Elder Scrolls: Legends

[Dp101]

(though that's exasperated by Solo Arena, where the AI has much better decks than the player).

Tell me about it, I tried it and went 5/3, but went below 5 hp twice on the wins. I like that it is hard though, makes you feel like you have an actual training ground before multiplayer rather than a tutorial.

[Cheater Hater]

(though that's exasperated by Solo Arena, where the AI has much better decks than the player).

Tell me about it, I tried it and went 5/3, but went below 5 hp twice on the wins. I like that it is hard though, makes you feel like you have an actual training ground before multiplayer rather than a tutorial.

And that's on the base level--every time you win a Solo Arena it gets harder (though the prizes go up too I think). Still, if you can get a couple wins each time it's a better gold sink than buying packs, since you're guaranteed a pack each time like Hearthstone. Of course, Versus Arena is better if you can win it consistently (as winning the Arena only takes 7 wins, and you get better prizes), but sometimes you don't want to play actual people, or the queues are too long (and you can have one of each going at once).

It isn't that it's hard that's the problem--the problem is that it's hard because of the opposing decks, while the AI is still dumb as a doorknob. It feels bad that the way you have to win most matches is either by getting extremely lucky (your opponent missing spots on the curve, or getting a favorable bonus) or by exploiting the AI--they're awful at dealing with Guards, rarely trade with your creatures, and suck at the control color combinations (in particular, they don't know how to play Purple well, and make a lot of misplays when playing the Blue/Green Last Gasp decks--conversely, they're deadly with aggro combos like Red/Green, and play Yellow very well since it's overloaded with good cards that are easy to play).

[SevenSpirits]

Going back to the randomness point, what do you think of the swingy instances of explicit randomness in Hearthstone, like the Ragnaros example I mentioned, or the new hotness of Yogg-Sauron (which apparently is good enough for Constructed somehow?)? I feel like the Prophecies are much less swingy than those, and unless you're killing them that turn it doesn't matter much at all in the late game (as they'll generally just cast the card from the rune anyway). I feel like there's a lot of play around Prophecies: dealing the last batch of damage in one shot, leaving damage on the table to avoid breaking a rune, understanding where the "point of no return" is when dealing lethal through multiple runes to minimize the risk, memorizing which Prophecies each color can have (or just the good ones in Constructed/common ones in Limited). Honestly, I feel like the risks of a player going second curving out 2-3-4 is as much variance as the Prophecies (though that's exasperated by Solo Arena, where the AI has much better decks than the player).

1) I think Rag and Yogg are mildly bad for competitive hearthstone. Yogg is worse - the variance on Rag is limited to roughly one minion and can be close to zero in some situations, and at least he always hits one enemy.

2) I find late game randomness to be much more forgivable than early game randomness. So stuff like Fiery Bat and Tuskarr Totemic is the worst. Whether or not you curve out is also a huge issue, in both games I'm sure. Hero powers help at least a little bit there.

3) I don't mind the randomness being explicit (e.g. "Damage a random enemy") as opposed to implicit (oops, you're going second and don't have a 1 drop in an aggro mirror; or you drew a bad matchup). They're both randomness to me. Hearthstone matchups without cards that have the word "random" on them can still be heavily random due to those implicit factors. I would prefer a game less random than Hearthstone, but I don't think that taking the word "random" off of cards is the way to get there.

[Cheater Hater]

Going back to the randomness point, what do you think of the swingy instances of explicit randomness in Hearthstone, like the Ragnaros example I mentioned, or the new hotness of Yogg-Sauron (which apparently is good enough for Constructed somehow?)? I feel like the Prophecies are much less swingy than those, and unless you're killing them that turn it doesn't matter much at all in the late game (as they'll generally just cast the card from the rune anyway). I feel like there's a lot of play around Prophecies: dealing the last batch of damage in one shot, leaving damage on the table to avoid breaking a rune, understanding where the "point of no return" is when dealing lethal through multiple runes to minimize the risk, memorizing which Prophecies each color can have (or just the good ones in Constructed/common ones in Limited). Honestly, I feel like the risks of a player going second curving out 2-3-4 is as much variance as the Prophecies (though that's exasperated by Solo Arena, where the AI has much better decks than the player).

1) I think Rag and Yogg are mildly bad for competitive hearthstone. Yogg is worse - the variance on Rag is limited to roughly one minion and can be close to zero in some situations, and at least he always hits one enemy.

2) I find late game randomness to be much more forgivable than early game randomness. So stuff like Fiery Bat and Tuskarr Totemic is the worst. Whether or not you curve out is also a huge issue, in both games I'm sure. Hero powers help at least a little bit there.

3) I don't mind the randomness being explicit (e.g. "Damage a random enemy") as opposed to implicit (oops, you're going second and don't have a 1 drop in an aggro mirror; or you drew a bad matchup). They're both randomness to me. Hearthstone matchups without cards that have the word "random" on them can still be heavily random due to those implicit factors. I would prefer a game less random than Hearthstone, but I don't think that taking the word "random" off of cards is the way to get there.

Thanks for this discussion Seven, I'm finding it very interesting.

The problem with CCGs (other than the pay to win aspects) is always going to be the use of cards and the randomness of the deck--the extreme when complaining about randomness is "go play chess", and while that's obviously an extreme, it helps illuminate the conversation. While chess is a great game, it has two main problems: the better player always wins, and much of the game is scripted. The polar opposite is just flipping a coin to see who wins: completely random, but more importantly for this conversation, it's one clearly visible event. As a related example, take Candyland: still 100% random, but it's a bunch of smaller events instead of one big one, so it's viewed more favorably than the coin flip. That's similar to my view on implicit vs explicit randomness: the Yogg flurry deciding games makes the "e-sport" side of Hearthstone look like a joke, but when Brian Braun-Duin finds three Collected Companies in his top ~15 cards to win the Magic World Championship, it doesn't seem as bad to me.

Speaking of Magic, that brings me back to CCGs and the reason both Hearthstone and ES:L need more randomness: the mana system. I don't know the whole story about why Magic's mana system was designed with screw/flood in mind (the reason exists; I just don't know it off the top of my head at two in the morning), but most CCG designers copied it. The ones that didn't needed to compensate--I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of CCGs, but Duelmasters originated the Prophecy concept AFAIK, and Yu-Gi-Oh restricted cards and removed basically all draw/manipulation from the game.

(This is getting ramblely, and there's an overall point somewhere, but I should be sleeping--I probably should edit this into something in the morning)

[T-hawk]

Speaking of Magic, that brings me back to CCGs and the reason both Hearthstone and ES:L need more randomness: the mana system. I don't know the whole story about why Magic's mana system was designed with screw/flood in mind (the reason exists; I just don't know it off the top of my head at two in the morning), but most CCG designers copied it.

Here you go: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/arc...2011-05-23

It's not exactly designed with screw/flood in mind, but those are acceptable industrial byproducts of the healthy variance included with the system.

[SevenSpirits]

Well I guess I should stop publicly judging digital TCGs because I'm now working on one (Plants vs Zombies: Heroes)!

[Cheater Hater]

Well I guess I should stop publicly judging digital TCGs because I'm now working on one (Plants vs Zombies: Heroes)!

Congrats on the new job! Do you have a good official source for information on the game? Apparently it's in limited release--larger than the typical New Zealand test, but not worldwide? Also, it's a mobile-only game--can you tell Popcap to start releasing games on PC again (notably PvZ2) for people that don't have mobile devices? Speaking of which, what exactly are you doing on the game?

[SevenSpirits]

Thank you.

1) No, sorry. Still finding out lots of information myself.
2) Yes, it's available in several countries at this point, but not yet e.g. US.
3) Doubt I can impact platform much, that's probably a data-driven decision. But I prefer playing games on PC too.
4) I am joining the design team, which is led by Devin Low. It's fantastic. I will be focusing on later-stage design and balancing (aka "development").

[Cheater Hater]

Thank you.

1) No, sorry. Still finding out lots of information myself.
2) Yes, it's available in several countries at this point, but not yet e.g. US.
3) Doubt I can impact platform much, that's probably a data-driven decision. But I prefer playing games on PC too.
4) I am joining the design team, which is led by Devin Low. It's fantastic. I will be focusing on later-stage design and balancing (aka "development").

Hooray for development! At the very least, do you know if it has changed drastically since the original soft-launch (which got a decent level of coverage, based on a quick google search)?

Based on that coverage, it looks like a decent merger of the basic Hearthstone model with the primarily lane-based gameplay of Solforge, which makes perfect sense for a PvZ CCG. That would be enough to try it--but again, no PC support leaves me SOL. (and to be honest, it's going to be hard to dethrone ES:L in the near-future) Maybe I'll find a gameplay video tomorrow and give some more feedback.

[SevenSpirits]

Hooray for development! At the very least, do you know if it has changed drastically since the original soft-launch (which got a decent level of coverage, based on a quick google search)?

Well, I can point you to the "news" section on the bottom half of this page: http://www.pvzheroes.com/

Definitely going to be erring on the side of silence though, sorry.