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 happen on different days and at different times, since Iksar is still on a break. 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 #36
6:00PM – 7:00PM PST
Ask me a question about Hearthstone!
Or Design! (or anime…) pic.twitter.com/DJm91WJTV3
— August Dean Ayala ???? (@IksarHS) December 15, 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:
- There’s a plan for Battlegrounds card reveals by various BG content creators, similarly to how it goes in Constructed. “We will see soon”.
- The team is working on more progression features for Battlegrounds (probably the separate BG rewards track we’ve already heard about), they will add more to Constructed later too, just nothing they can share yet.
- He could see revisiting older keywords like Twinspell, Reborn or Corrupt for new expansions if they fit thematically.
- No plans to make Tradeable an evergreen keyword for now. They might consider it for the 2023 Core set, though (2022 is probably already finished).
- The team has been split internally on the auto-squelch button, but it seems like they’re turning around and Dean says that they will now look into it.
- There won’t be Diamond Hero portraits, they want to reserve that look for cards and do something else instead. They also want to keep looking into ways to make special cards, like different types or shapes of frames or alternate art.
- Hearthstone is moving more towards cosmetic monetization, and if anything they will only create more cosmetics because as they started working better with outsourcing partners. If the adoption rate of new cosmetics drop then that will be the sign to slow down, for now they want to keep up with players’ appetite.
- Tavern Brawl is one of the areas they want to improve in long-term with the upcoming restructuring.
- They’re aware of people quitting the game faster in the middle of BG matches to get to the shopping phase faster, but they don’t have a great tech solution for it. Players will always have different shop times, because they finish their matches at different times. They could change it, but it would take a significant amount of engineering work and with not enough strategies that can really abuse it right now, they won’t prioritize it.
- Game design is not restricted by hardware limitations on the phones. Dean can’t remember a time when they wanted to implement something but couldn’t because it would be too much for low-end phones.
- If the team would have more time and tech/art budget, Dean would like to see a 3D view of the Tavern as the main menu, where you can see your avatar, change visuals depending on your progress and unlock new features.
- The team is now working on the last set of 2022 and just had a meeting talking about the theme of the first set of 2023. It’s still undecided, no cards are made yet.
- He isn’t sure whether Nimbus card back can become a reality, he’s not sure if there was any 3D work done on it (HS card backs aren’t just images).
- The ideal game dev environment should work closer to the Free Your Mind event, where individual devs are talented and trusted enough and get enough tools to work on whatever passion they have (that will still progress the game). They’re doing some internal restructuring and hope to get closer to that point.
That makes sense to me. I remember having to read though a card sized booklet to figure out what trample meant. This way is better.
6 years i’m squelching my opponent at the start of each game…now it’s a reflex, i will have to reeducate my muscular memory (not sure how you say that in english :P).
They could just add a skip combat button to BGs and a ready on the other side. It should make the games quicker. There is an advantage to watching the combat too so it really adds to the strategy.
I think that any keyword should be available if it makes sense with the card. I think they shouldn’t restrict ideas just because historicLly they’ve had a new keyword specific to each set.
I mean echo is in a ton of sets, it just isn’t called that for some apparent wild synergy, I must not be aware of.
I understand the argument, but I do think that it makes sense to not always use the keywords like Echo. Or let me rephrase it – it doesn’t make sense form the perspective of experienced players, but it makes the game more approachable.
If you launch the game as a new player, you have no idea what those keywords mean. You already have to learn a bunch like Taunt, Rush, Battlecry, Deathrattle, how exactly they work and so on. But those are fine, because they appear on lots and lots of cards. But let’s say that there are only 2 Echo cards in Standard at the same time. You need to learn a new keyword and remember what it means for just 2 cards. But if they say “Repeatable this turn”, you don’t need to remember anything, because it says it right there on the card. Now add a few more keywords that are used just for a couple of cards in Standard.
Some HS players are kids. Some players are let’s just say not smart. Some players take long time to learn. By not having multiple “one-of” keywords, the learning curve is not as steep.
The goal of keywords is to make players’ life easier and the game more understandable. Turning “Full-Blown Evil” into an Echo card doesn’t accomplish either of those.
I wouldn’t mind if all of those were keyworded, but I’m not the target audience for making the cards as understandable as possible. For me it’s a visual thing, something that doesn’t really matter, for new players it might make an actual difference.
And by the way, it’s not just Hearthstone – MTG is doing the same thing for the same reasons.
That makes sense to me. I remember having to read though a card sized booklet to figure out what trample meant. This way is better.