Hearthpwn

Community AMA With Hearthstone Developer - Iksar #35

Today we've prepared a summary of questions and answers that were answered by a Hearthstone developer Iksar in his 35th community AMA.

Be aware that some questions and answers were adjusted for a better understanding or better reading experience and they might slightly vary from the original text.

Be aware that Iksar hasn't been at work for over a month, so some of the questions might be a little bit outdated.

Quick Recap Of The Most Interesting Answers:

• New Battlepass for BGs is in development
• Old diamond cards from tavern passes will be available again (in the future)
• Old skins from tavern passes will be available again (in the future)
• A new type of card is coming (in the future)
• No plans to buff Moorabi or any other card in Wild
• They'll be monitoring Warrior's and Hunter's Questines in Wild after the expansion release
• Un-nerfs for cards leaving standard will still happen
• Lich King class is inevitable, but won't happen anytime soon
• No year-long story format expansions in 2022
• Cards could get cheaper (in the future) as monetization would come from cosmetics, but It's not possible to make them 100% free, because cosmetics won't ever cover expenses for those cards
• Iksar wants to find a way how to make Duels more accessible for new players
• Iksar would like to see Bard or Nekromancer added into the game (if they were to add heroes from outside WoW)
• They have regional reporters that send them a summary of reports and based on that they evaluate all the different things
• Team 5 will be changing their structure into groups for the features (BG, Constructed, Mercenaries, etc) instead of groups per discipline (design, art, engineering, etc).
• Solo adventure skins (Dungeon run, Dalaran heist) is something they want to add (in the future, not anytime soon) as rewards for completing achievements in those adventures
• 2v2 would require a completely new UI redesign for computers and mobiles (probably won't happen anytime soon)
• New features are coming in 2022, you can suggest more of them yourself - CLICK HERE
• Report toxic behavior within the game is something they want to add (in the future)
• New Arena system will be planned or cut after the holidays
• Hero cards will be banned in Arena's drafts

Arena

Q: I know it's been asked before but with the set so close are hero cards going to be banned from this expansion in the Arena?
A: Yes, they'll be banned.

Q: What do you think about older, lower power level sets in arena rotation? Drafting cards from them usually feels bad, worth re-examining how to do rotations?
A: I think we'll probably just do away with the idea of 'these expansions are in, these are out' for at least one rotation. We'll just curate a list of cards from various expansions that we think might play well together.
A: I'd love for the community to do this themselves, but it's hard to understand what that even means. Everyone? The community chooses a representative to choose for them? From what region? It's something I'm thinking about....

Q: Any update on the Arena system/MMR revamp?
A: No, will be a topic to discuss and either plan on or cut once we get back from holiday break at the start of the new year. Booked until then.

Battlegrounds

Q: Have you thought about adding different battle passes? I basically only play constructed so the rewards for other modes feel “useless” to me.
A: We have a battlegrounds pass in development, I imagine most or all battlegrounds content will be there in the future. It's still in early dev so no release patch planned yet.

Card Design & Balance

Q: Are there any current plans on adding a new type of card?
A: Yes :3

Q: Death knights when? :)
A: Someday, probably. Lich King is too strong of a Warcraft character to leave alone forever. Not anytime soon, though!

Q: What’s your fav card design you can’t/won’t/shouldn’t ship?
A: I've always been intrigued by having something reaction time-based. Like a laser that scrolls quickly back and forth on the screen that you have to click on to activate and hope you timed it right to hit the right minion/hero. Probably too big of a tech task for a one-off card.

Q: What are the best golden legendaries to craft from Alterac?
A: Shadowcrafter Scabbs and Cariel Roame seem like solid choices.

Q: If Questlines turn out to be restrictive for new strategies, would you consider adding a "rule" that if you play a Questline/Quest you can only be matched against another Questline/Quest player? Like a "subgame" let's say. That way the people who enjoy them can still play them.
A: Probably not, if we really believed there was an experience so unfun we wanted to stop huge buckets of players from playing against it... We'd just nerf or change those cards in some way. 

Cosmetics

Q: Are there any plans to make old diamond cards from battle passes purchasable/craftable? For example for those that missed Blademaster Samuro or Varian, King of Stormwind?
A: Not currently, though I imagine as we get better shop tech and personalization it's something we'd consider.

Q: With the recent ever-increasing push of cosmetic sales on the shop in all modes with a shop, do you think a move to a more cosmetic-based monetization model would work instead of a card selling-based one? Would it be possible one day?
A: Cosmetic revenue helps us give away more gameplay content without hurting the business of Hearthstone. We are more and more comfortable doling out more gameplay rewards as cosmetics get more popular, so yes indirectly we're moving in that direction.
A: Unlikely we'll ever have a cosmetics-based monetization approach. Cosmetics are always a low % adoption product. There are large game teams like Hearthstone that are successful on the back of mostly cosmetics, but their audiences are so insanely large a low % adoption is ok.
A: Third-person, 3D character model games also tend to fare better in this space because it's easier to make cool visual things players care about. If we had the audience size of something like Fortnite or League then yes, a cosmetics-based monetization approach would probably support the 100's of people that make the game.

Q: Is there any possibility for Annhylde to rerun? Not sure about the policy for BP rewards, would love to have her though.
A: We don't have very many exclusive items other than stuff you get from achievements, so we'll likely rerun at some point. As we get better shop tech and can personalize store offers more we'll try to deliver you things you are likely to want.

Q: I remember you once mentioning Solo Adventures heroes (such as Toki or Barkeye) becoming achievement reward skins. Is that still considered?
A: Yes, just been pretty far down the list of things to get in. We still want to upgrade achievements, particularly for old adventure content.

Duels

Q: Is there anything cool you can tell us about Duels? Seems like the format is getting some more attention from players lately, and I've sure been enjoying it.
A: I'd like to find ways to make it easier to hop in and play. I like the flexibility building your own deck each run gives you, but it's quite a large barrier. Need to find a solution for that or something that eases the experience.

Expansions

Q: How do you feel about the year-long story format now that the team has done it twice? Should we expect it as the norm going forward?
A: We still think about the year-long story as a tool in the toolbelt rather than the right or wrong way to do something. Next year should be more standalone stories rather than a yearlong thing.

Iksar

Q: Favorite hero portraits released over the past year?
A: NZOTH!

Q: As a player, what do you like the most about Standard Hearthstone over other strategy games (particularly other card games but I'm also interested in comparisons vs other strategy games)
A: The fantasy is easier to understand than many other card games. I love Magic/Gwent/Runeterra but the player is disconnected from the fantasy in all those experiences. In Hearthstone, I am Jaina, you are Rexxar, I point fireball at your face, you explode. Easy.

Q: What kind of Hearthstone-related content do you consume the most? Twitch streams, youtube videos, written articles, podcasts, social media discussions? How do you consider the relative community impact of each of these?
A: Our regional teams send us summarized reports. I pay pretty close attention to those so I can get a download of sentiment and discussion in regions where English is not the primary language.
A: Reddit and Twitter, watch streams, etc. I enjoy doing all those things as a player but I try to reserve design judgment based on a consumer survey, data, community summary reports, etc. Reading and acting on info from my personal social media isn't a smart way to make decisions.

Q: If you could add one non wow class (probably from another game) as a hearthstone class what would it be and why?
A: Bard or Necromancer. Warlock is kind of necromancery but for whatever reason the word NECROMANCER is just more badass to me.

Modes

Q: Thoughts on 2v2 / 3v3 mode, where there are 2-3 attackable heroes on either side of the board? Like has the team ever considered it and is it even possible? I’ve thought for a few years now that going multiplayer co-op would fuel a huge interest in competitive Hearthstone
A: There are some gameplay challenges, but the biggest challenge is having a coherent UI to house all the information. On paper, it's a golden idea. It leverages content we already make (cards...) and creates a social experience when our game is very limited (bad) at creating those experiences. Most Hearthstone players are on phone, on a medium-sized screen. Putting 4 players there would require some rethinking of how our UI works.

New Features & Improvements

Q: Seeing a lot of pottymouth rage-add screens lately, any plans to add in-client reporting (in HS as opposed to b.net)?
A: On the list of features to investigate, unfortunately, I don't have any info to add beyond that. Reporting lives through another team right now so I have very limited info.

Q: What did you think/feel about the various ideas presented in your recent “2022 Features Feedback” tweet? Did you like most of them, or did a lot seem/feel too ambitious or costly to implement? Which idea was your favorite? Least favorite?
A: I'm still in the space of generating a big list. Here is where I ended up after some personal brainstorming and community feedback.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE JUST IDEAS THEY'LL BRAINSTORM FIRST, THOSE WILL NOT GET ADDED INTO THE GAME IN A NEAR FUTURE!

If you want to contribute yourself, here is a link that you can use to suggest any new features.

Team 5

Q: Anything (you can share) that you are particularly excited about when returning back to work? Also - has taking time off like this changed any way you look at work?
A: Anytime there is a big fire at work or a big life event it makes things that used to stress me out less of a big deal. I imagine there will be very few projects at work that could cause me to panic after having a kid... perspective!
A: Also we're changing our team structure significantly starting next year. Instead of there being separate groups per discipline (design, eng, art, etc) we're moving towards grouping people by feature. Like all the people involved in making BG from all disciplines will be working together.
A: We'll have some growing pains, but excited to see how it changes the work.

Wild

Q: How did Freeze Shaman come about as an archetype for AV? Could we see a Moorabi buff to celebrate?
A: I think 99% of the audience would see Moorabi buffed and be like ????? what is this ?????. I didn't work on the initial design for this set but I imagine having a snow set is where the idea originates. Doing freeze stuff in the snow is an easy fantasy to sell.

Q: Would you be willing to buff some old cards (in wild) that have a synergy with returning card mechanics? (For example Moorabi and other freeze Shaman support cards)?
A: Buffing cards in a 1000+ card format has very little upside with potentially large downsides. We still plan on un-nerfing cards that had nerfs targeted at Standard but not buffing cards that were never nerfed just so they can be more powerful.

Q: Can Warrior's and Hunter's Questlines be banned from Wild? If so, can they be nerfed once they rotate to Wild completely (along with Warlock's)?
A: We'll watch post release and nerf anything that is a power or population outlier, as always.

Click on the "A" letter if you want to see the source

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