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.
I feel they should atleast implement acouple mechs so we could atleast play with the few mechs that were left behind with the last standard rotation.
CMON BLIZZ
i can understand the hurry to have the things set up for blizzcon but dont tell because of that you wont make a preorder card back. if what they have said is true then we are 1 month away from the expansion so blizz have at least 1 month to design or maybe not at all for the preorder card back, because if they are truly in a hurry they can use the card pack skin (the bank thiefproof door) as a card back with some tweaks of course; im sure no one will ever complain to that, thats for sure.
what a shame, they had a whole year to prepare a blizzcon, thats just a lame excuse
So you get nothing special for preordering this time if I get it right? :(
...except a dollars-per-pack discount!
The tri-class cards seemed so good and I am a bit disappointed to find out there will only be 3 for faction especially given that one is kind of the same effect for different factions. I hope this new idea turns out to be good and that it will be explored some more in future expansions. Can't wait for more cards, especially the other 2 tri-class legendaries.
You know, Blizz, its getting harder and harder to love you when you blatantly lie and make stupid as shit excuses for your laziness.
"No pre-order cardback cuz of Blizzcon Craziness" what does that even mean? Blizzcon caught you off guard, so you didn't have time to design one? Did the Tasmanian devil whirlwind his way through your office and destroy your cardback designs? To me, it sounds like you guys just couldn't be bothered to make one so said "fuck it, we'll just make an excuse"
You nerfed Molten Giant because of Handlock? Bullshit, nobody even plays Handlock these days in competitive, its been a dead deck for ages and you guys are just going to leave it that way, aren't you?
Really wish you guys could be more transparent and honest instead of treating us like we have room-temperature IQ's
The reason noone plays handlock any more is BECAUSE OF THE NERF OF MOLTEN GIANT you moron.
Why da f*** no preorder cardback??? Why???
Blizzcon Craziness= Full of Bullshetness.
No preorder cardback? Fine, i wont buy preorder.
No one cares that you wont pre-order the packs.
I dont care no one cares, but i can write it here if i please, and so did I. Triggered much?
They better introduce some kind of new mechanic on top of the tri class card if there are only going to be 9
Yeah LifeCoach told in his German Championship cast that he built a Pirate Warrior with Patches and went 14-1 against the developer team which consists of legend players, who knew LifeCoach' deck and their task was to counter it. Sounds like epic balance...
killed molten giants then made arcane giant. bliz logic
Plenty of good stuff in here. Im always down for new pirates.
Noggenfogger hype. :D
Agreed, been saying that since initial announce , hope we get elixirs
9 cards is seems like nothing but this is a new experimental thing which is very hard to balance. I'd probably guess that they will decide if to make more of these later down the road for future expansions based on the feedback that they will get. It can be easily compared to the joust mechanic - not too many cards but it still seemed like a big factor, they decided not to make more because the feedback was negative. They said that they still like the mechanic and might try to use it some day so I guess that the same could be said about the tri-class cards. They'll probably understand how to better balance them and then add something similar in a future expansion. I can easily see this fitting into something like an assault on Icecrown expansion/adventure - a group of argent crusaders , a group of the scarlet crusade and maybe a group for something like forsaken? Either way, even this small edition of 9 cards will have a big effect on the meta (IMO) and I'd love to see what the community (and me) can come up with now that we have those tools and the grounding for that "mechanic".
Molten giant was KILLED, along with handlock.. they fered handlock uses a lot of evergreen cards? so why kill the deck? just weaken it molten giant is UNPLAYABLE.. it's a 5! mana nerf it's the biggest nerf of ANY card at 22 mana it would be perfect..