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.
What if charge minions played more like a spell, and forced you to pick a target when you played them, whereupon they would immediately attack? This seems like it would solve all of the problems with buffing and/or Faceless Manipulator, allow for more powerful charge minions, and still afford room for limited combos using cards like Sword of Justice, Flametongue Totem, Hobgoblin, Murloc Warleader, etc.
You could affect the same thing by making a rule that playing another card or using your hero power cancels charge for the rest of the turn.
Such a change would require a lot of card tweaking (including buffs!) but seems workable to me.
The explanation is worth and I would like to remember that not long ago we yearned for more Blue Posts on the design process.
That being said, RIP Faceless Manipulator, and perhaps RIP Leeroy, both will be kicked out Classic, I fear.
I'm pretty sure that I'm in the minority, but I really don't understand the problem with One-Turn-Kill Combo's...
Yes you can kill your opponent in one turn without any interaction, but how much interaction is there when you smack your opponents face in with an Arcane Reaper and hope that they didn't draw Reno or a big Taunt?
Usually the Otk-combo's also require certain set-up's which means that you're just going to die to most Midrange and Face decks...
There's a quote of Brode saying losing to freeze mage felt worse than losing to aggro decks.
It's about all you need to know about this professional game designer, that to him, losing to a simpleton pointing everything face for 5 turns feels worse than a fairly skilled player surviving for 10 while drawing AND answering your plays before downing you with a planned set of cards ( That consequently also clogged their hand ).
Anton, you're not alone... I agree that OTK or combo decks are not problematic at all. The meta is a great example of this, you don't actually see much combo or OTK decks, cause they are too slow. You not only have to create your win condition, get all the cards as fast as possible, sometimes use the Thaurissan but also survive until turn 10, which is incredible hard these days. Normally the game is over by turn 6 or 7, if the pirates didn't kill you by there, the opponent won't have more cards in hand, so you don't really need the combo to win...
I'd rather die to a 20 damage combo on turn 10 than I'd die to a upgraded Arcanite Reaper to my face on turn 6...
You can counter the Leeroy combo by either setting up a bunch of Taunts, not getting below 20 Health, killing them before they use it (which is what usually happens), or play Dirty Rat.
The old Druid combo was much MUCH worse as it's damage increased by a shitload if you had 1 or 2 minions on board.
BenBrodeBack, it's pretty... unordinary situation, when you are "much more ahead" against Renolock at turn 10+, but still haven't smorced him yet, don't have taunts, cannot heal yourself above 20 hp and don't have Ice Block.
Also I'm kinda curious how you distinguish deserved and undeserved victory.
I completely agree that it feels worse to lose to Freeze mage than Pirate Warrior. The frustration is in the inevitability. Pirate Warriors can be stopped; you draw a taunt, weapon removal, or just heal for enough that they can't *quite* finish you off. Freeze mage..well I hope you're a Warrior or sitting on plenty of post-Alexstrasza healing. And with Emperor Thaurissan that might not even be enough.
But in that situation, at least the Freeze mage only has one avenue for victory. They've put all their eggs in one basket and pray that they draw it in time. Renolock isn't like that. It fields multiple large threats, extensive removal, healing, taunts, and often grindy Jaraxxus value. And if it so pleases it can include 3 cards which also give it 20 damage reach from an empty board (I'm not counting Emperor in that list; they'd run that card anyway). I will be very happy to never see that combo again.
I like how he calls OTKs "evil".
Who even bothers to include King Krush in a deck. Put charge with an absurd high cost so it will never be played, problem solved (the reality for our favorite dino).
Another main problem of Charge minions are, they have so few health in which almost all the time you would go face.
There are some Charge minions which are playable before, as some of you have mentioned like Argent Commander.
Blizzard is making effort to communicate and I do not see a single positive comment on this post.
So I must ask, What is the point???
Do we really need to pretend we like what they're saying ?
Like, let's be real, beforehand, the "Everybody constantly whines" thing had some merit, but now that we have Overwatch which is universally praised, meh.
If team 5 is not liked, that's because every time they speak it feels like they're insulting our intelligence. Remember ? "New players don't know how good the new Warsong commander is.".
They didn't say that it was a strong/good card... They said: A new player will not know if this is a good or a bad card.
IMO spells to face are less interactive than charge minions
if only they change Charge mechanic into the same text as Charge (warrior basic card) into: "Charge allows a unit to attack minions the first turn it is placed on the battlefield" so to make charge more a defensive minions i guess...
(note: Bold text are the ones that changed or added text between "")
funny how they try to look like good game designers but yet the game is worst day after day
If people would stop buying packs every 6 months (lol the price of a full AAA game and you have almost nothing to play) , they would maybe try to make the game actually good