From the legend of the furnace of the designer's advice: Do the game you first

The success of the Legend of the Furnace Stone once again proves that small teams are more likely to have success stories, but for PCs and ipad platforms, free digital card games seem to be not too many winners. However, because of the play and the quality of the game, the legend of the furnace has brought great impact on the game industry, at the beginning of this month, Blizzard Entertainment also released a second film, "Goblin Wars Dwarf," for the tour, adding 143 cards and making big changes to the game card image.

Recently, game designers from Blizzard, Ben Brode and Mike Donais, interviewed for the success of the new information and the legend of the Furnace, and they revealed that the legend of the furnace is the most wanted game, so it will be so successful. The following is an interview:

The origin of the new information film

How did the idea of the "Goblin vs. Gnome" Piece of information come?

Ben Brode: We like the image of gnomes and midgets very much. The legendary game director Eric Dodds is actually the first game planner of the World of Warcraft project, and he has made a great contribution to trading skills, designing trading skills and creating very good things like gnomes and midgets.

We were all sitting in the conference room, writing down our thoughts on the white writing pad, constantly deducing ideas, and there were a lot of good ideas, and then someone put forward the idea of a goblin vs. Gnome. After I wrote it down to ask Dodds's opinion, he was very pleased with it, and then our discussion ended, and we decided to make the film.

Our team is very excited about the ability to explore Goblin Shredder cards and other interesting features, and to extend our IP. We do a lot of functions, such as Snowchugger and Annoy-o-tron, and we can do a deeper exploration through this piece of information.

Considering that this is a very close to the release date of World of Warcraft: King of Draenor, is there any pressure on you to do the material for the legend of Stone?

Brode: On the whole, we feel very motivated, Blizzard is a great place to work, and I think it's very good that our "Legend of the Furnace" team can give full play to creative freedom and try something cool. The whole company has high hopes for our team and I really don't feel any pressure or anything like that. We like the warlords theme very much, so we are very happy to develop this kind of content, but I do not feel the pressure, most of the time I feel in the company is exciting motivation.

Mike Donais: We're just trying to do something interesting, and the company is very supportive of us, and they totally trust us.

Wouldn't it be scary to publish so many new cards at the same time? Because you can't predict exactly what the impact will be on the game.

Donais: I can only say that we are more excited than scary, and it is very exciting to be able to bring so many new content to the game, so we have introduced a lot of new cards. There may be fears at first, but as we develop, we know exactly what direction the game will take. We have a lot of unknowns about how players use these cards, but we hope they will eventually like it.

Tips for making new cards

How did you make the card? Is it first to shape the character and then add the play, or the first to play and then design the role of the image?

Brode: We actually use both of these methods. On the premise of Gnome vs. gnomes, we usually make a list of what we want to do, we want Goblin Shredder, we want the goblin engineer and the Gnome engineer, we want to madder bomber, we really think about how to get these ideas through the cards.

But we will also consider doing a very good job of "Goblin vs. Gnome". Sometimes it will be played first, consider the way the card and play between the interaction, redeemed parts is a very good idea, so we did some can this interactive card, so we both use.

We will also consider what tools are needed to make the game more manageable by allowing the player to perform the reverse operation. If death fear (Death rattle) is too strong, we hope that there are some cards that can restrain it and prevent the player from getting bored.

It seems that this is to solve the death fear problem that appears in the summers of the Karnak film, right?

Brode: Yes, we want players to have more strategies to implement, and if you're tired of Kezan mystic, tired of Hemet nesingwary, just add some tools to change the strategy.

The advantage of issuing a lot of cards seems to be to bring more balance to the game, is this your goal?

Brode: Yes, it is important to choose the right card in your card bag to play the game.

The influence of random function on game playing method

It seems that in this piece, you have introduced a material card that will perform different functions based on specific things, which seems unlikely to happen in regular card games.

Donais: We like to do something we can't do in traditional card games, which keeps our game fresh and makes players more interested because they can see something they've never seen before. We started with Webspinner and it seemed like the players liked it so much more in the second piece. This is good for us, and watching the players ' videos is also very interesting and has achieved better results than we expected.

It seems that a lot of cards have random factors, these cards to make a certain action probability is 55 open, this method is still popular with players?

Brode: We saw some worry at first, because it's easy to think that randomness affects players ' skills. Every time you use a random property card, you think the probability is lower, so the probability of winning is higher. So this allows players to play the technology at the same time need to take into account the random factors. But it's not really the case in the game, some games, even if there is no randomness, there is no need for the player how high technology, but some games, even if the addition of a lot of random factors, still can let players play their own technology, like poker or "furnace Legend", these are not contradictory, you can both have, After adding the probability factor to the game, the player needs to consider more.

I think in theory, some players will worry about the randomness of some cards, but now they experience that the impact on them is very small, and sometimes increase the probability of the game can greatly improve the gameplay, now we find that the players are very much like this feature.

What is the most controversial card after the release (including the entire game)? Are there any cards that are particularly unpopular with players?

Brode: On the whole, we have a completely different new play each time, players have nothing to compare. Cards like Bolvar Fordragon are unique in their design, and as the game progresses, the players are still available, no other cards are available, but players are often worried about whether the card is not strong enough. After the game was launched, players began to discover that they finally knew why the card was very good. New cards will open up new areas and it's interesting to see players talking about a card, and they can try their own game after they get their hands on it.

Have you ever paid attention to competitors?

Brode: We love card games, we are almost always playing, this is what we want to do "furnace stone legend" reason, we are always concerned about card games, hand Tour, PC and so on all kinds of games.

The revelation of the success of the Legend of Furnace Stone to blizzard

What do you think Blizzard can learn from the success of the Legend of the Furnace stone?

Donais: We've learned how to push other platforms, something Blizzard has never done before. We also found that the original game does not necessarily need hundreds of people to develop, not necessarily like the World of Warcraft. "Stone legend" the first team only 15 or less, to the test period, our team reached 15 people, this is very surprising, and the game is very successful, the play is very rich and interesting.

Is it possible to say that you have brought new energy to blizzard? For example, your "furnace stone legend" Success, you also announced the Overwatch and other new IP, also launched the "King of Draenor" information, now blizzard inside should be very busy?

Brode: From my point of view, I have always felt that working in blizzard is very good. I worked in the company for a long time, but also for the excellent game is very excited, I very much like the previous release of some games, but also personally experienced, for me personally, "stone legend" particularly excited me, is currently my favorite project in Blizzard.

Can you tell me one of your favorite cards and explain why?

Donais: If you want to say something, it may be difficult, I like a lot of cards, but I have to say one, I will choose Recombobulator, he can turn a servant into another equal servant, in the injury, you can transform it, and then feel that you have a new card, can always bring surprises. You can do a lot of good combo, get a lot of surprises, make the game experience more interesting.

Brode: My favorite card is quartermaster. Paladins can command the Legion, Luther is sliver hand commander, you can join in, hope they can all become paladins. With muster for battle and quartermaster, you get a better experience.

The game that you want to do will succeed

Here is a hypothetical question, if you have the opportunity to do a non-blizzard IP card game, what do you most want to do card collection game?

Brode: In fact, the legend of the furnace is the game we particularly want to do. In the initial stage of the game, we have probably tried hundreds of different planning schemes. We've been fighting heroes and heroes, and we've tried a lot of other ways not to join the corps, but I think the stone legend is the best we've ever tried. One of the most interesting parts of announcing and launching the Legend of the furnace is that I actually went home and played, because I liked the game very much. I do not think there is any better idea than the legend of the furnace to let us do, so we made the "stone legend" will be so successful.

What about the next content update? Are you going to launch a new card or a new one for the data, or do you want to use both?

Brode: What we're trying to do now is to keep the team sensitive, new cards and data are very different ways to update the content, we listen to a large number of player community feedback, we also need to learn a lot of content update frequency, we need to know what frequency is the most suitable for the "furnace Stone legend." I'm not sure what the future will look like, it might be one, it might be a combination of two, and it might be in a new way. But for now, our first piece of feedback is very good, we are now waiting for players to the second piece of feedback, I do not have the future of the game 100% definite answer, but we are very happy with the future opportunities.