Alright man, you’re obviouslty taking this personally and projecting a lot of stuff, resorting to namecalling etc… I’m sorry you seem to find these discussions distasteful (/dangerous I guess?), but I personally find them very interesting. Nobody on this forum has the power to dictate anything, which I suppose you recognize when you call them “wannabes”, but that does beg the question why you care so much to always get involved, and describe people expressing opinions on a community forum as an “issue” while characterizing freedom of speech and specific visions for game/product design as fascism… I get it, you only want to talk about development and not design, that is fine - I just honestly think you might find participating in other more development-oriented threads more enjoyable if that is where your interest lies.
Like I said, I feel threatened by this stuff sometimes too (bad design/development forum takes) but I do have faith in Blizzard’s ability to ultimately make their own decisions, so I don’t think there is any harm in friendly discussions. Of course not everyone comes here for friendly discussions about videogame design I guess, and even I do get heated at times…
This seems like a fairly obvious projection to me. People who are experienced in CCGs bring up magic because it invented/popularized the genre (in North America at least) and has been going strong for nearly 3 decades. 80% of Hearthstone’s design is a direct ripoff of Magic… WotC knows what they’re doing, and the history of MTG is a rich resource for people to access/learn from/talk about in the context of CCG design/development. I am not trying to prey on anyone’s ignorance here, people who don’t know what I’m talking about are not obligated to respond.
Blizzard, for what it’s worth, definitely know exactly what I am talking about because they are literal pros who likely have decades of experience playing/studying CCGs at relatively high levels just like we do. And those who do not have that experience should be here to learn and ask questions rather than attempt to criticize and shut down the (clearly labelled) personal opinions of others that they do not fully understand. This is a community forum, not king of the hill. More on this later…
What you are describing is a design/complexity limitation inherent to the design vision of Hearthstone as a game intended for mass consumption on mobile devices, vs something like magic designed and popularized in the 90s for play primarily by DnD nerds. This is a difference that is absolutely relevant, because games with less limitations and more complexity have more design space.
So, if you want to play a deck with no minions that wins the game by milling yourself (or other such non-traditional win-con) the rules of magic (specifically the availability of instants/flash and additional interactive game zones) make that stuff much more interactive/dynamic and therefore more acceptable as part of the design vision for any given format interested in maintaining fun, dynamic gameplay. Those cards/mechanics do exist in MTG by the way, even in relatively recent sets, they’re just typically priced out of competitive play in the design stage because they don’t want that stuff to get in the way of Magic’s (typically excellent IMO) core game loops. For the record, I also think Hearthstone has excellent core game loops.
I assume you have played MTGO before? And therefore are aware of how awful it can be to get through all the priorities etc while constrained by the asynchronous nature of online card games? I’m not going to bother researching this, but it’s pretty obvious to me that these design differences are a result of prioritizing best of one in an online (relatively) casual mobile VIDEOgame product… and sometimes sacrifices need to be made in terms of competitively viable play patterns in order to offer a streamlined yet still fun/dynamic gameplay experience.
The kind of stuff that moves on mass market mobile devices is never going to be able to have as many viable play patterns as a game like magic basically, for good reasons, and we’ve already discussed how much trouble MTG has had with resurrection play patterns in the past… so in general I think Wild just needs more resources/attention/activism in order to maintain that vision as a fun, dynamic card game intended for (relatively) mass consumption on mobile devices. Like I’ve said before, the recent balance changes aimed at OTK/APM mage etc are literally the only reason I am still playing this game, because IMO those are play patterns that do not work well in the context of a game like Hearthstone. And yes that is a clearly labelled personal opinion, not fascism.
For the record, over the years I have played many board-free/light MTG decks (necropotence, smokestack, counter-rebel, armageddon, opposition, psychotog combo etc) at relatively high-level (regional) tournaments, especially in the pre-2010 era, and they often felt like griefing (it’s really obvious when you have a real person sitting across the table from you) even in environments where there were avenues to interact with that stuff. So it totally made sense to me when they made all those big design shifts in 2010 to prioritize board-interactivity/dynamics, and IMO I had a lot more fun playing magic in the post-2010 era vs pre… and WotC did very well financially in the wake of those decisions as well, so I believe I am not the only one who felt that way. I have also talked to hundreds of people about this stuff in person over the years…
I actually haven’t played Runeterra before but I’ve heard good things - would you recommend trying it? I’ve been playing Slay the Spire lately and it’s excellent.
And I agree sideboards would give the designers a lot more tools to enable more dynamic gameplay, at the cost of adding complexity and degrading the user experience. I personally agree with the decisions made by the Hearthstone devs in this respect, because Hearthstone is a CCG with a lot of mechanical limitations for good reasons. Nothing wrong with that, but it does make design/development a bit trickier when you are trying to be ambitious and shake things up in standard w/ powercreep to sell packs while only having so much design space to make sure those play patterns also lead to fun, dynamic eternal formats. Difficult but not impossible I’d say, hence my call for more attention/effort, specifically theorizing about more temporary bans in wild then unbanning/nerfing on rotation out of standard.
I think you might be fundamentally misunderstanding their decisions here. WotC realizes resurrection play patterns can be fun, they are just difficult to implement well in eternal formats. That is why WotC uses both an extensive banlist in formats like modern AND a rider on certain minions that they want to have in a format but do not want to be part of resurrection play patterns. It’s not a contradiction, it’s two different tools being used to execute a specific design vision for an eternal format that is constantly being power crept by new set releases. Remember, the priority is always making Standard fun/exciting and selling packs, they have literally been creating entire separate product lines lately (modern horizons etc) to break free of the constraints inherent to this reality. Designing cards for multiple formats is really hard.
And I already agreed with you that Hogaak is not relevant to this discussion because that was a development nerf in the end and this is conversation strictly concerns design. To be honest, bringing him up felt like a non-sequitur to me at first, hence my misunderstanding, but when you fully explained yourself I actually really appreciated your input here because it’s a good case study of the interplay between design and development.
It sounds to me like they tried as hard as they could to keep him in the format for design reasons and eventually realized that it was creating too many problems, so development got rid of him once and for all… apparently, I wasn’t playing much modern at that time but he’s definitely a cool/interesting card that I could see design fighting for and development trying to jump through hoops to make work before eventually giving up. This too is largely a product of design/development limitations, this time on Magic’s side as they do not have the ability to change cards, only ban or powercreep.
I did appreciate you bringing this up though because it was an interesting point. Our discussion RE Hogaak, in case you forgot:
This next one was another great point and a perfectly reasonable request, so thank you for the positive contribution to this discussion:
Do I keep using that word? I’ve made it very clear that my opinions are my own and sometimes I do use toxic as a shorthand for play patterns that I feel fail to deliver dynamic gameplay, but we are talking about both the played and played-against experiences here - both are equally relevant to questions of design, by definition an extremely subjective space. I agree resurrection play patterns can be fun (I played some resurrection priest back in the day myself when those cards were first printed) and that is why I am the one advocating for pushing them in a different more proactive/dynamic direction rather than eliminating them entirely. I personally got bored of that deck pretty quick, and playing against it during the climb every ladder season now several years later feels like a total slog to me. Again, clearly labelled personal opinion, not fascism.
You asked for documentation from WotC describing their attitude towards this stuff and Mark Rosewater, their lead designer, wrote a series of articles about this very topic back in 2011. This was right around the time of the major 2010 core set rules/design vision update that lead to Magic’s second (or third? lol) renaissance. Anyway, I tend to write less posts with more content (because I’m old-school like that and believe in nuance/complexity lol) and still don’t have the ability to post links, but the article series is called “Grave Consequences” and it was part of his weekly Making Magic column on CCG design that he’s been writing for decades…
Like I said, a rich resource for people to access/learn from/talk about in the context of CCG design/development. I would highly recommend that column over the words of people on social media participating in attention economies and farming outrage clicks.
And I actually really appreciate that you put all that genuine time/effort into better understanding CCGs in general… I’m not 100% sure what your experience with actually playing them is to be honest, but I would definitely recommend actually going to an in-person tournament or something rather than listening to people complain on social media… either way, people who are way too online will always be angry and outrage will always bubble to the top of social media algorithms, that’s how the internet works at the moment unfortunately. I also think it is an inherent quality of CCGs to be honest, the tilt/nerd rage aspect, because people often have emotional/financial investments in their decks that can feel like an extension/expression of their personality, so people who struggle with social skills etc will often take losing personally because it is a big part of their identity/self-esteem. Not a judgment, just an observation.
It is part of the job of game designers/developers to discern which feedback is useful/meaningful and which is just people venting, though. I definitely do my best to remain positive/constructive, but I also certainly fail from time to time… good game designers, just like good teachers, can easily tell the difference.
If you really want to watch stuff online, I would recommend watching some vintage/legacy to see what that’s like, assuming you haven’t done so before. That is the logical conclusion of ultra-conservative attitudes towards balance measures, especially vintage as that is it’s defining characteristic (even though there are pervasive balance measures in place in that format as well, for design as well as practical reasons). Nobody said Magic is perfect, but it’s pretty awesome and a good compliment to Hearthstone IMO, and being knowledgable/experienced in both might help in understanding the process/history/context/logic behind the comments on this forum and decisions Blizzard’s been making lately… if you are interested in such things. My favourite people to talk to on this forum are other CCG greybeards because they tend to be more understanding.
Thanks, as always, for the responses!
Ps I am sure you are busy so don’t feel the need to respond to these super long posts if you don’t want to fully read them, I just enjoy writing and am happy to be a part of the convo and share my thoughts/perspective/experience with the community 