《炉石传说》首席设计师Eric Dodds谈游戏制作和移植iPad

原作者：Matthew Diener 译者：Vivian Xue

尽管《炉石传说》开发工作陆续进行了五年多，暴雪对这款F2P卡牌收集游戏一直守口如瓶。

在去年春天的PAX East展上，他们终于公布了这款游戏。从外表上看，《炉石传说》显然不是一款典型F2P卡牌游戏（比如《巴哈姆特之怒》）。

“我们刚开始设计时并没有想到它会变成这样，”首席设计师 Eric Dodds说，“我们只想做一款超酷的卡牌收集游戏，能让许多人爱上它。”

如今，在发行了首个iPad版后，《炉石传说》成功地吸引了许多人，当然这还是种较为低调的说法。

游戏开发的推动力

在跃升中、韩两国ipad游戏下载榜榜首后，《炉石传说》完成了它的商业全球化——它甚至帮助暴雪抵消了季度利润下滑的影响。

但这早期的成功来之不易，暴雪面对着把《炉石传说》和他们的战网（Battle.net）一同移植到iPad平台上的难题。

对粉丝来说幸运的是，这个灵活的开发团队成功做到了。但他们究竟有多灵活呢？

“这取决于你如何看待这款游戏的开发，这款游戏的开发经过了两个完全不同的阶段”Dodds说道。

“游戏的早期开发大概五年前就开始了，当时团队只有几个人，我们仅停留在创意设计阶段。我们用纸张制作了很多卡牌模型，并制成flash版，但是对于游戏最终会是什么样我们没有确切的想法。”

“直到两年前，我们的团队才终于完整起来，并着手开发如今你们所见到的这款游戏。那时团队扩大到15个人。”

尽管团队规模发生了变化，团队依然按照最初的想法将《炉石传说》设计成一个F2P游戏，这样全世界的玩家都能够尝试这个游戏。

“我们认为卡牌手机游戏非常棒，我们希望那些从没接触过卡牌游戏的人玩这个游戏。我们希望清除那些阻碍人们尝试F2P游戏的最大障碍，这是我们的目标。”

游戏开发的另一个驱动力是一套不变的设计原则，这些原则帮助游戏保持“本真”。

“我们把这些原则称为‘地桩’，它们帮助我们在构建游戏的过程中做出决策，”Dodds提到。

“比如‘让第一次进入游戏的玩家马上获得乐趣’以及‘为硬核玩家提供足够的深度，并让新玩家感受到游戏潜在的深度’。即便到现在，我们仍然会回头看看这些原则，以确保我们走在正确的道路上。”

卡组的改动

但是这并不是说《炉石传说》从头到尾都是一成不变的。

“我们去掉或者修改了很多卡牌，但没有一张是我真正想保留在游戏中的，”Dodds在谈到对《炉石传说》的卡组进行删减时说。

“曾经我们设计过能打出‘致命一击’的卡牌，以及一些25%的几率造成双倍伤害的卡牌，但它们的随机性太大了。”

除了随机性，玩家的体验是他们修改卡牌的另一个原因。

“曾经我们想过让随从在他们的主人进攻回合中发动额外攻击，但是随从的攻击每轮都在变化会让人感到困惑。因此我很高兴我们把它移除了。”

许多修改是出于维持游戏的平衡性。

“最初盗贼的技能是为你提供一个1/2武器，如果你已经装备了武器，它将提高现有武器1点攻击力，”Dodds说道。

“但是这样做出现了问题，盗贼的武器会越来越强大。因此我们调整了技能，在玩家回合末它才会提升1点武器攻击力。即便做了这样的调整，这种能力还是太强了，所以我们如今把它改成了增加1/2匕首。”

平板的神奇力量

在外行人看来，制作一款能够在PC，Mac和iPad 上玩的游戏看起来很简单——但事实上这对暴雪来说并不容易，因为他们的目标是提供真正的跨平台体验。

Dodds把实现这个目标称为 “一个重大的任务”，并且它需要“几位来自战网的工程师和开发团队一同合作，致力于用户身份验证和好友列表这样的社交功能的移植。”

但这样做不仅是为了让《炉石传说》更好地适应iPad，还由于“实现PC/Mac和平板之间的跨平台体验要求我们将战网移植到一个全新的平台，”Dodds说。

“在PC端，战网客户端能够处理例如储存玩家登陆数据、提示重要的服务器更新以及选择游戏语言等任务，”Dodds指出。

“由于在iOS平台上还没有战网软件，我们想办法将同样的信息和设定整合到iPad的用户体验界面中，同时保证它看上去不会过于杂乱。”

尽管这样做之后引发了一些令人头疼的状况，但这对于保证iPad版本符合玩家期待是很必要的。

“我们的目标和做PC版时一样，就是做出一个能让任何人获得乐趣的游戏，包括那些一般不玩卡牌收集游戏的玩家。”Dodds说。

“两个版本都能让玩家使用同样的卡组对抗同样水平的玩家群体，并且用户体验界面也非常相似，因此一个PC炉石玩家在iPad上玩时，他也能很快上手。”

但iPad和PC版有一个很大的区别，Dodds称之为平板的“物理特性”。

“在iPad上拖动这些卡牌是有触摸感的，”他说，随后很快补充说道，“打开卡组的过程也相当酷。”

平板的另一个特性是让玩家可以随时随地打游戏。

“在iPad上玩的另一个优势是你可以随时随地进行游戏。我经常在看电视的时候，或者是在躺床上时打一局，我很喜欢这种感觉。”

和朋友聚在一起

这种便捷性使炉石玩家们面对面开黑成为可能——我们俗称“炉边聚会”

但Dodds和开发团队一开始并没有想到这一点。

“这个‘炉边聚会’的想法在开发后期萌生的，因为我们想到在iPad上可以随时开始游戏。我们觉得让打游戏成为一种社交方式是个很棒的主意，”Dodds说。

“通常人们需要把他们的电脑搬到一起，但是如今我们做了一个平板版本，平板比电脑容易移动多了。”

《炉石传说》显然吸引了大批长期玩家，与此同时开发团队将目光放在吸引新玩家上。

“从一开始，《炉石传说》就是一个设计给所有人玩的游戏，”Dodds解释道。

“如今‘所有人’也许是一大批玩家，我们的目标用户是那些策略游戏爱好者——而不仅仅是之前玩过卡牌收集游戏的人——不过很多考虑过玩卡牌收集游戏的人出于某种原因放弃了。”

“我们研究了人们不喜欢卡牌收集游戏的原因，大致有这么几个，规则太复杂、多人对战太吓人，或者视觉效果不够丰富，我们发誓要在《炉石传说》中改进这些方面。”

一切恰到好处

《炉石传说》的最后一个设计难关在于它的音效。

拥有13名才华横溢、二十年来为魔兽争霸系列游戏配乐的音效师，暴雪显然不缺这方面的人才。但是在和Russell Brower——资深音效设计总监——的谈话中我们了解到，团队这次决定做一些改变。

这个决定使我们找到了《冥界狂想曲》和《狡狐大冒险》的配乐师Peter McConnell。

“我们希望游戏的音效和《魔兽争霸》的音乐有所区别，同时让玩家感觉亲切、友好，而不是像《魔兽争霸》里面的那种宏大的史诗级的音乐，”Doddos说。

“因此我们邀请了一些配乐师，让他们尝试做出这种新式的魔兽争霸音乐。Peter真是太棒了！他把我们想要的那种音乐完美还原了出来。”

融入了优秀的音乐后，《炉石传说》的游戏体验尽善尽美，它能吸引如此庞大的玩家群体一点也不令人意外。令人吃惊的反倒是炉石玩家的年龄跨度是如此之大。

“我听说了很多孩子和他们的爷爷奶奶一起玩《炉石传说》，”Dodds说道，“这真是酷毙了。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

For a game that’s been under development for the better part of half a decade, Blizzard did an admirable job of keeping a tight lid on its free-to-play CCG Hearthstone.

Announced last spring at PAX East, it was clear from the outset that Hearthstone wasn’t going to be a typical free-to-play card battler along the lines of Rage of Bahamut.

“We were not really thinking in those terms when we started working on the game,” Blizzard’s Eric Dodds begins. “We were really focused on making a cool collectable card game (CCG) that could appeal to lots of people.”

And now, after its tablet debut, it’s something of an understatement to say that Hearthstone has appealed to lots of people.

A strong hand

After rocketing to the #1 top-grossing spot for iPad in China and Korea, Hearthstone’s done the business globally – and it even help offset sagging quarterly profits for Blizzard.

But the road to this early success wasn’t an easy one, and Blizzard faced a difficult task in bringing both Hearthstone and its multiplayer client Battle.net to the iPad.

Luckily for fans, the nimble team at Blizzard was able to pull it off. But just how nimble was that team?

“It depends on how you view the development of the game, as that took place across two very different stages,” Dodds states.

“Our early stage of development started around five years ago, where we had just a few people kicking around design and art ideas about what the game might be. We were doing lots of paper prototyping and flash prototyping, but we were not sure exactly what we were making.

“It wasn’t until two or so years ago that we had a full development team in place and started working on the game as you know it today. It was at that point that we staffed up to the team of 15 people that we shipped the game with.”

Despite the changes in staff size, the team at Blizzard designed Hearthstone as a free-to-play game from the earliest stages of its development – so players around the world could try their hand at it.

“Our core tenet is that collectible card games are awesome, and we want to get people who had never played CCGs before playing them. Making the game free-to-play got rid of the biggest obstacle that might keep players from trying out the game, so that is the direction we went.”

Another driving force behind Hearthstone’s development was a set of immutable traits that helped ensure it stayed true to its vision.

“We [had] a set of what we call ‘Stakes in the Ground’ which helped drive our decisions when building the game,” he offers.

“These Stakes are things like ‘Immediate fun for the first time player’ and ‘Provide depth for the hardcore player and show the new player that there is additional depth’. Even now during development we look back to our Stakes to make sure we are still on the right path.”

Lost in the shuffle

But that’s not to say that Hearthstone didn’t change as its development moved along.

“We removed or changed lots of cards, but I can’t think of any that I actually wanted to keep in the game,” Dodds says of the various chops made to Hearthstone’s colourful cast of cards.

“We used to have cards that had the keyword ‘Critical Strike’, and those cards had a 25 percent chance to do double damage, but it felt too random.”

And randomness wasn’t the only reason for edits made to the cards. The player experience and was another considerations.

“We used to have another ability that gave Minions a bonus attack on their owner’s turn, but it was confusing to see the Minions attack changing every turn, so I was glad we removed that as well.”

Balancing, too, was another reason for many changes to Hearthstone.

“The original Rogue Hero ability used to give you a 1/2 weapon, and if you already had a weapon equipped it gave your current weapon +1 Attack permanently,” Dodds begins.

“We had problems with Rogues just hanging back and building their weapon into something huge, so we adjusted the ability to give the weapon +1 Attack until the end of a player’s turn. Even that ended up being very strong, so we changed it to what it is today with the Rogue getting a 1/2 dagger.”

A magical tablet

From the outside, making a game playable on PC, Mac, and iPad seems easy – but the reality for Blizzard was quite different thanks to the idea of true cross-platform play.

Making this a reality was something Dodds described as “a significant undertaking”, and one that required, “several engineers from the Battle.net team embed with the development team in order to focus exclusively on bringing over the authentication flow and social features like the friends list.”

But this wasn’t just for the sake of making Hearthstone feel at home on the iPad. It was also because “getting cross-platform play between PC/Mac and tablets required us to bring Battle.net to a whole new platform,” Dodds noted.

“On the PC we have the Battle.net app that handles things like storing your login credentials, letting you know if there are any important server updates to communicate, and choosing which language you want for Hearthstone,” Dodds pointed out.

“Since there is currently not a Battle.net app for iOS, we had to find ways to integrate that same information and those same settings into the iPad UI without adding too much clutter.”

While this created a headache on the backend, it was necessary to ensure the iPad version would live up to Blizzard’s expectations.

“Our goal was really the same as the PC version of the game, which was to make a fun game that anyone could enjoy, including people who don’t normally play collectible card games,” Dodds notes.

“Both versions let you play the same card collection against the same player pool, and the UI is very similar on both platforms, so a player coming to the iPad from the PC should instantly know how to play.”

But there is one big difference between the iPad and PC version, something Dodds calls the “physicality” of the tablet game.

“On the iPad you get the tactile experience of touching the cards and dragging them around the gameboard,” he began, before quickly adding that “Opening card packs is also pretty cool.”

As is the ability to play wherever you’d like.

“The other advantage to playing on the iPad is that you can play it pretty much anywhere. I often play it while watching TV or while sitting in bed and I love the ability to play the game wherever it is that I’m hanging out in the house.”

Gathering the faithful

This portability also planted the seeds for social meet-ups where Hearthstone players could compete against each other in person – events known as Fireside Gatherings.

But these weren’t something Dodds and his team thought about early on in Hearthstone’s inception.

“The idea for Fireside Gatherings came later in development, and it sprang out of the idea that you could play the game most anywhere on an iPad. We really like the idea of the game being a social experience,” says Dodds.

“Normally something like this would require that people drag their computers to the location, but with a tablet, it’s really easy to take your device with you and play with other people.”

While Hearthstone is clearly meant to appeal to long-time fans of the franchise, it was also designed with an eye towards new players as well.

“From the very beginning, Hearthstone was designed to be fun for everyone,” Dodds explains before catching himself.

“Now ‘everyone’ is perhaps a large audience, so we really aimed for people who like strategy – not just people who had played CCGs before – but perhaps people who have considered playing them in the past and have been turned off for various reasons.

“We examined all the reasons why a player might not be interested in CCGs, such as them being too complex, or multiplayer being too scary, or not having a compelling visual style, and vowed to improve Hearthstone in all those areas,” he concluded.

Hitting all the right notes

A final piece in Hearthstone’s puzzle was its audio.

With some 13 composers lending their talents to the various games in the nearly 20-year history of Warcraft, there was no shortage of possible talent. But in a meeting with Russell Brower – the senior director for audio and sound – the team decided to go in a slightly different direction.

This decision led Hearthstone to cross paths with legendary Grim Fandango and Sly Cooper composer Peter McConnell.

“We knew we wanted [Hearthstone] to be a bit different from Warcraft music while also having a friendly and inviting vibe to it, rather than the big epic sound that comes with music in Warcraft,” Dodds clarifies.

“So, we invited a few musical composers to try their hand at what this new take on Warcraft might sound like. Peter really knocked it out of the park! We thought we knew what we were looking for and Peter came along and hit the sound perfectly.”

With excellent sound joining Hearthstone’s sumptuous visuals and refined gameplay, it’s no surprise that the game’s managed to appeal to the audience it has. What is surprising, however, is the age range of Hearthstone players.

“I’ve heard stories of kids playing Hearthstone with their grandparents,” Dodds concludes, “and we think that’s awesome.”（source：Pocketgamer.biz）