Ben Brode on Arena Player Rewards, Game Balance, Card Sets, Features, and Ben Facts
Ben Brode was streaming live on Twitch earlier and said words! We've recapped the interesting bits below.
Quote from Ben BrodeSorry About That
- The sorry emote didn't have a lot of use, and they already had the wow emote recorded so they switched it because they thought it was more useful.
Arena
- They're currently looking into ways of celebrating arena players more.
- Iksar is doing a lot of work on figuring out ways to show top arena players without incentives.
- They want to be careful with incentives, they don't want players to burnout.
- It could be cool to change the arena drafting pool periodically.
Priest
- Priest may be the worst class now, but there could be cards [that exist in the game now] that bring it back up.
Shaman
- Shamans received very powerful cards with Old Gods because they had a lot of room for improvement.
Warrior
- Mech Warrior caught Ben and the team off guard. The cards were available for a while but no one had picked it up.
- Mech Warrior was one of the top winrate decks.
Game Balance
- Hearthstone's balance, and the balance of card games in general, shouldn't be compared with games like Overwatch or StarCraft.
- It's easier to nerf and buff in other games as you can do so at a much smaller level - micro changes.
- Changing any number on a card is a major change and is more noticeable.
- They'd rather players come up with solutions to problems as they arise then changing cards all the time.
- Creating cards that counter other cards is stuff that they should support more in the card pool.
- One class will always be the worst, even if its by a small percentage.
Card Sets
- New cards added to sets aren't always for high level play.
- Tons of players have fun with Majordomo Executus, but he isn't necessarily competitive.
- Adding more cards to the reward set is tricky, since it's a wild only set. They don't want to push new players towards wild.
- The way they choose what will be the next card set is by setting up a whiteboard and shouting out ideas.
- Then they talk about possible mechanics and flavor with each idea.
- Ben pitched 4 different adventures with card ideas before they had done Naxxramas. He won't talk about them though because we may see them one day.
New Features
- Being able to choose random card backs is a cool idea but isn't on the top of their list of things to do.
- Ben is hesitant to say yes to a tournament mode built into Hearthstone, it's a complicated issue with many different implementations.
- Golden hero borders at 500 wins for the paid heroes aren't technically possible at this time due to the single image the entire hero backdrop uses.
- Ben doesn't think that adding more classes is needed.
Ben Facts
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- In Overwatch, Ben likes to play Zenyatta and Pharah.
- Ben delivered a Pizza to Blizzard 13 years ago.
- Ben ate In-and-Out for dinner this evening.
- Ben is responsible for the Hearthstone troll mumbling found in background music.
- Ben is responsible for the World of Warcraft death sound of The Prophet Skeram.
- Ben was a pretty big pet collector in World of Warcraft.
- If the back of a hotdog bun opens up, its a sandwich.
I was pretty ticked when I read that bit too but Ben chose those words very carefully. It says he "doesn't think new classes are needed" just because Ben doesn't think they're needed doesn't mean it won't happen eventually. Be patient once income from the game starts dropping I bet they'll release it.
They cant even argue with balance because Cardstone is unbalanced as fuck anyway.
They already explained this and it's very logical. The more classes there are, the least cards for your favorite class you will get per pack.
At least Majordome has some potential to get you into a Trolden video because he ends up making you go from 30 to 8 to 0 health in a single turn.
at least majordomo have been featured in just for fun deck like mage coldara drake ice block combo :P, he's not that bad :P
So you would include those cards?
I actually lost to the Boogeymonster in arena and i have 10k arena wins. But... also i lost with CW in constructed to Y'Shaaraj pulling fkuking Majordomo. 30 hp + 30 armor, next turn 8 hp -> pyroblast gg. IT WAS VERY FUN! Lot of ppl like? Please,give us voting on those statements. It will be 95% against all your shitty statements really...
I was always sure there are op decks that we havent discovered and now its confirmed, exciting
"They'd rather players come up with solutions to problems as they arise then changing cards all the time."
So basically they want players to figure out a way to deal with their crap so they don't have to think about it....cool cool...
I really hope we get to design our own cards next because apparently these monkeys can't be bothered with anything these days
No... they don't want to have to compensate for you being bad at the game. It's not designed to be easy, but to provide shifting challenges which players must adapt to. If that's not your style of play, you should choose a different game instead of blaming the designers for doing exactly what they set out to do.
"Golden hero borders at 500 wins for the paid heroes aren't technically possible at this time due to the single image the entire hero backdrop uses."
I don't understand why this is a topic. Golden backdrops should be earned by playing the game, not paid for.
I think it was about unlocking golden borders for alternate heros at 500 wins, not about getting them right away when unlocking the hero.
But the borders aren't golden right away when you buy them. Only animations roll.
I know BBrode is trying to be more communicative with the community, but please ; for the love of God, could we have some actual informations ?
I mean, this have been blizzard style for ever : They say a lot of things that are pretty much insane or have little to no value for the average player.
Here is an few exemples :
New cards added to sets aren't always for high level play : This one we've heard at lot but they always feel like saying is again and again.
They want to be careful with incentives, they don't want players to burnout : We've also heard this one too many times.
What i'm trying to say is : Instead of changing words to say what you've said 2 weeks ago seem to be a waste of time for BOTH the community and the game developers, not to count that it is morally questionnable as we barely ever get some insights into where the game is heading, why some choices were made and some others not.
You'll have to convince the rest of the community to stop asking the same questions - that's how Q&A sessions work.
"Ben doesn't think that adding more classes is needed."
OF COURSE! The numbers of player is growing each day. I think a new class will only come when too many players will be bored and when the benefit$$ will fall.
I don't know why people yearn for new classes. I'd be grateful if they keep this line and never release a new one. It's such a balance-mess even when they only release few cards.
Someone please ask Benny what they were thinking when they creating cards like Call of the Wild and Flamewreathed Faceless and how these cards passed the tests