Ben Brode Interview - Insight into Casual Hearthstone, Meta, Just for Fun, Card Bans
GamesBeat's Jack Wilson had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Brode and talk about Hearthstone. The two discussed casual mode and how there are different views of how it should work. See our recap of the interview below or go on and read the full interview transcript.
Casual Mode
- Ideally, casual mode is low stakes Hearthstone. It isn't hardcore competition where you need to be 100% focused and available.
- Casual, like ranked, still has an MMR system but it's internal - you don't see it.
- The goal is to keep you at a 50% winrate in Casual, just like in ranked.
- The better you're doing in casual, the more likely you'll see better decks [usually meta decks].
Ranked Play
- Pirate Warrior and Secret Mage are currently 14% of the meta at Legend rank.
- Those archetypes at Rank 20 are only 5% of the meta.
- Most active Hearthstone players are between ranks 20 and 18.
Just for Fun Mode
- Ben knows there isn't a great opportunity right now to just play fun decks and not having to worry about meta.
- Adding in a mode for players to have "Fun Only" isn't really possible - you can't force players to play "bad" decks.
- The mode would evolve into players playing meta decks anyway since they win.
- Ben doesn't think it's crazy to pursue the idea, but it's not immediately obvious what the best direction would be.
Game Customization
- Being able to support a feature in which players could ban certain cards for tournament play is "very compelling", especially for Fireside Gatherings.
Supporting Different Types of Players
Quote from Ben BrodeI saw a tournament in Kansas City where they had a spinner. You spun the spinner, took out your camera, shot a QR code, and that was the deck you played in the tournament. That’s fun. It focuses on the pure fun and joy of playing Hearthstone, not on competition. Some people are competitive and that’s great. We want to support that too.
But also, it’s good to try and find ways for different people who have different goals and different things they get fun out of from Hearthstone—we should be looking at ways to support that as well.
Looking at how ridiculously easy it is to get past rank 18 (even for new players), this statement only shows that the ranked system is just too boring and meaningless for 'most active players' to even bother.
The ladder system is one of the most essential parts of the game, Blizzard has admitted many times before that it's flawed, yet it's been the same since launch...
They need to stop resetting everyone to rank 19 every season. Then most of their ladder won't be between rank 18 and 20.
Elder Scrolls Legends has a far, far better system to keep people in the right skill brackets in ranked - if you go past rank 9, you reset to rank 9. If you go past rank 5, you reset to rank 5. There's only 12 ranks and legend.
Oh, and they give real rewards for reaching rank 9, 4, and 1 each month, by giving you more free copies of the new card they release. Instead of 5 dust and a useless card like I got this month in Hearthstone (FIVE DUST!)
Blizzard thinks ranked floors solved their problem, but it did nothing to solve the monthly grind because you still need to win the same ridiculous amount of games to get back to legend. Each month!
Well we finaly heard about the card ban possibility. About time.
I think there should be a ban system. so I can choose a class and ban it before the game and i never see the razakus priest. done!
sure, ban your counters and bad matchups, win all the games, feel like you deserved legend. the point of being good is not winning favourable matchups, but also making the best of unfavourable matchups. you do realise that for every person winning there has to be somebody loosing. your solution would lead to the most cancerous meta imaginable, because if you try to counter a deck they can just choose not to play against you and crush all the other decks instead
If there is a deck that has only 1 counter and if there is a class that has only 1 counter class, its already a cancerous meta. think about that.
For the sake of the Hearthstone community please revamp Hearthstone.
Please reward a pack each time you reach a previously unearned rank in each season and every time a hero gains a level.
The development team clearly has no plans to level up heroes beyond 60, give us the option to prestige. From a design standpoint, the development team is passively rewarding you to stop playing the classes you like the most. Once you reach a new prestige level, you get a card pack.
Why are we so cautious about rewarding players card packs? As a player who has been around since closed Beta, the game needs a Hearthstone 2.0 like Heroes. Why is Blizzard's mobile game STILL not accessible this far in it's live state?
Let's finally get a PTR and test cards before we ship these expansions, the development team needs to use more community feedback.
Sorry for the rant.
I think having more balanced cards is better than having a supposedly longer experimental period.