Hearthpwn

Community AMA With Game Director Iksar - New & Returning Player's Experience Failure?

Today we've prepared a summary of questions and answers that were answered by Hearthstone Director Iksar in his community AMA on Twitter.

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

Quick Recap Of The Most Interesting Answers:

• They're not happy with the onboarding experience for new or returning players, hence they're forming a new team to solve that issue.
• Some new Tavern Brawls are in development, but this mode is unlikely to return to its heyday.
• They still want to add more minion tribes in the future, they just need a good expansion theme for it.
• Their card balance philosophy has changed and they'll continue to make more minor or more frequent changes in the future.
• They'd rather create a new archetype or support less popular archetypes than print cards that counter specific meta decks.
• Tech cards are something they definitely still want to make, just not as good as Mindrender Illucia.
• Locations were on the table since Fractured in Alterac Valley but were scrapped until now because of certain issues with UI or design.
• The next expansion after Murder at Castle Nathria might be available in Arena sooner than the rest of the game as some kind of an event.
• They are usually ahead with 1-2 expansions for Battlegrounds.
• They're now planning the theme of the first 2 expansions of 2024 (which will be the 10th year anniversary of Hearthstone).

Playerbase

Q: How do you feel about the current systems in place for onboarding new players and retaining them.

Quote from Iksar

Bad.

We're currently working on forming a small team to tackle onboarding and winback experiences, what we have isn't good enough.

Tavern Brawl

Q: When’ll we see a new Tavern Brawl?
A: I honestly don't know... Tavern Brawl is a good example of something we pumped the breaks on to use that time elsewhere (things like duels, book of X content, more new stuff in dev). @themattlondon might know!

Quote from Matt London

We're in active development on new tavern brawls.
Not a lot of new ones, but there are a couple in the works right now.
And Dean's right -- TB is low-priority and is unlikely to return to the release cadence of its heyday.
But the trade-off is we're working on new exciting things!

General Questions

Q: How do you evaluate the success of each game mode? And related, how do you decide on the amount of resources dedicated to support each game mode?
A: A lot of that is data. Are players playing this mode? Less or more than they did previously? Do our consumer surveys say players love this mode? Does this mode generate revenue?
A: Once we understand those questions, we still have to make a decision on how to support them. The question usually isn't whether we should support something or not, it's whether the talented people supporting that thing could be better utilized elsewhere or not.

Q: Would you ever consider doing some sort of card design podcast/workshop with @maro254? It'd be really cool to hear from lead designers of two of the biggest CCGs think about the craft, what you have in common and what you do differently etc.
A: I had thought about copying (and crediting) @maro254 by doing a '10 years, 10 lessons' talk about Hearthstone. He did a '20 years, 20 lessons' talk that I think might be the best design talk I've ever heard.
A: Probably not, though. Rosewater is an incredible writer, storyteller, and speaker. I'm more into.... clever use of internet memes... stuff like that.

New Minion Tribes

Q: Surprised we didn't get the Undead tribe with the new expansion theme. Do you expect Undead to ever join Hearthstone or is that a tribe that's too vague in its meaning and would cause a lot of dual-tribe overlap in minions? Similar to how people talk about the Pirate tribe.
A: Undead aren't really a Revendreth thing. We're definitely for the idea of adding more tribes, just have to get to an expansion theme that warrants it.

Balance

Q: A concern that’s come up in some circles is the rate of meta churn and change lately, especially with this expansion. Between 23.2.2 and .6, there were 36 new cards and 32 changes in 40 days. Do you have opinions on this cadence, consider it an issue, and/or have plans to fix?
A: We're definitely in a new world. We used to view card changes as a negative thing we'd only do when the positive was so great it outweighed the negative of change. These days, I'd say the 'negative' of card changes is viewed as a very minor thing.
A: And it causes us to make a variety of small-upside changes. Final design (@Chakki_HS,@AlecoGereco) are certainly aware of this change in mindset. I'd leave it to them on how they think it's going.

Q: Is it common to create cards for an expansion late to combat or help a portion of the meta? An example that may fit this category is Skulking Geist for Jade Idol, but were there other examples of cards created for a similar purpose but not released?
A: Somewhat rare. It's more common for us to make changes to not further power up an existing powerful archetype. Generally speaking, it's better for us to just nerf the powerful thing than point players to 1 thing they need to use to beat it.

Q: A mechanic I'm surprised hasn't been explored more is hand revealing. Ex. A 3 mana 4/4 that has the drawback of revealing the left-most card in your hand while in play. What is it about that mechanic that makes it tricky/unexplored design-wise?
A: Hand revealing is more interesting as a concept than it is in practice. Having unknowns is good. If you know what your opponent can do, it usually means you have less interesting choices to make.

Murder at Castle Nathria

Q: There's a lot more disruption than we're used to seeing in the upcoming set. Does this indicate a larger shift in design philosophy, or was this purely in reaction to Stormwind?
A: The team is generally more pro-risk than we have been in the past. Accepting more complexity and more high-emotion cards even if sometimes those emotions are negative. We've learned more in the last year or two of card design than we did in the many years previous as a result.
A: We'll probably skew more towards less complexity but I feel like disruption has been more welcome than I first imagined. Will probably keep printing, maybe just not at an Illucia level of power.

Q: I’m just wondering if you can provide some background on locations. How/when did the idea for this card type come up in the design stage? Any inspirations? Were some harder to design than others? Are there any other card types in development right now?
A: The first iteration of locations happened in Alterac Valley, but we didn't find anything very fun in design so they were scrapped. The second iteration came in Sunken City, but we ran out of UI time to solve some UI issues, so they were scrapped. The final version is finally here!
A: Locations went through an incredible amount of playtesting and were loved and hated then loved a few times over. @Songbird_HS might have some of those stories.

Arena

Q: Any chance of ever having new set arena cards a few days early in the Arena. It was done in the past a long time ago (don't remember how many times) and would be cool to play with some of the new cards a couple of days early.
A: I think there are some tech probs with this nowadays. Can check with @Celestalon and @themattlondon to see what they think. We have a '.0' day where the patch is live but the cards aren't ready. Then we have a 'content unlock' day which is the expansion launch.
A: I think the old way we did this was to have the cards from the expansion live in the Arena after the .0, but before the content unlock day.

Quote from Matt London

This is doable. We're talking about it. Maybe with the next set after Nathria!

Battlegrounds

Q: It has been said that there are, usually, 3 expansions being worked on at different stages at the same time. What is the cycle of big updates for battlegrounds? Is it one at a time or do you have a few being worked on at the same time?
A: One or two at a time still. We've had almost a decade to refine and build playtesting time into expansion-making schedules, but we've had to play a great deal of catchup with BG content creation. Our plan is to eventually be the same as expansion sets.

Future expansions

Q: How far ahead are you guys in the planning of sets right now?
A: The furthest in the future sets we're working on in some capacity are the first two expansions of 2024. No card design work is done but we're exploring what a two-set narrative could look like. Talked to the WoW team about possibly doing a canon universe thing, but very early.
A: This early on, the first thing we think of has a <10% chance of being the thing we actually do. We're just starting on some interesting narrative ideas very early.

Dean

Q: What’s it like being Game Director now? What kind of direction do you want to lead Hearthstone in?
A: Job is good. Some new things, a lot of the things I was already comfortable with. Generally speaking, I'd like to spend 70-80% of our time refining what we already have and the last 20-30% making new stuff you might not expect.
A: We have so much content upkeep in Hearthstone it makes it hard to do new things. Whenever we make a new mode, there is more content upkeep there, which means less time for new stuff.
A: While the team has grown, we don't actually have much more bandwidth to make new and exciting features because most of what we make requires us to stick around and continue making it indefinitely.
A: So we're taking stock of what players love and want us to improve (or create) and make sure we're spending our time there. There isn't any major revelation here, but looking at things like the monthly card back and asking if that artist time is better spent making something else.
A: Delight and surprise were one of the original Hearthstone values. I hope to live up to that.

Q: Have you ever played a game of Hearthstone, got tilted by a card, and wondered "why did we ever make that?" And if yes what card?
A: So many times, so many times. It's mostly when I misplay a card I didn't understand and blame the team (in my moment of frustration/stupidity)

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

Murder at Castle Nathria Card List & Expansion Guide

Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.