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...
Collection
[S] Upgrading cards to their golden form, crafting card backs, and (some) hero skins is one project that they are actively working on.
THX GOD!!! Explorer's Map will be MINE! FINALLY!
I think they should back Kathrena Winterwisp that was realy usefull in old metas. And I afraid a little about Ultimate Infestation .
How is this even possible - no plans for Secret Mage?! The most oppressive and disgusting deck in wild..
no nerf in secret mage = garbage, most cancer deck ever for 2 years and bliizard give more and more secrets and sinergy all expansion
Can anyone ask him why they keep printing mana cheat cards and other cards that encourage hitting face when it comes to hunter?
Shirvallah was exactly like this. 25 Mana to start and cost was reduced by cost of spells you played.
I actually wouldn't mind all the classes getting their hero cards back in the core set. They would add one more semi-permanent option to deck building. Obviously some of them would need minor tweaks in power level. Just keep them strong, but not too strong that every single deck includes them even if they don't synergise with the deck (Zilliax).
That's an interesting concept. You'd never have to waste mana crystals by doing nothing with them.
This statement confirms that they either don't care enough to address problems in wild OR don't care enough to even look into it. I just can't believe that the team would reach the conclusion that wild it okay the way it is right now.
Zeph is also one of my favorite cards, but its too soon to add it to the core set. We all need a break from strong cards at some point.
Sure makes me cranky that Priest is the only class Blizz seems to focus on when it comes to their class identity when Hunter literally doesn't have one. Scratch that, Hunter is the class where they aren't allowed to do anything fun or interesting. Or Draw. Or Heal.
But yeah we gotta make sure Priest players can enjoy their shadow priest fantasies.
Don't you know? Hunter is the aggressive class, going face is their indetity, it's been like that since 2014! But it seems that wasn't enough, so they got a brother called Demon Hunter, which has as its identity doing everything Hunter does but in a better and cheaper way. I guess some of the devs have some long lasting childhood grudges involving their siblings.
As much as I hate giving warlocks this much power, Defile being back would keep everything balanced against aggro metas. I just hope they don't bring back any Wild cards that just have rotated
I need to write this as calmly as possible, as hardcore anti-aggro cards (e.g. Reno etc) have a dedicated fan base with people who don't like the aggro playstyle, BUT:
Defile is undercosted. And not just undercosted, but brutally undercosted.
It'll be in slower Wild Warlock decks forever for precisely that reason. There is no way 2-mana Defile should be allowed back in Standard just because it is a card that requires skill to use effectively.
If we could ask Blizzard to provide the data of every cast of Defile, what would the average real-world amount of damage it does to a board would actually be? Around 3? Around 4? For a cost of 2-mana? There is an argument that some undercosting is OK because it often needs to be played alongside a cheap minion or spell damage minion. There is an argument that some undercosting is OK because that rewards a skillful use of the card. Fine.
But not 2-mana. That is ridiculous. Let's imagine that the lead designer of Hearthstone said his favorite card was a 3-mana Leeroy Jenkins. Time to question his competence?
I have been saying it for a long time - Defile is broken at 2 mana. It's oppressively powerful, actually.
See, people love Defile because they think it's a "smart" card. Blizzard likes it for the same reason - it makes people THINK they're smart when they use it and kill a bunch of stuff. They get these "spot the lethal" videos posted where someone uses define to chain a bunch of death rattle token kills and punch through for lethal. And Blizzard has shown that highlight potential trumps balance a lot of the time.
But the reality is, it's not that difficult to easily set up board states with 1-health increments in order to clear a bunch of stuff. It was TOO easy for Defile to kill multiple targets. A board clear for 2 mana is unbelievably broken and Defile was broken. Even dealing 3 damage to everything for 2 was broken and you got that a ton of the time on early turns.
Zephyrs is the same thing. Another card Blizzard was very proud of that is broken at 2 mana.
If Zephrys becomes core set I’ll uninstall. I hate the way that Highlander decks have 2 neutral cards in every single one but are supposed to feel unique. Zeph is my most hated card in standard by a wide margin.
I agree. Blizzard was too proud of Zephrys to nerf it out of 2 mana, which it is unbalanced as.
Decks should not be able to produce answers so consistently that aren't even in their class. And the decks that weren't even Singleton decks running it so they could get a massive finisher late in games just showed how problematic the card was.
Wait what ? Without deck building what's left of this game ?
Edit : core set Zephrys lol
Read the next 2 answers. :-)
I did, but still I don't think that saying deck building shouldn't be a core of this card game is a good way of putting it.