Developer Interview - Battlegrounds, No 10 Gold For 3 Wins, Next Patch & More
Hearthstone's famous game developer Dean "Iksar" Ayala had an interview yesterday with a Chinese website called iyingdi.
In their interview, they were discussing some national questions, how they should improve their communication with the rest of the non-English speaking community, some Battlegrounds questions, etc.
These are probably the more important parts of the interview:
Battlegrounds
- Junkbot will be moving to tier 4.
- Khadgar & Brann Bronzebeard will be changed to give you only one triple (at first, all tokens will be summoned, then you'll get the triple).
- The next Battlegrounds related patch should be in 1 or 1,5 weeks.
- They have multiple solutions for the reconnecting issue, but because they would have to change the whole system for Battlegrounds only (since Battlegrounds run on the same system as other parts of Hearthstone), It's really hard for them to resolve this issue.
- When someone reconnects, they think that you should be able to see the rest of the animations, which would prevent this whole reconnecting issue, but this solution turned out to be very hard to implement.
- They'll make a few adjustments to the progression system for battlegrounds - mainly to the experience gain throughout the game.
- They don't want to make significant changes to the core of Battlegrounds gameplay in order to maintain the accessibility for returning players.
- Darkmoon Prizes were well received, but the freshness has disappeared.
- They want to update Battlegrounds more frequently in the future.
- They're developing new races with new minions entering and leaving the card pool.
- We'll learn more about Battlegrounds updates soon (probably on Blizzconline).
Misc
- They don't plan on adding back the 10 gold bonus for 3 wins.
Communication
- Iksar wants to have a similar AMA as he's currently doing but for China-only.
China-region
- Bot problem is more serious in China than in any other region.
Iksar
- He learned how to wish a happy Chinese New Year in the Chinese language.
[SOURCE]
PS: Special thanks to ZelKnow once again for bringing this up to our attention + translating some important parts to English.
no it doesn't...is at least 10k/15k less gold than before.
Have you actually done the math? I have. (although it's been months, so I'm not sure if I can find the calculations again)
And while I'm not going to calculate it again, those calculations showed that in general, you get more gold in the new system than in the old, and definitely not 10-15k less. How were you even getting enough gold to even be able to get 10-15k less with the new system anyway?
I don't know about exact numbers. But before I had 1 pack per day = 7 packs per week. If i play for 1 pack per day in the end of the week i opened like 10 packs. So yeah, the new system is better.
How is players reconnecting to have more time the issue here? Hearthstone is a strategy game and the timer or the player's apm shouldn't be the limiting factor in what the player can do during their turn. The solution is to make the players have more time during their turns.
I'm not mad if someone reconnects, BUT
1st it's a bulhsit, that everyone has different timer depends on how long your turn longed, why am I punished if I just fought longer? 2nd using firewall thing is kinda like using 3rd party software, BUT you can do it by just closing HS and relogging, BUT hs is so unoptimised and you need powerful computer xD (yeah, buy computer to play HS). Just give us skip animations button...
Btw. I don't think being forced to even close and reopen a game is part of any strategy game :p
Right. More time per turn.
Because roping isn't a problem in this game whatsoever.
Uh... no. Nobody wants to play 30-45 minute games dude. Can you imagine if tournaments had no timer? It would take a week to finish a tourney
When I play BG, on my phone, half the time I sit there for 30-45 seconds per turn waiting for the timer to finish.
And besides, the issue is people winning with a strat that uses extra time. Giving them more time just means those people can go infinite which is not fun in the slightest for anyone else.
One solution is to just add a skip fight animation button, and/or make the animations faster. Battleground animations are so godawfully slow.
Agreed! That's always been a big issue for me with Hearthstone in general. It's 20% gameplay and 80% waiting for either animations or your opponent's turn to finish.
Half the game is combat. You should not be able to skip it to gain an advantage against other players.
People reconnect the game because the animation is too long while the timer still keep going during animation
Solution - forced player to watch the animation despite reconnecting
??
They don’t even consider shorten the animation time?
No, they didn't.
People are not skipping "because the animation is too long", but "because you get more time than your opponents, who watch them". Even with shortened animations people would get an unfair advantage with a reconnect.
(Unless the animations take like 5 seconds, wich would look awfull)
I mean, half of the game (and fun) is watching your armies fare against each other, no?
The "animation" is combat. People should never have been able to skip combat.
I think in Asia server bot are crazy too. I create new account on Asia. And play on aprentice rank. It takes 5 min to queued and you fight against warrior bot that spam taunt Minion everyturn like wtf. Pls fix this
Not going to address how the elemental tribe has several ways to build up to an extreme amount of attack and health, while other familys struggle to even buff a single time?
What are you on about?
Nomi is not very good, you need him very, very, very early and certainly a 2nd one to actually close out lobbies. Rag is slightly better, but again you'll likely need a couple of them and rag is NOT an elemental exclusive, in fact it's better to have some menagerie units with him, hydra, foe reaper, deflect-o ect.
Pirates have arguably the best and quickest scaling in the game, when they hit, but they are the hardest to hit since you ideally need 4 hoggers to pull it off. The scallywag/eliza build is a bit of a meme but can do work and has considerably stats when it goes off properly.
Dragons, they are undeniably the best tribe in the game right now, you have excellent scaling with kaly and you get a board of divine shields thanks to nadina, which no other tribe can get.
Murlocs, poisons give them infinite attack and there's seer and bagurgyl that give HP scaling to the entire board, obviously you want brann with murlocs for very high scaling.
Beast/mech/demons are probably worse than elementals for late game scaling since they all have lower ceilings, but elementals are a long way from being op.
Dragons are good because :
- Good lvl 6 (Malygos) that gives them big stats
- Good lvl 6 (Nadina) for defensive tools
- Good lvl 5 with Razorgore
Beats are good because :
- Good lvl 6 (Goldrinn) that gives them big stats
- Good lvl 5 (Baron) which gives them even bigger stats
- Good lvl 4 (Hydra) to swipe boards quickly
Imo, beasts are easier to do, one less lvl 6 needed + no time needed to build your huge stats as you just need the minions, rather than having to play 40k battlecries
Adjustments to battlegrounds experience? Pls don't make it less
Communication
lol they only care about China.... greedy bastards
Uhm, Iksar is doing weekly AMA where he answers ENGLISH questions. Asian people are not the best at speaking english and with china being a big part of blizzard community, they want to make something for them only. That doesn't mean they only care about china.