Ben Brode, the senior designer of Blizzard Entertainment's "Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft," recently addressed the issue regarding the card sets given to players of the game. According to the designer, the game deliberately gives bad cards to gamers to motivate them to level up.
As explained by Eurogamer, the gameplay of "Hearthstone" heavily focuses on card collecting. By completing entry matches and tutorials, new players of the online game will be able to unlock basic card sets. Some of these sets contain very powerful cards while others are a bit weak.
Because of this system, followers of the game noted that the imbalance between strong and weak cards could lead to an unfair gameplay experience for newcomers. More specifically, as more powerful cards are introduced in expansion packs, those who still have a generally weak card set might get left behind in terms of their in-game performance.
Although this issue may seem like a problem that needs to be changed, Brode explained that Blizzard Entertainment intentionally developed this system to help the players' progression. By giving them bad cards, the studio wants the new players to develop the necessary skills to improve their status in the game, VG247 reported.
"We want some of the basic cards to be really bad, really bad, to help make that feeling of progression even stronger," Brode said in a new video for the game's Designer Insights series. "But some people pointed out that those cards are making it unfair for new players and they're losing because of that."
"Actually new players are losing for more reasons that that, they just don't have the skill," he added.
The senior designer also noted that even though gamers generally receive bad cards, they are still given really strong ones such as the Truesilver Champion, Consecrate and Frostbolt. Through a combination of these weak and powerful cards, Blizzard Entertainment wants gamers to learn how to manage their decks in order to win in matches.
"Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft" was officially released on March 11, 2014. It is currently available for the Windows, OS X, iOS and Android platforms.
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