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
Honestly super cool to see dev. feedback! Hope they keep up the good work!
It WAS clear, dickswab. As is your own fucking greed for wanting to change it to the shitshow it currently is. You went from gold quests to rewards track simply because it benefits whales, simple as fucking that. Everyone else earns less unless they pay, or play obsessively. Previously, I could do my dailies, get my share, simple as that. Now, I have to play for fucking hours a day just to keep up as before. Fuck THAT, and fuck YOU.
Jesus, then make both a fucking option you fucking moron. Give the same rewards across all modes, like, you know, every other online card game.
Fucking hell, fucknuts like Iksar having so much say in game design, and Activision giving it to them, is why Hearthstone lost more than half of its developers to Brode's new studio, and why the game is effectively fucking dead.
i know right. the exp bar is stupid as hell too
they essentially added an extra monetary system on top of their loot boxes, which increases the time you need to grind for gold while reducing the gold you used to earn prior to this change. So they artificially create a problem with the introduction of XP, and then sell you the solution with their Tavern Pass. It is a very despicable business tactic, and watching the developers trying to justify it and promote it is simply pathetic.
No one complained about jade druid being the most powerful deck (though for a time it actually was, compounding peoples dislike) - it was the way it beat you. I summon a larger man, and larger man, and an even larger man was not fun to lose to at all....it was right up there with big priest high rolling barnes, or pirate warrior smashing you down to 12hp by turn 4, while holding a weapon, and inevitably, more direct damage...
Too powerful and timmy friendly, all that shit.
"There's an extremely high chance that we will see wild changes within a year... extremely high chance"
ok, so it is over to seat in Wild with full of dust and rich collection and craft only 10-20 cards per entire year to play D5 to Legend. Wild changes = too many guys still play Wild, lets make it harder or more expensive. Probably.
I just love the fact that Iksar shits on some portion of the player base's wishes even though they are just small quality of life improvements. the squelch button already exists as a plug-in and people are already doing their fucking achievements after they tank their rank all day so the people who wants to have fun with achievements just gets punished as well. Does he seriously want to listen a little or just want to seem like he listens.
He literally blamed players for not getting it, then admitted that's how it sounds, and doubles down... then adds the "it's on us" lipservice LOL
This is how Blizzard has been for several years. They believe they are the kings, and their players are the peasants.
Its important for big games to have a casual and a competitive player base thats why we ruined solo, dungeon runs, arena and tavern brawl to bring you 2 new highly competitive modes and half-assed monthly story content
Duels and? If you mean Battlegrounds then I would argue that is the most casual friendly gamemode in hearthstone considering the total lack of an entry cost.
Saying that battle pass was alright from the start and people just didn’t get it was the part when I stopped reading.
They still can’t acknowledge that it was straight awful and worse than previous system.
Also the post shows how they underestimate wild format. Jade Druid was mediocre at best? Playing against it felt like hell if you weren’t playing aggro. Since most of the decks were agressive, it’s only natural that the winrate wasn’t super high.
And thinking about interaction with older cards... Who thought about hysteria OTK and still let it happen?
If you had continued reading, you would know that your complaint is moot because Iksar literally did what you accuse him of not doing.
Actually he literally didn't. He literally said it (the first iteration of the battle pass) would be better for "most" players. That's simply factually not true based on the math done at the time; it would be the same for the top 0.01% of players who play 10 hours per day every day of their life, and worse for everyone else. The top 0.01% is by definition not "most".
The math at the time was incomplete, leaving the second wave of "legendary quests" completely out of the picture, since we didn't know the exp/benefits from them.
If you want to be factual, also stay fair.
The news at the time was that we would be getting "some" additional events. That's all the information we had. Nothing on how much, how often, timeline, etc. It could just as well have been 1 pack for New Years as nothing else, and with the history of Blizz being 2 events per year (Winterveil and Fire Festival) and each of those events giving only a couple packs, people who assumed this (which most people did) would have been fair.
If you're going to be fair, at least try to be factual.
Do you believe that there would be a wave without all the players rage? Also there was no first wave of quests, they just replaced them with first battle pass rewards.
We can’t say now what they have planned ahead. It all looked like an excuse for bad decisions
No he didn't.... "It's on us" is lip service. He not only doubled down, but tripled down on his opinion that it's the players' fault.
@LionKing714
"Do you believe that there would be a wave without all the players rage?"
Why wouldn't I believe it?
They stated officially and from the start (before the rage hit) that there will be bonus xp down the line in form of events and quests.
Also, there was a first wave of quests: The duels quests. They probably weren't to your liking, but they rolled out nontheless.
"We can’t say now what they have planned ahead."
Exactly. We can't know the exact numbers, so people can stop acting like they did/do.
I am not debating the quality, that definetly improved upon constructive complaints, but to ignore those facts is plain dishonest and unhelpful to a discussion.
@Ertai87
First of all: What in my statement did you deem not factual?
You even say yourself (now) that you didn't include the extra exp from events, since it is/was unknown. You can't spout stuff like 99,99% of the players will get ripped off, as if it were a fact...
Also he said, that it should be better for everyone. If it won't, they wanted to adjust it through exp gain and xp/level. To be clear here.
Secondly: Yep, they didn't give much info about those (or the pass as a whole) and that is definetly smth they should've done.
A new pass-system a first time mini-expansion and you assume it will be like the 1 pack-yearly events?
Really bad assupmtion there, to be frank. But that happens.
They likely did calculate the whole pass (including the unknown "future bonus exp") in such a way, that it is pretty much on par with the last system. They withhold information about that though and only showed the first half of exp gains, so people like Hearthstone Mathematics couldn't properly calculate it.
I am not saying the pass is good value, but claiming bs or obvious inaccuracies as facts, is not the way to counter that.
I just hope they'll do something about secret mages in Wild. They are Tier S for too long. And by doing something about it I mean not giving them better tools like Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon, Occult Conjurer and Rigged Faire Game - I mean even the name of this card is just spit in the face.
blud mage is fine if anything it needs a buff cuz