Weekly Community AMA From Dean "Iksar" Ayala - Basic/Classic Set Rework, Reward Track, 2v2 Mode & 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:
Achievements
- Current expansion achievements rewarding XP don't carry over to the next expansion reward track, because they think players would be forced to complete older achievements in order to level up optimally. [SOURCE]
- They have a total amount of rewards prepared for each expansion and It's up to them where they want them to be. [SOURCE]
Audio
- Sound has been one of the most consistently great aspects of their team for ages. [SOURCE]
- Andy Brock is one of the only people on the team that has been around for 8+ years. [SOURCE]
Basic/Classic set rework
- There will be some new cards, some old cards, some rebalanced cards. We decided not to bring back Barnes tho. [SOURCE]
- Naga Sea Witch is also not coming back. [SOURCE]
Balance/Design
- The Coin looks and plays like a spell and historically going 2nd is a lot worse, hence there are no plans on making The Coin a different card type (to avoid Gadgetzan Auctioneer and other interactions). [SOURCE]
- Juicy Psychmelon and Glide are probably the most recent examples of cards they knew were relatively weak to medium power level pre-release, but players thought they'll be game-breaking. Jade Druid was also a mostly middling deck that saw much more outcry for power level violation than was actually true. [SOURCE]
- Casual vs Competitive player base [SOURCE]
- It's difficult but necessary for big games to have a casual as well as a competitive player base.
- You have to remain focused on building options for players rather than forcing them down a path.
- If you create a great competitive feature, those players will find it and engage with it.
- If you place it at the forefront of your game and force everyone through it, those that aren't competitive might have to engage in something that makes them not want to play anymore.
- Having quests in Hearthstone to go play single-player content or BG is an example of this I think about. If a player doesn't like that content but we say hey here is a reward you better do it.... it toes the line.
- It's only a matter of time until we'll have a 0 mana 1/1 Pirate in the game. [SOURCE]
- Disruption stuff is cool, just not when it's the most powerful thing. Disruption usually has to be fringe in order to be generally acceptable. The goal is that players that love it have many options but players that hate it aren't regularly subjected to it. [SOURCE]
- They're close to the limit of keywords they'd want in standard. When you have too many it starts to defeat the purpose of having them at all. A keyword they keep around for a long time needs to have a lot of design space and low complexity. If they add something in the future it's likely they'll look to axe one at the same time. [SOURCE]
- Discover adds a lot to the game even though it's relatively high gameplay complexity. Lifesteal doesn't have enough design space for it to feel like a clear add, but the fantasy in places like demon hunter and warlock helps its case. [SOURCE]
- Wild
- Team is generally aware of common wild interactions so a lot of times a card that gets talked about never gets taken seriously because of how it would break the game in some way in combination with an old card. [SOURCE]
- They don't change many cards for the sake of wild, but it does impact the type of cards they design in the first place. [SOURCE]
- There's an extremely high chance that we will see wild changes within a year... extremely high chance (my thoughts: un-nerfs, nerfs). [SOURCE]
- The team will email about or concept a ton of mechanics but only 5-6 ever get implemented and playtested seriously for each expansion. [SOURCE]
- Most commonly they'll latch on to an idea and change it little by little until it's much different than the original version but keeps whatever the spirit of what they were trying to capture. [SOURCE]
- We'll see more Hero cards in the future, they just don't want to have too many of them in Standard at the same time. [SOURCE]
- Generally, they are moving away from having too many resources in one card. When control matchups devolve into one infinite generator and 29 removal cards the game gets less fun. [SOURCE]
Meme
- We actually received a letter from a young fan at some point about how much they loved dogs and how great it would be to have a dog expansion. [SOURCE]
- They ended their letter with something like: "I look forward to seeing more dog and dog-related cards" which then became a meme for many years until it was forgotten. [SOURCE]
Team 5
- They hire designers, not players. Their background helps them have a unique perspective but the reason all of their former players were hired is because they displayed high potential for game design. [SOURCE]
Reward Track [SOURCE]
- Iksar was pretty surprised by the initial outpouring of distaste for the system.
- Even in its launched form, he thinks most players would find that they were earning more, it just wasn't 100% of all theoretical cases and it was a minor amount more.
- He learned that clarity matters a lot when it comes to rewards, especially if players have felt burned by the system in the past.
- Unless it's easy for someone with limited understanding to know that your new system is better, they probably won't see it that way.
- Thinking that they were just going to hold back a bunch of rewards to give away later in events or through other fashions gave them the flexibility to learn about how people engaged, but he thinks that they were blindsided about how much that flexibility was going to cost them.
- As the person responsible for a lot of that decision making, it's mostly on him. He thinks that players and dev, in this case, were mostly aligned on what felt like a rewarding amount of stuff.
- So some issues in execution, some in communication.
- If he could redo from scratch he's not 100% sure that doing XP for playing was the right call - It makes the system much more complicated with questionable upside.
- They're in a reasonable place now though.
- Still going to improve in the next expansion.
- You can be sure it's going to be extra clear that whatever changes they make are positive with little to no room for misinterpretation.
- "Sounds a lot like I'm blaming players for not getting it, but it really is on us. Players shouldn't have to break out their excel sheets to understand something. It should just be clear right away."
New Ideas
- They've been doing some brainstorming around what UI and Engineering cost would be to make craftable hero portraits a thing. This is TBD (to be done) for now but he thinks players would like it and he's all for finding ways for players to spend their currency. [SOURCE]
- They plan on slowly expanding cosmetics to more sections of the game - for example, cards in general, but they don't want to overdo it because most of the players are playing cards based on visual muscle memory. [SOURCE]
- They might print some hero portraits as minions in the future, but only if they have a special reason to do it. [SOURCE]
- They don't want to introduce louder visuals (similar to Runterra's cutscenes), because they don't want to end up in a situation where they feel like they can't add something important. [SOURCE]
New Timeline/Expansion
- Work from home has been hard. If they'll be ready in March, the timeline we'll probably release then. If it'll stretching the team to the point where quality is slipping or the impact on the team is negative they'll move out till April or later. [SOURCE]
Modes
- They're pretty happy with the current ranked system and Iksar likes that players spend most of their time going up. [SOURCE]
- They've tried to brainstorm 2v2 mode at least 3 times. It's mostly UI and questions around the game flow. They had thought about things like simultaneous turns but never fell in love with the gameplay of something. It's still something he could see happening. [SOURCE]
Iksar
- He feels a lot more comfortable speaking on behalf of the team than I used to. [SOURCE]
- He thinks doing these AMA's every week seems to be too much because there's a lot of similar questions, hence people might be less interested in reading those recap posts. [SOURCE]
- Twitter isn't for everyone but Iksar is content for now. [SOURCE]
- He might move to bi-weekly AMA's. [SOURCE]
- Most designers hired 10 years ago were in some right place, right time situation, these days people actually go to school for it! [SOURCE]
- He had applied to game design roles on WoW and happened to be the #1 ranked NA Hearthstone player when Mike Donais needed a playtest partner because he was literally the only person in the final design at the time. [SOURCE]
Which Hearthstone character would you be most likely to hire onto the Design team? Elise seems like a responsible answer, I would trust her with project management. Dr. Boom sounds like a really creative guy that is into innovation (bombs mostly). Bob also seems really encouraging to work with.Quote from Iksar
Make next expansion more control-based please. F2P and unskilled players have enjoyed lately too much of aggro
Glide is a tech card like Ooze, in a meta full of weapons Ooze (or maybe the 5 manas cards with advantages) is excellent, when the meta almost don't have any weapon is a dead card, glide is awful now where Tickatus put the last nail in the control coffin and is a dead archetype, if glide exists when CW have 70% winrate and was 1 of each 2 matchs will be the best tech card in the game with 80% win-rate when played but since release of glide when we have a massive control meta? Never, then glide is crap.
I don't think Glide is "just waiting" for the meta-game to slow down. Judging by the HSReplays numbers, the card has among the lowest played win-rates in Standard at 31%. Magma Rager is 34%. Nor is it much better against the slow decks it is presumably meant to punish (39% against Highlander Mage and Ticklock.) Presumably, aggressive decks are better off simply playing cards that kill their opponent, rather than cards that try to mess up their hand. In most cases, Glide is like a 4-mana Secret Passage in a class that already has plenty of much better card draw options. As it is, 1-mana Secret Passage only has a 50% played win-rate.
Could not read the whole thing, cause I got a bit mad. Why would players feel forced to play certain cards to gain the old exp achievements? Didn't they feel forced right now then? It sounds like a bad accuse of "you are not allowed this exp in the future if you didn't play the cards we wanted in this expansion".
And when I saw his comment about Jade druid I snapped! Jade druid was true cancer - up there with quest mage.
I'm honestly scared with that bringing wild cards back (or not bringing them in this case). What I mean is by saying that they won't bring Barnes or Sea Witch back it could either be just humor or it could mean that they're indeed thinking of bringing some wild cards back into rotation for some sort of rotative "classic" set. The problem with this is that it's simply unfair to bring cards that are supposed to never be a part of starndard again back into the pool. There's many people that dust every wild card just cause they don't have any interest at all in the format. This would feel so bs and unfair tbh. The only way this could be fair is if they give the cards to everyone, as uncraftable copies (like they did with that halloween event in 2019) cause otherwise this will spawn a bigger drama than the whole battlepass controversy.
I don't want to be too judgmental. I want to be cynical and say that many of the answers here sound like excuses, but I'd rather not. It's not easy though.
I don't want to hate the guy. He seems generally pretty reasonable and open when he does these AMAs or shows up on official streams. I'm sure he's intelligent and nice. Then again, when I let him have the benefit of the doubt, many of the answers feel so "out-of-touch", that it's hard to take them for real. I won't go into every single point, just a few that feel particularly weird to me.
Aside from forcing Achievements only in Ranked and Duels, thus discouraging players to do them already, as low winrates can potentially be punished with a lower star bonus, and only because it would otherwise "hurt the experience", I would think most players would be happier having something they can do with old cards they got from events or bundles, than feeling forced to play only the new stuff. Especially when you feel under a time limit for no good reason. It feels like "get all your achievements done before the next expansion rolls out!", which is not exactly fun with achievements that are meant to take a long time, like Greybough, (0-cost) Corrupt cards, etc.
You can reroll every Battlegrounds-related quest, and some are not even exclusive to it (like winning 5 games in BG, Duels or Tavern Brawl).
The "5 ranked wins" that you get every week, on the other hand, is the single most rewarding quest and the only one that can't get rerolled, even if you wanted to. So, "forcing" players into Battlegrounds is problematic, but actually forcing players into Ranked, the most competitive mode in Hearthstone, is fine? And that's before considering that Achievements are easiest to complete in Ranked, and that Ranked gains you more Exp than any other mode, and that the monthly Ranked rewards are about the only source of additional rewards in the game, infinite Arena aside. And for the record, it actually does make me want to play less. When I don't like the meta, or my collection just sucks (or both, usually) it is a whole lot less fun to feel forced to play Ranked, because a large portion of the rewards is tied to it.
I know some people will say that Ranked is supposed to be the "real" Hearthstone and the mode that should get the most support, but how does that go with "don't force people to play the game a certain way"? Again, doesn't really sound like an honest answer.
Well... it's nice that Control decks are supposed to change again, because that was (in less extreme forms) basically the identity of Control decks for a long time now. Like Control Warrior in Rise of Shadows with Archivist Elysiana, Galakrond Priest, Kobolds Control Mage with Frost Lich Jaina, more recent Highlander Mages with Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, and many others.
But I don't really see that happening when Discover and Random are treated like the swiss-army-knife of Hearthstone, both in design and gameplay. Especially control decks like Discover for generating answers that you wouldn't want to commit to in initial deckbuilding. Maybe he's talking of future expansions only, but with cards like Palm Reading, Renew, Keywarden Ivory or Envoy Rustwix, just to name a few of the latest additions, I struggle to see anything changing anytime soon.
The original question was, whether "the design team [is] working on moving away from the multiple degrees of random deviation" as "[p]laying against decks that are more created by than not isnt fun". Even if the next expansions should feature close to no random value generators, for a drastic change, it's not going away.
I know that some people will disagree with me here because they really love Discover and Random, and "if you want consistency, play chess". I'm not saying that these things need to get toned down. I mean, I would, but that's not my point here. What I mean to say, is that adding another dozen Discover effects every expansion, because you like this element, will generally push Control decks (or in case of Mage, an entire class) in the direction you apparently want to avoid. I guess you could limit the range of Discover-effects...
Again... how am I supposed to believe this? The system was (and technically still is) highly intransparent. Where it is transparent, it's still needlessly complicated. And with all the statements about how long they've worked on it to "get it right", this was never, once, noticed during development?
If it wasn't for the (probably not even legal) datamining done by a few, people wouldn't have known what they get (or not get) out of the new system until many weeks and months later. I'm not suggesting that they need to redesign everything, and I will just wait and see how the next reward track looks like. I'm mostly over the whole issue, and I won't be like "never forget the betrayal" or something like that here. But excel sheets are sadly necessary in Hearthstone, because nothing is done straight and few things are ever clear right away. And while it might take a while between realizing that things need to be clear, and making things clear, I wonder what he thinks "clear" actually means.
The bit about expiring exp rewards for achievements is another one of those examples. It isn't mentioned in the game, wasn't mentioned in official blogposts or anything, but only mentioned in these semi-official AMAs, that few people outside of fansites will even take notice of. Is the same true for Duels achievements? Are they going to expire, or are they going to reset with a new rotation? Clear as mud.
You need Excel to keep track of everything, if only to check if made promises are kept and circulated "facts" like "300 exp per hour" are actually true, as trust is easily lost when things seem off. In the current Tavern Brawl, I've had multiple games, even those that I won, just give me 7 or 12 exp. Granted, the games were rather short, but it isn't that much fun to do exp-per-minute (or even seconds) calculations when single games just seem ridiculously undervalued (and on that note, I disagree that we are in a "reasonable place"). But also, because questions like "How much dust will you make in a month?" or "Can you affort to craft a deck if it might drop out of the meta?" or "How many packs do you need from the next expansion and when would you get them?" can only be properly answered if you keep track of everything, make crafting lists, and reevaluate everything on a regular basis. Those are simple questions that I think people should be able to answer without too much effort, but are never really easy to answer.
On that note, Iksar has also said in another tweet that he feels unhappy when players are just sitting on resources because they either can't spend them or decision making is too hard (Source). And I really don't see how latest efforts have contributed to make decisions easier. Just as another example, because of the very unclear future of Classic, that was already hinted at a while ago, I'm sitting on maybe 45 Classic packs, unsure whether I should open them, save them for new additions, or if they expire entirely, because they introduce a new "Classic" (or "Modern"?) set. All I can do is wait, until everything is "clear right away" once again.
Again, I know I will come across as nit-picky and overly critical. I'm a horrible critic that way. Which is why I want to stress once more that I'm not doing this just for the sake of it, or for upsetting people. I'm honestly glad that he chooses to do these things, because any kind of engagement and the will to communicate is an improvement and hopefully makes things go a little easier in the future. When people have a better idea about what is going on and why certain decisions are made, it might prevent another fallout like the one we've seen not too long ago.
But at the same time, it's not so much that I merely disagree with some statements, I struggle to comprehend them. Like, the game clearly coerces you to play Ranked in three different ways, and he's talking about not forcing people to go do things they don't like doing...
Should I ever get the chance to talk to him in person, I'll have to make sure to buy drinks. Both to not be too much of a hard-ass, and because he'd derserve more than one if he would actually sit through my hour-long ramblings.
Everything is so abstracted on purpose now. They don't WANT you to be able to plan ahead. They don't want you to know how much gold you will have at the start of the next expansion, how much buying power you will have, how many cards you will start with, and so on.
They want you to spend your gold, run out, and go "I can't play with this, I better buy some packs." That's been the goal since they've gone to 3 expansions a year and been creeping up the amount of gold sinks between expansions, and the number of legendaries per expansion.
Didn't read lol. I will wait for the film
How dumb to see another stupid comment from you.
I too want more dogs and dog-related cards blizzard
So he says they don't plan to bring back Barnes nor Naga Sea Witch which means they will bring back some wild cards with the classic set rework. Hopefully dirty rat will be one of them.
I agree. Tech cards like Dirty rat and the 4/3 secret stealing goblin belong in standard, forever.
Don't brainstorm 2v2 modes, brainstorm something that doesn't make 99,9% of my wild card collection be useless!
Make Sorcerer's Apprentice spells cost 1 less but NOT less than 1.
Being a Mage main for the past 5 years I actually kinda second this. The card is extremely powerful in some tempo situations, and preventing cards from going to free cast could actually be a balance change the class will need at some point.
I would make this a general approach to every single card in the game that features some form of mana cost reduction.
probably they didn't remember Jade meta.
He touched on the Achievement system but didn't acknowledge it's currently broken?
He's surprised about the backlash to the reward track? Wow I dunno, it's not like they sent out a survey about it beforehand and received near universal backlash to it. There's no way they could have known!
I get what he's saying about Glide, people seem extremely dumb over Demon Hunter cards, but Juicy Psychmelon being low to medium power? It was broken when it was first introduced, so much so that they nerfed a different card to salvage it. If Druid has a combo deck it's used because of how powerful and consistent it is.
Ah, I see you are a Blizzard representative and know exactly what the answers were for every person who took that survey