Mike Donais Explains the Categories of Hearthstone's Mechanics
Card keywords, or mechanics, are a popular topic when new expansions are announced with discussions flooding in on the Hearthstone team not revisiting mechanics of old. Mike Donais explained on reddit that there's three different categories for mechanics and ones that they may bring back in the future could be tweaked or made more fun. Specifically, a change to Joust was mentioned.
Read his post about it down below and while we're at it:
Which mechanics do you like the best and are there any that you think should make a return?
Quote from Mike DonaisThis is a topic we discuss a lot. We have mechanics that fall into 3 categories.
Mechanics we use a lot: Lifesteal, Poisonous, Discover
Mechanics we use sometimes: Played an elemental last turn, Holding a Dragon, Mech build arounds
Mechanics we might bring back: Hero Cards, Joust, Inspire, Adapt, Quests.The nice thing is if people enjoy a mechanic they will be excited to see how we tweak it when it returns, or how we make it more fun the next time. If I was to bring back Joust for example I would probably make ties win instead of lose.
What mechanics from old sets did you all likes the best? Which ones would you like us to bring back sometime in the future?
Mechanics we use more than a lot: Discard
NotLikeThis
No more discard Warlock, they said, we will give Warlock an actual legendary this expansion, they said. And then came Rin...
How about jade golem mechanic? ;)
It would be interesting to see a similar Jade-Druid/Rogue/Shaman mechanic for Mage/Priest/Warlock...
Ah, the old magic eternal philosophy of when everything's broken nothing is. I like it :)
Jade Golem mechanic is fine. The problem is getting infinite Jade Golems.
I wish joust actually was determined by "fake" battle between the drawn minions. As in, draw a minion from each deck, they battle, if your minion would kill the other minion you win the joust, if it would lose, you lose and if it would tie, you redraw. This way the joust mechanic rewards decks with overstatted minions and doesn't punish running lower cost drops. Also it would increase the likelihood that joust reveals info about the decks.
Finally this change would make if work better with some of the recruit mechanic from the next set as you could play the 4 mana 7/7 as a great target for both a recruit and a joust.
Thats interesting idea.
That seems worthy of it's own keyword. It is kind of like Brawl - go until there is one remaining.
The joust now is good it is determined by mana number and it favors midrange to control decks, the problem with your idea is that you already have a considerable lead with power creeps (like 2mana 4/5, 4 mana 7/7 ,5 mana 8/8) if your runing only powercreps you will also have higher chance to enable joust effects (cards draw/ special effects) making the deck OP and discouraging other types of decks were you'd run worse stated tech minions or combo minions
The problem id say with some joust cards is that the effect is not strong enough,and the fact that there can be a tie
Please no more adapt, discover or joust, ever, thank you
I think u meant Inspire, not discover
Idk, he does have Patches as his avatar, so I could see where he wouldn't like Discover. Too much thinking involved, must face.
Inspire didn't seem very interesting and unless they can make it into something that doesn't just boil down to "press the button every turn", it should stay gone. Joust was implemented poorly (as others have said). If they could make it more potent and less unreliable, it could be interesting again as a mechanic that forces you to think about how you build your deck properly to take full advantage of it.
Personally I hope they do more cards like Fatespinner, which I think has a lot of interesting applications and design space.
Joust has perfect synergy with Recruit.
If there's a good time to bring back that mechanic, it's next year.
Could you elaborate please?
you're more likely to win a joust if you're deck is full of high mana cost minions. recruit pull minions from your deck so you'd want high mana cost minions for insane value
I use Joust in my Shaman Wild deck and it reliably wins to give me 14 life instead of 7.
2. The Neutral minion named Guild Recruiter that has "Recruit a minion that costs 4 or less'
In a joust, you win if your minion is costs more. Recruit gives more value if it summons a higher cost minion. Therefore, both mechanics encourage you to put lots of high-cost minions in your deck.