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Proposed Balance Model for Card Deck Measurement in Hearthstone

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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.

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Yuanzhe Jin

Authors
  1. Yuanzhe Jin
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Correspondence to Yuanzhe Jin.

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

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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

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

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