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.
Will you be introducing any kind of tournament mode to the game? Such as a 8 man tournament where it costs $ or gold similar to arena and the prizes go to the top two players. Bigger risk but bigger reward.
will you be implementing a new form of casual for players that just started the game? I've been playing since a month after the release of the game and have nearly every card (a lot of them golden as well), but everytime I go into casual to try a fun deck it's always just a bunch of tier 1 decks. This makes it so people with barely any cards have no "safe haven"
one thing I think this game is severly lacking is a sense of community. Is there anything in the works to create guilds/clans? You could have weekly quests that the entire guild could contribute toward with larger rewards (ex. Win 100 games=three card packs)
Auto-squelch option in menu. PLEASE!
What do you guys think the average number of turns of a hearthstone game should be?
Is average turns a KPI you have when testing to keep the games short?
Ahmed Noureldin</pre>
Suggestion for using the annual theme (year of Kraken / Mammoth) for some thematic consistency and keeping meta fresh and exciting.
I had hoped the idea of theming each year (Kraken, Mammoth) would lead to some more exciting storytelling between the expansions of the year and maybe even use it to keep the meta fresh/exciting throughout and in-between expansion releases.
To that end, i would like to suggest that Team 5 would consider something like — A set of 6 to 12 cards released over a bi-monthly / monthly schedule with the rank pack (subject to similar basic requirements being fulfilled, like playing/winning at least x games that month etc) with the Annual theme (Mammoth for 2017). Strong Legendaries/Epics (Like N'Zoth, Kazakus) , perhaps which bring out the "Mammoth" theme, tie all expansions together thematically, keep meta dynamic every month?
This may also provide an additional advantage of letting Team 5 course-correct the meta by introducing the right card at the right time if/when needed.
These cards would form their own annual standard collection (Year of the Mammoth Set) and cards from these can be crafted in months following their release (for those who missed winning them in monthly packs).
Cheers!
Love the idea, but maybe only 5 per month (team 5 hehe). Make them all neutrals so every class has access to them and gives plenty of new deck building ideas.
IDK about strong legendaries every month though. That could break the game and make it hard for newer players or f2p players to get them all. Plus it makes owning a legendary less valuable if their are a bunch on top of the three expansion this year.
Why are some of the more powerful cards in the set Legendary? ( like Clutchmother Zavas ) For consistency sake, wouldn't it make more sense to make these kinds of cards not Legendary? ( even if the effect it weaker. )
The only way they should do this is by putting them in the shop and charging $5 per cardback. They are meant to be unique and make the owner feel special for owning them.
I would buy all of the cardbacks that I'm missing in a heartbeat! I have a pile of special cash, dust, and gold waiting to make me feel special for owning all of the special cardbacks I'm missing. :-)
What are your thoughts on arena and wild being added to professional level tournament hearthstone? I.e. blizzcon/seasonal championships
I feel like this is already taken care of in the upcoming standard to wild cards. You are keeping them while being refunded the full price. You can easily craft 3-4 legendaries and keep your collection up to date in the same time.
Are there any quality of life improvements planned for 2017? I'm specifically hoping to see a fix to the mobile disconnect issue (e.g. you don't know you've disconnected until it's too late, you have to restart the client, and by the time you reconnect it's two turns later and you've lost)
new class?
So in the previous post that talked about the Elemental tag, Mike mentioned that one of the things they tried with elementals was "Gain Elemental Charges and spend them to power up Elementals." I think this is a fantastic idea. It could add a new dimension and skill to the game. Like deciding on whether to spend your "elemental charges" to power up a minion or saving them for next turn to power up an elemental AOE spell. Is there a chance you guys will use this idea/concept in the future?
Why do Blizzard make a lot of effort to get back players who stopped playing a long time ago (like the 'Welcome Back!' quest series which awards you a lot of classic packs), but not rewarding the current and active players?
Daily login rewards are going to be just a promotional thing? Will they ever be a permanent addition to HS?
Jade idol... why kill all control decks with one card?
Will there be some quests that rewards us with packs when the next standard year hits, kinda similar as previous time. If this is the case, we might be need to leave a quest slot open.
Q1: Any plans on making old adventures available to new players just for the fun experience and opportunity to play with the mechanics.
Q2: Any plans on making old adventures replayable? Have you considered adding adventures based quests. For example:
60g - complete normal wing
100g - complete heroic wing (available onyl to people, who have completed the heroic wing before)
Q3: Any plans on adding Wild card packs?
Q4: Any plans on releasing mini adventures purchasable with gold that don't introduce new cards, just some fun and some rewards to make it a profit (20% or so) outside of the yearly schedule?
Q5: Any plans on releasing new game modes?
Q6: Any plans on releasing the alternative heroes for gold? Even if they cost more than 1000g I think that it would be good for the game because more people will play with/against them which will add some more variety.
Ancient of Lore definitely does not need a revert, and neither does Keeper of the Grove, with those both being ridiculous cards. The other two would be great to return to their previous states though.