Hearthstone: 10 Bits Of Design Wisdom 

0:55 Iterate Fast 6:48 Share the Vision 10:00 Simplify 18:51 Keep it Deep 22:56 Immediate Fun 26:05 Embrace the Medium 30:17 Don't Change Too Much 34:18 Support Player Stories 41:02 Emotional Design Matters 47:20 Little Victories

13:55 - "We dont need to have a popup menu" (Dont get me wrong, i love HS. Just love how they have innovated and happy to go back on previous design decisions!)

I guess it's not too surprising that this talk wasn't well-received by players, but there's some great advice in there for developers. It's funny that the Magic the Gathering talk about the same design principles is loved so much, but I suppose that's fine, people can just learn from that one and make jokes about this one.

11: Make sure you introduce more and more expansions and adventures, with increasing number of expensive legendary cards to milk your customers of their money.

The note about "Little Victories" is crucial. By the very nature of competitive games, at least 50% of players will lose for every match.. In games without even teams, it's the ratio's even larger. For solo rounds of any battle royale, almost *99%* of players will be losing at any given time. If the only way to have fun in your game is by winning, you have a massive problem. Because at least 50% of your players are inevitably going to be having a bad time.

What a fantastic talk! I wonder why he is not on the team anymore.

Good talk... but i wish the audio was better.

This is how design should work, and why it is valuable. It is preparation work.

his observations around the 40 minute mark, that forcing narrative into a story with lots of pop-up boxes is a terrible idea - hearthstone went on to do exactly this with various singleplayer modes, and sure enough, he's right, it fucking sucks.

"If in magic you see your opponent has 2 blue manas open... you assume certain things :D" YEAH BRO.. i assume a counterspell all day long bro..

"we didn't want new players to be scared about too much game, so we didn't include any game mechanics so there wasn't any game to intimidate them. this is going to be great for player retention."

I feel like Hearthstone had a great way to funnel new players into the game and get them to know the game, but could not hold water since so many of the mechanics that were removed ended up unintentionally limiting the fundamental balance of the game they were basing it off of (not to mention basic long-term game development problems that could have been avoided). Like the removal of control as an archetype to help protect people's feelings will get new players to join, sure, but then they learn that there are only two viable ways to play the game (Aggro and Combo) and then quit. Sure, they try to address this, but it ends up just creating overly powerful and uninteresting cards to counter that and accelerating the bane of every long-term game's existence - power creep. Plus control is so fun to play against once you know what you are doing if it is well-balanced.

He's talking about "Design for emotion," yet, they still managed to introduce cards like Knife Juggler, Flame Juggler, Huge Toad, and Fire Bat. It doesn't feel good knowing you lost the game based on a turn one or turn two juggle coin flip.

I actually believe the part where he told about "player stories" around 36:32 lies Hearthstone's greatest weakness. This huge randomness takes the fun out of the game and makes it more frustrating than memorable. I don't think the guy who lost thought it was fair, I don't even think the guy who won the match thought it was fair. Hearthstone did a lot of things right but randomness wasn't one of those.

Hearthstone to me is a game where the developers kind of went whole-hog with their design philosophies at the detriment to the game as a whole. I'm noticing that it's designers are chalking Hearthstone up as a "victory" and not questioning their game further, which will prove to be an obstacle moving forward. From a gameplay perspective, I find that there is not a core consideration for counterplay - something that should be a core consideration from the ground up. In terms of monetization, they need to better control the frequency of their releases and institute a set rotation to help free players keep up. Finally, in terms of design they need to stray from randomness for randomness sake/giving out free shit, and keep closer to great mechanics like Discover and/or Secrets.

I can’t believe this is available to me. Thank you 🙏

funny to hear a blizz employee say: "it's important to use words people know and use already" when they have been refusing to do just that for years in heroes of the storm. they refuse to say MOBA, ultimate ability, map etc...

Whoever designed a 1 mana 3-2 that summons a 1-1 with charge doesn't have designer brain. You also discovered summoning sickness was a necessity early on yet proceeded to produce loads of charge minions and effects. The majority of which had to be nerfed or changed completely and you continue to make that mistake now. Combined with weapons and face damage spells you set up environments of 0 interactivity that still plague the game to this day. You should do a GDC on the current state of Hearthstone as an example of how not to iterate on your game. I say this as a huge Blizzard and Hearthstone fan.

And finally we get the random machine, which is interesting to watch, but painful to play.

Thanks Pat

so this is why priest got purify?

Wow the comment section. Man.

If the new league/ladder system or whatever Ben said they will add to reduce the power creep isn't just dust in the eyes to get the players attention, but a well polished alternative to the current ladder system, the game will have a bright future. There is more to talk about it, but until we know what we are talking about it is pointless to speculate, just as tavern brawl is just something to fill the gaps between large content updates, and not the hardcore tournament mode that everyone seems to want, yet nobody really knows how it should work.

Nice panel!

mark rosewater (mtg head designer) began by smiling throwing his arms out in a huggging motion, said welcome with a smile and introduced himself blizzard dev #456 began by saying a halfhearted hello waving to one person and trying to tell the audience what to do im likely reading way too much into this but thats just something i noticed

Of course Hearthstone doesn't need a narrative story. It's got a whole different game to tell it - World of Warcraft.

All the negative comments here should be taken with a grain of salt. As long as Hearthstone keeps players playing and is making so much money, this talk is worth listening to. If your idea of good game design is to copy everything someone else does then please go make a game and see if that works.

it's sad how "traditionally in CCGs" means MTG variants. Paper CCGs are so much more diverse than that.

"Lets take the agency and skill out of the CCGs we love and make a game that flips coins and prints money"

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL 😀

Hah the whole video is basically "we didn't want to do what Magic did...for...reasons"

"hello"

Can't speak much on the game as a whole, especially at higher levels as I only played a little. But it seemed overly simplistic and lacking depth, despite their attempts to maintain it. Also, he is surely a better and more experienced game designer than I, so I probably couldn't talk. But I don't agree with removing the parts of the game that give people negative emotions. Maybe controlling it to an extent, sure. But the reason the highs of a game feel so great is largely BECAUSE you had low points and overcame them, or have put your opponent in these situations and they need to find the solution to get around it. It's difficult to balance and prevent decks that simply delete other decks or 100% counter another play style where counter play is impossible, but it shouldn't be outright removed as a feature. Building decks that counter other decks is part of the experience, and there are a number of ways you can dampen these endless chains and give people a chance for counter play regardless of their build. Making everyone always in a happy controlled emotional state as if treating them like children or snowflakes, afraid to upset them, robs them of the emotional rollercoaster that makes a game interesting and builds player investment and rivalries. Without this, the game becomes stale and boring.

You know what feels worse than priest? Half the bullshit Rogue pulls off. At least you can try to bait a priest, but if a rogue gets a combo, there's nothing you can do.

We had a lot of fun with these design stages when making the battle system for the Allians card game. HS is so curvebased :(

Why the protos were made in flash instead of unity ?

38:00 let me guess... that streamer was Noxious

1. Be backed by a massive corporation with built-in audience that will buy any game you produce, no matter how crappy. 2. Use an existing world that people are already familiar with. 3. Copy the basic mechanics from another successful game (MTG), but dumb down the overall game to make it more accessible to consumers. Like one HS streamer said, HS isn't actually good, its just "good enough" to a large enough audience. Blizzard has a profitable formula. What they don't have is a good game.

1 - iterate fast: funny how they don't do this with the live servers. 2- allow non competitive players to thrive - not in an aggro shaman and pirates meta. OH did you not craft the 1 mana legendary?? too bad new guy. - simplify - yea 6 turn games are simple - design for emotion - whelp, mill decks are never coming back. -balancing for emotion - why don't they do this to aggro. - little victories - lots of those in a six turn aggro meta.

It's like night and day listening to MTG design talks and then listening to this guy. Control feels bad to play against so we remove most of it and overcharge for it in resources? Sounds like they'd rather bore their players than challenge them. Glad I never played Hearthstone!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now everything is different

thumb up for the flash prototype :)

43:15 - Dirty Rat anyone?

If the game is so great why is it dying rn?

43:30 (around this time) THEN EXPLAIN PRIEST. Now, to give context, I haven't played Hearthstone in a long time. I was in the beta, I played for about a month or two after true release, then I put it down. I came back once or twice, but never for more than a day. So most of this is going to be based on vanilla Hearthstone. But anyway, back to the topic... EXPLAIN PRIEST. I _never_ had a good time playing against a priest. Now, by no means am I saying priest is overpowered; they aren't. In fact, they were slightly underpowered last I recall (about 49% win rate). But they just weren't any fun to play against. They'd make the game last forever with their constant healing. By turn 8, they'd wait for you to play the biggest minion in your deck, then mind control it. (Yes, I know, mind control now costs 10, but that only delays the issue) Which means you have to counterplay by just not playing anything big after turn 8. Not playing things is not fun. Having them taken from you is even worse. It got to the point where I'd just instantly surrender when matched against a priest. Because, win or lose, they're going to drag the match out far longer than necessary, such that it's more efficient (in both gold earned per hour, and fun) to just not bother. Edit: Perhaps I should mention I typed all this after he mentioned "designing for emotion" but before he actually mentioned mind control. Still, he never addressed the long game time issue...

yu

MTG is good offline as it was but as CCCG outdated and slow. HS on the other hand at least when it came out and few years after was fun, neat, clear and yet open to vast amount of strategies. I would always praise the HS's resource system - the most annoying part of MTG combined with awful mathematical side of it and removed blocking as a duty of a defending player that slowed the game all the time(the digital one).

"Traditional Paper CCGs" Just say Magic the Gathering. We all know that is the game that Hearthstone (and 75% of other card games) rip off.

I'm confused. Did he say at any time while talking about designing the game that they just used the shadow era system? Don't get me wrong, I'm no shadow era fan or hearthstone hater, I,m just saying. Shadow era didnt just inspire Hearthstone the way Magic inspired any other lcg, Shadow era and Hearthstone are the exact same game.

WHERES BEN BRODE

Now I understand why Hearthstone didn't catch me as a player. Is oversimplified and over protective of the players "emotions".

Lol the salty Loosers on the comment

Oh lord, the nerve of Hearthstone devs. Handful of cards ("random" being the most common used adjective) is released a few times a year with a crystal clear indication of what overpowered cards will rule the next meta. Because there is so few cards released, players have no choice but to play one of the couple (sometimes literally two) deck archetypes available (everything else being vastly underpowered). People confusingly point it out, Brode denies everything in one of his videos, while boasting what a great designer he is. Rinse and repeat. Hearthstone in one sentence: give us the money, random is exciting, now shut the fuck up.

Why the discard hate? Someone got nailed by 8-rack one too many times.

You know what creates the best player stories that are so dear to his heart? Freedom to choose mix and match. 2 Meta netdecks. Such divers player stories. Also the f2p experience is god awful. Hearthstone is a casual joke and in my opinion a very subpar game. Thankfully i never spend money on the damn game.

Balance for emotion is the reason why OW is such a cancer game :(

Pure PR.

9:55 to 10:17 That's the problem with today's games in a nutshell. Too much accessability and simplicity makes for very shallow games.

16:42 Using 4 year old art new cards OMEGALUL

Hearthstone is a terrible, terrible game.

Too bad Hearthstone never quite caught on

lots of bad advice.