Ben Brode on Design Space, Game Design, Adventures, and Feedback
Josh Calixto of Glixel sat down with Ben Brode to discuss game design, community feedback, and keeping Hearthstone fun.
Mr. Brode
- One of Ben’s favourite ways to decompress from work when he gets home is to talk to people on the internet who play Hearthstone. That’s how he became a big part of their communication strategy.
- Ben has a passion for explaining the team’s point of view to help give people a deeper understanding of things they may not think about.
Adventures
- They're currently ramping up a team for Adventures, with the next one releasing alongside the next Expansion (as previously announced).
- Adventures will be free content for players to consume. It will reward card packs.
Game Design
- Cards removed from the Classic set for this year's Standard rotation were due to the fact that they were hoping to get more variety out of certain classes.
- As an example, Conceal was very popular with Miracle Rogue for years.
- Sometimes, they just need to make room for new stuff.
- Standard needs to always be fresh, Wild is allowed to have the same decks forever.
- Designing a top-level metagame is hard. People will always play the best decks out there, leaving less room for variety.
- For the high end of play, they try to create lots of tools and cards that test the skill-level of the player.
Card Design
- Yogg-Saron, Hope's End may have been one of the most fun cards ever created, but it was bad for competitive; It didn't belong there.
- Sometimes, they have a really cool idea for a card but during playtesting, it gets re-evaluated due to someone finding a broken combo.
- Animated Armor was originally going to be a Neutral minion but due to bad interactions with Master of Disguise, it went to the mage set.
- A similar issue with Dreadsteed and the old Warsong Commander is why Warlocks ended up with the minion.
Feedback
- The community “hugely” affects the final design of the game. They're here to serve and are heavily motivated to make the game more fun.
- The top concern for the team is making Hearthstone as fun as it can be for as many players as possible.
- Feedback from Un'Goro has shown that the expansion has been super fun.
- Feedback on pricing shows they have some discussion to do internally.
Ben on Design Space
Quote from Ben BrodeThere's this concept of design space, which I think is an oft-misunderstood term, but it's basically: if you imagine every "vanilla" minion: a one mana 1/1, a two mana 2/2, a two mana 1/3, a two mana 3/1 – all the way down to a 10-mana 10/10, a 10-mana 9/11, or whatever. That's all the design space there is for vanilla minions. You can't make any other vanilla minions. You've used all the space for vanilla minions.
Then once you start putting words on cards, there's a lot more space. Let's say I made a card that said: All your 1/1 minions get +29/+29. Stonetusk Boar makes it so that you cannot make that card. It's just game over. Stonetusk Boar has reduced some design space. Every card both uses some design space and restricts some design space for the future, and often, what happens during playtesting is that we try some new thing and then realize it totally does not work with this other combo that we've got in the game, and so we have to cut it.
'Let's say I made a card that said: All your 1/1 minions get +29/+29. Stonetusk Boar makes it so that you cannot make that card. It's just game over.'
Dear Ben Brode, let's just say we have a veeery similar thing to that right now in the meta called Caverns Below. And when you talk about design space it just makes me cringe because of the fact that there's Jade Idol and Caverns Below in the game.
They just give him an index card with keywords before the interview to use. 'Design Space' is always the first word.
These interviews are embarrassing.
Ben Brode no one cares about you, you're a horrible designer that ignores any problem associated with the game that your playerbase tries to explain. You're a fantastic representation of the greedy corporation you work for, pouring horrible ideas into money sinks, then morphing your face into some stupid expression that sells and appeals to the dumber population. It's parallel to your Diablo team thinking Necromancer was an innovative unknown concept to introduce into Diablo 3. "Yeah we get together in this meetings, shit out ideas, many from the past, get high and pick one." Stating you claim about dedicating a game to having fun when you design classes to literally pick one to two decks consisting of 1% of the total card amount. Oh and your Hunter development team is non-existent, seeing as how every other class gets better beasts in their class cards than Hunters do with the exception of the classic Savannah Highmane and Rat Pack. I dream of the day the world recognizes just how horrible your company and EA games truly are.
- I know Ben Brode won't read this as this isn't affiliated with Blizzard. Forward it to him if it upsets you so much.
Leading a design team isn´t easy. Its like monopoly, make choices and out come will either be good or bad.
just look at what patches did to the whole game.
id say.......hearthstone team should listen more of their fanbase, but for examples they have listen their fanbase, is because numerous of anti-pirate cards, taunt quest and so on.
So heartshstone team and ben brode does listen hearthstone fanbase even doe we don´t know what spins in ben brodes mind.
hearthstone is free to play game but some how they need to make money, to pay the card creators, designers, voice actors for different languages and translators and coders and many much more.
Ben Brode is not the best man in the word but atleast he is not the worst.
make hearstonne grate again
What is the point of this article, it provides almost no information at all. What about adventures?
So then adventures are going to be completely pointless.
So there will be no heroic mode and no heroic card back? :(
Havent learnt a single thing in this article.
pls denerf yogg and put him into the hall of fame
Are you idiot? Yogg is probably the WORST and more unfair card ever Made, you can play arround or control that card, is really frustrate yo lose against it, is like a pirate Warrior but worst because the yogg efects como out nowhere.
If he's in wild he won't be a competitive card anymore just a fun card in a fun mode
You forgot that yogg, is random as bag full of skittles with poison skittles with them.
Its not guarantee win always while pirate warriors and rogue quests are scripted with endless possibilities to win.
Yogg saron can be either positive or negative, he will either over draw your a** out or kill you or minions with pyroblast, or give you buffs and more minions.
That´s why we loved yogg saron because he was trump card that could either win the game or loose it.
Blizzard almost has same brain as valve.
Valve cannot count to 3
And Blizzard doesn´t know how to ban cards from tournaments.
like seriously, yogg saron was literally the best card ever and they nerfed him....because tournaments
The best one? Sure, because lose only because RNG is the best of Hearthstone rigth? It's not like "unfair" Rigth?