Hearthstone Developer AMA - Basic/Classic Set Revamp, New Vanity Card Type & More!
Blizzard made an AMA event on Reddit where people could ask their most desired questions about "anything" related to Hearthstone, here is the full summary of answers.
But at first, what could this mean?
Quote from Ben LeeQuestion: "Are you planning anything that has to do with the undead from the World of Warcraft?"
Answer: "My son. The day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name, Arthas. My child. I watched you with pride, as you grew into a weapon. Of righteousness. Remember, our line has always ruled with wisdom and strength. And I know that you will show restraint when exercising your great power. But the truest victory, my son, is stirring the hearts of your people. I tell you this, for when my days have come to an end, you shall be king." -Ben
Basic/Classic Set
- New modern Basic and Classic set is something that Team 5 has been working on and we will see the result with next year's first expansion! [SOURCE]
- There will be no new replacements for the 5 neutral cards from the Classic Set that rotated to Wild earlier this year, hence the reason above. [SOURCE]
- They're asking about which cards we would like to see in Standard (from wild) beside Whizbang the Wonderful (as a reference to the new Basic/Classic Set). [SOURCE]
Battlegrounds
- The Tide Razor and Nat Pagle, Extreme Angler are in the process of being redesigned. Tokens generated by other cards might be a problem that they'll address if needed in the future. [SOURCE]
- Balance changes will be happening pretty soon! Eudora in particular is one they want to address. [SOURCE]
- Battlegrounds should get their ranking reset soon, seasonal resets, and many more to come. [SOURCE]
- Murlocs will get nerfed, Beasts will get a boost. More details in the weeks to come. [SOURCE]
Arena
- Their main focus is on developing new game modes while keeping Arena in a stable place. [SOURCE]
- Set rotations were removed (hence older sets are not as balanced as Standard ones), but since players want them, they'll be back in December with the next expansion release. [SOURCE]
- Drafting "buckets" were hard to maintain and tweak right so they got removed, the current drafting experience feels "fine" for them as you have a lot of interesting choices anyways. [SOURCE]
- Offering rates for problematic "Neutral" cards like Dragonqueen Alexstrasza are being adjusted by offering slightly more or fewer class cards, based on how the class is performing. They are open to removing problematic cards in the future if needed. [SOURCE]
Nerfs/Buffs
- With the next card rotation to Wild, we will see quite a few nerf reverts from Rise of Shadows, Tombs of Terror, or Descent of Dragons, they also pointed out that they want to revert nerfs for some cards that are currently in Wild already. [SOURCE]
- Buffs are trickier to get right so in the future, we'll rather see buffs to correct classes and get them in-line with others instead of trying to make drastic changes like Luna's Pocket Galaxy. [SOURCE]
- They are now closely looking at how decks are shaping up and in particular, they are looking at how they feel to play against (like for example Kael'thas Sunstrider), however they are still gathering feedback and data. [SOURCE]
Expansions/Events
- We shouldn't expect any expansion stuff being attached to another game from the Blizzard universe (except World of Warcraft of course), but It's possible to expect some special events with other Blizzard fan favorites. [SOURCE]
- There won't be a year-long narrative in the foreseeable future. [SOURCE]
- Events like Doom in the Tomb are not planned but they are something that they might do in the future, however, they would do that a little bit differently this time by making the event a bit shorter and react quicker to problems that might arise. [SOURCE]
- Evolve and N'Zoth, the Corruptor are 2 cards that they want to bring back in some way in the future. [SOURCE]
- There are basically no upsides for turning "Can't be targeted by spells or hero powers" into an Elusive Keyword, but if they're about to do a design of a card that might use less text space with that keyword, they'd implement it. [SOURCE]
- Secrets in Paladin are really hard to design as (1) mana is not a lot to work with. Celestalon said that one of his favorite cards currently planned for the next expansion happens to be a Paladin Secret. [SOURCE]
Scholomance Academy
- If Dual-Class cards would become a staple in Hearthstone, they'd get printed in a lower amount than we saw in Scholomance Academy. [SOURCE]
- There are no plans on printing more Dual-Class cards in a foreseeable future. [SOURCE]
- The first Dual-Class pair was Priest/Warlock and the last one was Priest/Paladin. They wanted their mechanics/themes to overlap with each other. [SOURCE]
Features
- Upgrading cards to their golden version is something that they want to do in the future, but they're focused on doing "big things" right now. [SOURCE]
- They have a list of smaller features that they are gradually adding into the game, the upcoming feature will be the ability to flip through pages in the Collection Manager using the scroll wheel. [SOURCE]
Performance/Bugs
- The performance of the client is something they're paying close attention to. They recently spun up a new engineering sub-team specifically dedicated to improving Hearthstone's performance. [SOURCE]
- There's a fix checked in for Polkelt's animation in the next patch. Lightning Bloom's card art appearing upside down will be looked at. [SOURCE]
Misc
- A new type of vanity card type that can look different in both the Collection, hand, and on the board is in the works. [SOURCE]
- Some older Card Backs and Hero Skins will be back in the shop, we just don't know when. [SOURCE]
- There will be a quite big amount of new Hero Skins in the future, maybe even surpassing players' expectations. Some of them will be free (progression system) and some of them will be available for purchase. [SOURCE]
- Hamuul Runetotem might be a new alternative Druid Hero Skin. [SOURCE]
- New entrance animations are something that we'll see in the future, cards that were suggested by a user, and thanked for their suggestion by FX artist -> Tirion Fordring, Archmage Antonidas, Edwin VanCleef, Grommash Hellscream, Mal'Ganis and Gahz'rilla. [SOURCE]
- Developer Insights is something that they would like to do more, the next one will be about how Team 5 adapted to working from home in shipping Scholomance Academy. [SOURCE]
There is also an interesting insight from Cora about how the final design process looks like
Quote from Cora GeorgiouThe Final Design process is 16 weeks long. We receive the spreadsheet from Initial Design that has all of the cards that they created, and from there it's a lot of building decks and playtesting. We usually start with the major mechanics of the set to get a feel for how they play and if they're fun (i.e. Spellburst, Dual-Class cards, etc). We build all of the archetypes for the 10 classes and play until we have a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. If we feel archetypes are lacking in certain areas, we'll redesign cards until they're in a good place. A lot of the design work in Final Design is ensuring the archetypes are fun and have the pieces they need to see play, but we also do more significant redesign work if it's necessary. If a mechanic needs to be changed, we can and will do that. A good example of a card that was changed fairly late in the game is Instructor Fireheart. During the 16 week Final Design process for Scholomance Academy, I believe it read something along the lines of "At the end of your turn, deal damage to a random enemy equal to your Overloaded mana crystals." We tested with it during that time and felt it would be a decent seed card for maybe an Overload deck down the line, but that it wouldn't be really impactful during this specific cycle. Later in the process, we actually decided that it was just too underwhelming, and we changed it's design to what we ended up shipping.
NEW: It was on a 2 mana 1/5 body, so it was decent. Just ended up not being what we wanted, so we changed it. [SOURCE]
Ay I don't like the Battlegrounds reset. I've spent months slowly, but steadily gaining points, and now all that progress will be gone? I'll probably stop playing BG then.
Finally male rogue hero maybe?
I also hope for a female warrior in future
It'd be sick if they made up a new character that's a reference to every edgelord male undead rogue that players in WoW make and gank low level alliance with. Kinda like Cutpurse
In those upcoming Battlegrounds changes they better be bloody removing Arcane Cannon. If that dodges all nerfs and changes that team hasn't got a clue what they're doing.
Im going to be alone in this, but, i would like a set rotation, bringing an entirely new group of heroes (not changing all, just the tribe specific ones) and minions with diferent sinergies, like tft does from time to time, it would be cool to see new tags and intereactions,
Maybe not now, but in the future with more time to announce and present the idea to the player base.
Toki, Time-Tinker should be a standard card permanently.
Change my mind.
I'd like to see a few more time travel cards in the game.
Some example effects would be:-
-"Battlecry: Add a random card form the past to your hand"
-"Deathrattle: Summon a random 2 cost minion from the past"
-Spell - "Draw 2 cards, convert them into random cards from the past"
"Add an unnerfed card from the past to your hand"
Thanatos2k for president
So basically Toki, but for Demon Hunter? Sounds interesting.
There're much better/more interesting mage legendaries that could be evergreen cards.
I would love if they brought back Enter the Colosseum for Paladin.
All i hear is mimimi :)
That comment on bringing the undead tag into the game - yes undeads and death knight hero coming in the future.
Shaman just needs his fellow Shudderwock back. Evolve is good but maybe Unstable Evolution is more viable (would be better to see both of them in standart).
I find it interesting that they mentioned giving Mal'Ganis and Gahz'rilla new animations. Perhaps those are potential Standard returning cards? Other than these, I think some solid returning Standard cards are as follows: Dirty Rat, Unseen Saboteur, and Nerubian Unraveler. While two of the three of these may seem questionable, I think these are excellent tech cards that while they may not always see play, they will always be an option. When it comes to raw stats and usability, I think cards like Tar Creeper, Lifedrinker, and even Witchwood Grizzly could be decent. Finally, when it comes to Legendaries, besides the two that were mentioned above, this is definitely very difficult. I immediately wanted to say Zilliax and Loatheb, but then I remembered why the HoF'd Ragnaros the Firelord and Sylvanas Windrunner. I imagine they'll be consider the most neutral Legendaries possible, based off of their mention of N'Zoth, the Corruptor and Evolve, both very straightforward cards. I think some Legendaries that follow this trend are Sneed's Old Shredder, Countess Ashmore, and maybe even Sir Finley Mrrgglton.
What do you guys think?
I don't know, I can't really see them pulling cards from adventures into basic.
Same, most of the cards there look spicy options but dventure cards i think are out of question. Those cards are adventure rewards, moving them from there should come with some change to those adventures and their price
About time they added something for people who have played since closed beta and have complete collections because we support the game. Thanks for adding things that F2P will NEVER get and adding the amount of time they have to sit and play to get anything insanely what it should be ....NOT WORTH IT.
more vanity stuff for people with money to enjoy and a pass that lets us gain an advantage over F2P who do nothing to support the game. Time to get a job and p2p or get left in the dust........
the game is finally a 2-3 minute a game in wild ...auto win by turn 4-5 or even turn 1. Nobody wants to sit and play a game of hearthstone for 20+ turns . Rank 5 has never been easier or quicker for people who can play any deck in the game they want. Finally the game is going in the direction it should to keep it around for the future.
can’t wait to get all the new skins and vanity cards ....and listen to the F2P seething vitriol and hate because they think everything should be free....