Your Questions for Hearthstone Game Designer Dean Ayala!
Blizzard has generously invited Hearthpwn to fly to the Bahamas this weekend for the upcoming Hearthstone Winter Championship! While at the event, we'll have a chance to sit down with Hearthstone Game Designer Dean "Iksar" Ayala to ask him some questions about Hearthstone's upcoming expansion, Journey to Un'Goro!
Do you have a great question on your mind? Write it down in the comments below and we might include it when we compile the best ones later this week!
Dean is a Game Designer on the final design team, focusing on testing and balancing new cards, making sure they're fun, trying to predict what decks they will go in and what the meta will look like. He also plays a lot of Arena! He's also very active on Twitter and Reddit, often responding to questions from the community.
Have you considered changing the class cards and balancing the core of each class? Some classes depend more on the expansions than others, and this is an issue in my opinion.
Surely implementing Achievements in the game would only increase play, both for new players and veterans. I assume you've considered this... what are the biggest hesitations? We'd love to see this!
When you start making a new set and the theme has been decided, do you all sit down and brainstorm single-card-concepts that need to be in it? Like "a big bad T-Rex". If yes, what were some for Un'Goro?
Does Team Five ever look at fan card creations? Have any ideas from fans inspired cards that make it to the game?
They do. They've stated this before.
oh! have they said any specific influences/inspirations they've implemented?
Hello,
My Question is simple: How would you change the ranking mechanism between 5 and legend? Can we expect somekind of "Best of 3" mode or can we get win streak still in thoose levels?
You are right asking about mana geode, but shifting shade is NOT an elemental. It's an Undead (not an abberation) as every shade. It looks maybe like one, but it's clearly an undead.
I am curious if your design team wants to implement new things like achievements,new campaigns,raid modes,mini tournament modes etc in near future..I feel that Tavern Brawl have made a real good impact to everyone and it will good to make it permanent in my opinion no one loses..One more question.Can you tell in the community the reason why there isn't a constant patch when things go wrong and we are waiting at least for 3-4 months to fix things?As we saw,the last brawl had been fixed nearly a day but fixing cards can take more than 2 months..Is that something that your designing team can't do more frequently?
Are you ever going to start adding hotfixes when a card is clearly broken and ruining the meta, instead of waiting 3 months while telling us to solve the problem ourselves?
I can imagine that a shitload of people left the game because of pirate warrior. At least i did. I'll start playing again for un'goro but if that has a bunch of obviously OP cards as well and it doesn't get fixed i'm leaving for good.
What will you make super broken this time, and wait 3 mounth before doing anything about ?
"Tech cards are often valuable to fill out your deck's weakness versus certain other decks in the meta. For example: we have tech versus taunts, secrets and murlocs. Question - when you do a new expansion, why don't you include the tech cards in the *same* expansion? Since you have twice already released strong cards for secrets and now pirates without tech answers (although those answers came some months later) - wouldn't it be better to include the 'answers' in the same patch so that if a deck gets out of control then players can answer it by using the tech cards?"
I can answer that. The designers of Magic: The Gathering found that including counters against the set's themes isn't what you want within the set itself. Because you want people to be excited about the set and its themes, you don't want to punish them for playing them. Once the next set is out, it's okay to give people the means to punish playing the last set, because if they're still playing the old stuff over the new stuff, that means it's overpowered and needs to be answered.
doomfish, Apocalypse Chime was a Magic: The Gathering card, and I can't remember the one that came after it, but those two cards were a failed experiment in 1994. I agree with you.
ooooh. so this is where those stupid and poorly formulated (and often passive aggressive) questions are coming from. :o nevermind, they'll be answered by fluff answers anyway.
my question is simple and has been asked by others, but not answered directly; with the numerous game-breaking cards that have transpired over the years (for example, prenerf Yogg-Saron threatening the whole competitive scene, Tuskarr Totemic, old Undertaker, Patron and old Warsong being the key ones that destabilized the game and the competitive scene alike) and the excuse of "we are still learning" fading out of reality a long time ago, is there a plan to change the Blizzard philosophy and pace of letting players handle it? Because a deck or card should not oppress and warp the player experience for several months.
so, in short, is Blizzard interested in having a more on-board approach to problematic cards in Hearthstone after several events that put the game in a very negative light, competitive and casual alike?
Is there a chance that you guys are going to nerf Jade Idol if it proves itself meta-defining card and Druid become a tier 1 deck when the expansion hits and afterwards?
When will common cards be removed from arena rewards, especially for high wins? Is team5 looking at allowing players to pick a pack of choice for the arena reward?
Why is twilight elemental not getting the elemental tribe tag? It got elemental in its name.
Will there ever be an option where you can play friends with drafted arena decks? This would be a lot of fun for people that doesn't own every card.