Mike Donais Explains the Quest Mechanic & Talks Journey to Un'Goro Card Expectations
Shaun of Tempo Storm got a chance to speak with Mike Donais on the upcoming Questing mechanic, mentions details on the new set, and briefly touches on Arena.
Quote from Mike DonaisJourney to Un'Goro
- There will be at least one other card in Un'Goro that works with Deathrattle minions.
- Adapt will be seen on more than just Battlecry activation. There are spells for Adapt similar to those that make use of the Discover mechanic.
- Elementals are a focus in the set. They are "important" and "very cool". Not ready to talk about interactions yet.
Quests
- Quests are meant to be late-game cards that you build up to so they don't feel like they need to add ways to slow them down.
- Quests take up a secret slot, which means you can only drop 4 secrets if you have a Quest active.
- Only one Quest can be active at a time per player.
- Quests can activate on either players turns - much like the old version of secrets!
- Quests were the most challenging part of the set due to the iterations of fleshing the mechanic out.
- At one point, Quests started in-play.
- Quest design was kind of like the Old Gods design but with 9 cards (18 with tokens) instead of 4.
Arena
- The team is exploring more ways to iterate on Arena and Mike thinks they'll start experimenting with them over the next year.
- Any specific first iterations to the Arena won't be permanent. It may even be interesting to change it up every few months.
- With their new Arena technology, Quests aren't available in drafts.
Game Design
- Mike thinks we'll see less high-attack one-drops.
- They don't want to nerf things so fast that it punishes deck innovators but they'll keep an open mind about it.
Yewwwww
Anyone else notice this?!
"Quest design was kind of like the Old Gods design but with 9 cards (18 with tokens) instead of 4."
This means each quest is going to give you some kind of powerful(probably) token wether it's a minions, spell, or weapon.
We need more High attack 1 drops because people will just keep playing the classes that have access to them over the ones that don't. If priest would get 1 decent high attack 1 cost minion it wouldn't B garbage tier every expansion.
A wild arena is what we had before
Yes, we had a good arena before, not the dumpster we call arena now.
Can quests be countered with Counterspell?
The quest begins at the start of the game, you can't cancel its set up
yes
Actually, it will ALWAYS be in your hand. If you shuffle it back, it will come back to you.
And most likely, if you're playing a "quest" deck, you wont have a turn 1 play better than playing the quest. But in case you do, I guess it could, indeed, be countered by Counterspell.
Because quests are spells, which was said in one of the interviews, it will be countered by
Deck innovators, in Hearthstone? These decks build themselves. Changing 1 card is not innovation. Shallow! Nerf stuff FAST! If the nerf isn't perfect. change it again the next month and again and again. It's digital, you can do that.
Team 5 said, that they moving cards to the Hall of Fame because this cards is used in a lot of decks, but they forcing us to use quests in every deck too. Hypocracy.
It's not hypocrisy. Their motivations are very clear. They want you to have to use cards from the new set that you need to shell out money to get. They don't want you to use cards you already have.
The Quest cards are not in the Classic set. Your thought are flawed.
You expect Deathrattle priest to be the only viable priest deck in the Meta?
This quest will certainly boost it's power, but I certainly doubt it will be the only one.
And in Wild, I doubt it will ever be more popular than Dragon or Reno priest (although it might, considering Naxx)
I can see it being pretty good (Reno should heal to 40, heals Rag to 8 and Jaraxxus to 15, so only makes sense, never says 30 in the text) but I still think Wild is the best place to find multiple decent buids for each class. Currently N'zoth priest is great, but I'd argue Dragon is still superior, with classic control Priest somewhat behind both of them. Still they are all playable so, I dont think this expansion will push one much ahead of the others.
(If there is one argument against Standard, it is the Meta in standard this January/February. Wild can never change much to the better, but it's a lot harder to be completely ruined by an expansion.)
40 Health is over rated...normally board control is what wins games not having higher health. I would say at least 50% of games if the loser had 60 health would still have lost.
So will eater of secrets destroy quests?