Weekly Community AMA From Dean "Iksar" Ayala - New Class? Game Modes, Bots & More
Yesterday, Dean "Iksar" Ayala made another weekly community AMA on his Twitter account, where anyone could ask him any questions about Hearthstone and he tried to answer back.
Here's a summary of answers from this week's AMA:
Game Philosophy/Balance
- Highlander Hunter
- Hunter and Rogue
- Demon Hunter
- From a player-metrics perspective, it seems like Demon Hunter was successful. [SOURCE]
- It's sort of impossible not to take some inspiration from other games. [SOURCE]
- Reprints can be good and they will do that someday. [SOURCE]
- They were extremely close to reprinting Webspinner for Un'Goro but changed it about 50-75% of the way through design (Jeweled Macaw). [SOURCE]
- It always just feels like they can accomplish the same thing through a very small tweak and just make a new card, so they do that instead. Eventually, there will be a time where that isn't the case and they'll probably reconsider. [SOURCE]
- There are some benefits to doing reprints but one of the downsides is figuring out all the little rules and tech requirements that they haven't done yet. If they brought back Webspinner, should we be able to play our old one? [SOURCE]
- They don't want to introduce a "pack voucher" because the majority of rewards are gold anyways and if there are pre-selected packs, you don't need to make a decision if you want to buy this pack or that pack and they think this is a good approach because you already have a lot of decision making in the game (gold, dust) and this is the fun part, where you don't need to decide what you want/need - It should be the minority of rewards though. [SOURCE]
- The fact that Shaman's Hero Power is different because of some RNG involved isn't negative for them, but they have discussed changing aspects of it. When they looked at the classic set and ways to change it, they also looked at the base hero powers and what classes were supposed to be good/weak at. They'll have some more details on that in a big future update but nothing to divulge just yet. [SOURCE]
- They made the call to let Hysteria slip through, even though they knew about the Wretched Tiller and other interactions. They made this call because they tend not to "round all edges" ahead of the set launch in order to keep the game interesting. This time it didn't work out. [SOURCE]
Battlegrounds
- Khadgar might be deleted soon but they are still exploring a couple of solutions. They will have more details in the next couple of weeks. [SOURCE]
Upcoming Cards/Strategies
- Hunter
- In the future, we could see a deathrattle buildaround that will tie all the deathrattle pieces together. [SOURCE]
New Class
- Hearthstone's team is positive about Demon Hunter and will probably make another new class in the future. It's just not something we'll see every year. [SOURCE]
- They've talked about Death Knight, Monk, or even the idea of inventing something new. [SOURCE]
- There is no new-class in development today, and they work about a year ahead of schedule, so don't expect a new class anytime soon. [SOURCE]
Bots
- They BAN bots somewhat regularly, but people that make these bots always adapt, make new bots, smarter bots, and the cycle continues. [SOURCE]
- They did research recently to look into the issue of players roping for more XP, or botting for more XP, and it turns out there hasn't been much of a difference before and after progression was released. [SOURCE]
- The time taken per turn is roughly the same as it's always been across all game modes. [SOURCE]
Upcoming/Current Modes
- The Tavern Brawl team is also responsible for Duels, Book of Heroes, and another entirely new game mode, they've been busy. That's why we haven't got any new Tavern Brawls. We should expect some newer Tavern Brawls when those things get closer to release but not until then. [SOURCE]
- They don't mind fragmenting the player base with new modes because Hearthstone is a big enough game, hence they don't need to worry about matchmaking times, etc. [SOURCE]
- It's nice when people can have a conversation as a community about the same thing, so that's why we like to have different moments where each mode gets its time in the sun. (Like not releasing an expansion and a big BG update at the same time.) [SOURCE]
Achievements
- They want to add achievements for past single-player content. [SOURCE]
- They weren't sure if adding gameplay achievements for things like GvG would be very enjoyable. [SOURCE]
- Part of the gameplay achievements now is exploring new cards in a new way and getting a reward for doing so. [SOURCE]
- They could do the same thing for older cards but the power level of cards these days could make getting TGT or GvG achievements in Wild a painful experience. [SOURCE]
- Achievements hunters like doing wonky things to get achievement points, so maybe there is some room for overthinking there. [SOURCE]
- Allowing players to complete achievements in casual mode/with friends would hurt the experience of achievement hunting because it's easy to complete this way. [SOURCE]
- With the new reward track, there will be new achievements that will grant XP for the reward track and the previous expansion achievements will no longer grant XP, only achievement points. [SOURCE]
Improvements/Features
- They have some related information about more deck slots to share but it's not quite ready yet. [SOURCE]
History
- Until pretty late Death Knights were a neutral design that shuffled corrupted things into your deck that turned you into a Death Knight (or something?). It wasn't fun and every class turning into a Death Knight felt very similar. [SOURCE]
- They created Hero cards in the final design, which is really late to be creating a totally new card type from scratch. Turned out to be one of the most polarizing but ultimately positive mechanics they've ever done. [SOURCE]
- Livewire Lance was just (2) mana until basically the last possible day of balance design. They knew it was a 10/10 but they liked it and wanted to push the power on it a bit. They hesitantly changed to (3) last minute. [SOURCE]
- They usually have 3-10 mechanics that have been tested, tweaked, and iterated on, but just 1-2 make it through. The most recent example he can think of is this concept of champion cards. [SOURCE]
- They were minions that had a health value, no attack value, and an ability. They were like your commander on the battlefield, a mini-hero. They used their ability every turn but didn't directly attack, much like your hero. Weren't affected by things like Flamestrike, etc. [SOURCE]
- There were some promise and excitement but he doesn't think they got to a place with the abilities or the visuals that made them confident enough to move forward at the time. Might be something we revisit later. [SOURCE]
Another class is a terrible idea, unless you're a whale.
Demon Hunter is as free to play as it gets. Super strong base set, super strong decks with very few expensive cards needed. So in the case of DH the opposite of what you say is true. DH has been great for f2p players.
You quite literally now have a lesser chance of getting the cards (mainly legendaries and epics) that you want, BECAUSE of the existence of DH. Besides that, even if you were a person that wanted all the cards every expansion, you now have an entire new class added to it, including legendaries. My statement is factually true. You only look from the viewpoint of a DH player.
You're right about that. I've always been casual free to play tho and still find it as easy as ever to play the classes I want without paying for cards. Demon Hunter just gave me an extra, pretty much free option. I'm happy with that. Made it feel more f2p friendly to me. :)
It's always the worst solutions with this guy. Wretched Tiller causing problems due to newly introduced card? Let's not address the real reason for the problem - that you introduced a card with bad design that can produce unlimited attacks. Let's not address the fact that it again surfaced your perennial problem of animation lock skipping turns. Just a quick slap dash nerf.
Let's not address the turn timer inequity in battlegrounds. Let's not address the fact that huge amounts of players are exploiting the game in plain sight to get extra turn time and telling others how to do it, something you have happily suspended people for advertising exploits in the past. Let's not address the animation lock inequity in battlegrounds that causes turn crunch. Let's just remove Khadgar as a quick slap dash nerf. Cards are STILL triple-pump-faking and taking several seconds per attack. They shorten certain animations because they admit it's a mistake for them to take so long and then whenever they introduce new animations they're long again.
I dont believe they knew about the Hysteria combo for a second I played the priest version and after going 8-0 I was just like anyone who tested this would have easily said "Not a chance in Outlands"
People posted it in the reveal post immediately, BEFORE the cards were launched. If random players figured it out within hours, what exactly are the employees PAID to design and balance the game doing?
Ive played since beta and there "test team" is a joke you can see this looking at other ccgs were they will be okay with saying we didn't see that blizzard is always "yeah we saw it but what do we care" aka they didnt see it
Whatever, now patch the game so I can play on my phone.
This Dude ruined Standard HS for me.
Im multiple legend player (atm 5K Legend EU wich is ok, im not a pro), i played about 30K Matches in Hearthstone since Beta, i bought every single expansion since release and i rly can say that the STandard Format is in the worst since release. I've never seen so many degenerate cards and mechanis in standard format. NEVER.
HS is Draw or cycle your entire Deck as fast as possible / Manacheat/ Highroll / Ramp / OTK
Mage ? Tries to OKT you and draws the entire Deck Turn 6 (No joke, happened to me couple of min. ago)
Druid ? FIll the Board 8 TImes in a row - Cant clear the board once ? Dead.
Paladin ? Turn 4 Abbes Alura coin a 11/14 Turn (Pure) or a Board Full of Murlocs with +4 Attack since the new Ramp Paladin arrived. No answer ? Dead
DH ? tries to OTK you with Lifesteal
Warlock ? Bad Mulligan and there is no comeback, Dead on Turn 5. if you play Control, Tickatus destroys your entire deck.
Warrior ? tries OTK you with rush
Shaman ? tries to fuill the Boad and evolve Turn 5 (or 3 with Bloom) No Weapon Removal or AOE ? No comeback, your dead
Weapon Rogue and aggro Hunter ? So fucking fast, bad Mulligan, GG.
The whole experience is horrible right now, doenst matter if i win or loose, the Game feels like "Oh, i have no answer to this so i can concede".
So, if I understand your comment well, it could be resumed as :
"The game is destroyed ! Let me show you how you can play ALL TEN CLASSES in ladder and still have a viable deck !"
Isn't that supposed to be a very good thing ?
If you want we can go back to Huntard VS All during Naxxramas, that was certainly much better ?
Or maybe you miss more the mighty 70% overall winrate Jade Druid ?
Stop CREATING problems to complain about dude. Try to grow up and evolve with the game rather than staying in the past complaining things were better just because you're blinded by nostalgia.
The implication that every class wins every time is a bit confusing. There are good and bad matchups, and every deck has to lose eventually. Granted, Ramp Paladin needs to die.
you didnt understand a single word, that was not the essence of my post dude.
Its not about "ALL CLASSES CAN BE GOOD AT THE SAME TIME" Shit. Plz read again and try to understand.
So instead of trying to explain what you meant, you just ask people to read again?
My interpretation then, is that you are frustrated at the many mana cheating decks and OTK strategies right? You feel that there are too many consistent power plays that requires too specific counters right?
Like during the beta when a turn 1 chillwind yeti or mana wurm + mirror image was an auto-win? Or when cube lock could flood the board endlessly? Or when odd paladin would eat up every AOE card and then drop level up, WIN! Or during all time of HS history that we had OTK decks? right?
I don't really care about achievements for older sets necessarily, I just wish there were cosmetic coins for completing older sets as a way to reward older players or even entice newer players.
I like this idea.
The 2 new coins we got were very alike, and I would love to have more actual choice in coins if it were possible. Be creative!