Game Content Creation #6: Adapting My Approach to Hearthstone Card Design

         Overview: Having played the Journey to Un'Goro expansion for going on two months now, I am just starting to appreciate the flexibility that the new Adapt mechanic offers to players (and designers!). In this post I will showcase the design potential of Adapt and explain why it is the cornerstone of Un'Goro and why I hope to see it make an appearance in future expansions.

      If you are not already familiar with the Adapt mechanic and the existing adaptations released with Journey to Un'Goro, take a look here before reading on. When designing my own adaptations I kept true to the core value that designer Dean Ayala shared with the community, "Adapt was clearer when the expectation was always that it would make the minion itself better" (Source). That being said there are only so many ways that you can buff a minion. Taking inspiration from existing Hearthstone cards and effects, I present to you the following adaptations:

      From the Ashes effectively ties the effect of Getaway Kodo to a specific minion. This adaptation is one of the slowest tempo-wise in the sense that it does not immediately effect the board state. 

      Leader of the Pack grants the adapted minion the aura from Dire Wolf Alpha. This is only one of three adaptations that require the player to consider positioning when adapting (Shrouding Mist and Liquid Membrane being the other two).

      Living Parasite is a blast from the past (if you are a Standard player anyways). It adds the same Deathrattle seen on Sludge Belcher to the adapted minion. I felt that there needed to be another defensive adaptation in the mix besides Taunt.      

     Each of these custom adaptations as well as the existing 10 are analyzed and compared below. Before reading the following chart, understand that creating a tier list for a mechanic like Adapt is inherently difficult. Each adaptation, by design, is situational and the tier list is not strictly stating any one adaptation is better than another. I am merely trying to gauge the relative power of each adaptation in Arena. Each adaptation is rated on a tier scale: S > A > B > C > D for adapting a Big minion, a Small minion, and Multiple minions. The adaptations are sorted by their overall tier rating across the three sub-categories.

      One interesting note regarding Charge, which is not an adaptation released with Un'Goro, is that is scores similar to Poisonous and +3 Health according to my tier list. I believe that if the designers chose to include Poisonous that they should also include Charge. They are of a similar power level and Poisonous is arguably more frustrating to play against. I personally think that both Poisonous and Charge are too powerful to be adaptations and as a side note +3 Health could be reduced to +2 Health to make it less of an auto-pick. Then again I am only speaking from Arena experience.

      I had a lot of fun coming up with clever (and thematic!) minions that bring Adapt to a new level in Hearthstone. Never before have you been able to Adapt your opponent's minions, well, why would you? Does a 5 mana 7/8 change your mind?

      Dharles Carwin is a card that gives minions a chance to Adapt that otherwise never could. This presents players with overwhelming deck possibilities (Tirion Fordring with Living Membrane anyone?).

      Vulture is a high-quality hunter minion that feeds into the Deathrattle archetype. By itself it is a formidable 3 drop at 3/4. But if you can lead the Vulture to a fresh kill it will thrive on the board. Its Battlecry includes enemy Deathrattle minions, too!

      Confused Zookeeper is feeding the wrong animals! When played, you must choose an adaptation for all enemy minions (if there are any!). Good thing she has the stats to make up for her clumsiness.

      The three minion above all Adapt a certain number of times. However the number of adaptations is conveyed in three different manners. Ravenous Pterrordax uses the Adapt keyword once, but the text is clear enough as is. Volcanosaur unnecessarily uses the Adapt keyword twice. A more concise version of the card text is, "Battlecry: Adapt twice." Lastly, Galvadon follows the same format as Ravenous Pterrodax but includes a number to indicate the number of adaptations. This is a necessary addition in this case but it sticks out since the other cards do not follow suit (Ravenous Pterrordax doesn't say "... Adapt 2 times."

      I propose a new format for Adapt that solves all of the above problems. If a minion only adapts once leave the text as "Battlecry: Adapt." but if it is any number greater than one simply add that number in parentheses. For example, Galvadon's card text could be simplified to "Battlecry: Adapt(5)." Volcanosaur's card text could simply be "Battlecry: Adapt(2)." It is a minor change and depending on the future use of Adapt may be glossed over. I felt that this inconsistency was worth bringing up because even if it doesn't get fixed, the concept can always be applied to future designs/mechanics.

Thanks for taking a look at my approach to expanding on the future use of Adapt in Hearthstone.

Disclaimer: All card art used in this blog is the property of Blizzard Entertainment. I do not claim ownership of any assets (art or otherwise). 

Cards were generated using Hearthcards.net