1) What are your plans to help getting new players into the game?
2) Do you feel maybe letting a new player have 3 free arenas instead of 1, for example, or revamping the arena reward system (since both new players and older ones might feel cheated out of a reward when said reward is a Common card) could help bring players to the game?
3) And regarding adventures: do you feel that older adventures that still affect standard like Blackrock Mountain or League of Explorers should still be at full price after all this time? Are there any plans to allow newer players to have access to the Naxxramas adventure? If yes, do those plans include a way for newer players to have access to a larger cardpool with something like, say, paying the 700 gold and getting 10 Classic packs for each wing?
4) Is there any mechanic that you felt it could be in the game but you felt it was too powerfull and was ultimately scrapped? If so, do you believe the next Standard rotation could help said mechanic? What are your favorite mechanics in the game? And what are your favorite cards in the game?
5) Will there be more promotions like the one that gave 10 Classic packs and a class legendary (don't recall the promotion's name)?
1) Can you give examples of what type of cards that likely need to be nerfed or moved to Wild by the upcoming rotation? What is the concern about these types of cards besides making the meta more fresh?
2) What do you think about the current meta in compare to a year ago and two years ago?
3) Among these 4 archetypes: Control, Combo, Midrange, and Aggro, which one do you think needs more push and which one needs less push?
What in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan have the devs found to be successful, or playing out as intended? What has been a disappointment, or not played out as intended?
Much has been said regarding developer communication with the player base, and the live stream itself is a great outlet. It can be frustrating to try to track dev activity through Reddit, social media, and interviews. Are there any plans for an active and official communication outlets such as a blog, more live streams, or podcasts?
The single-player game mode has not been updated for some time, with the Innkeeper decks horribly outdated and the AI also very poor. Are there any plans to enhance this game mode, either to offer more advanced tutorials to newer players or to provide a reasonable challenge or outlet to test new ideas for more experienced players?
With the comments around possible rotation of overplayed or archetype-defining Classic cards to Wild, is there any thought to reverting the changes made to some cards last spring in preparation for Standard and rotating them to Wild? Cards like Molten Giant, Ancient of Lore, and Blade Flurry now never see play, but would be very exciting to play in their pre-nerf forms in Wild, where they won't pose risk to the changing Standard meta.
What in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan have the devs found to be successful, or playing out as intended? What has been a disappointment, or not played out as intended?
Much has been said regarding developer communication with the player base, and the live stream itself is a great outlet. It can be frustrating to try to track dev activity through Reddit, social media, and interviews. Are there any plans for an active and official communication outlets such as a blog, more live streams, or podcasts?
The single-player game mode has not been updated for some time, with the Innkeeper decks horribly outdated and the AI also very poor. Are there any plans to enhance this game mode, either to offer more advanced tutorials to newer players or to provide a reasonable challenge or outlet to test new ideas for more experienced players?
With the comments around possible rotation of overplayed or archetype-defining Classic cards to Wild, is there any thought to reverting the changes made to some cards last spring in preparation for Standard and rotating them to Wild? Cards like Molten Giant, Ancient of Lore, and Blade Flurry now never see play, but would be very exciting to play in their pre-nerf forms in Wild, where they won't pose risk to the changing Standard meta.
I'm a very competitive player and I hate the grind of the ladder I would love to see it more balanced, I love the legend card back and don't want to see that changed but it would be awesome if there was another ladder tournament format or something like that so we have another outlet to get the card back
While it can be seen as taking a step back, has the development team seriously considered bringing cards back from rotated out sets to help with balancing?
1. With the upcoming rotation, Dragon decks are going to lose almost their entire toolkit. Are there plans for the next expansion and/or adventure to support this tribe?
2. Are there any plans in the works for alternate hero portraits for Druid, Rogue, or Warlock? I'd like to cast a vote for High Botanist Freywinn for Druid, Garona Halforcen or Maiev Shadowsong for Rogue, and Archimonde or Teron Gorefiend for Warlock.
1) Why don't you implement autosquelch? That would be a very simple feature that would make people who hate emotes happy without spoiling the noxious fun of those who like to use or abuse them.
2) Abuse of turn time by burning the rope on multiple turns to upset the opponent spoils a significant number of games. How about some sort of mechanic where repeated rope burning is penalised.
3) You guys clearly get card balance and synergies wrong on a regular basis - that's fine if you want people to play unbalanced decks in standard and keep that changing regularly - but why can't we have a mode that keeps them away? Currently Pirate decks are infesting wild ladder and casual as well as standard.
How might you suggest are the best way(s) to get involved in the Hearthstone pro scene? Many like myself already enjoy playing competitively on ladder each season, but it's not quite enough to satiate and we would like to get more involved in a live community where others compete and discuss. Are there certain events or goals which you can recommend that will better move those people in the right direction? What about in regards to becoming a Hearthstone caster?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jaraxxus: "I WILL FEAST ON YOUR SOUL, THIS WINTERVEIL!!"
1. When will we get more news regarding the changes you said you were going to do to arena? I am pretty happy with the overall class balance at the moment, Warrior, Druid and Hunter might deserve some love, but you said last year when you banned some cards in arena that big changes were coming other than those bans and I am still waiting to hear more about that.
2. Are you currently planning/working on adding a new mode to Hearthstone? Like a secondary arena mode or tournament mode perhaps? When you talked about big changes to arena a lot of players were hoping to see a new way to play it, particularly in the way you draft your deck, personally I don't want to lose the arena mode we have now, but I'd be very interested in trying other ways to draft my deck. Are you considering adding another mode which work similar to arena, but with a different way of drafting your deck, such as for example getting 90 random cards, minimum 10 being rare or higher quality, to make a deck from? Could also be different in other ways like always give you a certain amount (5?) different legendaries you can choose 1 from so everyone will always have at least 1 legendary in their deck.
3. When will you add achievements to Hearthstone? Like seriously we crave it, the rewards doesn't have to be great, but it will give us something to strive for other than just ranking up or getting a high win amount in arena. It would also promote playing more fundecks if you could actually achieve something by doing so, like for example "Throw more than 20 bombs in 1 game" so you make a bomber deck with Mad Bomber, Madder Bomber, Bomb Lobber, Bomb Squad and Youthful Brewmaster + Brann Bronzebeard to maximize your bombing and go at it! :P Or like "Win a game without killing a single minion" or "Win a game without having a single friendly minion killed", there are thousands of different great achievements you could add to this game and the rewards wouldn't have to be much at all, maybe like 5 - 50 gold depending on the perceived difficulty of it. If you don't wanna do it yourself, hire this guy: http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/fan-creations/87787-new-achievements-in-hearthstone
Achievements would also help new players a lot as they have something fun to tinker with while they are learning the game and building their collection. I know there are some achievements in the game already to help new players out, but honestly it really feels like Hearthstone is missing an overview of even these few achievements that already exist. Introducing a couple hundred new achievements and a tab with an overview of them I feel would do a whole lot for Hearthstone, both for new players and veterans like myself.
What is Hearthstone to you? A fun and semi-competitive game with wacky effects and crazy RNG outcomes or just a card game you wanna grind as many wins you can get as fast as possible in?
Will you ever buff some bad class cards like Pit Lord ? the idea on a epic that gets shadowed by Chillwind Yeti. +1/+1 Demon tag and 5 damage to your face does not feel like i get what i payd for. If the 5 damage would have an advantage, like charge or something else like big stats. Shaman has 4 mana 7/7 Overload (2) COMMON warlock has 4 mana 5/6 deal 5 to own face EPIC..... so what is the deal with this epic demon? other than it is in classic set.
Will it be possible to have more Brawls where players gang up against either another player (or two) or the AI? Had considered buying a Unity asset for card games to build one myself, but figured if it was at all successful that y'all would just do something and make me regret spending the time :-)
Yes, this has been popular and is likely to be seen more in the future.
While it can be seen as taking a step back, has the development team seriously considered bringing cards back from rotated out sets to help with balancing?
No, they rather want to add new cool cards than bring back old ones or buffing up bad ones.
The Grimy Goons have such a cool hand buff mechanic, however aside from Pirate Warrior these 3 classes rarely see competitive play. Are there any plans to adjust the balance here? Seems like only 7 seven heroes exist on ladder since MSoG release.
Yes, they always consider class balance when introducing new expansions and adventures to the game so they will try to adjust this with upcoming releases.
Now that MSoG has been out for a while, Arena seems harder than ever. Is that apparent from the stats on Arena games? Has the average wins gone up or down with the newest expansion?
Average wins in arena is and will always be pretty much exactly 3, slightly above due to 12 win runs and the few retired decks, but very close to 3 overall.
1) What cards from classic are you looking at nerfing/moving to wild?
2) What do you think the meta will look like after the year of the kraken ends? The decks that looks to lose the most from this change are Reno Mage/Lock, Dragon, and even shamans lose Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem. Pirate warrior and Miracle Rogue however are hardly effected at all.
1. They can't give you a list of this until they have decided, maybe you can ask them to mention 1 card.
2. They can't really comment on this without either revealing too much about upcoming content or possibly influence and upcoming meta to become stale more rapidly.
Gave you answers or expected answers to some questions here just in case they don't make it to the dev team and you wonder why.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What is Hearthstone to you? A fun and semi-competitive game with wacky effects and crazy RNG outcomes or just a card game you wanna grind as many wins you can get as fast as possible in?
Will you ever buff some bad class cards like Pit Lord ? the idea on a epic that gets shadowed by Chillwind Yeti. +1/+1 Demon tag and 5 damage to your face does not feel like i get what i payd for. If the 5 damage would have an advantage, like charge or something else like big stats. Shaman has 4 mana 7/7 Overload (2) COMMON warlock has 4 mana 5/6 deal 5 to own face EPIC..... so what is the deal with this epic demon? other than it is in classic set.
Pit Lord always costed 4 mana, but at fist it was a 7/7 minion with battlecry: deal 7 damage to your hero, then Blizzard decided to nerf it and make it a 7/5 with the same battlecry, and finally they changed it to a 5/6 with battlecry: deal 5 damage to your hero. But yeah, Pit Lord sucks and is an epic (I know many other epics in the game are total trash too, but still :P).
Will you ever buff some bad class cards like Pit Lord ? the idea on a epic that gets shadowed by Chillwind Yeti. +1/+1 Demon tag and 5 damage to your face does not feel like i get what i payd for. If the 5 damage would have an advantage, like charge or something else like big stats. Shaman has 4 mana 7/7 Overload (2) COMMON warlock has 4 mana 5/6 deal 5 to own face EPIC..... so what is the deal with this epic demon? other than it is in classic set.
Pit Lord always costed 4 mana, but at fist it was a 7/7 minion with battlecry: deal 7 damage to your hero, then Blizzard decided to nerf it and make it a 7/5 with the same battlecry, and finally they changed it to a 5/6 with battlecry: deal 5 damage to your hero. But yeah, Pit Lord sucks and is an epic (I know many other epics in the game are total trash too, but still :P).
i know it is funny how much blizzard wanted to nerf it, and now we have 4 mana 7/7 without as big drawback. Pit Lord should be totally changed, if blizzard wants to make standard more versatile and fun. Classic has a lot of cards unused.
The community produces a lot of creative cards (for example the weekly competition here but also cards from the 'best of all time' gallery on hearthcards). I think it would be awesome to have some kind of sandbox mode where people can 'build' (I know making anything that's more complicated than a yeti is harder than it sounds) and play these cards just for fun. Maybe people from the community could moderate the list of cards playable there so it doesn't get out of hand. This way you won't have to test cards (the testing will be done by the people like testing the cards) and you won't be responsible when people start whining that it isn't fun.
Do you know that powerful 1 drops are actually causing the meta to be aggressive? Wouldn't you like to have a meta without any kind of aggressive cards/decks at all? I mean Buccanneer is the only cancer now and without it the meta would have been way more balanced...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Just remember the good times!
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My questions:
1) What are your plans to help getting new players into the game?
2) Do you feel maybe letting a new player have 3 free arenas instead of 1, for example, or revamping the arena reward system (since both new players and older ones might feel cheated out of a reward when said reward is a Common card) could help bring players to the game?
3) And regarding adventures: do you feel that older adventures that still affect standard like Blackrock Mountain or League of Explorers should still be at full price after all this time? Are there any plans to allow newer players to have access to the Naxxramas adventure? If yes, do those plans include a way for newer players to have access to a larger cardpool with something like, say, paying the 700 gold and getting 10 Classic packs for each wing?
4) Is there any mechanic that you felt it could be in the game but you felt it was too powerfull and was ultimately scrapped? If so, do you believe the next Standard rotation could help said mechanic? What are your favorite mechanics in the game? And what are your favorite cards in the game?
5) Will there be more promotions like the one that gave 10 Classic packs and a class legendary (don't recall the promotion's name)?
Ranked game wins per class (26/Dec/2018): Druid - 457; Hunter - 482; Mage - 345; Paladin - 435; Priest - 295; Rogue - 234; Shaman - 430; Warlock - 419; Warrior - 367
I really should update my signature more often...
1) Can you give examples of what type of cards that likely need to be nerfed or moved to Wild by the upcoming rotation? What is the concern about these types of cards besides making the meta more fresh?
2) What do you think about the current meta in compare to a year ago and two years ago?
3) Among these 4 archetypes: Control, Combo, Midrange, and Aggro, which one do you think needs more push and which one needs less push?
CCGing since '98.
What was the Unicorn priest deck you talk about pre MSG?
Can we get Khadgar to purchase again?
Omicron016#1732
I'm a very competitive player and I hate the grind of the ladder I would love to see it more balanced, I love the legend card back and don't want to see that changed but it would be awesome if there was another ladder tournament format or something like that so we have another outlet to get the card back
Omicron016#1732
While it can be seen as taking a step back, has the development team seriously considered bringing cards back from rotated out sets to help with balancing?
Are you working on any project to improve the social aspect of this game? If that is the case, could you tell us something about it?
1. With the upcoming rotation, Dragon decks are going to lose almost their entire toolkit. Are there plans for the next expansion and/or adventure to support this tribe?
2. Are there any plans in the works for alternate hero portraits for Druid, Rogue, or Warlock? I'd like to cast a vote for High Botanist Freywinn for Druid, Garona Halforcen or Maiev Shadowsong for Rogue, and Archimonde or Teron Gorefiend for Warlock.
1) Why don't you implement autosquelch? That would be a very simple feature that would make people who hate emotes happy without spoiling the noxious fun of those who like to use or abuse them.
2) Abuse of turn time by burning the rope on multiple turns to upset the opponent spoils a significant number of games. How about some sort of mechanic where repeated rope burning is penalised.
3) You guys clearly get card balance and synergies wrong on a regular basis - that's fine if you want people to play unbalanced decks in standard and keep that changing regularly - but why can't we have a mode that keeps them away? Currently Pirate decks are infesting wild ladder and casual as well as standard.
Any plans to expand the Jade faction in upcoming releases?
Dear Mr. Devmen,
How might you suggest are the best way(s) to get involved in the Hearthstone pro scene? Many like myself already enjoy playing competitively on ladder each season, but it's not quite enough to satiate and we would like to get more involved in a live community where others compete and discuss. Are there certain events or goals which you can recommend that will better move those people in the right direction? What about in regards to becoming a Hearthstone caster?
Jaraxxus: "I WILL FEAST ON YOUR SOUL, THIS WINTERVEIL!!"
Medivh: "Happy feasting, Champion!"
I guess I have some questions as well:
1. When will we get more news regarding the changes you said you were going to do to arena?
I am pretty happy with the overall class balance at the moment, Warrior, Druid and Hunter might deserve some love, but you said last year when you banned some cards in arena that big changes were coming other than those bans and I am still waiting to hear more about that.
2. Are you currently planning/working on adding a new mode to Hearthstone? Like a secondary arena mode or tournament mode perhaps?
When you talked about big changes to arena a lot of players were hoping to see a new way to play it, particularly in the way you draft your deck, personally I don't want to lose the arena mode we have now, but I'd be very interested in trying other ways to draft my deck.
Are you considering adding another mode which work similar to arena, but with a different way of drafting your deck, such as for example getting 90 random cards, minimum 10 being rare or higher quality, to make a deck from? Could also be different in other ways like always give you a certain amount (5?) different legendaries you can choose 1 from so everyone will always have at least 1 legendary in their deck.
3. When will you add achievements to Hearthstone?
Like seriously we crave it, the rewards doesn't have to be great, but it will give us something to strive for other than just ranking up or getting a high win amount in arena.
It would also promote playing more fundecks if you could actually achieve something by doing so, like for example "Throw more than 20 bombs in 1 game" so you make a bomber deck with Mad Bomber, Madder Bomber, Bomb Lobber, Bomb Squad and Youthful Brewmaster + Brann Bronzebeard to maximize your bombing and go at it! :P
Or like "Win a game without killing a single minion" or "Win a game without having a single friendly minion killed", there are thousands of different great achievements you could add to this game and the rewards wouldn't have to be much at all, maybe like 5 - 50 gold depending on the perceived difficulty of it.
If you don't wanna do it yourself, hire this guy: http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/fan-creations/87787-new-achievements-in-hearthstone
Achievements would also help new players a lot as they have something fun to tinker with while they are learning the game and building their collection.
I know there are some achievements in the game already to help new players out, but honestly it really feels like Hearthstone is missing an overview of even these few achievements that already exist.
Introducing a couple hundred new achievements and a tab with an overview of them I feel would do a whole lot for Hearthstone, both for new players and veterans like myself.
What is Hearthstone to you?
A fun and semi-competitive game with wacky effects and crazy RNG outcomes or just a card game you wanna grind as many wins you can get as fast as possible in?
Will you ever buff some bad class cards like Pit Lord ? the idea on a epic that gets shadowed by Chillwind Yeti. +1/+1 Demon tag and 5 damage to your face does not feel like i get what i payd for. If the 5 damage would have an advantage, like charge or something else like big stats. Shaman has 4 mana 7/7 Overload (2) COMMON warlock has 4 mana 5/6 deal 5 to own face EPIC..... so what is the deal with this epic demon? other than it is in classic set.
What is Hearthstone to you?
A fun and semi-competitive game with wacky effects and crazy RNG outcomes or just a card game you wanna grind as many wins you can get as fast as possible in?
The community produces a lot of creative cards (for example the weekly competition here but also cards from the 'best of all time' gallery on hearthcards). I think it would be awesome to have some kind of sandbox mode where people can 'build' (I know making anything that's more complicated than a yeti is harder than it sounds) and play these cards just for fun. Maybe people from the community could moderate the list of cards playable there so it doesn't get out of hand. This way you won't have to test cards (the testing will be done by the people like testing the cards) and you won't be responsible when people start whining that it isn't fun.
Do you know that powerful 1 drops are actually causing the meta to be aggressive? Wouldn't you like to have a meta without any kind of aggressive cards/decks at all? I mean Buccanneer is the only cancer now and without it the meta would have been way more balanced...
Just remember the good times!