Blizzard Explains Why It Gives "Bad Cards" To New Hearthstone Players

[Fanghawk]

Blizzard Explains Why It Gives "Bad Cards" To New Hearthstone Players

Blizzard senior designer Ben Brode is absolutely giving bad cards to new Hearthstone players - but there's a reason for it.

Hearthstone may be <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141944-Hearthstone-Earns-20-Million-Per-Month-For-Blizzard-Entertainment-And-Leads-Digital-Card-Games>a hugely popular digital card game, but it still faces a surprise criticism: <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-podcast/57418-Power-Creep-Podcast>That new expansions are already causing power creep. This occurs when new expansion cards overpower content from the base game, forcing everyone to adopt the latest expansions if they want to keep up. And sure enough, senior designer Ben Brode admitted many Hearthstone's Basic Cards are really, really bad - but that's the point. In his recent designer video, Brode explains that Basic Cards are less powerful to teach how the game works while giving new players a stronger sense of progression.

"We keep those cards incredibly simple to be that very slow learning curve for new players," Brode says. "We want some of the Basic Cards to be bad, really bad, to make that feeling of progression even stronger."

When you first open Hearthstone, you'll play through a series of tutorials and initial matches against live opponents. Beating these matches levels your Hero and earns Basic Cards, many of which are so weak they'll be crushed by advanced cards in no time. But according to Brode, experimenting with Basic Cards makes it far easier to learn Hearthstone than starting out with stronger, but more complex cards.

"Basic cards are what we give you when you first start playing Hearthstone," Brode says. "A lot of the people who come play Hearthstone, they've never played a card game before and it is somewhat daunting. So we have to kind of ease in those players and then layer complexity in things like Secrets and Windfury and Trigger powers and things like that."

In other words, Hearthstone's incredibly simple Basic Cards aren't meant to be part of your decks forever. They're about teaching players core game mechanics, while establishing a clear sense of progression as your decks become more powerful. That's how players can tell the 5/1 Magma Rager should be dropped as soon as possible, while a Truesilver Champion can stick around for your advanced decks.

"We do give new players incredible cards," Brode continues. "We give new players Truesilver Champion, Fireball, Frostbolt, Flamestrike, Consecrate. That's definitely intentional. We want new players to have some great cards, and we want high level decks to include Basic cards also. Just because there are bad cards in the Basic set, it doesn't mean we're trying to make sure we give players really bad cards to start out with. That's not our intention, but we do also want them to feel a feeling of progression and to learn what cards to put in the deck - some good choices, some bad choices."

As a specific example Brode points to Dr. Boom, referenced in power creep debates because it resembles the Basic (but weaker) War Golem. According to Brode the comparison is misleading, because War Golem was a barely-used card to begin with. "His existence has increased the power level of the game, but it's nothing to do with War Golem," he explains. "War Golem could not exist and he [Dr. Boom] would still get played in high level decks. War Golem is bad because it's bad - it has nothing to do with Dr. Boom and they shouldn't necessarily be looked at through a lens together. Dr. Boom doesn't represent power creep because War Golem exists. War Golem is just bad and was never played - it's not like people took out War Golem for Dr. Boom."

I don't know if Brode's arguments will change anyone's mind on the power creep debate, but it's certainly worth a listen for insights on Hearthstone's design. My personal favorite point was how Basic decks constructed by new players usually fare worse than randomly-generated decks of Basic cards - a surprising detail for a game which seems easy to grasp.

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[EndlessSporadic]

This would all be nice and fine if their matchmaking actually matched new players with other new players. When your matchmaking is near non-existent and you throw your new players in with players who have decks full of legendaries, this explanation is no excuse. People are going to call your game shit, and I fall into that camp. You put new players in an extremely not fun and unfair situation. Until matchmaking exists for new players I will forever continue to claim that Hearthstone is an extremely bad game.

 

[TwoSidesOneCoin]

"We keep those cards incredibly simple to be that very slow learning curve for new players," Brode says. "We want some of the Basic Cards to be bad, really bad, to make that feeling of progression even stronger."

I read that as "We're gimping the newer players and slowly forcing them to buy the newer cards by giving them shit cards."

Anyone else?

 

[Fappy]

"We keep those cards incredibly simple to be that very slow learning curve for new players," Brode says. "We want some of the Basic Cards to be bad, really bad, to make that feeling of progression even stronger."

I read that as "We're gimping the newer players and slowly forcing them to buy the newer cards by giving them shit cards."

Anyone else?

Yep, that's a fairly good translation. The digital TCG model Hearthstone has popularized has effectively killed the genre. The last MtG game was fucking horrible due to how grindy it was. After playing 100 games with the same shitty decks people aren't going to stick around long.

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

I like the game, but it is absolutely pay to win. play mode is a joke. you always get matched against someone who has a super advanced deck, and you get curbstomped.

 

[ron1n]

They're going to have to make some big adjustments at some stage or I think new player numbers are going to dwindle. I already don't understand how anyone could possibly be playing f2p as a new player from here on out as you essentially start way behind and can never hope to catch up.

Considering the game is aimed at the casual market in a big way, surely some disillusionment must be happening. I think Blizzard is banking on the fact that a lot of new players don't really know what's going on and are just having their fun fluffing around win or lose.

At the very least they need to start dropping the price on vanilla card packs and earlier adventures.

Personally I've had my fill. Just cannot justify spending money on packs as you are putting money down on potential rubbish and the adventures are a rip off so it just becomes a massive grind for gold. (And said grind becomes even more unbearable when you end up facing nothing but the top 3 meta decks every other match)

 

[Fanghawk]

I like the game, but it is absolutely pay to win. play mode is a joke. you always get matched against someone who has a super advanced deck, and you get curbstomped.

I've never spent a dime in Hearthstone, and have over 1000 wins.

While there's certainly an argument that Hearthstone is NOW harder for new players (Brode hand-waves that particular issue as "Nah, there are all kinds of reasons they could be losing") that's something which could be fixed with better matchmaking. The model they're using isn't irredeemable.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

I just don't play it because it takes few thousand gold to grind just to unlock few campaign wings - for the good cards.

Oh well, it will only get worse as time goes on, as all laws of CCG dictates.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I wonder when he'll break down and just say "look we just want your money, also extra deck slots priced ?10 per slot"

Yeah I used to play a lot of Hearthstone and it's not really a bad game once you get into it, it's just that if I had a friend who asked me if he should get into Hearthstone or not I would tell him to stay out of it. I have no idea how new players can catch up right now without spending a lot of money on it. I think at this point even making a physical deck might be cheaper than grinding packs. I'm making a physical Yugioh deck right now and yeah it's not super cheap but I know for sure that i'm getting the cards I want (thanks Ebay) instead of grinding 100 GVG packs and getting zero Dr Booms.

I installed Devpro (for anyone who doesn't know, Devpro is a fan hosted online Yugioh server) a while ago and i've not looked back. You get to play a good card game with every single card that is ever released. I could not imagine if someone had to make budget versions of the top Yugioh decks. Even my mid tier decks, yeah you can maybe sub Manju for Senju in a Prediction Princess deck but what else is there?

Granted I know physical cards can be expensive as all hell. I checked a few of the more staple XYZs I run, fuckin' Silent Honour ARK costs ?23 per copy but then there's Castel being 99p per copy. They're both considered really solid Rank 4s and can fill the same function, Konami pls what are these rarity conditions?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

My personal favorite point was how Basic decks constructed by new players usually fare worse than randomly-generated decks of Basic cards - a surprising detail for a game which seems easy to grasp.

I'd probably chalk this up to those new players being at the point where they've just started grasping the basics but think they understand better than they actually do, and therefore building decks that are unworkable with their nascent understanding of the game's strategies.

 

[Politrukk]

If this is the case gold/pack farming should be re-invented for hearthstone, the power-creep is what stopped me from playing, I'm not going to shell out 50 euro's every few months just to stay in the game without getting mauled.


And even then spending 50 euro's might not even get you close to receiving the cards that you want. (I mean in the beginning I bought like 80 packs and I got a golden Ysera and nothing else.)


Edit:

-As a specific example Brode points to Dr. Boom, referenced in power creep debates because it resembles the Basic (but weaker) War Golem. According to Brode the comparison is misleading, because War Golem was a barely-used card to begin with. "His existence has increased the power level of the game, but it's nothing to do with War Golem," he explains. "War Golem could not exist and he [Dr. Boom] would still get played in high level decks. War Golem is bad because it's bad - it has nothing to do with Dr. Boom and they shouldn't necessarily be looked at through a lens together. Dr. Boom doesn't represent power creep because War Golem exists. War Golem is just bad and was never played - it's not like people took out War Golem for Dr. Boom."-

This is the only thing I can see from his point of view because it's true, it does not however dispell the fact that Dr.Boom is a must have card that one can only acquire from GvG packs.

There are some cards from the Adventures that make it even worse in that regard.

 

[Politrukk]

I like the game, but it is absolutely pay to win. play mode is a joke. you always get matched against someone who has a super advanced deck, and you get curbstomped.

I've never spent a dime in Hearthstone, and have over 1000 wins.

While there's certainly an argument that Hearthstone is NOW harder for new players (Brode hand-waves that particular issue as "Nah, there are all kinds of reasons they could be losing") that's something which could be fixed with better matchmaking. The model they're using isn't irredeemable.

you might be lucky on your card draw from packs.

 

[Erttheking]

This would work out a lot better if the matchmaking matched up players of equal resources.

 

[RedDeadFred]

"We keep those cards incredibly simple to be that very slow learning curve for new players," Brode says. "We want some of the Basic Cards to be bad, really bad, to make that feeling of progression even stronger."

I read that as "We're gimping the newer players and slowly forcing them to buy the newer cards by giving them shit cards."

Anyone else?

Yes, that's exactly what it has become. If you started as a F2P player (or heck, even if you started after Nax as F2P) you could make it in this game. It's what I did, and I now have a large variety of decks with almost all of the best legendaries unlocked. Sure, if you're good, you can always go infinite in Arena, but they can't really expect that of new players.

There is of course Trump, who recently did a F2P run to legend as Priest, but this is a pro player who knows the ins and outs of playing against pretty much every deck in the game. This just isn't realistic for a new player.

The only solution I can think of is to add a bunch more of those tutorial style quests that grant lots of free gold, or maybe even give new players 50 basic packs right off the bat.

 

[EyeReaper]

I mean, If we're going to be fair, most starter sets to competitive card games are terrible, and I don't think any tcg has avoided power creep completely (cough cough especially Yugioh cough).

If you ask me, the whole dust mechanic is what makes the game more pay 2 win, see in any other card game, you're just stuck with the cards you get in the booster pack. However in HS, you can drop like a hundo $$, dust everything bad, and then look up your personal favorite tier list and go from there.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

1) they need to add/fix the game modes, tavern brawl isn't bad but there should be something else too I think.

2) fix fucking casual mode, it's not casual when all people do are grind aggro decks for gold, you can't tell me that was the intention for it, especially for newbies.

3) as mentioned by others, the older wings (nax especially) should be at a much reduced price, you have to win a stupid amount of times and quests to unlock them and I can only imagine how daunting it would be for new players.

 

[(whitty name here)]

I think people are looking at this wrong in this thread. People need to realize, or at least understand, that this is standard for TCGs in general. Hell, in things like MTG you're just expected to shell out cash for singles or risk your money on packs to try and pull some expensive card to save in the long run.

A popular Streamer/Youtuber named Trump actually has been doing something he's been calling "The Grand Free to Play" which is essentially him starting a new account, blocking out his name so people don't know it's him and trying to hit Legend Rank without spending a dime. Throughout the entire thing, he talks about maximizing your free packs, doing your dailies and building around what you pull in order to move up in the ranks. He goes even further to talk about why disenchanting early on is bad since you have no idea what class you may or may not have to settle into based on what cards you pull. He's currently at about rank 6 if 25 (So pretty close to Legend rank, which is roughly 30 wins more than losses from where he is now) With a purely free to play deck.

Am I saying anyone can hit legend in less than 3 months like him? Of course not, but it's a good example of how cards DO matter, but decision making matters more. I wouldn't put it past a regular gamer to hit at least rank 15 after a couple months of playing once they start to get down what's good and what's bad. And really, that's not that hard of a target to hit unless you get some bad RNG from cracking packs; even then it can be padded a little by dusting cards to make a couple key rares/epics to round yourself out once you settle in.

Is this game pay to win? Probably. About as pay to win as any other card game. But at the same time, it also plateaus. Once you get one decent deck that you don't mind playing, you begin to speed up in efficiency. You'll start buying arena keys so you can draft. You'll get better until you can more or less live off of doing your daily/an arena to make another 150 gold to buy a new arena key. All the while you're getting more dust, breaking even in gold, and guaranteed a pack every time you do an arena run. Even only playing an hour or so a day this system is easily achievable. And once again, a pack a day is pretty damn great for a TCG. Especially when you figure each pack is worth about 1.50 if you were to try and buy them in the lowest interval(2 packs for 3.00).

Now, to the power creep discussion. People keep looking at Dr. Boom and talking about how he's power creep and how he's ruining everything. I'm here to tell you cards like Dr. Boom really don't matter. Evil Heckler and Booty Bay Bodyguard don't matter. Magma rager and Ice Rager don't matter. Why? Because power creep implies the bar is being raised for good cards and setting a new standard that all other cards have to meet now. Why don't these cards count as power creep even though the new ones are clearly and strictly better than their predecessors? Well for Dr. Boom, you can argue rarity. A little. You're comparing a Legendary card to not even a common, but a basic. But even then...you know what the article already talked about Boom I'll move on. Ice Rager and Evil Heckler pretty much have the same argument as Boom minus the rarity. They're still cards that aren't worth playing. They're not setting a new standard for good cards, they're setting a new standard for bad ones. The game itself is completely unaffected by the existence of these new cards. Do you wanna know what power creep looks like? Piloted Shredder. This 4 drop so heavily set the standard for 4 drops, that literally every 4 has to be compared to shredder now. Why? Because why take X, Y or Z card when you can just take piloted shredder? Its decent attack power trades well, its health isn't super low or anything, and it leaves a 2 drop behind. Can the 2 drop screw you? Sometimes. But save for Doomsayer popping out, the worst you can get is Captain's parrot which is a 1/1. So you're getting at WORST a 5/4 of stats for 4 mana, and on average you get a 2/3 or a 3/2 from the shredder so 6/6 or 7/5 of stats for 4 mana. From GVG on, all 4 drops have to be comparable to this. So we now have more 3/5s so they can survive the initial shredder and possibly trade with whatever comes out. Blackwing Technician, Dalaran aspirant, Holy Champion, Refreshment Vendor, Twilight Guardian, all have the same thing in common. They're all 4 drops with 3 attack and more than 4 HP. Hell, even Blackwing Corruptor is used to kill shredder as a 5 drop since you can go (Play 4 drop)>(Opponent plays 4 drop; Shredder)> Drop Corruptor on turn 5 to kill shredder with 0 consequence, minus Millhouse Manastorm popping out and killing your corruptor. :/

TL;DR

So is there power creep in this game? Hell yeah. But it doesn't seem to be where people are looking. Can you get a COMPETENT deck in a reasonable timeframe? Yup. Just google the hidden quests and get a dozen or so free packs to get started, and pick a class based on what you pull. do you need to shell out money to play against people who do? I mean it helps, but you can only shove so much money into a deck before it plateaus and even then they can get fucked by card draw. And even THEN just because their cards are orange, it doesn't mean you auto lose. Look up Face Hunter or Face Paladin decks. They're cheap, fast and they're frustratingly efficient at winning quickly before those big scary orange cards appear. Is it pay to win? I guess? It's a TCG it comes with the territory. I don't play modern in MTG cause I don't feel like dropping hundreds of dollars for 4 lands and still not having a playable deck. But hey, I started playing Hearthstone as a cheap alternative to MTG so I could get my fix so ?\_(&#12484_/?

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

You know what card game I remember the most, Magic The Gathering(1997). That game didn't really have any problems like this, shame nobody in the entire universe would bother to try and make a TCG game without in app purchases anymore.(Not with that much freedom in the game and your deckbuilding at least)

 

[kimiyoribaka]

As someone who willfully plays war golem knowing it's not a good card, I have to question his reasoning. Each pack is 5 cards. Each normal card is 5-20 dust when converted. Each normal card is 40-100 dust when crafted. There are 9 classes. The math isn't there for what he's describing.

Yes, it's a bad card. I'll happily get rid of it when it stops being the most useful card of its cost I have or when my other cards are so good that I don't need a card of that cost. Given that I have a minimal social life and a job, though, I don't believe that's going to happen. I only still play at all because of tavern brawl and arena.

Oh, and seriously, if you think the "meta" is the most important part of your card design, there's something seriously wrong with you as a developer.

 

[elvor0]

I like the game, but it is absolutely pay to win. play mode is a joke. you always get matched against someone who has a super advanced deck, and you get curbstomped.

It's a CCG, there's literally no way around that short of making all the cards available and everything free forever, which is unfeasible. What would you suggest?

As long as you don't go into constructed at the start of the month, you're generally fine I find. Obviously there are cards that are very powerful, but they're certainly not mandatory to win as long as you put the effort in to learning the game.