[gavanwoolery]

In order to balance the game I am working on, I am planning to use a somewhat similar automated system (although its good to note, you can get a very interesting statistical analysis by ignoring the AI and just playing random cards/skills/whatever you are testing against each other). This of course works best if you are selecting two discrete subsets of one superset and playing with card variance (random decks, control decks with only one different card between them, etc).

Off topic: I've played Heathstone enough to appreciate it. It is a good game (I'd give it maybe 4.5 stars), but not perfect; my critiques:

- Chance of winning is based largely on luck - the same deck drawn two different ways can be almost a guaranteed win/fail, even if it is balanced.

- Card starvation is way too common of a problem. Could not count how many times I ended up exhausting the deck, even with plenty of cards to counter it. When you only have one card to play at a time, the game becomes rather dull.

- Classing leads to a certain lack of permutation and surprise - most decks have a few basic strategies.

- Cards outside of the class decks tend to be fairly generic feeling for the most part. Many cards feel a bit mundane compared to other CCGs.

- Free to play model hurts the game a bit - I don't mind paying money, but many aspects of the game feel too grindy (in order to get you to pay money).

[personjerry]

Interesting criticisms, but I'd have to argue against most of your points here.

- You're right: card games inherently involve luck. But games like Hearthstone and MTG let you control your deck so that less luck is involved. And I would argue Hearthstone actually has the better model -- there's no way to get screwed out of mana or flooded with mana like in MTG.

- Card starvation exists, but is typically a problem with deck construction or gameplay rather than the game itself. Two ways about the problem in deck construction: more card draw, and bigger cards. Playing is more complicated, but consider keeping your options open rather than playing things immediately, since you can gain card advantage if you can 2-for-1. Consider the HandLock deck in which a warlock draws a huge hand to abuse abilities involving hand size. Rarely will their games go past 30 cards, and yet their hand is filled with options all the time.

- You are right, each class has but one or two competitive deck styles and are predictable. But knowing the meta is part of any card game, and I think as Hearthstone grows this will be better. Coming from MTG I found classes brought quite a variety of play styles (at least 9!), if somewhat unbalanced and artificial.

- Again you are right. This issue arises as a necessary consequence of classes. Blizzard has actively done this for balance. Cards outside class decks need to be generic or else they would make some decks too powerful in combos. For example I might want more spell power cards for my Druid deck but that would make Mage control decks unbelievably strong.

- This is a subjective point and your view is valid. IMHO their quest system is a pretty versatile option of getting gold. If you want you can play 2 games a day and earn 40 gold, or you can play 10 and earn 100, depending on the quest.

[gavanwoolery]

Good points :) The only thing I would make a note on is luck in card games: Some card games involve a lot more luck than others. One of my favorite iOS games, Orions, gives you a set of random cards (assuming you do a random match), and from there you play whatever cards you want (your full deck, basically, which is a random subset of about half the cards in the game). Of course, you have to build up enough mana to play a given card, and many increases by 1 each turn on its own. Its possible to be given a crappy deck, but even those matches you can play out more deterministically because you know what you've got to work with; also this is part of the fun - finding a creative path to victory with a deck that you are not used to (building decks can be fun in its own right, but I (personally) prefer being given a random set of cards - this makes each playthrough more unique and exciting).

In shorter words, there are a few types of luck you could work with: luck of the deck, luck of the draw, etc.

[Kurtz79]

I agree with most of your comments, but I really think Heartstone is Free to Play done right (not to the extent of DOTA2 or Path of Exile, but almost).

After more than a hundred of hours on it, to date I haven't spent a dime of real money (I'll happily buy the single player expansion, though).

Just do daily quests in Ranking and spend the coins on Arena,which doesn’t depend at all on real money spent, and you'll get a lot of mileage (also considering that for an Arena run you get a pack of cards, so you'll get better at Ranking).

BTW, to the OP: thanks for ruining my plans for the weekend :)

[gavanwoolery]

Yeah, I should note of all the F2P games, Hearthstone has done it the best for me. Its really a tiny nitpick for me, if anything.

[chacham15]

The #1 reason I stopped playing the game is because I would do fairly well at the game, get matched with stronger opponents, and subsequently lose because I dont even have the full set of Mage cards while my opponent is pulling legendaries. That kind of a game just isnt fun for me and it happens over and over.

[jxf]

FWIW I ranked Legendary (in March 2014) without using any Legendary cards. It's definitely not required for success.

[KVFinn]

You get matched against people who are winning about as much as you are. The system looks at nothing else. This is the best and really only way to do matchmaking.

If you were kept separate from the rest of the decks how would that work?

(FWIW, my best deck doesn't is the one that doesn't have any legendaries in it anyway, and it got as high as rank 2, 4 stars.)

If you were isolated from decks with legendaries and had a seperate ladder, h

[nacs]

> If you were isolated from decks with legendaries and had a seperate ladder, h

Offtopic but that reminded me of those decade-old Slashdot posts with the sudden cutoff mid-sentence followed by 'Connection dropped' modem messages.

[infiniteri]

It's definitely a bit of an issue, but less of one than people tend to believe. There are many decks that people bring to Legend rank that cost very little in terms of dust.

[dirtyaura]

To me Hearthstone didn't feel grindy at all compared to almost any other top IAP game available in App Store. I think Hearthstone hit a pretty good balance for freemium IAP model, I never felt that I had to pay to be able to play, unlike in most of the other freemium IAP games.

I agree that classing causes a bit too predicable deck strategies, MtG felt more balanced on this aspect.

What Hearthstone got right was the flow: they had to remove instants and introduce secrets and taunts, but with that they achieved an excellent flow for a turn-based card game.

[matchu]

I suspect that MtG's big advantage here is having a ton more cards. Hearthstone's meta is pretty straightforward because there are only a handful of cards to work with right now, but the upcoming Naxxramus mini-expansion should make things more interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what'll happen when they finally produce a full expansion.

[_raoulcousins]

How do you define straightforward? Magic has a lot of cards, but formats restrict* the pool of cards that can be used, and within each format's legal cards, the majority of them are unplayable.

*(in the colloquial sense of the word restrict, except in vintage (and trivially in commander/EDH/Australian Highlander/Chromandercore), where cards are restricted in the magic sense of the words restrict)

[zequel]

From what I understand though is magic still ton of cards compared to HS, HS has ~ 320, isn't that much smaller than Magic, even with restrictions? I think the meta will be a lot more interesting once they expand the pool, HS is still a very young game.

[_raoulcousins]

Are you working on a CCG? I'd be interested in seeing how an automated system's results would compare to the MtG model of balancing, which sounds pretty intense.

From what I understand, design makes and tests sets at a flat power level, development adjusts the power level and creates more cards, and future future league plays the new cards for months/years and makes more adjustments to balance before the cards go to print.

[gavanwoolery]

The game I am working on is called Voxel Quest (voxelquest.com). It is a roguelike, not a CCG, but many of the mechanics are inspired by CCG mechanics (Card Hunter is one other game that has taken CCG mechanics outside of its normal environment, although what I'm doing quite a bit different).

[Kiro]

I just want to say that I've been following your game and it looks amazing. Really unique. Can't wait for it to be released!

[gavanwoolery]

Thanks! Next major update coming this month (hopefully!) :)

[ciaranm]

FYI - the way your comment is formatted caused text to be hidden in a horizontal scroll bar which wasn't visible on Chrome on OS X - took me a good minute to figure out what was going on.

[gavanwoolery]

think I fixed it...

[ciaranm]

I think you fixed it as I was replying - please ignore!