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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

With Sire Denathrius being revealed, I want to take the opportunity to talk about a seemingly small aspect of designing Hearthstone cards that has a bigger impact than one might think: card text! THREAD: HS card text wording & formatting. (1/14) https://t.co/jcEjFtP8I3

With Sire Denathrius being revealed, I want to take the opportunity to talk about a seemingly small aspect of designing Hearthstone cards that has a bigger impact than one might think: card text! THREAD: HS card text wording & formatting. (1/14) https://t.co/jcEjFtP8I3

  • MyntyPhresh
    Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
    With Sire Denathrius being revealed, I want to take the opportunity to talk about a seemingly small aspect of designing Hearthstone cards that has a bigger impact than one might think: card text! THREAD: HS card text wording & formatting. (1/14) https://t.co/jcEjFtP8I3

    • MyntyPhresh
      Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
      Sire Denathrius' textbox might read a little off, and that's because the textbox is missing the word "split", which is how we've worded similar effects in the past. But trying to fit that + Lifesteal + Infuse lead to a pretty cramped textbox we weren't happy with. (2/14) https://t.co/rfpfDv7ff3

      • MyntyPhresh
        Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
        This is the closest we could have gotten. The thing is, "Endlessly Infuse (1)" is now split across multiple lines, which is something we avoid if we can because it affects readability quite a bit (in AV, Honorable Kill was always on 1 line) (3/14) https://t.co/I3XeG3hyjq

        • MyntyPhresh
          Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
          We talked about other solutions, like removing Lifesteal, or changing the effect slightly to something less wordy, but we really liked the gameplay of the card as-is, and in the end, solid gameplay > a perfect textbox - as long as you can still understand the effect! (4/14)

          • MyntyPhresh
            Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
            One example of where we actually did cut corners with wording while keeping gameplay was with Primordial Wave! If you compare it to Evolve and Devolve, you'll notice it's missing words like "all" or "random". Technically, PW SHOULD have those words, right? (5/14) https://t.co/ppGuA3AduL

            • MyntyPhresh
              Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
              We went with this wording for Primordial Wave because A) Without those words, you still understand the effect (or worst-case, get 90% there), B) "Evolving" is an action a lot of our players already know, and C) It fits perfectly on the card! (6/14)

              • MyntyPhresh
                Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                The most important part of a card's textbox is explaining the effect with minimal confusion. What we want to avoid is players reading a card and having little to no clue what the card does - this is one of the reasons why we don't evergreen every expansion keyword. (7/14)

                • MyntyPhresh
                  Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                  For example, I see a lot of comments online about Recruit and how we should evergreen it with how we still use the effect. We actually don't save on a ton of text space by using Recruit, and the benefit of spelling it out ensures new players know what the card does! (8/14) https://t.co/pX7zPY5d9m

                  • MyntyPhresh
                    Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                    I also see discussion about how some card's text isn't consistent with the same effect on another card: a good example is card draw. You'll see some examples say "from your deck", while others don't. (9/14) https://t.co/luHQnucBGT

                    • MyntyPhresh
                      Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                      We try to be consistent whenever we can, but in the above example, we eventually decided that we don't need to specify "from your deck" because players just understood that that's where they draw from. (10/14)

                      • MyntyPhresh
                        Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                        But sometimes we just don't notice minor inconsistencies, like these two Murlocs released in the same set. On their own, their textboxes read perfectly, which explains why we didn't notice 😅 For that same reason, we're OK with minor differences in 1to1 effects like this. (11/14) https://t.co/m2QLsGshFA

                        • MyntyPhresh
                          Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                          Again, the single most important part of a card is making sure it reads naturally and makes sense to as many players as possible, both new and old. Denathrius reads a bit weird compared to what you're used to, but the read is clear enough to preserve the gameplay we like! (12/14)

                          • MyntyPhresh
                            Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                            "So what about Mankrik?" Mankrik's effect is vague, but it tells a super fun story! That and there isn't a lot we're asking of the player when you play Mankrik - he isn't conditional, and the reward happens automatically. - you just need to draw it! (13/14) https://t.co/Wdm3zKcz6k

                            • MyntyPhresh
                              Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                              Hopefully me rambling on and on about card text was interesting to some of you! Personally I love talking about this stuff, so if people have any Qs, I'm more than happy to answer 😄 (14/14)

                              • Cora
                                Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
                                @MyntyPhresh Myself, Liv, Clay, and Dom spent a solid 30 minutes in a call just templating this card. Denathrius is very evil indeed.

    • Linus Flink
      Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
      @MyntyPhresh I go read twitter to avoid working and the top story on my page is Leo talking about the exact thing we were talking about in slack 2 minutes earlier...

    • Old_GuardianHS
      Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
      @MyntyPhresh Why "Endlessly Infuse" over something like "Infuse: ... (repeatable)" - would add to comprehension, ease localization, and make the keyword phrase shorter and easier to format.

      • MyntyPhresh
        Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
        @Old_GuardianHS If I'm understanding your pitch correctly, that could cause confusion as to what is repeatable. The whole card, like a turn-lasting Echo? The battlecry + Infuse? Just the Battlecry? Just Infuse?

        • MyntyPhresh
          Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
          @Old_GuardianHS IIRC the original wording we had used the same wording as Horrendous Growth, we moved away from that for reasons I admittedly can not remember right now 😅 Like @Songbird_HS said in another comment, a whole squad of people sat in a Zoom call devoted just to templating the Sire https://t.co/q2BRwmwzoS

          • Cora
            Posted 3 years, 6 months ago (Source)
            @MyntyPhresh @Old_GuardianHS Yeah it was this wording. It was fine on the uninfused Denathrius, but the Infused textbox was so squished. It looked terrible.
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