Dean “Iksar” Ayala is a Lead Designer on the Hearthstone team, and he’s been doing weekly Q&A sessions on Twitter for a while now. Right now they mostly happen on Fridays, afternoon-evening Pacific Time (but he moves them to a different time slot or day occasionally, such as around big releases). People have been asking lots of questions about the game’s balance, design, specific cards, mechanics, and so on. Sadly, Twitter is kind of a mess when it comes to such things. Messages are short, you have to create long threads if you want to talk about something in detail, lots of comments get hidden, and it just doesn’t flow right. To make it a bit easier for all of you, just like during the previous weeks, I went through all of his replies and decided to make a summary of his most important talking points.
If you want to read the full Q&A – all the questions and answers – here’s the Tweet you should go to:
Hearthstone AMA #30
5:30PM – 6:30PM PST
Ask me a question about Hearthstone!
Or Design! (or anime…) pic.twitter.com/kkTUEgbnQ9
— August Dean Ayala ???? (@IksarHS) September 18, 2021
Below, you will find my summary. It’s still pretty long, but Iksar tends to answer the questions thoroughly and includes a lot of details. I try to ignore “fluff” answers and not repeat points that have been already discussed in his recent Q&A’s, so if you want to learn more, go back to them. And if you want to read his full replies on all topics, check out the Tweet above. Things in parentheses are my own notes/comments and not Dean’s words. Let’s start:
- They have bigger plans for Battlegrounds cosmetics. They want players to be able to earn some of them for free, others with Battlegrounds perks, and even craft some of them with currencies. There’s a lot coming for BG cosmetics in the future.
- About “rotating format”, where you get to play a different set of expansions every now and then (like Arena seasons): They didn’t think that enough people would want that, but he’s getting questions about it very often, so they might reconsider. It wouldn’t cost much to implement it, so even with moderate interest it could be possible to do it. (I would like it more than Wild, actually – for example, getting to revisit some of the older metas or have a completely different set of thematic expansions available, but still within “Standard” power level.)
- (A very, very long answer about Quests) From design’s perspective, Quests were successful at doing what they were supposed to do. They give players a goal to work towards in the game and they are build-around and create new deck styles that weren’t popular in previous expansions, making the meta feel new. But each time, they had a slightly different approach. In Un’Goro, the Quests were harder to finish, but rewards were very powerful. In Uldum, they made Quests easier, but rewards’ strength were spread over multiple turns so you didn’t win on the spot and opponent still had a fighting chance. Uldum Quests generally also weren’t actual win condition – like Druid’s where you still needed a lot of Choose One cards to then win the game. In Stormwind, they tried to follow the Uldum path, but with more “power moments” along the way, so those playing Questline could still get something from it even if they didn’t manage to complete it. Weakness of the Quest is that they’re asking players to build a deck in a specific, sub-optimal way to reap the rewards – so the reward has to be big to motivate players to do it in the first place (usually has to contribute to you winning the game). But when rewards is that powerful, it might make opponents feel helpless – especially opponents that rely on slow strategies that strip you out of resources to win (Control) – format with Quests is just not very friendly to those decks. But not every meta has to be the same, next year we might have a completely different set of viable decks and different players will love or hate.
- “Battle Ready Decks” (the ones introduced last expansion, where you could straight up buy an entire competitive deck for real money instead of relying on packs) will be back.
- The team is still deciding which cards to rotate from/to the next year’s Core Set. They already have some build-around cards they want to rotate in.
- Classic format was really cool for a moment, but then it quickly became less popular. They expected that, but it might get more busy once again after Naxxramas gets added eventually.
- They’d like to introduce an extra card back for people who achieve #1 Legend at any point (but the technology to give achievements based on Legend rank isn’t there yet).
- Rank & MMR are the only things taken into the account with Constructed matchmaking – there are no other variables. For Arena, there is some protection for new players, but it’s mostly based on the current record.
- Displaying XP after every match was disabled, because it caused another bug. Once the bug is fixed (probably in the next patch), it will be back once again.
- Back in the day they’ve designed a card that would start another Hearthstone match, and if you win it it would do X. It was obviously too crazy for Constructed. But they always try to find interesting effects that would surprise players.
- Iksar’s favorite OTK decks ever were Shadowboxer OTK in Wild (giving it Lifesteal and making it trigger – so it would repeat its own effect until enemy is dead, the interaction got fixed later by making it no longer trigger when the owner reaches maximum health) or Warsong Commander + Molten Giant back in the Beta.
I fail to see how Warlock quest is supposed to be built around with sub-optimal cards like Iksar had suggested. Most of the cards were good on their own even before the expansion; I acknowledged that control warlock was tier 3 at best but the delete package was proven decent. Druid has to play Pounce, Mage is refrained from accessing minions, Rogue has to play the bad SI7 cards, DH has to play Glide and lots of draw to finish their quest and for others class the restriction is really clear. And the Warlock quest is not even a tempo or card draw lost since at its worse, it’s a 1 mana Fireball with lifesteal bonus with Warlock hero power negate and card draw disadvantages. The difference in power between Warlock quest and the rest is quite big and only Shaman quest and Mage quest come close in term of value.
“Weakness of the Quest is that they’re asking players to build a deck in a specific, sub-optimal way to reap the rewards – so the reward has to be big to motivate players to do it in the first place (usually has to contribute to you winning the game)”…….
So let’ see
Druid quest: I put on my deck a bunch of bad card (panther apart) to accomplish my quest and the reward is win the game? Nope.
Mage Quest: I put on my deck great spell and some questionable freeze spell, my reward is kill my oppo in the next 2-3 turn.
Warlock quest: I put on my deck great card that i play aniway, so my reward it’s nothing special right? Right???
That’s not entirely correct, expect for the Druid one, which seems kind of unfinished (guff hasn’t even got an animation).
The problem with the quest lines aren’t the rewards themselves, it’s mostly the decks that are built around them to exploit the unfair advantages.
Take Warlock for example. Do we believe the devs thought about the fatigue mechanic becoming a serious win condition, not just an endgame threat. Maybe, but unlikely.
Do we, even unlikelier, believe that they took into consideration, the discounting of flesh giant alongside quest line progress, resulting in very early 0 mana giants. Probably not, and to add up, the sudden gains of soul rend combined with the 6/6 taunt and 6 damage lifesteal quillboar. No, the devs most certainly did not add this to the equation.
So what was there idea of the warlock quest line then? As you can see, from cards like bloodbound imp, it was about “self damage” becoming “self advantage”. If the devs version of the deck had worked out, i think Warlock would have been a quite fair and not so hated class at the time writing this. But as you know, that isen’t the case…
So, how can these kind of unbalanced and rage indulging scenarios be avoid… Ya’ll now the answer already, it’s all about play testing. If Blizzard would just listen to this part of the community opinion, changes would be made before the release, instead of multiple fixes after things go haywire.
Oh and btw, I’m not roasting or anything like that, I’m simply elaborating your statement…
Glad we have the same ideas. They didn’t do any testing is what makes me rants most of the time.
It’s like they were credited if they can think of some new mechanic that never exist before.
“Create this unique card mechanics that will blow players mind”, leave the test to them”. Something like that.
They printed a lot of cards without even testing them in the first place. They’re using the players as their testers. There’s a lot of instances where new cards breaking the game. And they only find it out from players.
That being said, some of the quests are overpowered. I don’t know how far this guy planned this, but I honestly think, if he allowed the cards to be printed anyway, that makes him somehow responsible for it.
Clearly, Blizzard got some bad eggs within their devs. Iksar may be good at his design, but that doesn’t make him good at deciding how to approach things. And I was hoping that another lead designer takes the leadership from him. Because up until this point, I disagree a lot with what he said.