Iksar’s Twitter Q&A #23 Summary – All 2022 Sets Designed, No Tavern Pass in Mega Pre-Purchase, Tradeable Becoming Evergreen, Non-Minion Permanents, Hearthstone Manga

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. They usually happen on Wednesdays, afternoon-evening Pacific Time (but he moves them to a different time slot or day occasionally). 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 #23

Early Time!

Ask me a question about Hearthstone!

Or Design! (or anime…)

2:30PM – 3:30PM PST pic.twitter.com/RLLF4kw9PP

— August Dean Ayala ???? (@IksarHS) July 30, 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:

• All the 2022 sets are already designed (it doesn’t mean that they are finished, of course), Team 5 will now be brainstorming the first expansion of 2023.
• Time will tell whether the Tradeable keyword might become evergreen. It’s not a decision they have to rush, they prefer to look at how it plays out when the expansion goes live first. However, they are really happy that the keyword’s reception is so good pre-release.
• They don’t consider adding Tavern Pass to Mega Pre-Purchase Bundle. If they felt like it didn’t give enough value, they’d probably increase the number of packs instead. The reason why is that Tavern Pass is cosmetics-focused and people mostly buy pre-purchases for packs.
• Hearthstone had a manga commissioned, some chapters were already written (Dean said that he read around an anime episode worth of it), but it was never released.
• They’ve tried adding permanents to the board that aren’t minions and don’t interfere with the current board slots, and it will happen at some point, but they just haven’t gotten the right mix of visual and gameplay design to make it work.
• Hearthstone has a pity timer, which is a mechanic that guarantees Legendary after 40 packs opened and Epic after 10 packs opened – but Dean said that pity timer is actually a curve (so e.g. the longer you go without a Legendary, the higher your chance to open one becomes, topping at 100% for 40th pack without one).
• They’re working on some ways to reduce the install size on mobile, but sadly it’s a complicated problem.
• The design team does not take Evolve/Devolve effects into account when designing minions. It might be a very small consideration, but never a primary focus. (I assume he means outside of minions that are specifically built to be played with those effects.)
• Dean’s favorite card from the new set is Maestra of the Masquerade because of her unique effect. They had this design in mind for over five years and almost shipped her in two previous expansions already.
• “Sandbox mode” (where players can use custom rules, match cards from different classes etc.) would be really fun to implement, but it’s a matter of cost vs audience. It would be a really big task engineering and UI-wise, but it’s hard to say if enough people would actually use it.
• They had lots of ideas for Demon Hunter HP before they arrived at the current one. One generated a new resource called “Fury”, which some cards required to be played. Other cost 2 mana and gave +1 Attack, but was reusable. There were at least 2-3 other designs before the final one.
• Bugs regarding the friends list are being worked on, and they’re high on the priority list, but they’re also hard to reporoduce (because they only happen under specific circumstances – mostly when you have a lot of friends on the list).
• The reason why Hogger is not a part of the expansion (even though he’s an iconic character and he’s really close to Stormwind in WoW) is that they wanted to capture more of a “city” vibe and Hogger didn’t fit that much into it. Fun fact – the original designer behind Hogger (Pat Nagle, and yes, Nat Pagle is a reference to his name) is now working on the Hearthstone team as a Lead Live Content Designer.
• Dean would like to design a whole set around a single important character and tell their biography through cards. He likes the idea of Garrosh expansion because he had a long journey that took him into lots of places + Siege of Orgrimmar could be the mini-set.
• Having cards that are really great and often game-winning when drawn at the right time (Druid’s Gibberling on T1 before its nerf, Mage’s Incanter's Flow on T2 etc.) is unfortunate, but it’s unavoidable with some card designs. The important thing is what crosses the line (and is just TOO powerful) and what doesn’t.
• There are people on the Hearthstone team who “gauge players’ sentiment” across different regions (what players think about some new feature, cards, balance level etc.). Hearthstone designers are also very active in the game. But anecdotal data can be pretty flawed and it’s important to understand that the community is not only compromised on what you see on your own social media channels.
• According to Iksar, the three best players on Team 5 are Chakki, Gallon and BoarControl (no wonder, they were all pro players with tons of competitive achievements before joining Blizzard).