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.
But you can't add 5 mechanics/keywords per set. 2-3 max.
ideas aren't infinite. If you keep putting 5 mechanics per set (15 per year), you'll run out of ideas pretty, then blizz will be recycling older mechanics and people will whine about using old mechanics instead of adding newer ones.
They should rotate Charge out of Standard, and the game will be evergreen.
That's probably a good idea, as that's where most of the balance issues have tended to come from.
Or maybe it should allow attacking minions only on the first turn
What's with the "hardcore" players' obsession over new keywords? It's not how many keywords a set has, it's the number and variety of new mechanics. A keyword is just a shorthand for an effect. Say you came up with a new keyword "Buff: X" that's like "Give a minion +X/+X". New keyword? Sure. New effect? Not really. There are plenty of interesting effects every set, so why don't players play with those effects instead of clamoring for more shorthands to describe them?
apparently everything is so confusing to new players i'm surprised there's even any of them. I mean there is only around a few people like 70 million of them playing it.
I don't understand the anger over this... I mean wild will have every keyword created... who cares whether standard still prints it. They didn't say they would never ever ever print an inspire card again, just that they don't want a set that has 20 keywords in it... they want each set to feel unique. It's unlikely they will ever have another inspire card printed. I think what they are trying to do is keep core mechanics limited to a few keywords, and then unique set ideas that match a theme to another set of keywords... and there is no point printing inspire in an adapt set... and adapt will not be printed in a "xyzkeyword" themed set. Makes sense to me.
People are mad at Blizzard because they can goto http://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules , download the comprehensive rules, and be in awe at how many keywords Magic has, and they want Hearthstone to be better than Magic in every way.
Which is stupid because I agree with what Max said as Wild should be the repository of keywords... whereas standard should be more limited because the newer players simply haven't had time to go through all the sets in the same way that us vets that have been here since Beta have.
If you dislike the game that much then maybe just don't play?
That is just plain wrong. When you say that you can't wait for them to create a good game, you also imply that the game is not good at the moment. That is just the tense you used. That is reading 101. If you think the game is good, you could have used "better" instead of good, even though that also doesn't really contribute anything, since that also means that you think some how that a better game must exist even if it is only in the abstract, or you could have said keep it good.
What you really meant to say was:
"Wah, Blizzard doesn't do exactly as I want and they actually care about someone else than me therefore they are wrong, and I'm right."
Technically the game being good and the developers focusing on making it good are different things.
I really like that they don't burden new sets with old keywords. They are right it is better to have a distinct and fresh theme than limit card design by throwing in old keywords for the sake of it.
I want MORE keywords! Something like "Lifelink" for example, which Burnbristle have.
Having more effects would make game much more diverse. Much more tactics. Much more fun.