Game Development Giant

The reason why Blizzard cut off "Warsong Commander" is this - they tested dozens of changes and found that this change was the best.

The question is why do they find this change the best?

That's because the OTK deck has been hated by Blizzard since the first day of "Hearthstone".

What is an OTK deck?

This is a term in the trading card game. The full name is One-Turn-Kill. As the name suggests, it means killing the opponent in one turn. In fact, this is a very common deck in the trading card game, whether it is Whether it's Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic: The Gathering, such a deck is not uncommon, and because certain conditions are required to achieve OTK, it is not easy to accomplish.

Blizzard believes that they feel that you can't do anything in this round. You can only watch yourself go from half or even full health to being killed directly with a set of combos. This gives players The experience will be very bad, so they don't agree with the existence of a deck where players can only wait for death in their own turn without any means.

From the beginning, the hunter's release of the dog did not change the previous wave of dragon dog poison explosion, but later the rolling stone battle was cut off.

All of them are sanctioning this kind of OTK deck.

But one thing to note is that Blizzard always uses what they think to measure players' feelings. They think OTK destroys the player experience, so they delete some OTK decks. Let's not talk about whether players who are OTKed will really feel disgusted. , even if this is the case, doesn't Blizzard consider the feelings of those players who like OTK?

To achieve OTK, you need to pay a price. You may not be able to achieve it in five out of ten games. Why should you destroy the hobbies of these players?

Jester remembered the feeling when he first encountered the Rolling Stone Battle. It was definitely not boring, but a feeling of amazement. It gave rise to such a feeling-it turns out that warriors can still play like this. , not only broadened my horizons, but also introduced myself to a new deck. When encountering him in the future, he will be on guard. When he sees a soldier happily selling his blood, he will be on guard against his stone-rolling battle. Either control the blood line and prepare to take them away in a wave, or raise the wall to let the opponent throw a mouse trap.

Why should such an interesting deck be completely scrapped?

It's just to satisfy those SB designers at Blizzard that we don't like XXX, so we have to get rid of this extremely stupid thinking of XXX.

A bunch of arrogant people who always think they are right. Don’t even open your eyes to see what players want to play. The loss of five million players in World of Warcraft 6.0 in half a year can be attributed to the sluggishness of the MMORPG game type. Heroes of the Storm can be attributed to players not liking this kind of team. Gaming aspect.

The question is, haven't players told you what games they want to play?

The difficulty of the dungeon of "Warlords of Draenor" blindly caters to high-level players, and the fault tolerance rate is astonishingly low. In order to take care of high-level players, it prevents random groups from losing sets, and in order to allow high-level players to kill people in the wild, flight mode is not turned on. Aren't these all settings that are so SB that they can no longer be SB?

At first we were talking about Crab, Crab, Crab's Cataclysm, Crab's Mists of Pandaria. Now Crab is gone and a new group of people has been replaced to make "Warlords of Draenor". What's the result? They are not as good as Crabs. At least Crabs know what kind of games most players like. High-level players are definitely not equal to most players.

Therefore, although the two versions of Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria have mixed reviews. However, the number of players is relatively stable despite the decline. This is the so-called downward trend of the number of players in a poor MMORPG environment. It must be a smooth downward curve, and what about "Warlords of Draenor". It’s a jumping-off-the-floor downward curve. Shouldn’t you tell me that this is an MMORPG environment?

Nonsense, this is just a group of SB designers making a SB version, and then the players stopped paying for it.

As a result, Blizzard could only slap itself again and again. For example, when Blizzard responded to why it took so long to launch a flight, the explanation given by Blizzard was because launching a flight requires fixing many bugs. Why are there so many BUGs? Because there will be many errors when flying the map, Blizzard has not said why there are so many errors.

Needless to say, anyone with any intelligence can tell that he had no intention of flying in the first place.

As a result, the players didn’t buy it, so it became SB, right?

Have you slapped yourself?

Of course, the SB aspect of "Warlords of Draenor" is not just this one place, it is simply winning countless games.

It really lives up to that sentence.

I didn't realize that this was the case when I was here, but after I left, I didn't realize it was the same.

On a crab, it really suits the occasion.

Putting these messy thoughts behind, Jester also sighed. As a designer, you must learn to listen to the voices of players, but you must not be influenced by the voices of players, but one of your changes was rejected. When most players are against it, then you have to ask yourself again and again, am I right to do this?

Just like the modification of Slave War, after Blizzard made this modification, the 'Little Fishman Great Immortal' conducted a vote, and as a result, 88% of the participants opposed this modification.

Doesn't this explain the problem?

Of course, Slave War does need to be modified, because this deck is too perfect, but it is definitely not a crude cut-off modification.

Doing so is irresponsible to the players.

Because this is a deck that players have spent countless efforts perfecting.

Another very important thing is that the key to why Blizzard hates OTK so much is that when Hearthstone is playing, players have no countermeasures for turns that do not belong to them, that is, there are no real-time cards. This is why Jester always believes that the game Hearthstone lacks competitiveness. When it is not your turn, you can only act based on other people's faces, but cannot control your own destiny.

This kind of game that leaves half to luck can only be an entertainment game.

Of course, the fierce competition in Hearthstone also shows one thing, that is, whether a game is a competitive game has nothing to do with whether the game is competitive or not. As long as it is a confrontational game, as long as there are enough players . Then it becomes a competitive game.

And if Hearthstone is added in a round other than your own, you can set up instant response similar to the trap cards in Hope, which naturally increases the depth of the game and makes the game more fun. But the disadvantage is that it is more complicated - this is not what Blizzard wants to see. From their development videos, we can know that in the original Hearthstone, they had this kind of instant card.

But they deleted it.

have to say. It's really a stupid decision, and of course Adventure Mode is a stupid decision as well.

Jester did not read the replies on the forum again. This time he shut down the computer completely, washed up and went to bed. After all, he had not slept all day and he was very tired. He had several meetings tomorrow. Want to go.

The next day, Jester's post on the Mars Entertainment Community really caused an uproar. This was Jester's first time in public. Expressing one's attitude between old-school FPS and modern FPS made many old-school FPS designers of Mars Entertainment very dissatisfied. Even Carmack was a little angry when he heard the media talking about this matter.

He even uttered threatening words.

Carmack said: "He will talk to Jester, and if Jester really has irreconcilable conflicts with him, he will resign."

As a meritorious figure in Mars Entertainment and an industry leader in 3D engine development, the news really shocked the industry, and soon there were rumors that it was either Sony or Sega. Or American game companies like EA are in frequent contact with Carmack and want to recruit Carmack under their command.

However, this news did not receive a reply from Carmack.

Carmack himself is a man of his word, after he ended his conversation with the reporter. I immediately booked a flight to Chicago. After arriving in Chicago, I went straight to Jester's hotel.

It was already afternoon when he arrived at the hotel, and Jester was attending a seminar on the development direction of future games and did not meet him at the first time. But Carmack was still waiting patiently for Jester to come back. After Jester learned that Carmack suddenly arrived in Chicago, he also guessed his purpose, so Jester immediately returned to the hotel.

No one knows what exactly Jester and Carmack talked about, but it can be guessed that the result of the conversation was not good, and Carmack ended up breaking up on bad terms.

Many media outside the hotel photographed Carmack's face turning red and leaving the hotel without saying a word.

And immediately booked a return flight to Los Angeles.

The next day, Carmack suddenly accepted an interview with a gaming media, saying that he had submitted his resignation to Jester, and that the countdown to his departure from Mars Entertainment had begun. This news had just been disclosed, and it immediately caused a stir. There was an uproar.

You must know that Carmack is no ordinary person. It can be said that he is one of the cores of the entire Mars Entertainment and the best 3D engine developer in the world. The earliest 3D game engine was independently developed by him, and now it is Entering the rapid development period of the 3D game era, having Carmack is a very important assistant for any game company.

Of course, in fact, the development of 3D engines has now entered a team-oriented effect, especially for Mars Entertainment. Even a top master like Carmack can hardly occupy an absolute dominant position in the latest engine development, but for For some other companies, Carmack, who has participated in the development of the world's most outstanding 3D engine, is still something they can only meet.

They didn't expect that this time Jester suddenly said that he was not optimistic about the future of the old-school FPS, and that he would offend Carmack at the same time.

It made many game companies laugh.

Of course, they were all trying desperately to win over Carmack, wanting to win him over to their gaming company, and the conditions they offered were all extreme, but Carmack did not respond.

When he came back, he was really annoyed by these games, so he made a statement that he would not join other game companies.

However, in the eyes of many game companies, this is just Carmack taking a retreat in order to advance.

When Jester returned to Los Angeles, he also accepted an interview. In this interview, he was asked about Carmack's resignation. Jester did not hide it. He admitted it: "We Indeed, there was some analysis on game development, and Carmack also submitted his resignation to me, but I don’t think this is an irreconcilable conflict. It’s not that I won’t continue to make old-school FPS. For example, I was in Among our player community, we have revealed to players that "Team Fortress" is an old-school FPS with a very Thor style that we will make next..."

"So are you sure you can keep John Carmack? When he was interviewed before, his tone was that he had decided to leave."

Then he quickly followed up with questions.

"I can only say that Carmack is an indispensable part of our Mars Entertainment. He is one of the most important people why we are so successful. I don't want him to leave us. I will try my best to save him. If it is really impossible, If he recovers, then I will also wish him a smoother career in the future. He is a genius, a true genius. If we lose him, it will be our biggest loss."

Jester also answered.

The reporter also felt that the time was almost up, and asked a topic that many people and even many game companies are most concerned about, that is, if Carmack leaves Mars Entertainment, will there be industry restrictions on him?

In fact, Mars Entertainment is very tolerant towards employees who leave them and never imposes industry prohibition clauses on their employees.

But those are just ordinary employees, not the real core like Carmack.

The rumors of Carmack's departure are also the first time in the twelve years since Mars Entertainment was established that rumors of a real core member leaving the company have been reported. No one is sure whether Mars Entertainment will ban him from the industry. , so this reporter asked this question.

Jester shook his head firmly after hearing this.

"I don't know why you think so, but we at Mars Entertainment are not such a company. If any of our employees leaves, we will not ask the other industry to ban him. He can engage in any industry he wants to do. If he is in We develop FPS games here, and if we go to other game companies, we can also develop FPS games." (~^~)