card text and it's corresponding effects is actually important in this type of game, and they have been heavily criticized on their lack of consistency in the past. So is addressing the reasons for that lack of consistency really something we should be criticizing them for? No. It's not. This is something they SHOULD address, and I'm glad they did because now we know there are legitimate reasons for these discrepancies.
where did you see that they are going to nerf anything soon ?
http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/2209-ben-brode-on-the-meta-balance-and-shaman
ok ty :)
We are not interested in your statements anymore. If current meta is an effect of your philosophy, change it. It's unacceptable.
it is not since we are speaking about a few unplayed cards for most of them
Am I blind or this post somehow isn't on the main page ?