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From Warcraft to Starcraft to Diablo to Overwatch and even to Hearthstone, Blizzard has found success in producing very high-quality, very balanced games with a

From Warcraft to Starcraft to Diablo to Overwatch and even to Hearthstone, Blizzard has found success in producing very high-quality, very balanced games with amazing replayability. I'm pretty happy with this approach. Plenty of other companies already push out half-baked games and hope they gain traction.

hood_syntax 10y ago
Hearthstone is not what I would call very balanced. High quality? Yes, but it's a frequent complaint amongst the game's enthusiasts (I would include myself in that group) that they do not a good job balancing the game.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  That is a consequence of Hearthstone's focus on variety and simplicity (most of the game is powered by integers less than 10.)
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Balance is a weird aspect in most Blizzard games (as well as in any truly good game), infact it's the artfully constructed imbalance that makes them truly great. Starcraft 2 is a great example for deconstructing this design philosophy (while ironically Starcraft 1 is a great example of the complete opposite), Blizzard have intentionally and constantly changed the balance of the game and create new imbalances so the meta would evolve and be fluid by forcing players to adapt, change, and find the imbalances and find ways to deal with them. The art of most video games is not to create perfect balance but to create multiple subtle imbalances that can be discovered and overcome this in effect what creates the meta of the game and without a living meta games often can become stale and boring. Making a mathematically balanced game is easy, making an imbalanced game that is still interesting is an art form. This is what sets a few games apart from the rest, games like LoL and Starcraft are a great example of the "imbalanced by design" distilled to an art form. Hearthstone is also imbalanced by design to both create a fluid meta, as well as to push the progression both the in-game progression and the out of game monetization progression.
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    > Making a mathematically balanced game is easy, making an imbalanced game that is still interesting is an art form. That is absolute rot. A simple balanced game. A perfectly balanced complex game with thousands of combinations of disparate variables is incredibly hard - because actually ranking what equality means is in and of itself an incredibly hard problem when abilities are significantly different. Blizzard approached this problem by homogenization at one point and recognised this is a terrible solution. They now attempt to balance within a structure of variety - largely by responding to the evolution of the meta as players learn new ways to min/max
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  No popular multiplayer game has very good balance. Even Brood War has units that are mostly useless (e.g. scout). But relative to the rest of the field, yes, Blizzard's games are well balanced.
- Kiro 10y ago
  You're reading too much reddit. It's not representative of the player base in whole. A casual player like myself have no problem with balance and enjoy the game as it is.

hood_syntax 10y ago

Hearthstone is not what I would call very balanced. High quality? Yes, but it's a frequent complaint amongst the game's enthusiasts (I would include myself in that group) that they do not a good job balancing the game.

1123581321 10y ago
That is a consequence of Hearthstone's focus on variety and simplicity (most of the game is powered by integers less than 10.)
dogma1138 10y ago
Balance is a weird aspect in most Blizzard games (as well as in any truly good game), infact it's the artfully constructed imbalance that makes them truly great. Starcraft 2 is a great example for deconstructing this design philosophy (while ironically Starcraft 1 is a great example of the complete opposite), Blizzard have intentionally and constantly changed the balance of the game and create new imbalances so the meta would evolve and be fluid by forcing players to adapt, change, and find the imbalances and find ways to deal with them. The art of most video games is not to create perfect balance but to create multiple subtle imbalances that can be discovered and overcome this in effect what creates the meta of the game and without a living meta games often can become stale and boring. Making a mathematically balanced game is easy, making an imbalanced game that is still interesting is an art form. This is what sets a few games apart from the rest, games like LoL and Starcraft are a great example of the "imbalanced by design" distilled to an art form. Hearthstone is also imbalanced by design to both create a fluid meta, as well as to push the progression both the in-game progression and the out of game monetization progression.
- Ntrails 10y ago
  > Making a mathematically balanced game is easy, making an imbalanced game that is still interesting is an art form. That is absolute rot. A simple balanced game. A perfectly balanced complex game with thousands of combinations of disparate variables is incredibly hard - because actually ranking what equality means is in and of itself an incredibly hard problem when abilities are significantly different. Blizzard approached this problem by homogenization at one point and recognised this is a terrible solution. They now attempt to balance within a structure of variety - largely by responding to the evolution of the meta as players learn new ways to min/max
TulliusCicero 10y ago
No popular multiplayer game has very good balance. Even Brood War has units that are mostly useless (e.g. scout). But relative to the rest of the field, yes, Blizzard's games are well balanced.
Kiro 10y ago
You're reading too much reddit. It's not representative of the player base in whole. A casual player like myself have no problem with balance and enjoy the game as it is.