Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Maven]

Yeah fuck me when it seemed to go along with your overall general tone of aggressive mockery.

Carrying on...

When you have to explain away a core design decision, there's a problem. Being a TCG fanatic does not actually qualify you as a game designer, nor does being QA (exhibit A: 90% of gaming QA, who is trained incredibly poorly). There's some great excuses and mistakes that can be made in a lot of genres. Really, every single fucking one of them except TCGs. Mark Rosewater, Richard Garfield, Aaron Forsythe, and a host of other people over at Wizards have gone out of their way to make sure you can't make core design mistakes when developing a TCG by writing down nearly every mistake for every set including the ones that existed before blogs. Not only at the set level, but through every step of the process.

There's also the obvious issue of institutionalization at Blizzard. Yes, Blizzard is basically Shawshank. With a cult. So, basically, a less profitable and arguably worse-dressed Apple. But that's another can of worms. One that is being matched by the sort of bland vanilla shitshow that is Heroes of the Storm.

Edit: I accidentally a 'y.'

OK, so benefit of the doubt based on personal experience with the man fails in the face of heartless, superior logic about why he's a hack and should never have been given the opportunity in the first place. Blizzard doesn't have *any* talented TCG designers, so they deliver a subpar product, mechanics-wise.

What *does* qualify someone to be games designer, anyway? (Besides the point, right?)

Blizzard does have some *severe* problems, all I see from them is that they've opted to take safe routes to preserve its position and the lifestyle of its employees, which will lead to its eventual irrelevance and decline in the games industry. I don't see them recruiting fresh, young talent to take the company in new direction. They're going to milk their formula until it kills them or leadership changes.

What I'm failing to understand is the vitriol. Do you just hate seeing incompetence? Are you writing how you feel, or are all the shits and fucks your idea of wit? (Honestly.)

[schild]

OK, so benefit of the doubt based on personal experience with the man fails in the face of heartless, superior logic about why he's a hack and should never have been given the opportunity in the first place. Blizzard doesn't have *any* talented TCG designers, so they deliver a subpar product, mechanics-wise.

I never actually said any of that. Or said that was the reason they delivered a sub-par product. They did deliver a sub-par TCG missing a lot of the key components and mechanics that fly in the face of a lot of known fixed-mistakes of the genre, but I don't think it has anything to do with someone being given a chance or Blizzard not having *any* talented TCG designers. They're a huge company. Also, heartless? Why should this discussion have any heart at all? That's a little silly. None of this has anything to do with emotion and it shouldn't even enter the equation.

What *does* qualify someone to be games designer, anyway? (Besides the point, right?)

Well, yea. I was merely stating that what you said had nothing to do with being a good designer. I don't even know how he ended up being a designer, tbh. Nothing there says "this is a man who could design a good TCG." Sometimes at companies though, demos and designs get made when it's untasked, and that may be what happened here with Team 5. No great way to tell really, and the whole truth never comes out of gaming companies.

Blizzard does have some *severe* problems, all I see is that they've opted to take safe routes to preserve its position and the lifestyle of its employees, which will lead to its eventual irrelevance and decline in the games industry. I don't see them recruiting fresh, young talent to take the company in new direction.

What I'm failing to understand is the vitriol. Do you just hate seeing incompetence? Are you writing how you feel, or are all the shits and fucks your idea of witty discussion?

Do you work at Blizzard? Do you know anything about the "lifestyle" of employees there. Because it ranges from underpaid and absolutely abysmal to typical gaming executive at a monolith.

At no point in this thread did I say the game isn't "safe" and wouldn't make a shitload of money (not that you were contesting the latter). It will. That's something Blizzard does REALLY well. Make money, that is. They also tend to polish and streamline very well. They did wayyyyy too much streamlining with Hearthstone.

And yes, I fucking hate incompetence. If there's ONE thing I've been consistent about over the last 11 years, it's my hatred for incompetence. That hatred gets doubled down in the most well-documented genre in the entire industry.

P.S. I didn't quote it, but I'm pretty consistent with my mockery and I don't take the low-brow route of fucking with peoples names unless there's something comedic that can come out of it. Besides, I don't even know what sort of joke you were implying with "Brody." It's a pretty common name.

P.P.S. I'm sorry for breaking up your post like that.

[schild]

Also, yes, I curse a lot. I haven't actually called it cursing since the late 80s though. I'm pretty sure at this point they're just "words."

[Maven]

Working at Blizz: Yeah, I did. I gave you this handle over Facebook. The pay's low compared to other industries unless you're in a development position, with a mess of perks. I'm not even taking game master or technical support into consideration, they probably have it a lot worse than QA did. When I think of their lifestyle, Orange County + Family + Steady, Predictable Income comes to mind.

Sorry for putting some words in your mouth -- but some of that is just my own words expressing my views on the company.

Obviously, being a TCG fanatic and a member of QA doesn't involve any *guarantee* of talent in design (on that same note, I don't see how poor training for QA provides support for your statements). The Ben I knew was all about card games, if he lacked the talent to actually create them at a professional level, it's disappointing but depressingly typical of wanna-be developers in QA (or maybe just wanna-be developers, period).

His transition to production then design from QA gave the impression that he had some sort of marketable skill set the company was able to utilize. Blizzard has a lot of koolaid running in its blood, but on the surface it appeared to be a meritocracy.

However, when it comes to TCGs, I don't think they had any serious, experienced designers when they set out to make Hearthstone. None of the initial assortment of team members came from outside of the company nor had any previously worked for any TCG company, only other games at Blizzard (details fuzzy). Ben was perhaps the most experienced simply working alongside UDE for several years. The team initially applied Blizzard methodology to the game creation.

I'm tired, overcaffeinated and have to start an 8-hour work shift at a job I despise shortly. So, take everything with that in mind. I don't have much to say on the game.

[Jeff Kelly]

'Fanatics' are usually (with some exceptions) bad at creating things they are fanatical about. They lack the distance to their creation necessary to make a great product. I've seen this often enough to think that there is a pattern. Someone is very passionate about RPGs, TCGs or any other sort of game, is seriously nerding out about them and when he/she finally makes his/her own game it usually sucks or is some sort of wish-fulfillment.

So 'TCG-fanatic' isn't really any sort of qualification.

This goes both ways btw. Yes Wizards is the benchmark but treating their words like scripture (and yes the word bible was mentioned repeatedly) will lead to designers treating them like holy people and subsequently dogmatize Wizard's way of making card games.

[schild]

I'll leave it at this:

Blizzard has enough money to steal any experienced TCG designer they wanted. From any company. Except Maro, I'm pretty sure he's unbuyable. Wizards has a notoriously shitty worklife and Crypto people are probably just mercenaries. Not to mention the hundreds of board game designers that make dick for money.

But they weren't making a TCG. They were making Farmville: The Gathering.

Edit:

This goes both ways btw. Yes Wizards is the benchmark but treating their words like scripture (and yes the word bible was mentioned repeatedly) will lead to designers treating them like holy people and subsequently dogmatize Wizard's way of making card games.

Their articles on the successes and failures in designing their Magic basically are scripture. I think there are some flaws in a couple of the things they do, but the design stuff (the processes, the overall intention, etc) is best in class impeccable. I've never once brought up things like how they do lore, their playtesting, and a few other bits from inside Wizards hallowed walls because it's worst-in-class awful. ESPECIALLY the Future Future League. Wizards simply doesn't pay enough to entice the right people to do that work properly.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Piling on hearthstone, because.

http://i.imgur.com/Ho1LVjs.jpg

Flametongue for shamans and tundra rhino for hunters neglected to make list but man....paladins.....

[jakonovski]

What's that, all class specific creatures?

[Falconeer]

Ben Brode playing tough guy against my then 11 13 years old son back in 2007. (Gee, he had all the cards   )




EDIT: Math.

[Paelos]

Was that at a tournament?

Moments like that should make you reevaluate your life if you're the 20-something guy playing an 11 year old.

[Falconeer]

Heehee, no just an exhibition. I mean, it was a "Tournament" (Darkmoon Faire), but Brode was there only to draw sketches and play quick matches. I think there was a little gift for those who could beat him, but it wasn't easy since he literally had all the cards.

By the way, there were 128 people in that tournament. I came DEAD LAST. 128th. My son was 80th I think. Achievement unlocked?

[schild]

Was that at a tournament?

Moments like that should make you reevaluate your life if you're the 20-something guy playing an 11 year old.

Not really. Moments like that make me wish I could design a game that appealed to adults and kids and then sell the fuck out of it and abuse both the kids and the dad's wallets.

[Trippy]

You mean like Hearthstone?

[schild]

No secondary economy to abuse. You need to be able to print money.

See: Modern Masters, Vintage Masters.

[Hoax]

Wait wait wait.

Falc you have a teenage son?

[Falconeer]

Was a teenager. He'll turn 20 in two months

[Ingmar]

Then why is he not playing Blood Bowl with us!

[Falconeer]

Haha cause he's not half the gamer I am. He's into playing the drums now, and goldsmithing. And activism.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Haha cause he's not half the gamer I am. He's into playing the drums now, and goldsmithing. And activism.

You have failed as a parent.

[schild]

Goldsmithing and activism?

You raised a 1920s jew. How weird.

[naum]

MTG players (or former): Your thoughts on Hearthstone?

A few snippets…

…Hearthstone has some significant advantages over Magic. The biggest one is cost. Good standard decks in Magic cost upwards of $200 (excluding Red Deck Wins, which is about $120). If you want to play modern it's more like $500-800, and legacy decks can cost $2000+. What's more, standard is constantly, well, going out of standard. So every year if you want to play standard, you have to drop another $200. This is a prohibitive sum of money for most people, and it stops the majority of players from being deckbuilders. Why build a $200 deck that might not work? Of course Magic is so dominated by netdecking.

Honestly, if Hearthstone were a physical card game, I would play it. both Hearthstone and M:tG are incredible games, but when it comes to which has the better experience in a digital setting, my money will always be on Hearthstone, since the powers in charge of the M:tG Online client seem to be convinced that there is no competition out there, and have become lazy with their improvements because of it.

Hearthstone is a better video game, but Magic is a better game.

I would argue that as of right now, MtG is the better card game. It stands to reason, it's been around for years. Over 20 years I think? There are thousands of cards, probably tens of thousands, so the things you can do with it are damn near infinite.

That being said, MtG has never and probably will never come out with a virtual platform that can compare with Hearthstone. HS was built and designed from the ground up to be a computer card game. HS can do things that MtG simply can't, such as all the various RNG aspects like copying random cards from your opponents deck. HS will introduce adventure modes and ultimately, it is my belief that HS will become just as good a card game as MtG if not superior given time.

What I like about HS is that you can bust out a few games very quickly, and the turns go fast.  In MTG the turns can sometimes take a long time due to the instants and other things you can do in response to player actions.  Another thing I enjoy about HS is not getting "mana screwed" as can sometimes happen in MTG if you get a bad shuffle and don't draw enough land even though your deck is balanced.  I like the animations and the golden cards too. Things I find questionable are hero powers, which seem hard to balance, and the fact that only some classes have secrets.… …Things I miss from MTG are many, but most of all I miss the ability to trade cards.

[Paelos]

I think the last point is the best one.

[Tannhauser]

#1 Is that true?  $200 for a Magic deck each year?  Fuck that shit.  That's just fleecing the rubes.

#2 Agree, though I haven't touched the Magic client in some years.  I hear from others it's clunky.

#3 Agree.  HS is great fun, but it doesn't have the depth of Magic.  Deckbuilding back in the day was really fun in Magic. Plus it has insane collectibility.

#4 Kind of agree.  I don't see Magic ever improving while HS will keep iterating.  But Magic has YEARS still left in the tank.  It's been quite popular for longer than DND was really hot.

#5 Agree.  Mana screwed in Magic always annoyed while lack of trading in HS is really disappointing.  Such an obvious cash grab.  But I'll be playing HS for a long time to come while I won't even sit at a Magic table.  HS is quick fun and lets me complete quests to get free cards every 2-3 days.  Plus adding PVE.  

[schild]

The majority of players for any game are incredibly stupid. Magic amplifies that by requiring far above average intelligence to play correctly following all the rules let alone actively trying to win the game as well.

Getting opinions from a Hearthstone board about Magic vs Hearthstone is scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Edit: Also, $200 is on the massive low end. Your good decks are gonna run more than $400-$500 just in upkeep over a single season. This is because, again, your average Magic player doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand and is far too stupid to actually brew properly.

Edit 2: Hell, to add: In the Hex forum I commented that when you build a deck you should build as if you have 4x of every card available. That's the only way to even begin brewing properly. Card substitutions due to card availability are basically inexcusable when you're brewing. Anyway, again, those quotes mean nothing and come from the fish I wish played Magic constantly. The people who padded my ranking. Then again, those people are precisely the target audience Blizzard could hope for.

[schild]

I'm super super bored, so I'm just gonna break this down 1 by 1:

1) Just flat out wrong. His costs are wrong and this is impossible to gauge against Hearthstone. What's the Legendary drop rate? What's the likelihood of getting what you want? With no secondary market, who knows how much a Hearthstone deck will actually cost. Crafting a lot of those cards is damn near prohibitive and trying to build a constructed deck by playing for free is a shithole nightmare in Hearthstone.

2) Known information. Hearthstone is also about 900x more simple as far as logic goes. Blizzard can build a better client than a publishing house - also water is wet.

3) This is a logical fallacy. Duels of the Planeswalkers is Magic and Magic is better than Hearthstone. Ergo, Magic is also the best video game. And if you're going to compare Hearthstone as a game, you should probably compare it to the most shallow form of Magic as well - which is still better and far more complex than Hearthstone.

4) This person calls out randomness as a good thing. Clearly he got kicked in the head when he was small. Also, Hearthstone will never be the game Magic is because they limited the design way too much by streamlining the gameplay itself. Hearthstone could be played by fucking e-mail. It's just, yea, they rolled too deep on the minimalistic game design. That said: Counterpoint - Hex.

5) These are the complains of a bad player and should be regarded as such. It takes all my power to tolerate people on f13 complaining about mana screw and time to play (you know what the fuck you're getting into with ccgs!), but I won't tolerate it from elsewhere. This person is a moron.

[Ingmar]

Basically anyone who ever uses the word "netdecking" can be instantly ignored.

[schild]

I don't know if I'd take it that far. Netdecking is, basically, a thing among most players.

It is, however, an instant sign that a player probably shouldn't be playing at any competitive level.

[Johny Cee]

5) These are the complains of a bad player and should be regarded as such. It takes all my power to tolerate people on f13 complaining about mana screw and time to play (you know what the fuck you're getting into with ccgs!), but I won't tolerate it from elsewhere. This person is a moron.

To expand on schild's comments without the vitriol.

Does mana screw happen? Yes.  Does it happen very often if you have:
A. A deck with an appropriate mana base to support your cards
B. You are able to mulligan semi-competently (ie, don't be greedy/unrealistic)

No.  Mana screw is generally the cry of the not very good to downright bad when you are dropping cards right on your mana curve and crushing them.  In general, mana screw is a freak event if you aren't playing a pile of untested cards (a "pile" is a perjorative term in MtG, as in you threw shit together and your deck is terrible) and you are able to mulligan.

In this case, being able to mulligan means not keeping a hand that is obviously either mana flood or mana screw (5 or more lands, less than 3).  Your deck or your opening hand can change that, for instance, if you have a bunch of 1 or 2 drops and 2 lands in opener?  Go for it.  Fast aggro?  2 lands is probably great.


Complaining about netdecking generally means the complainer isn't very good.  Limited card pool and limited amount of effective strategies means that there are only going to be 2-5 competitive decks in your top tiers (usually a couple dominant, and a couple tier 2).  As much fun as I've had brewing rogue strategies (schild and I came really close to breaking the Mirrodin/Kamigawa format with a rogue deck using our Goryo's strategy), the fact is any format is going to have a few top tier strategies and that's that. 

Complaining about netdecking is complaining that the sky is blue or grass is green.  Even in the old pre-internet days, the local pool generally settled on what the dominant deck types were..... sure, not as efficient or fine tuned, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what has synergy and what strategies work.  The internet just means we don't have to sit around and wait as long.

Even with the internet, it can take a few months to shake out the top decks.

[Ingmar]

I don't know if I'd take it that far. Netdecking is, basically, a thing among most players.

It is, however, an instant sign that a player probably shouldn't be playing at any competitive level.

To be more clear, I should have said anyone who complains about netdecking.

[lamaros]

5) These are the complains of a bad player and should be regarded as such. It takes all my power to tolerate people on f13 complaining about mana screw and time to play (you know what the fuck you're getting into with ccgs!), but I won't tolerate it from elsewhere. This person is a moron.

To expand on schild's comments without the vitriol.

Does mana screw happen? Yes.  Does it happen very often if you have:
A. A deck with an appropriate mana base to support your cards
B. You are able to mulligan semi-competently (ie, don't be greedy/unrealistic)

No.  Mana screw is generally the cry of the not very good to downright bad when you are dropping cards right on your mana curve and crushing them.  In general, mana screw is a freak event if you aren't playing a pile of untested cards (a "pile" is a perjorative term in MtG, as in you threw shit together and your deck is terrible) and you are able to mulligan.

In this case, being able to mulligan means not keeping a hand that is obviously either mana flood or mana screw (5 or more lands, less than 3).  Your deck or your opening hand can change that, for instance, if you have a bunch of 1 or 2 drops and 2 lands in opener?  Go for it.  Fast aggro?  2 lands is probably great.

Lets be honest, manascrew and flood is a thing that happens - even when you aren't an idiot - because cards. It is complaining about it as a significant impediment to your skill long term that is obviously idiotic.

[Johny Cee]

Lets be honest, manascrew and flood is a thing that happens - even when you aren't an idiot - because cards. It is complaining about it as a significant impediment to your skill long term that is obviously idiotic.

That's what I said.   

If you do the math, though, the chances of getting mana screwed/flooded with a proper amount of land in your deck plus the ability to mulligan is pretty small.  It happens to inexperienced and not good players far more often due to bad deck construction, poor mulliganing skills, and also for paper cards bad shuffling mechanics (ie, they shove all their cards back into their deck after a game, then don't shuffle enough to randomize it, so they end up with streaky amounts of land/spells).

Crying manascrew is generally an indication that someone has weak deck-building skill and wants to blame outside forces rather than themselves for their loss.


The MODO equivalent is complaining about the shuffler, which you see every so often on forums.  Usually someone posts test results proving the shuffler is sufficiently random as to make no difference, but people continue to complain about the shuffler.

[ezrast]

I failed to hit my mana curve in Hearthstone every bit as frequently as I do in Magic or Hex. 3-card hands will do that.

[Margalis]

I failed to hit my mana curve in Hearthstone every bit as frequently as I do in Magic or Hex. 3-card hands will do that.

I played a fair bit of HS recently before uninstalling. I think HS may actually be worse when it comes to being draw-dependent. You start with a relatively low number of cards in hand and there are very few card cycling / filtering / tutoring abilities.

One of the reasons the Druid "ramp" deck is popular and does well is that it doesn't matter that much what you draw - it has very little curve. It just has a bunch of expensive stuff and a way to get to them. It's one of the best decks and it's literally just "play a bunch of generically good creatures."

The game is very combo-reliant - the fact that the opponent can't do anything on your turn means any combo you setup will work 100%. One of the side-effects of this is that stuff that happens on your turn in very valuable, so stuff like Charge is retardedly good.

There are a bunch of neutral cards that are either useless or only good for one class (so they might as well not be neutral) and neutral cards that are good for every class. Oh look, another Azure Drake!

Some stuff just makes no sense. Priest has expensive conditional removal - what? If removal is going to be conditional it needs to be cheap, so that trading favorably makes up for times when your cards in hand are dead. Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death even together can't deal with attack 4 creatures (who oh by the way are the most popular creatures!) and Shadow Word: Pain costs the same or more than many of the creatures it kills. The game has no instants so you can't do nothing on turn 2, use it in reaction then cast something on turn 3.

There's very little "tech" (narrow cards that serve a specific function vs other deck types - Harrison Jones for example) because the range of what you can do and when you can do it is so small. There's no counterspell, no land destruction, no color-hate, no discard - very few vectors from which to attack a problem.

Overall to me it feels very shallow and repetitive.

[Falconeer]

I am not really qualified to chime in here, but in regards to "mana screw", I really liked how in the WoW TCG you could just play any card face down to generate 1 mana/resource and circumvent the bad luck (but at a price).

[Ironwood]

 poor mulliganing skills,