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Game Preview: Hearthstone
Collectible card games have been a prominent part of nerd gaming culture since the early '90s. Magic: the Gathering forged a compelling genre and dozens of games have followed in its footsteps. But the past two decades have been a time of technology, and Magic is a decidedly low-tech game. Like chess, it's been moved online in only the strictest emulation of real-world play. The game itself hasn't actually evolved to make use of technology. Enter Blizzard. Many of the developers at Blizzard grew up playing Magic and other CCGs, and it seemed natural that they'd want to design one of their own. But Blizzard is video game company; managing cardboard print runs and scheduling tournaments isn't exactly in their wheelhouse. Thus, we get Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, an entirely digital CCG. It's currently in closed beta test, but open beta is supposedly just around the corner. In this video (with transcript) we take a look at how the game is shaping up.
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This game was boring as heck. Two misses in a row for a company which used to be the best in the industry.
MTG was the original CCG. No other game comes close. The art work won't compare and the game play won't compare.
managing cardboard print runs and scheduling tournaments isn't exactly in their wheelhouse.
Maybe if you ignore all their boxed releases and game tournaments they've run over the years.
This hardly qualifies as a preview since the game is available in even its beta form
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
But Blizzard is video game company; managing cardboard print runs and scheduling tournaments isn't exactly in their wheelhouse.
Just as one example, Blizzard has run tournaments at BlizzCon for years now. You could have found this out with 10 seconds of Googling.
I'll admit it, I'm mildly surprised to hear Blizzard is still a company, outside of Panda loving, anyway.
I've been playing a bit, mostly with friends, and having a blast.
It seems like they could have done it in the browser instead of a full blown application, but it's fine.
I'm a pretty hardcore RTS gamer (StarCraft II) but holy cow HearthStone is so fun that I've mostly abandoned SC2 in favor of racking up time there instead.
I definitely want the iOS release to hurry up so I can play on my iPad.
The thing that is surprising is, even with only a handful of emotes for communication, people still find ways to BM you :D But seriously, this is a REALLY REALLY fun game, and is going to make Blizzard some ungodly sum of money.
Which I find amusing because, I stopped playing in or around 2001, and picked up the game again only in the past few weeks. It looks more like a re-statement of the rules than much of a change since I already thought of it as a stack; and it already worked like a stack...there just was no explicit "stack" reference
Under the old rules, a spell being cast could be responded to by an instant or interrupt (which I believe were slightly different but I can't remember how), and since that was a spell too, it could also be responded to....and then spells resolved in reverse order. About the only complication was that a spell on the top of the stack could invalidate the target of a lower spell causing it to fizzle instead of resolving normally....which I believe is still the case.
All that said, I can't imagine playing a video game based on MTG. Part of the reason I play MTG is that it is a physical game played with other people. Actually handling the cards and seeing the look on someone's face when you take their creature and kill them with it (That "Act of Treason" card comes in so handy in my red/black deck)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Me Tarzan, you is video game company
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The mechanics of this game are about on par with the Pokemon TCG. The game is extremely lacking in player interaction. There are no instant effects. Attacking players choose to attack defending creatures directly, and can completely ignore the defender's board if they want. The game is like dual solitaire. Once you know the range of possible effects that a deck type can produce, it's fairly trivial to play around. Magic players I've seen streaming this game tend to win about 90% of the games they play, and most say it gets boring and repetitive fairly quickly. About the only time they lose is when they leave Arena and face someone who's invested every waking hour grinding for cards. It's pretty hilarious to watch other streamers coming from non-TCG games trying to play and clearly not planning out very far in advance.
As for the summary's criticism:
It can't, won't, and shouldn't. Magic is, first and foremost, a paper card game. WotC has stated repeatedly that the online and digital versions of the game exist to promote and supplement the paper game, not replace it. This is the same stance they've taken on D&D video games: they supplement the tabletop game. Their goal is to get players to graduate from playing online to playing the paper games. It's a good thing, too, because the client software for Magic is pretty shitty. It does the rules just fine, but the interface is consistently terrible. If the game weren't so good, it wouldn't be worthwhile. Fortunately, they've finally brought in real outside help to work on it. They brought in the Duels of the Planeswalker people for the current beta and it's terrible, but supposedly the new team consists of better programmers. Historically their problem has been paying peanuts and expecting gold. We'll see if they can get something usable by the time Hearthstone is out of beta.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
hmm I wonder if there will be a market for virtual card protectors.
I stopped listening at, "It's nice to see from a company that's mostly been riding its old IPs for the past 15 years."
You realize this is nothing else other than riding old IP, right? There's very little new and innovative here, and the Warcraft IP has been used more times than a $2 hooker on Fremont street.
Isn't it using recycled art from their (discontinued) real world trading card game? (The one the summary doesn't seem to realize existed.)
Haven't played the game yet but judging from that advertisement,
If I compare it to Mtg:
- no interaction during opponents turn
- no resource management
- no trading of cards
So...the three things that give Magic it's depth and appeal are missing...hmmmm...not sure about this.
As a former Magic player and former WoW player, it tickles a nice spot. I've had fun playing in the beta for over a week now. I get the complaints about the lack of interaction, but it's still a well-polished, fun, casual digital CCG. I do agree that it's "almost" Pay2Win because grinding gold through normal play to get better cards and get into Arena will take you forever, though technically possible. They need to make Arena cheaper, because being the most like a Draft in Magic, it's the most fun for the rush of what you can accomplish with a random bunch of cards given to you as opposed the slow methodical build and tweak gameplay of the normal Play mode.
Playing Magic online is a lot like playing poker online. It either works for you or it doesn't. Different strokes. I play online (from time to time) because I can get an 8-player draft game pretty much at any time of the day or week -- something I can only get at few scheduled times locally.
Moving on...
There has always been a LIFO stack in Magic, the changes over the years have been to both standardize the rules so they could easily add on to them and to allow computer play without tons of corner cases -- programming Magic under the "old" rules would have been the living mother of all CASE statements.
There's still a lot of oddball cards that cause CRAZY interactions and require specific card+card rules, but the overwhelming majority of cards generate simple computer understandable rules.
Play is now almost always:
[...a bit simplified.]
Priority alternates between the active (guy who's turn it is) and non-active player.
The active player can add spells and effects to the stack, and the non-active player can respond to that.
That can go back and forth for as long as players can add to the stack.
When both players pass priority, effects on the stack start to unwind.
As each effect resolves, each player has the same option to, if they want, add more to the stack.
[These all happen in Active Player - Non-Active Player (AP/NAP) order.]
When nothing is on the stack, and the AP wishes to put nothing more onto the stack, and the NAP wishes to put nothing more on the stack, the game moves to the next phase.
Any time a there is an opportunity for priority to pass, "the game" does housekeeping. Anything that has been destroyed goes to the graveyard. Creatures with no toughness left are destroyed (and go to the graveyard). Any players with zero life dies, and their opponent wins.
Game events and cards themselves may cause "triggers." Cards can say, "When X happens, do Y." These too can be responded to AP/NAP; they use the stack, and they work like anything else.
A single trigger may cause a series of triggers, but they too simply add things to the stack.
There's a few more complicated ideas (like replacement effects), but they're all programmable.
I know that seems long, but anyone who ever wrote a script should understand it.
Most plays are simply: "I try to put armor on my guy." "No, I kill your guy in response." "Ok, lets move to the next phase."
Also, when the re-engineering of the rules happened, there were a number of other clarifications.
(2):Draw a Card -- That says, spend 2 mana of any color, and draw a card. That's an activated ability. That's something you can do when you have priority, and when you activate it, it goes on the stack, and your opponent can respond to it, perhaps by casting a spell that negates your next card draw.
When your opponent draws a card, you draw a card -- That does exactly what it says. It's a trigger. Any time the game sees the trigger, it adds the ability of you drawing a card to the stack, and....APNAP opportunities to respond exist.
If your opponent would draw a card, you draw a card instead -- ...also does exactly what it sounds like. It's a replacement effect.
When multiple seemingly contradictory effects happen at the same time (e.g. you have two cards, one says "When a creature goes to the graveyard, instead, remove it from the game." and the other says "When a creates goes to the graveyard, instead, return it to play." the active player manages the order of those effects.)
Just as a heads up. The browser-based (Flash) game Card Hunter is better and is incredibly charismatic and fun. It's also free to play and not pay-to-win. It is like someone worked out what game my brain would like the most and made it.
You can pay to get more treasure and to do special quest maps, and the quality is astronomical for a flash-based program.
Penny Arcade also agrees with me about it being awesome!
Wow thanks! That explains why I never saw a rule change, I had started playing before 6th, but I don't think I ever really sat down with a rule book and read the intricacies until then (nor uttered the dreaded phrase "at the end of your turn I...." ) so I never realized it was a change!
That really is an excellent writeup of the rule change and consequences and even explains some curiosities like why power sink would be worded the way it is; talk about a nerf! Though, tapping you out is still pretty nasty in a larger game (we recently had an 8 person free for all, it took HOURS; especially with all the extort and lifelink out there now)
As an aside.... since the wife started up magic night a few weeks ago, someone told us mana burn was gone; and "Mana burn still exists" became our first house rule.... which was hilarious when our BIL came over with his ancient mono red and cast some mana flares.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Unlike what the review says, if you are playing against another player, you will see what card they have highlighted in their hand. If they are playing a card, but haven't chosen a target, you will see it (face down) floating on the field along with the targets you opponent is picking. Same goes for choosing an attack. This adds to how lively the game is and adds to the bluffing part of the game.
The AI on the other hand seems impossibly fast, playing cards right as they come out, faster than what the UI allows. On the other hand, the AI isn't very good. The AI will often play cards as soon as possible, like doing 1 damage to the player at full health, rather than waiting to kill a minion that only has 1 health.
One issue I do have with the game, is that the rules for some of the cards aren't clear. If you return a silenced minion to your hand you can play it again un-silenced. If you return a polymorphed minion to your hand you get a 1/1 sheep you can cast for 1. Only by playing or watching others play can you find out about these details.
If you had ever made it through school, you'd know that birth isn't a mystery.
Learn to love Alaska
They can get complicated. I remember the excitement in one group when we discovered an exploit in Munchkin, a comparatively simple game, caused by the interaction between a class ability, a specific loot card, and a rather rare event. It takes a lot of luck, but when it happens it results in a player being able to pick up the entire loot deck at once.
Still have to discard anything over the hand limit at the end of your turn, but by then you've put down enough useful items to gain a near-unstoppable advantage. So powerful is this 'cleric-hoard' exploit, the munchkin FAQ has an entry specifically saying you're not supposed to do that.
There's nearly countless 2 and 3 card interactions in Magic that, unobstructed, end the game. Most of them are triggers and replacement effects. They generally don't exist in the same sets, and there's generally better strategies and card interaction in extended formats that make those card interactions sub-optimal strategies. That said, the older extended formats (the mostly-no-holds-bared forms of Magic) include a lot of decks that win on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd turn. Even "Modern" which uses only cards since when we reformatted everything has decks that win on turn 3-4 fairly consistently.
The game overall is pretty fast. You be shocked how many games are over by turn 8 in every format.
A quick google search for 2-card and 3-card Magic combos will give more than I could possibly come up with.
Oh hearthstone can get a bit complex too.
Events can trigger other events. And sometimes multiple events can happen all at the same time, which means that those events cannot interact with one another. E.g. Cultmaster has: When another one of your minions dies, draw a card. If someone kills all your minions at the same time cultmaster's effect won't get triggered, no matter how many of them you have.
One issue is that the rules aren't that well defined on the card. If you return a silenced card to your hand, you can play it un-silenced. If you return a polymorphed card to your hand, you get a 1/1 sheep you can play for 1 mana. Only by playing or watching the game, can you understand these details.
ok ok ok ok If i'm gonna sit, I'll sit....... Como back next month. Bring corn chips, box of diet coke, and two standard cheeseburgers. Let's make it right this time.
The best, of course, is the 1-turn kill using Flash and Protean Hulk, which would kill you BEFORE YOU TOOK YOUR FIRST TURN.
"In response to you taking your first draw step, I kill you."
Hard to pull off but highly amusing.
They re-restricted Flash after that.
They're non-optional, so no. It's not that difficult to discern what they likely are, so it's not that difficult to trigger them in the least harmful manner. Playing a mage and they cast a secret? Send in your weakest unit in to trigger it. If it doesn't, well, that eliminates 2 of the 5 Mage secrets, and only 1 of those do you really have to worry about. Besides, only 3 classes even have secrets.
Sort of. The issue is that the attacker still decides whether, when, and how the defenders are attacked. With Magic, one of the major strategic elements is that the defender assigns blockers. So the attacker has to consider whether the defender will block, which attackers he will block, and if he has any instants. And even if he didn't have anything before, he might have been sandbagging you. Attacking is risky in Magic. In Hearthstone, it's just something you almost always do.
Of course it is. The problem is that the game favors the attacker over strategy, not that you can't misplay. It just makes the game a lot more skill based. That sounds good, until you realize it means that competition will exclude a lot of people, and thus limit popularity (this is why chess is such a small, albiet international, community).
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Yup, I played against a guy a couple of times years ago. On the third turn he started drawing cards, shuffling his library, taking turns, and suddenly I was hit with a 38 point drain life before I got another turn. It was incredibly sick and broken. Even worst, it wasn't like he drew his nut hand, his deck was doing this consistently.
I have a couple of decks with nasty combos (nothing that fast or broken). One of my favorite was to toss a fire whip on a marsh viper....with a seeker of skybreak and vitalize in the deck, dealing 10 poison counters between the end of my opponents turn and the beginning of mine actually happens occasionally.
It also worked a few more times than Queen Sliver/Ashnod's Altar/Heartstone; though less fun as I don't get to declare "I summon infinite creatures, sacrifice an infinite number of them for infinite life, and sacrifice another infinity of them to do infinite damage directly to you" (or I wait to attack next turn if I don't have victual and/or acidic slivers out)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Has the gaming industry really not yet reached the point where a female character can be portrayed without enormous breasts spilling out of her costume?
I've got nothing wrong with enormous breasts or skimpy costumes, but is the gaming industry really happy being a male-only endeavor?
Games are filled with adolescent depictions of women and male characters with enormous powerful leg muscles, indicating that the young men who play games must be pretty sexually conflicted. Actually that sounds about right.
Seriously, in Arkham Origins, for some reason Batman's legs are drawn completely out of proportion to the rest of his body. He's supposed to be a big strong guy, but I don't remember him looking like a normal athlete on the top half and Mr Universe on the bottom half.
There are lots of examples of male characters drawn as old and skinny, short and fat, strong and weak, handsome and ugly. But the female characters in those same games are all triple-E cups and dressed as if by Frederick of Hollywood.
And yet, interestingly, if you look at the characters that players design for themselves (when the games give them the opportunity), they tend to look a lot more like normal people. I've seen people playing Saints Row IV as middle-aged black women and balding Hispanic construction workers. And yet, when the developers define the look of the character, it's always the same thing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
D3 was the fastest selling PC game of all time and didn't just break PC sales records, it destroyed them. But yeah, other than that I can see why you'd think it would cause blizzard to fail...
D3 was the fastest selling PC game of all time and didn't just break PC sales records, it destroyed them. But yeah, other than that I can see why you'd think it would cause blizzard to fail...
You are merely quoting initial sales before word of mouth appraisals got going. Initial sales are largely based upon reputation, the actual value of the game itself is a minor factor. You have to look at sales once word of mouth appraisals of the game are flowing to determine a game's actual value.
D3 may very well be a big success. But you are not really offering evidence of that. You are really offering evidence of the success of D2 and WoW and their effect on D3 day one sales. Well, that and the fact that the D3 beta was not a disaster. I suppose a truly disastrous beta could have squandered the D2 and WoW good will. However less-than-big success in the beta would not derail the D2 and WoW good will.
Hearthstone has literally nothing on MTG in terms of complexity. One (fairly simple, by MTG standards) example was an abilities using words like "as though", for instance, "when this creature attacks, treat it as though it has flying", and another card which says "this card may only block creatures with flying". So, can the second creature block the first? (under MTG rules, yes). Or other cards which replace various phases of the game, eg one card which replaces the draw phase with Hearthstone's Animal Tracking ability (scry 3, draw one)-- and in doing so effectively make it impossible to deck out (since the "new" draw phase does not have a "deck out" provision).
Probably the most complicated thing in hearthstone that Ive seen is Jaraxxus, which replaces your champion with a minion.
I've played a bit of both, so here's the differences.
* There's no real way to respond on another player's turn, which lessens the strategy, but also means you're not waiting on your effects to resolve forever. Games generally take much less time (~15 minutes at most)
* Not quite as chancy. You just can't win on turn 3. The infinite and quasi-infinite combos of MTG are, as of yet, nonexistant. And there are some *good* combos, but you can't base your deck on channel/fireball as you could during MTG alphas;)
* Harder to keep permanents. All permanents are characters or attached to characters which can be damaged directly via attacking them with your creatures. As a result, utility creatures are much harder to keep alive.
Blizzard's done a great job of making a CCG that actually plays well online by designing it to be that way from the ground up. Unless MTG does a redesign, or at least designs cards specifically to be played online, it will always be a cludgy using a Windows Tablet circa 1999 (or a Windows 8 machine circa now).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"The game itself hasn't actually evolved to make use of technology. Enter Blizzard. Many of the developers at Blizzard grew up playing Magic and other CCGs, and it seemed natural that they'd want to design one of their own" I guess you've not discovered Combat Monsters yet. This game actually does advance CCG's by providing proper board-based combat using real 3D characters.