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.
I appreciate HearthPwn breaking it down for me. As for all the toxic comment0rs -- sod off and find a new game.
I can't say anything BAD about Hearthpwn aggregating news and interviews like this, although it would serve them better if they pursued some actual journalism themselves, instead of just telling us what everyone else is reporting... They should go out there and get some news; conduct some interviews, do some research and write some actual stories. Websites are getting too complacent with stuff like this these days, because it's a lot cheaper to hire people to aggregate the news than hiring people to hunt down the news and write original content.
But then again, "recaps" like this are still newsworthy. It's just that with Hearthpwn and a lot of pseudo-news sites these days, that's all there is. I just think Curse should aspire to something higher. They love all the benefits of being considered a news site, even though they technically aren't (most Curse sites are aggregators), but the higher-ups in corporate don't wanna spend the resources to actually BE a news source. I'm sure the staff at sites like Hearthpwn probably feel the same way, because I'm sure they'd love to travel on assignment more and chase down interviews and write up real news stories. But when they're being paid for something paltry like 10 hours worth of freelance work per week, it's tough to motivate yourself to work 20 or 30 hours for free (which is required to actually do the work of a real news reporter).
''Designing a top-level metagame is hard. People will always play the best decks out there, leaving less room for variety.''
If more people would get this
Un-nerf Yogg. Send him to the Hall. Make Wild truly Wild.
That is all.
no
That's what I suggested even before the hall of fame was created. So sad that "pro players" get to ruin the fun for all the other players because it's not a competitive friendly card. Well, then don't play it in tournaments or GTFO. Damn that kid who cried on stream after losing the game to a Yogg, pretty sure he sealed the decision back then.
Article is so short. I expected it to be a long read. Oh well I saw the word "Free" that is good enough. :)
"The community... are heavily motivated to make the game more fun." Ahahahahahahahahahah! XD
Nobody wise disenchant wild card :)
[they try to test the skill of the player]
we need better 2-4 drops :3
When they think their most fun cards they've been designed is the most RNG-based one, more I reach to conclusion that this game is not for me and I'm done...
If you cannot follow the one true god of yogg, then get out.
Yeah, that's why all cards of warrior are taunt cards, it's people who have variety problems....
We'll release discard warlock, buff pala, taunt warrior till you play it, YOU MUST PLAY IT!! UNDERSTOOD???
Just wait a moment. He says Yogg is too random for tournaments but they at the same time push Mage to new levels of randomness. Something does not stick.