Proposed Balance Model for Card Deck Measurement in Hearthstone | The Computer Games Journal Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Proposed Balance Model for Card Deck Measurement in Hearthstone

  • Published:
The Computer Games Journal

Abstract

Hearthstone is a popular trading card game (TCG) that was released in 2014. Players can build numerous decks in the game, one that offers variety and sophistication to over thirty million players worldwide. The TCG requires players to use their card decks to compete with one other. In this paper, a series of functions that describe the strength of a TCG card is described; and a balance model for Hearthstone, which could serve as a basis for many other TCGs, is proposed. The balance model could become a fundamental element for TCG design, one that might enable TCG developers to design cards without making them too powerful. The balance model could also be used in other TCGs including Shadowverse, Magical Card and The Elder Scrolls: Legend.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In Hearthstone, these are classes; in The Elder Scrolls: Legend, this refers to the decks’ colors. For other TCGs, this might refer to games characters.

  2. Data available in https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics.

References

  • Blizzard Entertainment. (2018). Hearthstone (official game site). https://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/.

  • Bursztein, E. (2016). I am a legend: Hacking Hearthstone using statistical learning methods. In 2016 IEEE conference on computational intelligence and games (CIG), 20–23 September, 2016.

  • Grad, Ł. (2017). Helping AI to play hearthstone using neural networks. In 2017 federated conference on computer science and information systems (FedCSIS), 3–6 September, 2017.

  • Ham, E. (2010). Rarity and power: Balance in collectible object games. Game Studies Journal, 10(1).

  • Stiegler, A., Dahal, K. P., Maucher, J., & Livingstone, D. (2018). Symbolic reasoning for Hearthstone. IEEE Transactions on Games, 10(2), 113–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Yuanzhe Jin

Authors
  1. Yuanzhe Jin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuanzhe Jin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author state that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jin, Y. Proposed Balance Model for Card Deck Measurement in Hearthstone. Comput Game J 8, 25–40 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0072-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0072-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation