Weekly Community AMA From Dean "Iksar" Ayala - Golden Cards Upgrades, Craftable Skins & Card Backs, Titans and 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.
If you want to see the source of an answer, click on the corresponding [S] letter.
Here's a summary of answers from this week's AMA:
Arena
- [S] Classic Arena rotation with only old base set + classic set is something we "might" see in a 20.4 or 20.6 patch.
Achievements/Rewards
- [S] They want to expand the long-term reward/achievement system (similar to the 1000 win achievements for heroes) in the future, but for different things - Achievement points, total reward track levels ever earned, high legend finish, etc.
Balance/Design
- [S] Class identities still matter, otherwise, classes would feel too close to each other.
- [S] Deathrattle Rogue doesn't have enough heal or taunt cards, that's why Iksar thinks Tempo Deathrattle rogue might exist in the future, but not the slower version.
- [S] Iksar thinks that deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience.
- [S] He thinks it should be there if you're into it, but it shouldn't a dealbreaker if you aren't.
- [S] They want to find more ways to get meta or fun decks for people that don't want to build their own decks and don't want to go out of the client.
- [S] If they make more modes where your cards don't matter, It's easy to stop caring about the things you collect.
- [S] Ideally, when you open a pack the cards that come in it are exciting for a variety of reasons, and not just exciting for one mode that you might/not play.
- [S] Iksar tried to guess that Even Paladin spent the longest time in standard as the #1 deck in data of all-time.
- [S] They don't want to make any cards that would permanently change your mana crystals to less than (10).
- [S] They also don't want to make any cards that would reduce the attack of your opponent's stuff permanently.
- [S] They regret how the Warsong Commander nerf ended up. There were too many people in the team trying to suggest different changes and they had to make a compromise.
- [S] They might bring back some cards/mechanics from wild to the mini-set if they were well received in the past.
- [S] Priest identity changed a little bit, since the 2019 class identity blog post, to embrace the shadow-fantasy more.
Heroes
- [S] There's a very high chance that we might see a Tauren hero in the future.
Core Set
- [S] [S] Iksar's hinting that some Core Set cards are among his all-time favorites. We listed his All Time Favorites from a different tweet below:
- [S] They're always a bit nervous about large-scale change such as Core Set.
- [S] The main idea of the Core Set is that if you reach level 10 with a class, you'll have access to a better core with more synergies than before.
Collection
- [S] Upgrading cards to their golden form, crafting card backs, and (some) hero skins is one project that they are actively working on.
Battlegrounds
- [S] They don't have any plans on changing the rating system to the ladder system.
Duels
- [S] Part of the goal for duels was to have the cards you own matter.
Wild
- [S] Secret Mage and Darkglare Warlock is something they discuss every patch, .2/.4/.6. There are no plans for now.
Titans
- [S] 'Titans' in the warcraft universe are the opposite side of Old Gods.
- [S] They've often thought about what a 'Titanic' minion in Hearthstone would be.
- [S] He's personally played with the idea of a card that costs more than 10 mana and you have to spend mana over the course of many turns in order to actually use it.
Design Of The Game
- [S] They're happy with the representation of minions on board.
- [S] Iksar thinks that they could a better job showing off card back on board - UI is tricky to solve.
Modes
- [S] New game modes are the most difficult to develop in Hearthstone.
- [S]They're working on another game mode now and there are just way more open questions to solve than anything else they're doing.
Quote from IksarQuestion: Have you ever been recognized in public or had a cool positive interaction with someone unexpectedly because of hearthstone?
Answer from Iksar: Recognized?... No, unless it was at a Hearthstone event which sort of doesn't count. Positive interaction, yeah! Happens all-the-time at a blizzard level because of the fandom the company has but yeah. There is one story I thought was funny.....
About 5? 6? years ago I was at a Fireside Gathering and met a dad and his kid, we'll call him Jim. I was about to leave and Jim's dad asked me if his son could play a game against me.
I said yes, added him as a friend, and was pretty surprised how good he was. I beat him 3-0 or something but he was maybe 11 (terrible with guessing ages) and clearly knew a lot about the game.
Super nice, and he messaged me later to say thanks and we chatted a little bit. Over time he reported some bugs and we talked about HS. When Overwatch came out I saw he got the game and I was checking out his profile...
He was ranked 700 rating or something, which was honestly worse than I thought you could even be. I remember laughing and thinking welp, I guess Jim is truly a card gamer.
A couple of weeks went by and he was 1500 something, could more at 2500, a couple more and he was diamond, which was the same as me! A few months later he was a grandmaster. Damn kids...
Jim and I still talk from time to time today, he even went to a game design camp after being inspired by the idea of making games. Someday I hope he gets into the industry and we can talk about that time I crushed him in our Hearthstone series.
Celestalon: I was waiting for this story to end with "And that's how I met John McIntyre."
Iksar: Should have known it wasn't John when I said I was impressed with his Hearthstone skills...
"Iksar thinks that deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience."
I rarely post or comment but this statement shocked me. Even a monkey would be curious to build a custom deck in a card game!
"Iksar thinks that deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience."
Wow... this guy... wow...
Deckbuilding is the most fundamental and important core aspect of any card game... This ridiculous statement sets the course for this game's entire future...
"There's a very high chance that we might see a Tauren hero in the future."
Good. Can we have a Forsaken hero too? Tauren and Forsaken are the last of the 8 original playable WoW races to be represented in Hearthstone as Heroes.
Actually, we could do with some more diversity in heroes in general.
Especially rogue. They have the least amount of skins at 4, and all 4 of those are dirty elves, and 3 of those are the same elf.
Don't we already have the Forsaken Queen herself Sylvanas Windrunner as a Hunter hero?
There's also an Old God (N'Zoth), a Murloc (Morgl), a Mech (Sir Annoy-0), a Mechanical Demon Lord (Mecha-Jaraxxus), a Treant (Dame Hazelbark), a Naga (Lady Vashj) and even the Mad Aspect Deathwing representing Dragons.
Hero Diversity is something that'll come naturally as themes allow different races to be illustrated. If/when we get an expansion about Tauren and totems, we'll probably get someone like Hamuul Runetotem or one of the Bloodhoof reps
'Iksar thinks that deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience.'
Thank god. Deck building is a nightmare.
'Iksar thinks that deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience.'
Aaaand I'm out.
"deckbuilding shouldn't be a core part of the Hearthstone experience"
It's sentiments like this that are just mind boggling. How is this guy in charge of a card game?
Blizzard trying to make card collecting matter by addind a duels mode,which one is unplayable and there is lack of players actually playing this mode. Also we got a wild mode, which one is barely playble too,cant belive they dont pay ANY attention to whole game mode, they just throwed old cards like a garbage bag, all of them are not using by most of players.So we have only one game mode to use our cards which is standard. if Blizzard actually wants to make card collecting matter, they should make a lot of changes and nerfs in wild and duels, we dont need another god damn game mode which will be instantly forgotten by developers. I was praying to Blizzard to reanimate wild mode for so many years, and all i get is another imbalanced secret mage package. Make wild a game mode to play, not a garbage can, do some duels changes and keep both of this game modes playable,thats the way to make card collecting actually matter.
The only "favorite cards" I can really see going to the core set are defile, void ripper and maybe dire frenzy (but probably not). The other cards seem too expansion theme related. It seems unlikely that they will add just one old god or one hero card without the core set seeming inconsistent. Maybe Rin could replace Jaraxxus... Then again we still have tickatus and if the rumor about a hero card remake of jaraxxus isn't true, then my money would be on Mal'ganis as the core set legendary. He he would support the demon class identity well.
I agree. If deck building wasn't a core part of the hearthstone experience, I wouldn't be playing it.
Couldn’t agree more. Be me, deck building is as important as playing. I really enjoyed playing off-meta decks
I think what he means is more like: You shouldn't have to build a deck before playing if you don't find it fun.
The context was the question of how much time you should invest before "the fun part" starts. I love deck building too and for years almost spent more time building than playing. The statement sounds odd, but has to be seen in the context of player inclusion/broadness of play style :)
It feels like they’ve been talking about golden upgrades for quite some time, and I’d really like for them to make a decision at some point.
yeah they already made a post about this in april 2020 https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/7393-golden-cards-upgrading-new-expansion-mechanic
whats so hard about it?
10 copies common = 1 golden
4 copies rare = 1 golden or upgrade for 400 dust idk
3 copies epic = 1 golden or upgrade for 1000 dust
2 copies of the same legendary = golden one or upgrade a single one for 2000 dust w/e
Check this on Reddit:
https://reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/lhvceu/a_lot_is_going_to_change_so_now_is_the_time_to/
Why is no one mentioning C'Thun returning? That means loads of the neutral cards will be C'Thun related unless they want to make him useless.
C'Thun isn't returning, it's just listed as one of Iksar's favorite cards, and he mentioned those cards completely unrelated to the question of what will be returning in the core set. I very much doubt we'll se any of the "old" Old Gods return as long as we have the Darkmoon versions in standard.
Crap, didn't read it correctly. Hope we get Defile back tho. One of my favourite cards too.
If we do get Defile back, it'll probably be slightly nerfed. Was easily one of the best cards in Frozen Throne and may be a bit too overwhelming
I gotta say, they've been doing a lot over the past year and they're doing a lot of it pretty well. A whole lot more new content than in any previous years.
But then it also kinda sucks that those things are usually overshadowed by a few big fuckups, such as letting Secret Mage ruin Wild for multiple years.