We had a chance to chat with Bethesda’s Pete Hines about the recent full release of The Elder Scrolls: Legends and what we can expect from the digital CCG moving forward.

At PAX East 2017 we met with Bethesda’s Vice President and head of Public Relations and Marketing Pete Hines to chat about the recent release of The Elder Scrolls: Legends. After a year-long beta, the game has officially launched on PC and is coming to iPad devices on March 23rd. Bethesda is planning to release Legends on Android tablets in April, Mac OS in May, and on mobile phones sometime this summer.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends, developed by Direwolf Digital, is Bethesda’s first foray into the flooded market of digital CCGs. The game features a distinctive two lane battle system, advanced deck building mechanics, a unique single player story mode, and several different multiplayer game modes. The question is: can it distinguish itself enough from the competition to garner a dedicated player base? Can it compete with the likes of Hearthstone or Gwent?

We talked with Pete Hines about how Bethesda plans to market The Elder Scrolls: Legends, how it mechanically differs from Hearthstone, and what we can expect now that the game is officially out of beta.

App Trigger: I feel while it was in beta, Legends sort of flew under the radar a little bit. Now that the game has been fully released, what are your plans to boost marketing and get the game out there?

Pete Hines: Yeah, we’ve already started a lot on that. Whether it’s working with a bunch of different influencers who have been streaming for the last few days, to kind of help get the word out to a wider audience to get folks in, and running advertising to increase awareness. And then obviously once the iPad version comes out in less than two weeks, we’ll be doing a bunch of stuff there as well to try to focus on the iPad version.

So yeah, we were a little under the radar, but there was a lot of stuff we were kind of waiting for and wanting to make sure got in before we really started to ramp it up. You know, even folks who had been playing in the beta for a while, we kept messaging them that their account wasn’t going to reset. But there were still so many people when we did surveys that assumed that we were going to reset their accounts when we came out of beta.

We just felt like it was better to wait and hold off until we removed that confusion of like “Well, it’s in beta, so I don’t really know what that means” or “Do I lose my progress?” So now that we’re out on PC and coming out on all these other platforms, yeah for sure we’re really starting to push and drive people to the game. And so far the numbers we’ve been seeing since Thursday it’s pretty clear folks get it, like “Okay, it’s out, I can go play it.”

AT: I know a lot of other digital card games have been sponsoring big streamers like Kripparian or other Hearthstone personalities to play their game and seen success from that. Do you plan on doing something similar?

Hines: Yeah so Kripp streamed [Legends] for like six hours or something the other night. And we’re using Kolento and Toast and Kripp and Numot, who’s a Magic player but I love Kenji and his streams, and you know a lot of folks to try to reach different audiences that we know like or are interested in strategy card games to get the word out there.

I’ve watched Kripp play before and he really digs the game, and Kolento made it to like first or second Legend rank, he really likes it and gets it. He played in a tournament with us at PAX West last year and with a number of those folks like Kenji, Kolento, Trump, they get it and like it and enjoy playing it. And yeah, absolutely we’re going to work with them to help spread the word.

AT: So you mentioned before about beta players being unsure about their progress being reset once the game was launched. Since their progress didn’t reset, how do you feel this affects new players coming in who didn’t play in the beta? Since beta players are ahead of them in terms of card collection in the competitive scene.

Hines: Yeah, I’m not as worried about that only because the whole point of having a ladder system is to have the players at any given point, whether you just started playing today or started playing three months ago, you should be playing against people of equivalent relevant collections and skill levels. And all the players who are much more experienced and better should inherently be farther up the ladder. So they kind of quickly naturally spread themselves out.

AT: I don’t know much about how the Legends ranked system works, do you have seasons and how long are they?

Hines: Yep, monthly seasons.

AT: Do the seasons act similar to Hearthstone where you reset back to a certain rank at the beginning of a season?

Hines: Yeah, to a certain rank, but even the highest level players will only get reset to maybe Rank 5, and new players are coming in at Rank 12, so there is a big spread there.

AT: That kind of addresses one complaint in Hearthstone that I have and a lot of players have is that once you hit Legend rank, you reset next season all the way back to Rank 16. And this makes the first week of the season almost unplayable for a lot of players.

Hines: It’s just brutal, right? You’re just getting crushed by guys who’ve been dropped. Our drop isn’t as far, and so you don’t see as much of that.

And then the other thing is, look, it’s not fun even if you get somebody who dropped and clearly shouldn’t be where they were. But you don’t actually lose progress. So if you gain a level or two, you can’t actually drop to a previous level. So if you make it to [rank] nine, you can’t actually drop back to ten if you lose five in a row. Now, losing five in a row is not fun, I’m not trying to argue otherwise. But what I’m saying is that you aren’t punished for those kinds of things, where you just suddenly start seeing yourself lose progress, that’s even worse. We don’t do that. So up until you get really high you can’t actually drop down a rank at all.

AT: Oh, okay, awesome. Relating back to Hearthstone, I feel they balance their cards very infrequently. In the beta Legends did a lot of balancing, do you plan to be that aggressive with your balancing now that you’re released?

Hines: Absolutely. I think it’s a differentiator. I think we feel pretty strongly that it’s one of the pros of having a digital card game. I’m a big Magic fan, I love playing Magic. But if there’s a card that’s unbalanced, that card ain’t changing! Smuggler’s Copter is Smuggler’s Copter! It’s a 3/3 for two that is just going to crush, so they have to ban it.

But we don’t have to ban it, we can just change it. And I think we have been really aggressive in doing those on a fairly regular basis. And not just one or two cards, we’ve done things where ten cards just changed because we really want to see that meta spread out and have lots of diversity. So we’ll continue to do that. I mean we’re about to release The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood here on April 5th, that’s 40 new cards. Not really sure what that is going to do to the meta or how that’s going to change things or maybe there are cards that we have currently that suddenly need some changing. And in either direction, by the way, it doesn’t always have to be a nerf.

But yeah, we’re going to continue to be pretty aggressive on that. And you know I don’t think it’ll be an every month thing, but it will be regular and we will change as many as we have to. As you said, I think we were pretty aggressive about that in beta and just because we’re out I don’t think we’re going to change. Because that is important to us, that we identify problems or issues where if everyone is leaning towards these one or two decks because this combo is broken, well, alright, we’re just going to break up the combo and go from there.

AT: Excellent to hear. So later today I have an appointment with Direwolf Digital, who obviously develops The Elder Scrolls: Legends. Do you see any conflict of interest with them also developing their own card game, Eternal, at the same time as Legends?

Hines: At the end of the day, I mean, we’ve worked with external developers before who are working with other publishers on another game or whatever. We feel like our game is getting the time and attention and focus that we need, and they have other folks who have been working on the Pokemon game, or their board games, so as long as we’re getting the guys that we want doing the stuff that we need, if they’ve got people making other card games…I mean, I’ve played Eternal a healthy amount and it’s definitely quite different from what we’re doing both from a total standpoint and from a mechanic standpoint.

So I don’t have any issue with it, and honestly we talk to them a lot about it, like they say “We’re gonna do this thing for Eternal in this time frame,” so we won’t do something there for Legends to make sure we’re not trying to do the exact same thing on the exact same day. But so far it’s been fine, and it’s really down to me and my team in terms of promoting what we’re doing. And they’re always willing to help us out from that standpoint. So, I don’t think it’s really going to be an issue.

AT: Okay, cool. Well, thanks for talking to me, I’m excited for the upcoming Dark Brotherhood content!

Hines: Yeah absolutely! The cards are going to be great, the new Slay mechanic is going to be really cool, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. And you know, right after that we have a bunch of features coming out the following month. Like I’ve been waiting for things like Spectator Mode and the Gauntlet Mode which is really big for me.

I’m just not really a constructed guy in any card game, I really prefer limited, I just think it’s more fun. I don’t want to evaluate meta games, just let me see if I can figure out how to build the best deck out of a random pool of cards, I find that fun. But Gauntlet Mode is something that I would do, right, I’m not going to try to get up to Legend rank.

But if there’s a discrete tournament a certain weekend, yeah, I’ll put together a deck and enter and see how I do because there is nothing that says that I couldn’t win that tournament even if my rank is ten or five or whatever it is right? In that individual moment anything could happen, I think that’s kind of fun.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends is out now on PC and coming to iPad devices March 23rd, with more platform releases planned for later this year. Keep an eye out for the upcoming The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood expansion set to release on April 5th.