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.
RNG is everywhere, expect if you play pirate warrior.
if you have equal amount of cheap cost cards and high cost cards, there is always the possibility that you draw high cost cards at the start of the game and draw cheap cards from bottom of your deck.
Yogg saron is good example of playing with your life, its not guarantee win when you put him on the field, but sure its fun to see tons of spells flinging around the field.
I still say nerfing Yogg-Saron was a mistake. They should've just flat out banned the card from tournaments if they didn't want it in e-sports instead of making it unusable.
Finally some constructive analysis on the current discussions on reddit/hearthpwn! I've been waiting for this since the launch of Un'Goro!
Thank you Ben Brode you brought hope to the community!
Want to make the game more fun? Try moving Ice Block to the Hall of Fame. Then make Shield Slam remove some (or all) Armor when used. Lastly, make it so I can "ban" classes from Casual. Just my two cents.
Sorry, my bad. I thought an article about how Ben Brode loves community feedback, which also mentions that making the game fun is their top priority, would be the right place to point out three things that would make the game more fun. We can't all enjoy being denied a win turn after turn, or taking a massive hit for a single Mana. I guess you just have more fun than me.
Yeah, I wish more people noticed that I was offering three suggestions to help make the game more fun, instead of just being salty and complaining about the game. I actually really enjoy the game a lot.
Make sure to actually come to conclusions please. That is, the conclusions we've come to.
FWIW - the dev team doesn't determine pricing. Presumably, BB has input into Blizzard's marketing decisions for the game he directs, but it ultimately isn't his call. Hence the vague allusions to "internal discussions" and similar phrasing whenever he addresses the issue of pricing.
10 mana 1/1 battlecry: all your 1/1 minions gain +29/+29
Probably a terrible card and not fun but technically fits the thing you said was impossible. even if it was not a battle cry and was a 1/2 this card might not see play, because 1/1 minions are bad and easily removed.
So, what about any crap with stealth?