Folks at Hearthcasual (Rho and Multizord) podcast had an opportunity to interview lead game designer Mike Donais and associate game designer Conor Kou – both heavily responsible from the development of a new mode, Battlegrounds. They talk about everything related to it – history, development, balance, community response etc.
Here are some of the most important points from interview:
- Next patch will drop on December 5. Two new minions will be introduced in that patch. One is already known to oldschool HS players – Floating Watcher. Second one is completely new – King Bagurgle. It will be a Tier 5 minion, a 6/3 Murloc, with “Battlecry and Deathrattle: Give your Murlocs +2/+2″. As you can see, it will be incredibly powerful for Murloc strategies, not only giving a permanent +2/+2 buff right away, but also a minion you can keep around to buff your entire board at the start of the fight by putting him on the left.
- Another thing introduced in that patch will be the first iteration of Stats. The button in menu will start providing some basic stats, and then more will be added in a month or two.
- The next tribe coming to Battlegrounds will be Dragons (which was the most common prediction already). Previously Mike has said that they plan to bring them around March next year. Adding another tribe (after Dragons), however, might mean rotating one out first, because then there would be too many minions in the pool.
- Just like Mike has mentioned previously, no massive changes to Nightmare Amalgam are currently planned. The current plan is to make it a little bit weaker in January (nerfing it to 2/2 instead of 3/4). This way it will be weaker right away, but it will still have this late game scaling. They feel like it makes the game more fun, since it lets players go for multiple tribes and switch strategies more easily.
- Inviting 7 other players to a Battlegrounds match is something they’re working on – you will eventually be able to play a full friendly match of BG.
And here are some other information, including development history and new player Hero preferences:
- Battlegrounds actually started as a 1v1 Tavern Brawl back in February 2019 when Auto Chess was getting increasingly popular.
- Then in March 2019 they figured out that they want to turn it into a new mode instead of Tavern Brawl, and put together a team to do so.
- Battlegrounds was pretty difficult to develop, because it’s based on Hearthstone, but a lot of things work differently – basic things like moving minions around the board were hard to implement, because that kind of functionality never existed in HS.
- Community responses about the format are great so far, they’re really happy with them.
- Extra rewards / modifying current rewards isn’t something they think about yet, since the game is still in beta – they’re almost 100% focusing on the gameplay itself for now.
- Heroes that work well with specific tribe are best for new players, because they make them commit early and stay in one tribe, focusing on it and adding more synergies. Patchwerk is also good, because extra health is strong – it gives players more time to perform new strategy. On the other hand, Dancin’ Deryl is not great for new players, because it’s not very obvious how use his Hero Power correctly.
- One of their main goals is to make Heroes more balanced, closer to each other in power level.
- Apparently, Bob has a rich backstory and lore, something we should learn about in the future!
You can listen to a full podcast here:
“they’re focusing on the gameplay”, yeah right.
Once they’re focusing on modifying the rewards, it’s gonna be just like the arena.
you wanna play? Pay an entrance fee.
Can’t wait to see that happen. I’m so pessimistic. >.>
BG will definitely stay free to play, I’m almost certain. They’ve already said so anyway. It would be a suicide to take the most or 2nd most popular format (I imagine that Standard might still be more popular than Battlegrounds, and it will definitely be after expansion launches) and putting it behind a paywall. People would get angry, stop playing it, they wouldn’t really earn anything.
The only way I can see Arena-like BG happening is adding an option to pay an entry free and then getting better rewards. I wouldn’t mind a separate queue like that. But the main game should stay F2P and I’m nearly sure (of course can never be 100% sure) – they wouldn’t do it to their playerbase after calling it a F2P mode everywhere.
Focusing on rewards doesn’t certainly mean adding more actual, HS-related rewards – like this mode doesn’t have to give you packs etc. But cosmetics should be fun. Both HS cosmetics like card backs, Hero skins, and maybe custom BG cosmetics like new portrait borders etc. that are only available in Battlegrounds.
“The only way I can see Arena-like BG happening is adding an option to pay an entry free and then getting better rewards”,
you mean like “Ranked BG”? and making a different “Ranked MMR” for that?
somehow I doubt it. Even the original BG MMR didn’t do anything to me, is there any purposes on making those?
It would’ve been better if they treat MMR like Dota 2 MMR for ranked (or similar), where you get a medal or something to recognize your gameplay (aside from the perk of playing those with equal MMR pool as you).
I even consider playing BG earlier with an entrance fee for like 3 BG tickets, and getting a reward based on how good your average is.
But again, perhaps I don’t have any idea to where the BG direction is. It’s still too early to tell.
Not necessarily ranked, just a separate queue where you only play against other players who fight for rewards. But it would either need a smaller buy-in / rewards or play until X wins / loses like Arena.
But like I’ve said, I’m nearly sure that they won’t monetize Battlegrounds entries themselves, because that would make people so mad. The mode will definitely stay F2P. But I do think that there’s a lot of potential to monetize in cosmetics. New emote packs / Hero borders / maybe even board itself (like you could change the way your side of the board looks like during combat – they can even use already existing boards from previous expansions).
But same could be said about regular Hearthstone… In general, I think that they do miss a lot of cosmetic potential. Maybe they will utilize it better with BG.
I guess people who misses profits potential are either already quite rich, so they don’t care (straight up guessing), or lack in the time to do so. Because my guess, Blizz is already quite busy with new Arc every 4 months (plus Solo), and often got troubled by bugs, maintenance etc.
but meh, I couldn’t care less about cosmetics, so to speak. Not that I have anything against it, I just don’t have the appetite for that.
For now, I’ll just gonna wait for your complete review #3 on those new dragon cards.
especially Warrior Galakrond. This one brings up my appetite. ^^