Hearthstone: 10 Bits Of Design Wisdom

In this GDC 2014 talk, as Blizzard's Eric Dodds explains: "The Hearthstone team started with a love of collectible card games and embraced the idea of making them a game type that is fun for everyone. Along the way, we found ten design ideas that worked really well for us, and hopefully some of them will be useful for you too."
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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

[@karlwiggett435]

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!)

[@focusedfox7167]

Hearthstone now violates most of these design decisions so I’m glad to have quit 😂😂😂

[@wavedash-]

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.

[@jarrod6331]

Because MTG is a groundbreaking game that completely changed gaming as a whole and has supported the gaming scene for decades now. Hearthstone had some interesting ideas but was mostly iterative and rode on the coattails of Blizzard's and WoW's success. MTG has continued to innovate (for better or worse) over the years whereas Blizzard has continued to ignore community input for what they want from the game regarding patches, balance, release schedules, tournament/ladder variety, etc.

[@googlemademedoit806]

From the MTG talk I saw it was the lessons they learned over the course of the games lifespan. This is strictly about blizzards design philosophy. MTG is far more community influenced while Hearthstone is very much driven by internal design goals.

[@NeroVingian40]

This discussion does not aged well lol

[@coup-de-grace]

@@NeroVingian40 Not one bit.

[@AidinZolghadr]

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

[@chaotixspark7934]

Because he probably started making sense at a certain point and Hearthstone's devs can't be intelligent.

[@jamesayewale5695]

@@chaotixspark7934 KZbin comments made by you could afford to be more intelligent.

[@aa-tx7th]

either he wouldnt rape enough women or was too good at raping women

[@JaneDoe-tn8tn]

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

[@vxcci]

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

[@mattihol726]

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

[@mattihol726]

Almost the art of preparation

[@esthersmith3056]

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.

[@warhammertoken4022]

Nothing wrong withbit. Let me skip it and even if I cant. Animation of them appearing and disapearing takes too long. Unbearably so.

[@warhammertoken4022]

Also. Just let me play the game. While the character is monologing

[@NeroVingian40]

What he meant was the whole game having a story narrative. HearthStone never had that, the little adventure sets are little, contained experiences that barely had any story, it was more like just a theme.

[@IpodMapler]

They recently tried forcing you to play a campaign to unlock the DH and DK classes, and it was horrible lol

[@PlumpPotatoRump]

Thanks Pat

[@meditationsanddimensions542]

"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..

[@Goblin_War_Buggy]

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.

[@HarryHelsing]

I am creating a card game and I wanted to try, rather than just to make more positive experiences player, make more types of experience. So a very tactical movement based deck, a spy deck with loads of face down cards and traps, a tank deck which relied upon survivability and incrementally overcoming the opponent, and a mill strategy too. I felt the same thing you did when I played Hearthstone and I'm wondering what you thought of trying to create many experiences to give variety, even if some matchups may be frustrating.

[@mohandasjung]

Control warrior was so fun!

[@solsystem1342]

@@HarryHelsing wouldn't tank and mill strategy's blend together? Like, how would a defensive strategy win?

[@NeroVingian40]

Control is, in a way, just saying “you can’t play the game” to your opponents. If your opponent can get out of your “control”, that’s a pretty bad control deck and shouldn’t even be called control. If it’s a good control deck, then it’s going to be a one-sided game where only one player plays while the other watches. It’s fun playing control, but it’s never fun being on the receiving end of it.

[@fernandobanda5734]

​@@NeroVingian40This is a very narrow view of a control deck, though. Control could simply mean you remove a few of the faster stuff, get advantage somewhere else, and then win with an expensive bomb. It doesn't have to drag out if it's well designed. The "Will I get there?" moment of the game *is* the fun part when you're playing against it. After that, you just need to make sure that the control player is motivated to win fast, and the game won't be boring.

[@wwe2005]

so this is why priest got purify?

[@BCGpp]

I love how the video starts with: "Have you silenced your........ cell phones?" xD

[@MungeParty]

I was going to silence my cell phone, but the emotion was negative so I didn't do it.

[@jasenlakic5033]

Because you figured out that's a positive emotional response from you or it was going to be beneficial to the positivity in there?

[@paulstaker8861]

Wow the comment section. Man.

[@N12015]

I don't bleame them. Hearthstone is a VERY FRUSTRATING game very often.

[@Rare.99]

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL 😀

[@kalolord]

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.

[@rozalindachesebro]

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.

[@P4i3r]

Nice panel!

[@iamarugin]

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

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

"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."

[@SiggEye]

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.

[@crzyprplmnky]

That's definitely emotion.

[@MungeParty]

It's negative emotion, which the whole video is about designing away from. You should watch the video.

[@6Jarv9]

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

[@96RJL]

"hello"

[@winniZX81]

"Well met!"

[@mrapplegate4065]

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.

[@DestroyedArkana]

Agreed, they are so sure their design philosophy is correct without challenging themselves about it. You can just look at discard for that. It's totally random what you discard, you lose cards from your hand and can't play them, and you often don't get a big reward for doing so. Yet still they want to push that mechanic without experimenting with it. What if they made a card that discarded the leftmost or rightmost card in your hand? Way less random, but still has a similar result in gameplay. They don't experiment with mechanics at all, so quite a bit ends up feeling boring and random.

[@marularch]

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.

[@solsystem1342]

Hearthstone and games like it aren't trying to make sure the best player wins every time. Randomness is a part of the strategy for a lot of games and learning how to play around it can be quite fun. In these sorts of games you aren't trying to win every time just figure out what the best move is. Some other games that try and do this and fail though because the game becomes too swingy and feels more like a lottery then a game. Also, this was a really fringe case. It's unlikely that their opponent would keep a huge card like that in hand and then just happen to keep the combo going.

[@fernandobanda5734]

​@@solsystem1342Randomness has to be built into the game though. Card games already has one kind of randomness that everyone accepts: the deck. When you draw or when you look at the top cards of the deck, nobody is bothered until it's very very bad luck. On the other hand, nobody likes random effects determining a game. Some players like high stakes randomness, but making those cards good makes the experience bad for everyone that doesn't like that. The trick here is really to hide the randomness and not make it that splashy. A card that every turn looks at the top of your deck and may have an effevt depending on that is fine. A card that randomly destroys all minions except one is not. On the other hand, the fun that you mention where you play around the randomness isn't there with big effects. You already spent your mana and commited your card, and *then* you find out if it does what you wanted. Compare to drawing cards which are still random but actually allow you to plan around before spending resources AND reward your thinking because although your tools are random the end result is not. There is value in randomness giving wins to the less skilled players, but throwing literal coin flips into game-determining effects is not it.

[@mojojojo2150]

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.

[@angelcakes5151]

There's no 1 mana 3-2 that summons a 1-1 with charge. Maybe you're thinking about Razorfen Hunter, which is a 3 mana 2-3 that summons a 1-1 with no charge.

[@krzysztofbandyk168]

@@angelcakes5151 Mojo jojo was talking about small time bucceneer + patches back when patches had charge and buccaneer had 2 health so with a weapon became a 3/2.

[@angelcakes5151]

@@krzysztofbandyk168 oh, that makes sense! I took a long break after gadgetzan, so I didn't really remember patches haha. Side note, they seem to be moving away from charge, chillblade champion was the last charge minion printed and that was over a year ago back in frozen throne, they seem to like rush much more haha.

[@alexandredaubricourt5741]

Why the protos were made in flash instead of unity ?

[@asboll]

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

[@Cannonbo]

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...

[@Linguz]

Remember that Blizz isn't a single group. The people who make Hearthstone (like this guy) are completely different from the people that make HotS (not this guy). Because of that, design philosophies are not necessarily shared between Blizzard's games.

[@nyx211]

43:15 - Dirty Rat anyone?

[@PavaoIvancek]

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

[@Coeurebene1]

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

[@Moley1Moleo]

Collectible paper card games are indeed diverse, but the *tradition* is in the early or first game, rather than the diversity. That is, defying tradition is how you get diversity. ------ It is similar in tabletop RPGs. D&D is the traditional style. RPGs can be *much* more varied than that, but those different ways of doing things are precisely non-traditional because of that.

[@jackyoh971]

But most of the CCG are based one MTG and MTG dominate for most of the time.

[@MungeParty]

MTG is still dominant.

[@jackyoh971]

Yugioh didn't beat it in sales at one point?

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

@@jackyoh971 YGO! was probably strongest in relation to M:tG in late '05 - early '06 around Kamigawa block, when M:tG was at a low point in standard gameplay quality and more closely resembled YGO!.

[@morphattack]

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.

[@rpgaddict314]

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.

[@UTube2K6]

thumb up for the flash prototype :)

[@d3s3rtray]

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.

[@codemonkey7446]

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.

[@Manabender]

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...

[@firebat36]

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

[@VladyVeselinov]

Look at it from a casual player's perspective. It's fun to have a chance to win/gain variety through randomness. Otherwise it turns into chess, where you have to predict way too far.

[@hasamidschwartz8725]

+Vlady Veselinov 'Agency and skill' worked out fine for Magic (up till recent times, perhaps).

[@jackyoh971]

Randomness didn't take the agency and skill out actually it's the only way to let the player use a great skill "adaptation" and "anticipation of probability" Poker is way more random than Hearthstone but there is still use a lot of skill and great player aren't just lucky. Magic is more random than Hearthstone when in the final of championship you can still lose by mana death that not a lack of still and not fun. If ou want a game with no randomness stop pretend you like CCG and go play chess.

[@googlemademedoit806]

Korra Martell except poker is a game of lying. You can mitigate bad luck with good bluffing. You can't bluff where knife juggler is going to throw his knives. There is also no player interaction. The game is not a great CCG but it is great for being what it is.

[@kas9402]

"Agency" means your ability to choose to do things or not do things. The first person is saying you don't get choices in this game and the 2nd person is saying that's BS.

[@Leikjarinn]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now everything is different

[@aa-tx7th]

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

[@NeroVingian40]

You’re reading too much into it. Mark Rosewater has always have a bubbly and quirky personality.

[@MungeParty]

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!

[@olot100]

As an MTG player, Hearthstone is actually pretty fun. Been playing it on and off for years and I have to say that removing the complex mechanics (phases, passing priority, choosing blockers,... etc) gave the game a lot of interesting depth. As Mark Rosewater said himself "restriction breeds creativity." The more you play Hearthstone, the more you realize how hard it is to find the best play. Also, the control mechanics had to be overcharged because the tempo decks would have been too overpowered (they ended up being OP anyway). Getting mana automatically makes control cards inherently overpowered (they can go into any deck no problem), so nerfing them early was a good idea. Many meta-games in HS have been super control heavy anyway.

[@wanghaifeng7998]

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.

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

what a strawman. that's nobody's idea of good game design.

[@juansotelo3996]

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

[@yrussq]

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).

[@royrosta3565]

yu

[@darioodde8590]

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.

[@nh0522]

WHERES BEN BRODE

[@razzendahcuben]

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.

[@Simon-ow6td]

"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.

[@nirritis1516]

Pure PR.

[@azlath]

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

[@xavierroyer5044]

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

[@mcashed]

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.

[@luisronaldofigo]

Lol the salty Loosers on the comment

[@PointyGorman]

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

[@kaioxys]

nori what's OW?

[@ukaszkrawczyk1100]

Overwatch

[@andtpfack8243]

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.

[@Kwazkneeack]

16:42 Using 4 year old art new cards OMEGALUL

[@Rajin90]

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.

[@DuraheLL]

Hearthstone is a terrible, terrible game.

[@morthim]

lots of bad advice.