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.
it would allow "top -or - bottom of deck" type interactions but I don't think that kind of mechanic isn't as useful or intuitive in a digital card game
Do you really think random in a lot of cards is so "AHAHAHAHAHAH I'm a bearded raper Ben HAHAHAHAHAH" fun? In causes a lot of frustration and suffering to a lot of players who's trying to be competitive after all. You created HS to be just a fun game, that's true, but after community became so hyped about it and it became an e-sport, don't you think you just HAD to get rid of all (or most of it) random?
Cause making your players suffer isn't good.
How happy is the design team with the Jades design? What do you think about jade mechanic punishing slower decks too much?
Hi Dean,
First i wanna say that i have spend a great deal on money on Hearthstone but i just cannot justify paying $9.99 for an alt hero. I know these heroes have been in the store for quite some time. When are they going on sale? I'm pretty sure more people will buy these skins if the price was reduced!
Thanks.
Adept
Nerf Jade Idol to shuffle one? It still has no fatigue and cheap jades, BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME! Also it still works well with Fandral
Why would you nerf a card that is in a deck that is not even a Tier 1 deck? That would be kind of stupid.
Because thecard is retarded and should never exist? I am no saying to remove jade from the game
Changing the shuffle feature to just 1 would make it complete useless for anything other than avoiding fatigue.
Changing it to 2 would likewise not solve the problem.
The shuffle multiple copies feature is completely flawed by nature, and this is what needs to be changed.
The card is retarded? Whats the matter with it?
Your statement is what is retarded.
"should never exist" and "not saying to remove it" lol
Sounds more like you do not have a clue.
Hint: So you want a deck such as Control Warrior to crush both "super fast aggro" decks and slower to develop decks such as Jade Druid.
Yeah, ok.
Do you even read, bro? I said that I dont want to remove jade as a mechanic, but cards like "jade idol" just make control decks disappear for 2 years and that's what is retarded about this card. Control warrior does NOT crash super agro decks because he dies because the only real things control war got are "dirty rat" and "sleep with the fishes", it crashes midrange decks tho, except the only midrange deck right now (and for a while tbh) is midrange shaman that has guess what (tip: jades), and this midrange deck outvalues the control warrior because brann + cheap jades. You just brann + jade claws + jade claws and you have generated 4 jades out of your ass. And against druid it is 85% auto concede, and if it is a good druid player it is 99% auto concede. I hope Un'Goro brings variety to the meta.
All the best.
Since every new expansion and adventure will eventually be rotated out of Standard (and even some classic cards now), are there any plans to re-release certain wild cards in future expansions to bring them back to Standard?
Will the daily login rewards be a thing? I mean permanent. That would be awesome.
Do you have plans to optimize card draw to make control decks more reliable? For example instead of getting an early defensive card like Armorsmith (1/30)% maybe bump it up a bit (by 1.05/30)%.. sometimes games are decided instantly if they have an early play or not, or if the control player is lucky to get an AoE and tools to stabilize afterwards.
Do you have plans to mitigate the first turn advantage? Kripp has been vocal about it in the past few months, and this hasn't been addressed lately.
Will you implement some kind of flavor of the month in deck building? like ban Patches for a month, or bring back Grim Patron or other cards that are very influential in deck building and with synergies in the current standard set to increase the variety in the meta, .. The time between Winter Championship and Ungoro release was a bit stale in terms of the meta since the decks have been figured out, and I think this change could force players to tinker more in deck building
Quest cards are new and fun, we will see more Quests in other expansions? and i like Clutchmother Zavas because is not something you see all days, i mean, a Legendary Warlock Insect, its not the main thematic of Warlock (demons) and its interesting (i dont know if Warlock will has more insects and Rogue plants), it will be repeated in another expansion like Ungoro and with other classes (like "in this expansion the warrior's thematic is ogres")?
with your recent announcement about which cards will gain the elemental tag, why are certain cards which within the lore are considered elementals not considered elementals here ,following are the major examples and the reasoning for it
starting with Mana Geode Geodes are elementals we can find them in deepholm, so shouldn't they be considered at least an earth elemental or if they are a construct of mana an arcane elemental like the Arcane Anomaly
the jade spirit is very clearly a pandaren elemental spirit of earth we see those little cuties all over pandaria and the wandering isle
Djinni of Zephyrs should be an elemental because lore wise they are it is very clearly stated that they are high ranking air elementals
the Twilight Elemental is well very clearly an elemental as it states in the name
Hallazeal the Ascended is also an elemental as ascended are classified as elementals, there is also a ticket from a GM which stated that ascended are elementals,
There are some that could be argued for, like majordomo and flamewaker along with all the core hounds since they are creatures from the Firelands, Voidwalkers and other void creatures can and have been tagged as elementals but it gets tricky when you talk about warlocks and their void walkers cause they call them demons but they aren't they are just void beings that made the same contract as demons with the warlock,
But when we get into the shade cards its tricky for us to understand,cause some times shades are ghosts some times they are shadow elementals and Lightspawn being and elemental but its dark counter parts not is very odd to us.
I think the general idea is that they isolated specific elementals to receive the tag based on gameplay feasibility, design space, and significance.
If we consider what the Elemental tag does--it fits that specific card into the Elemental deck archetype or strategy. As such, they naturally needed to be very careful about which Elementals they could tag, so as to not create a cancerous archetype.
This ties into design space--going forward, anything given the Elemental tag will need to 'fit' into that archetype and not make it broken. It's a big balancing act, especially given the Standard format. Everything added to the Elemental pool will need to be very deliberate.
Finally, significance. Ragnaros is widely recognized as one of the four Elemental Lords. Hallazeal, not so much. The other ones are debatable, but they're definitely not in any way as significant as Rag.
I've also been wondering about these gaps in the Elemental tag (though I admit I'd forgotten about Mana Geode). The one that I might be OK with them not including would be Jade Spirit, just to avoid there being some sort of Jade / Elemental synergy. And even then that might not be the end of the world.