Max McCall Talks About Charge and Taunt - Concerns, Experimentation, and Execution
Our friendly neighborhood Game Designer, Max McCall, was out on the forums this afternoon responding to concerns regarding Charge and Taunt. He had this to say:
- Taunt allows players to defend themselves and add minion to minion combat.
- Charge can be problematic due to one-turn-kill combos, usually through cheap Charge minions.
- We'll see more charge in the future when they find safe ways to use the mechanic.
- Currently, experimentation is underway with more expensive minions that are harder to use in combos.
- The Hogriders in Gadgetzan are the first example of different ways to use the mechanic in a non-degenerate way.
What would you like to see out of the Charge Mechanic? Can you think of any cool cards that could work like Leatherclad Hogleader, Spiked Hogrider, or Tanaris Hogchopper?
Quote from Max McCallNeither taunt nor charge are inherently bad for Hearthstone.
Taunt is great. Taunt minions let players defend themselves and their other minions and add a lot of depth to direct minion combat.
Charge can be problematic, though. Minions’ ability to directly attack other minions means that a player who achieves control of the board early will tend to snowball their lead. When you control the board, you can arrange for minion trades that further cement your board control. Minions with charge are a useful tool for allowing players who have fallen behind on the board to catch up. Spells are a good way to catch people up as well, but cards like Stormwind Knight can kill a 3/2 and establish a board at the same time. Different ways to catch up when you’re behind gives the game more texture, and offers more strategic choices.
Charge becomes a problem for Hearthstone when you use it to kill your opponent out of nowhere in one turn. Playing Druid of the Claw as a 4/4 charge for 5 is good gameplay. Playing Bluegill Warrior, casting Power Overwhelming on it twice, then copying it with Faceless Manipulator to attack your opponent for 20 isn’t. In that example, charge is only a problem because of how efficient it makes converting minion buffs into direct damage. We could make more charge minions if we made minion buffs worse, but minion buffs have more design space than charge minions. Minion buffs are also fun and also enable you to catch up with weaker minions your opponent hasn’t gotten around to trading off yet.
Note that it’s specifically cheap charge minions that tend to cause problems, because they’re easier to combine with buffs and Faceless Manipulator. No one uses Reckless Rocketeer or King Krush for evil. We’re cautiously experimenting with more expensive charge minions that are harder to use in degenerate combos. The Hogriders in Mean Streets were the first example of this, and it’s reassuring to see that no one is using them to one-shot their opponents. We’ll do more charge stuff in the future as we figure out what’s safe.
maybe I should post a constructive comment with what I think is wrong or how they could better improve the game? Or maybe, I could post something funny to make the front page of reddit? Nah, I'll just say theyre shit game designers so I can go back to playing shaman and eating glue while doing nothing to improve the game.
Those 3 cards are trash, and no one play them in construct. Too conditional for construct play.
leatherclad isn't really that bad. is blizzard ever supports mil decks. you could ship leatherclad right in!
wooooooowwww sh't sherlock. wow. i didnt know that
What I just read is diminishing returns on multiple buffs on 1 minion and stripping charge gained from copying others :X
Oh yes, because midrange and aggro are so "interactive." If Shadowverse, a much better balanced game (no matter what you think of the game, you have to agree it is better balanced with games that usually last 10-20 turns compared to Hearthstone's digusting turn 5 lethals that rely a lot on RNG), is that combo is not a bad thing. Is takes usually 10 turns to set up and even then, they usually do not kill until turn 15ish. Combo is the natural counter to control.
Blizzard thinks "kill the control opponent fast!" is the way to beat it. This is not the way a game should be balanced. Control should have actual answers to aggro, combo should be able to beat out control, and aggro should keep combos in check. This is how Hearthstone used to be, too, but now, it is 4 midrange decks that can also be aggro and win on turn 5, full-face decks that win turn 4-5, and an inconsistent Renolock deck that does not win as often as other decks. Blizzard has stated they "want to encourage all playstyles" and this....this is just them trying to completely kill one off when it is the most balanced of the styles out there at the moment. It really is sad. I personally find combo decks to be the most interesting and thrilling not only to play, but to play against and I know I am not alone. Combo is not the problem. Making combo insane and the only playable playstyle is obviously not the way to go, but neither is destroying it. It serves a purpose and Blizzard needs to realize this.
Ok I have a suggestion inspired by Shadowverse.
Add a new keyword that is like charge, but you cannot charge heroes the turn the card is played.
Then take a look at all charge minions and decide which are healthy and which are not as they are, and change those who are not to the new word.
This also opens a lot of design space as you can choose to print new cards with either charge or the new word.
Another idea I had was cards that activate from your hand if your face is charged, but otherwise average thus making them tech cards, i.e.: 3 mana 3/3 if your hero is charged while this in your hand summon this minion as the new target.
Please read the other comments before posting next time, someone posted the exact same thing just 5 messages below...
As a tangentially-related thought: why not more cards with Charge AND Taunt? Poor Gnomeregan Infantry is lonely! I'm not asking for playable cards, necessarily, just ones that are "aggressively defensive" in nature. They have low Attack, medium-high Health, Charge, and Taunt to clean up a minion the turn they're played and also preserve your board, assuming your opponent doesn't have easy removal.
The idea of Charge being used for removal AND board presence (if the minion survives) is a problem, especially in a mode like Arena. I don't have a problem with Charge being used as a form of removal, but only if Charge minions have low enough Health to be killed almost every time they trade. At that point, though, design space is limited and Attack values must be high enough to compensate - and even then, it might not be enough (e.g., Reckless Rocketeer). Those high Attack values also make it easier to come up with degenerate OTK Charge combos, so Blizzard would have to do something like make Charge minions attack only minions the turn they're played.
I kind of wish Charge minions had high Attack and decent Health, but then lost some Attack after they first attacked. Imagine a 2 Mana 3/3 with Charge that lost 2 Attack after its first attack. Then, even if it remains on the board, its impact is not as large. It's a cheap Charge minion, but it's not a problem (unless it gets buffed). For this system to work, Charge would probably need to be disallowed from hitting face immediately. Eh, it's too late to change so many cards, so drastically.
Literally everyone in this thread is a salty anti-combo brain-dead child. It take so many turns to compile a combo, and you give your opponent several opportunities to kill you. In addition, freeze mage is literally as bad or worse as combo decks, and it will never be removed from the game. Everyone who wants to change/remove charge just wants to water down shaman-stone even more, where the game is "who can draw the most consecutive drops before turn 6". Its disgraceful.
combo decks that are strictly there for the combo, or combos that deal over 20 damage from hand shouldn't exist. leeroy package is ok in renolock because 1. when renolock is the meta people already aware of the leeroy combo and know the damage ceiling. 2. you know when to play around it when they drop emperor thaurissan. 3. its a combo deck that can disassembled to clear the board or destroyed by dirty rat. can you really do any of that against freeze mage? i mean ratting their alex is not that much of a big deal if you're playing against a slow control deck that gives you breathing room. against djinni priest? theres only 1 minion in the combo and you run 2x jhinni so you have to get lucky twice and you have to make sure you have 2 taunts up at all times. those types of combos aren't good for the game. the problem with combo decks is that you can't really stop your opponent from drawing cards unless you pressure them by playing super aggressively. theres not much you can do against acolyte and loothoarder not to mention freeze mage runs novice engingeer now
cycle decks are fucking retarded
So here is a unpolished idea: I would like to see a cheap charge that takes multiple turns to play. Like a 2 mana 4/1 with charge that is delayed by one turn and takes up a space on the board... you can put a shadow as a place holder (like a stealth but this would still be considered payed for in advanced the hand and safe from removal.)
something that behaves like a stealthed minion with windfury but pops back into the hand... blah yeah... I really can't think of adding more to charge minions except restrictions.
a 1/1 charge with windfury would be really over powered.
Its tough to think of new ideas.
Uhh, wouldn't that card just be a 2 mana 4/1 with stealth for a turn? It wouldn't matter if it had charge at all. The point of a charge minion is that it can attack right away, and you don't have to wait a turn to attack. You basically described a minion without charge... lol.
So.... A normal minion?
I literally just overflew the text and read "Taunt is cheat" somewhere. I am not lying, it was written somewhere or my eyes were betraying me
"fuck combos, we here at blizzard prefer just killing people turn 4 with shaman for 7 months."
Yeah, go ahead, destroy an entire archetype. Good thinking.
Compairing HS to Shadowverse is like comparing an apple and a pear, they might look almost the same but they are not.
Actually, there are two separate forms of "charge" in that game. Rush is exactly like what you described, they can only attack minions. Storm minions act the same way as charge does in Hearthstone.