Top 5 Plays of the Week
GiantKiller of 2pPressStart published a new episode of Hearthstone, Top 5 Plays of the Week. This week's plays come from Ponkie, TheRobb, Teldo, Shirkuh, and Iain. Congratulations guys on some great plays!
Hearthstone Day Q&A Recap
Friday's Google Hangout of the Q&A event was cancelled, but Zeriyah, Eric Dodds, and Jason Chayes switched over to TwitchTV last minute to answer questions from the community. We've got a summary of the chat below, and if you'd like to watch it yourself, it can be found here.
Quote from BlizzardNon PC/Mac Releases
- The iPad client is very close to launching, most likely within the next few weeks.
- Phone versions of the game are in very early stages. Release targeted for the second half of this year for phones.
- Your account will be the same across all devices. Same collection, same friends, same wins and losses, same arena run.
Competitive Scene
- We will see spectator mode "relatively quick", but they do not have a set time. The community really wants to see this, so they developers want to make it happen.
- There are some discussions about tournament structures, but everything is still in the early stages.
Game Systems
- The design decision behind which Heroes get added to the game is first by looking for the most iconic characters, and then figuring out which class they can represent. Tyrande could fit Hunter and Priest.
- The decision to change secrets in the latest patch to only trigger on your opponents turn was to let the developers create more fun secrets without having to worry about players triggering their own secrets. It was not done to solve any current balance issues.
- The new card backs for ranked seasons are earned by getting to rank 20. Getting to rank 20 isn't very hard since you can't downrank at the early levels, which keeps them open to everyone provided they play. The card backs are animated!
- There will be additional methods to obtaining card backs outside of ranked play. These will be rolled out within the next month or two.
- Adventure mode will contain bosses which when defeated will give you new cards. Details are still being worked on.
Mechanics that didn't make the cut
- Discard mechanics never made the cut because they give people a negative feeling.
- Critical Strike - When you attack a minion, it has a chance of doing double damage. The team felt they were pushing the RNG too far with it.
- There was a card which would deal 1 damage to you if you hovered over it with your mouse. Ben Brode has been attributed to its creation.
- There was an idea floating around for a card which would flip the gameboard.
Boy am I glad that crit mechanic didn't make the cut
Are the different card backs currently in game? I should have earned some, but only the default shows on my options page.
I call bullshit on the Hangout failure.
Losing, in general, probably gives players a negative feeling. I'm not sure why this is a reason not to implement some further discard/forced draw/mill mechanics.
For a lot of players there is a big difference between losing a game and losing for "My opponent forced me to lose by doing X".
no it is not a good mechanic Thought seize which is one of the most played black cards in Magic history feels terrible. You get your hand have your plan and your opponent forces you to discard a card completely screwing you for the rest of the game and you lose. Milling i may be able to get behind but not Discard effects it slows the game down and is frustrating.
This sounds like something I would love to see, would make an excellent battlecry on a legendary.
I read about that mouseover card before and still think they should make a card, but instead of a regular card, fit it into something like Gelbin. A device that does one Hero damage each time that Hero mouses over it.
Kel'thuzad should be the card, obviously.
Your curiosity will be the death of you.