There are Nine Tri-Class Cards in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan
We got a chance to sit down with Hearthstone Game Designer, Dean Ayala, at BlizzCon this year to talk about the new expansion and get answers to questions the community had about the game. Check out the recap of our interview below!
You can find Dean "Iksar" Ayala over on Twitter, @IksarHS.
Quote from Dean Ayala
- There are nine tri-class cards in the set. Each faction has three.
- The way they decided which class would belong to each faction was done by theme before balance.
- Mechanics were built on the tri-class cards to fit the three classes in each faction.
- A big goal of each new expansion is to play less off existing cards and build new things.
- The no duplicate cards synergy is something that hasn't been explored deeply which is why Kazakus has been added into the mix.
- No duplicates is super interesting, but it's dangerous to make too many of those kinds of cards. The cards that use this mechanic are very powerful and too many could be too strong.
- Kazakus isn't very easy to understand at face value, but is still a very exciting card and makes for interesting gameplay.
- They don't want to add too many cards like Kazakus.
- Dean wasn't sure if there would be any quests at the start of the expansion release that would give out free card packs like Old Gods.
- The freebies in Old Gods were more there to promote Standard, and C'Thun was given to players to make sure if you got C'Thun's worshippers, you could actually play them.
- There will be more pirates in the set.
- There was a Warrior pirate deck they were playtesting.
- They aren't jumping back into Mechs like they did with Goblins vs Gnomes. They're already had a Mech heavy expansion in the past.
- No pre-order card back this time around due to BlizzCon craziness (all the preparation they were doing to get things ready for it).
- Designers do look at community created cards and sometimes fetch inspiration from them.
- There will be some existing World of Warcraft characters appearing in the expansion, but it's mostly brand new characters. We will see Noggenfogger in the expansion.
- More existing lore characters from Warcraft will be done at some point, it's just also fun to create new characters.
- Part of LifeCoach's trip to Blizzard was to play test the new expansion and provide feedback on the current and future expansions. They like getting direct feedback like that from some of their most engaged players.
- Kazakus took a lot of iterations to get right. They had to figure out exactly how it would work and what all the different spells would be. Communicating to players how it worked was the most difficult; it had to be understandable.
- Patches was another card that took a lot of time to get right. Literal years of play testing to make sure it was right.
- They've discussed AI improvements. One of the gameplay engineers is interested in rebuilding the system but it's not something being works on right now.
- Improved AI could be a great teaching tool.
- Molten Giant was nerfed mainly because Handlock was using too many evergreen cards. They wanted to see that change up.
- It is hard to balance cards which could cost 0 mana, but sometimes you have to take the risk and it can make for some very exciting cards.
- Freeze mage is around 3% of the population.
- It's still important for players to feel like the card they open from a pack will continue to exist in that form.
- Waiting to see how things evolve when something powerful appears is important as it lets players figure out how to counter it on their own.
- Getting rid of things that are good just because they're good isn't a fun experience for players.
- It's painful sometimes to read threads where people think the team isn't listening to feedback; they are always looking at feedback.
Our BlizzCon 2016 Coverage
Looking for more coverage from BlizzCon 2016? You can find all our BlizzCon 2016 articles right here.
doesnt matter what you say, i will never forgive you what you did to moltens, you nerfed the card to the ground, card that wasnt even op. doctor boom was op not goddamn handlock arch. if people are refusing to use new cards that either means your designing skills have declined, or the formula is out of steam. maybe you will simply ban the classic cards to make us not use 'evergreen' ones (whatever that means)
I'm actually very happy that we won't get a cardback this time around. This is literally the first time I've decided to not pre-order 50 packs because my money's tight, so I won't miss the cardback.
Same
So, then MIGHT be some quests for free packs???
Still making my hipster mech deck!
I will make it as well, then it will be mainstream.
People triggered by no preorder cardback...they give you a new one each month for free...get over it
*yawn*
Elder Scrolls Legends is where it's at these days.
*yawn*
Elder Scrolls Legends
Nah, it's all about Gwent
Nine? Great job half-assing a new mechanic.
Making too much of them would make things pretty stale, as every class from one faction could end up having a good chunk of their deck being exactly the same. So they might want to start slowly, and maybe add more in the future if people like the mechanic.
Why just three cards for each tri-class? I mean, just nine cards? And three of them are just discover cards? I guess then we have a legendary tri-class card, and then what? I really cannot understand, why not 15 cards? Why not 12? Would they destroy the """balance""" in the game? If we consider that this mechanic will not appear in future expansions (since this factions exist only in Gadgetzan, I guess) why have they created this new mechanic? Or are they gonna make future tri-class cards with different factions, thus confusing the ideas to players?
Well, its smart in my opinion. Going full in a new mechanic can be too powerfull like deathrattle in naxx or mech synergy on GvG then create a worry to print similliar viable cards in future expansion, or the other way around like inspire.
I'm disappointed too, we can only put a maximum of 5 tri-class cards in a deck..We'll we know there's a legendary , a Discover , hopefully the third one is something exciting.
So they wanted to 'change up' handlock because it was getting stale by pretty much killing it's one essential card and giving nothing in return?
Well good job at completely removing handlock from the game. It was one of the most fun to play decks, with a really high skill requirement yet without being op. But i shouldn't complain, at least we got aggro Shaman in return.