Dean “Iksar” Ayala is an Interim Game Director on the Hearthstone team, and he’s been doing regular Q&A sessions on Twitter for quite some time now. 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 #40
4:30PM – 5:30PM PST
Ask me a question about Hearthstone!
Or Design! (or anime…or elden ring…) pic.twitter.com/KPnm57zkzz
— August Dean Ayala ???? (@IksarHS) March 25, 2022
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 been “medium” on the mini-sets. The total number of cards feels right, but they think about spreading it over 4 expansions without mini-sets instead. They’d also have to adjust the rewards structure for expansions lasting 3 months instead of 4 months.
- There isn’t any evidence that the meta is being “figured out” more quickly if streamers get to theorycraft live before release. Dean also thinks that more players benefit from getting inspirations for decks to play than there are people negatively impacted by “hype loss”.
- No plans to make Battlegrounds cosmetics obtainable with Gold and it’s unlikely to ever happen.
- For a while now, they try to nerf stuff with a lighter touch – to make it weaker, but not kill it so that people who love the deck can still queue it up. Sometimes they go to light and need to nerf something a few times (The Demon Seed, Incanter's Flow). They never intend for that to happen, but mistakes do happen and they’d rather do it than Warsong Commander treatment.
- He thinks that cross-over content with other Blizzard IPs (Diablo in particular, I don’t think there was much else?) was “just okay”. It’s hard to judge how well they went because they were so small. If they do it next time, it will be something bigger.
- Cross-promo with other (non-Blizzard) IPs is a big ask, because it costs a lot of money to get the rights + they would probably take % of the revenue, so it wouldn’t make sense (revenue-wise) if it was anything else than a full expansion. And the team isn’t very excited about doing a full non-Warcraft expansion. But never say never.
- While Colossals are a new card type in this expansion, they have something exciting planned for 2nd and 3rd set of the year.
- Mass pack opening is on a to-do list, but it’s still way off.
- Dean confirmed that they want to give an option to select random portraits, across every mode, but it’s not something they’ve done yet.
- Stuff like changing Hero Powers or Silver Hand Recruit artworks for different cosmetic skins is doable, but the “cooler” they want to make them, the longer it will take and the more expensive they will be. But they do have a higher-complexity, more cool Hero skin in development right now.
- They’ll look into making Nemsy skin just available for everyone since Fireside Gatherings are still closed.
- Mercenaries nerfs are possible, but since leveling them up etc. is so costly or time-consuming, they’d rather try to force a meta change with new stuff. But if necessary, they can be nerfed.
- When they do another class, it will have its own themed expansion like Demon Hunter did.
theorycrafting in hearthstone is at minimal. to me there is no theorycraft, pretty much everything is obvious for archetype. meta adaptation on ladder and that’s it.
The 4 expansions idea is a dirty horse shit excuse for their broken way of thinking, to try to add nothing better to the game and yet sponge even more out of everyone. Not sneaky. Mini-set system is what people like. More sets, more cards for everyone. Not to mention people already complain that the meta moves too slowly. Yeah, let’s go from 6 meta shifts to 4. Fire the people who come up with these bloodsucking ideas.
Shit, I hope they get the price of those expansions down, I do not think I can spend in another expansion per year, like pre-purchases do not even get you the full expansion, and they hella expensive, if they are going to do four per year, they are gonna need some restructuring of their economic system.
It’s nothing official yet, but yeah, IF they go with 4 expansions, they would definitely need to adjust their pricing.
Dean is Game Director now? Wow, I just noticed the change! Did he get promoted?
Interim for now, as Ben Lee left and someone had to step up
Ben Lee left Hearthstone for another project at Blizzard so Dean (previous Lead Designer) and Nathan Lyons-Smith (previous Executive Producer) took over for now. We don’t really know who will become the new director in the end, nothing was announced yet. We’ll see how things go, but it would make sense for Dean to become full time director.