Max McCall on Keywords in Standard Format
Max McCall was out on the forums recently and talked about Keywords in the Standard format. Specifically, he mentions:
- Too many keywords would be overwhelming.
- Keywords aren't needed to give people new strategic options and to make for interesting deckbuilding.
- Less keywords means more support for those mechanics through special interactions.
Check out his full post below. What are your thoughts on keywords in Hearthstone? Are there any that you'd like to see more of?
Quote from Max McCallHaving too many keywords in Hearthstone would be overwhelming. Most of our sets have a new keyword, and some of them have more than one. If, in addition to a set’s new mechanics, we also kept around Spare Parts and Inspire and so on, we’d quickly reach Peak Keyword. Every set is someone’s first set, and learning Hearthstone is tough enough without a bevy of cards with words you don’t understand.
The marginal benefit of the twentieth keyword in the same Standard environment is small. We don’t need many keywords to make deckbuilding interesting and give people new strategic options. So, we do most of our keywords on a set-by-set basis, and they naturally sunset when Standard rotates. Because we have fewer keywords, we can support those mechanics more; having a theme is more fun than having a card or two with Inspire. Instead, we can layer cards like Maiden of the Lake and Garrison Commander on top of Inspire to give the mechanic more depth. We wouldn’t be able to do that if we had more keywords, because we don’t have enough cards in each set to do so.Couldn't this be relatively easily rectified by simply adding some sort of appendix or something the website that lists all the in-game words as well as what effects those words apply? Screen shots for a visual aid could help a lot as well.
Far be it from me to question your design philosophy, but it just seems like a non-problem that could be easily fixed with a new player section on your website that provides useful information pertaining to the game as well as a list of key words.New players rarely use resources like these. It's a lot to ask for someone who may have only played the game for a couple of hours to hop out of the game, go to a website, and look up relevant information. It's even worse if you're playing on your phone and you need the information immediately.
I get the impression that some people think that reducing the number of keywords in Standard is catering to new players at the expense of experienced ones. It's not. It does reduce comprehension complexity, but it doesn't reduce the space for strategic decision-making. Consider if every card in a set had its text replaced with a keyword: the set would be no more or less complex strategically. It would just be harder to understand. Indeed, doing fewer mechanics and devoting more cards to them gives people more options for deck construction.
It's not the keywords you need to remember, it's the cards, if you want to play around them.
But don't worry, keywords or cards, Hearthstone is never gonna have enough broken cards that you'll need to remember over a 100 cards to play around.
Hearthstone is never gonna ask you something a toddler couldn't do, rest easy and play around nothing, because actually broken cards are not AOEs, board wipers, or other such effects that actually punish a certain behaviour, they're just very efficient minions/spells that crush you no matter what.
The tutorial is not the problem. As far as i can remember i've learned every game by simply playing it up to a few hours.
The problem is that making a single competitive would set you back 20-30 dollar or like 50 hours of grinding. Getting a decent collection of just standard cards goed into the hundreds of dollars.
Keywords are the main "ingredient" in every card game.If you focus everytime in new players and don't want these players to get confused with something,then make guides,adventures even more small solo story lines and explain the cause you are into.Many adventures in the past have made this clear and have given more fun in the game but now we face an era that we have to buy many more packs to stay into the meta..As sme guys mentioned before me,Blizzard introduce new things,abandoning old things making he game more confusing for both new players and old ones.For example if you are a new player and you want to keep up with the current meta maybe building some decks need some cards from old expansions which were powerful with or without keywords.But when the go and craft these cards after 3-4 months the most of them will be useless cause the will introduce a new thing that will "replace" completely the old one..So to keep up with the flow you have to put more money into the game or grind the game itself so many hours.I believe that makes ha game too confusing for new and old players and not the keywords.The state in which the game goes..If there was a keyword that fits in the game and works well then I don' see a reason being an issue for the players(like deathrattle or divine shield or poisonous etc).In my opinion you have to help new players like introducing them in other ways into this game and not focus only in ways to earn more money..If you make this good then the money will come,the other way I'm afraid it won't..
Read your post and stop insulting..Cards of course are the most importand but cards without keaywords never exist solo in a card game..If you have ever played MTG(which you haven't as it seems)you would understand what I mean..There are so many powerful cards in Hearthstone right now because of their keywords and not because of their art or sth..Stop insulting people and get some reason in your posts..
I'm not sure if you understand what a keyword is. The cards are important due to their TEXT, not their KEYWORDS.
To use the example Max did, do you think Emperor Cobra is more powerful because they changed the card from "Destroy any minion damaged by this" (text) to "Poisonous" (keyword)? Of course not. It does the SAME THING.
Keywords help experienced players parse cards quickly. They are also a barrier to inexperienced players, and most importantly, they do NOT add (or remove) any power to cards. Read the last paragraph of the article again: if they turned Ravaging ghouls text to "Ravenous" or Cult Masters to "Redraw" or whatever, the cards gain NO strength. The keywords add NO power to the cards, the abilities do that, which can be keywords or text.
woow
Yes it would be sleightly harmful to the flavor of each set.
Velrun has a point though. Joust and inspire (and the hero power) where the key-flavor of the Grand Tournament, just as the three-classes, jades, buffing and potions are from Gadgetzan, C'thun from Old Gods, spare parts for GVG and Adapt/quest of Un'goro. Adventures did mostly have a play/miniontype-flavor like dragons, deathrattles, discover and spell-interactions. Adventures are because of their limited cards much more integrated and we've seen adventures mostly integrate with the game (the gorilla mech from LoE and netherspite historian for example). A new set brings something new and not something old. If every set was to dote upon old set ony the existing decks become stronger and the new mechanics are being overrun.
Appearently I'm outnumbered here but as a game designer I strongly believe each set (or block) should have a different vibe and feel to them in order to stand the test of time. If it all blends together, then the game becomes quite boring after a ten years.
There will always be newbies complaining though.
I understood it the way that not giving those mechanics key words gives those mechanics that didn't get a keyword more support. Also isn't the sentence more easily interpreted to mean instant support rather than long term support in the following expansions?
Out of curiosity, how does Magic handle introducing new mechanics? I'm sure they've figured the right way to do it at this point.
Personally, I want Blizzard to introduce a new mechanic with every set but I also wish they would revisit the mechanics from TGT.
Joust is a cool mechanic in the sense that it really pushes choosing what minions you put in your deck wisely, similar to the Brann/Y'Shaarj combo but ideally less gimmicky. King's Elek was a great example of a joust card and it would be awesome to get some proper support.
Inspire is one of my favorite mechanics in the game and I always try to include some Nexus Champion Saraad, Kodo Rider, Confessor Paletress, and the likes into decks that they'd make sense in and I think with more cards like Shadowform (specifically another card that can induce shadowform so reno decks are possible with both stages!), Dinomancy, and Justicar Truehart, these decks could really take off. They've already got some great support with cards like Garrison Commander but I feel they've really just given up on the idea because of the general negative reaction to the expansion.
Oh well
MTG does this every block(3 expansions=1 block) and usually supports the theme of the new cards. It is their way of making the game new or refreshing to the old players and a stepping stone to the new ones. They release these mechanics in hope to introduce a new way to play and also to change the current standard meta.
But some cards transcends modes(Legacy, Modern, Standard) and creates a powerful deck archetype. This is then that MTG can ban/restrict those cards if they become problematic. With so many cards already in their lineup, many decks will become op in their respective format and no amount of card testing on their side that this can be avoided. The community is the collective that builds these deck.
A block is 2 expansions. Has been so for the past 4 blocks.
More to the point (amurei said when, not how). Magic introduces new mechanics by simply explaining what the card does on the card itself. Example: charge (this minion can attack the same turn it was summoned) or lets say windfury (this minion can attack twice in one turn). And for spells (in the hearthstone term of spells, minions are also spells in magic) it will say something like scry 1 (look at the top card of your deck, then place it at the top or bottem of your deck). Eventualy when the mechanic has been around long enough, they remove the bracketed part and the card will simply say windfury, charge etc. etc.
Magic introduces a fuckton each expansion. Like 4 or 5 new mechanics will usually come out. Sometimes they'll then keep mechanics around, or forget about them. It should be noted though, Magic is geared far more towards experienced players and deck building, so even if they released new mechanics at the rate Hearthstone does there would still be a lot of interesting things to experiment with, simply due to color combinations
@ Mini 1994 sorry about that. Thanks for the correction
@DJSoren
And by tons, there's like 3 new keywords per expansion in MTG
(I think it would be best for Hearthstone to follow the 3 keyword route like they did in Journey to Un'Goro: "Adapt", "Quest", and "If you played an Elemental last turn...")
Here are the MTG expansions that were released in the last 5 years (from most recent to least recent) and the new keywords introduced in those expansions (and the number of new keywords):
You know I might just post this for the heck of it...