Dean “Iksar” Ayala is an Interim Game Director on the Hearthstone team, and he’s been doing 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 Q&A sessions, I went through all of his replies and made 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 #44
6:30PM – 7:30PM PST
Ask me a question about Hearthstone!
Or Design! (or anime…or elden ring) pic.twitter.com/o9a2GC08qn
— August Dean Ayala ???? (@IksarHS) June 18, 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:
- There’s a new card type coming in one of the upcoming expansions and it’s already done.
- They’re still discussing turning Classic into a rotating format that explores different time periods.
- The team has discussed adding a “graveyard-like” feature to the game, but decided that they’d only implement it if they had more mechanics that lets players engage with it. Otherwise, it’s a big UI change and it would bloat the screen unnecessarily.
- If they increased the number of sets from 3 to 4 per year, they would also adjust rewards accordingly. Probably condense the current 100 levels of rewards track to 75 levels (increasing rewards for each level).
- No plans to rework Golden cards, but they do have some other cosmetics planned, such as alternate artwork, new frames, and more Diamond cards.
- New Dungeon Run was on a list of things to potentially do, but nothing is scheduled right now. Hearthstone is mainly a 1v1 PvP game, but they’d like to explore some modes that expand that.
- There are some plans for Dr. Boom (cosmetics, another appearance or maybe something else), but Dean doesn’t want to spoil it.
- If Dual Class cards returned (and they probably will at some point), it would most likely be the same class combinations. However, they also thought about letting players build real “dual class decks” with cards from both classes for a limited time and balance around it.
- There are some card designs that are limited by text space on the card – it’s difficult to explain some of them . It mostly concerns weapons (text based around losing durability when something happens) and Hero Powers (small text box).
- In theory, they could remove cards from Core Set mid-year instead of nerfing them, but they don’t necessarily want to “break” people’s decks. A nerfed card is still playable, but it doesn’t feel good to have a big X on your deck once you log in after a patch.
- No plans to revert old nerfs like Novice Engineer, Nat Pagle or Pyroblast, because there wouldn’t be any real gain in doing so, the format won’t become more fun.
- Additional Mercenaries features are still at least 6 months away, but they will have regular content drops in the meantime. They’d like to ship new features as soon as possible, but there’s still some design work necessary.
- Dual Class Arena is done every year during Hallow’s End and it’s not likely they will do it more often. They could do some other Arena events, though.
- The team thought that Troggzor the Earthinator will be meta defining (just like most of the players) but it never took off.
I didn’t write the usual weekly summary because the patch was released just a few days earlier and I didn’t have enough decks to post yet. I’ll be publishing a meta analysis from Old Guardian today, though.
That is a very polite answer, but is there some reason why the toxic post deserved it in the first place? It’s one thing to permit it in the first place, but another to encourage it.
You should read some of your comments buddy 😉
Dear iksar you killed the game, you have no new ideas, I will leave this game after 6 years. My looking is on the new game ben borde
The game will survive the loss of a special snowflake.
‘…The team thought that Troggzor the Earthinator will be meta defining (just like most of the players) but it never took off…’
This information seems a little bit weird. Why talk about a years-old card? I get that he is answering questions, but still … maybe some sort of comeback for Troggzor in the near future!?
To be fair, that remark was a response to someone who’d asked him what card the developers thought would take off in the meta but never did.
As I wrote – I get that they answer questions, but aren’t there lots of ‘newer’ card designs that he could’ve mentioned? Why such an old card? I tend to believe there’s some hidden message there. 😀
He’s usually just super casual about stuff like this. It’s funny, cuz I remember thinking the same thing about that card but Dr. Boom wore the crown back then and he’s not even played now.