On the eve before BlizzConline, Cool Hearthstone Dad Dean Ayala brought to us, another community Q&A.

That's right, we're back covering Dean Ayala's community Q&A this evening and although it may not be the exact eve of the con, we're in full con hype-train mode with the engines set to 110. Let's get right into it!

  • All previous Q&As from Dean can be found under our "Iksar's Community Q&A" topic.
  • Anything covered in the previous Q&As will not be covered in the recap but will appear in the transcript below.
  • We may cover old topics here to reinforce how stuff works in the new Free Core Set and associated announcements.

Dean will be back next Wednesday to talk about BlizzConline.

BlizzConline

  • No spoilers for BlizzCon here.
  • Dean's BlizzCon backdrop barely fits into his office. He's happy to be at home with the dogs and his wife though.

Randomness

  • The randomness in the game is random.

If I had a nickel for every time...

New Players

  • They are working on reworking the starting experience. No timetable yet.
  • The most popular thing for new players to do after the tutorial is to join Battlegrounds.
  • The current constructed tutorial is "pretty bad" for Battlegrounds players.
  • The tutorial probably shouldn't roadblock the Battlegrounds players.

Arena

  • They could remove undraftable cards from the Discover pool but Dean isn't sure if its the right thing to do.
  • The goal isn't to just remove all the powerful cards.
  • If there is enough card generation available that can consistently bring certain cards into play, that can be a problem.
  • Dean doesn't think that Runaway Blackwing is a big problem right now.

Cards

  • Animated Broomstick has come up in balance meetings. It might be something that shows up too often.
  • Cards like Broomstick are fun when they appear in the right decks, but less fun when its everywhere.
  • "Recently we wanted to destroy your deck and transform your hand into this vehicle that had 3 buttons that did some sweet things (being intentionally vague) but had to cut"
  • Dean was recently talking about how exciting new card frames can be. There has to be a great reason to do a new type of card though.
  • The weirdest card that was considered according to Dean was "Battlecry: Add 1 to all numbers on your cards for the rest of the game."
  • Expect more support for Shadow Priest.
  • Card design writes the voice lines for cards. They want to make sure each of them are unique - nothing generic.
  • Dean says "The gnomish playfulness of hey loser I think is hilarious." Agreed.
  • Expect less resource generation, removal, and lifegain.
  • Dean would love to explore "Fury" as a resource with Demon Hunters. They tested different stuff with it but they weren't happy in the end.

Cosmetics

  • Dean thinks that they'd love to have a larger focus on cosmetics for monetization.
  • The team doesn't have a great answer for that content yet though.
  • A new Rogue hero portrait is coming this year.

New Game Modes

  • Dean loves the idea of commander / EDH in Hearthstone.
    • This is a Magic: The Gathering format where you pick a special card that acts as your Commander.
      • This card starts in a special zone and can be brought back when removed.
    • Your deck is built in the highlander/singleton style.
    • There are more differences, if interested, check out this article from Wizards of the Coast.
  • Dean wants to try 1v1v1v1 in Hearthstone.

Esports

  • They've talked about a Best of 3 format for the previously announced and indefinitely hiatus'd tournament mode.
  • They still want to figure out how to do more esports work in the game.

Expansions

  • Warcraft 1, 2, and 3 almost always come up when they do expansion brainstorming.
  • Dean thinks that storylines in the Warcraft universe are a matter of "when" and not "if". You can't do everything at the same time.
    • Gamon expansion confirmed hype! /s

Ranked

  • Dean responded to a ranked ladder issue for legend players. The issue is that a week into a new season, players that didn't rank up yet have longer queue times.
  • Dean says they'll look into it because he agrees that something might be up.

Work From Home

  • Different groups on the team have different needs. Some just like to have an open Slack call all day.
  • Sometimes they do daily standup to keep everyone on track but some people thrive on just one.
  • Dean underestimated how much information you gather from others just by overhearing conversations around you. That communication is lost now.

Dean

  • Currently maining League of Legends.
  • He has been previously playing World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, and Stardew Valley (that comes to mind).
  • Illidan was his first rewards track portrait.
  • Favourite anime is probably Fullmetal. Hunter X Hunter and Naruto are both up there.

Ben Brode

  • Apologizes for removing the sorry emote with "My Apologies".

Quote From Dean & Ben

why did you take away my sorry emote and how many achievement points do I need to earn to get it back?

@bbrode took it away from you I'm not responsible for his sins (Dean Ayala)

My Apologies (Ben Brode)

I honestly don't even know the whole story it's just fun to blame brode for things from time to time. (Dean Ayala)

Full Transcript of February 17 Q&A

Quote From Dean Ayala

In Hearthstone, the ladder is mainly done in BO1, but since the influence of luck seems to be large, are there any plans to implement Bo3 with a sideboard in the ladder?

I think sideboard is mostly just added complexity for little strategy gain, at least for most players. I actually like the idea of having Bo3 and if we implement a more competitive format I could see going here. It's something we talked about for tournament mode way back when (Source)

no plans atm, but we'd like to figure out how to do more esports work in-client as opposed to out of client. If/when this work is realized I'd like to figure out ways that aren't just Bo1 for end of event style formats. (Source)

Can you go more in depth with the design pattern of Broomstick? I am really interested in the process of testing a board-wide keyword applier since it's such a hard card to balance in a vacuum, have there been any utilization of Broom that surprised the dev team?

I think how widespread the usage was is surprising but we've done cards like it in the past, Houndmaster Shaw comes to mind. The cost of putting a (1) 1/1 that requires specific scenarios is pretty high, so the payoff has to be really great to feel worth it. (Source)

As a reactive thing that goes in minion-based decks, it's the kind of card we're comfortable pushing power on. It also helps you consider at big control cards that are normally too slow to play. (Source)

It has come up in balance meetings, though. Still something that might just be too high of a power level and show up in more places that intended. It's fun if it's showing up in the right decks, less fun if it's just everywhere. (Source)

With blizzcon coming up, how many big hearthstone news will be popping up? Has the team ever tried to design a card but it ended up being too hard to implement (for either design or programming reasons) and it ended up being something entirely different?

there will be some hearthstone news, but no spoilers for it here! To the second question, all the time. Just recently we wanted to destroy your deck and transform your hand into this vehicle that had 3 buttons that did some sweet things (being intentionally vague) but had to cut (Source)

we are mostly happy with that, imo hunter has probably the strongest class fantasy (maybe outside warrior?) because they've been more focused than other classes. (Source)

With the game having evolved as much as it has since release, has there been any discussion to reworking the starting experience to be more inclusive of new game modes?

yeah, we're currently working on that actually. No timetable, atm, there is a lot to figure out. (Source)

Through tracking data, we've found that a common thing to do post-tutorial is to go play battlegrounds, While the tutorial we do have is fine for constructed, I think everyone would admit it's a pretty bad tutorial for battlegrounds players. (Source)

So if we know that battlegrounds is a core destination for new players, our tutorial probably shouldn't roadblock those users from participating. There is a lot of account setup that happens in the tutorial that we'd have to figure out how to replace. In the works. (Source)

Presently, there are a lot of do something X times achievements. These are easier to design, but aren't always the most exciting. On the flip side, achievements like YoggChamp are super hard to get. Where's the balance and what lessons have you learned from this new system?

Tech for achievements is new, we've been a little limited starting out. When Hearthstone was first created our card editor was very limited, but over time we've gotten more tools and are able to do weirder things with limited engineer support. Same will be true of achievements. (Source)

The difficulty of Oh-My-Yogg isn't that much of an issue, though taking much of the creativity of decision making out of your hands is a little against the grain of what most achievements should try to do. (Source)

There will be super-difficult achievements, but I think we'll lean more into the space of if you build a great deck for completing an achievement you'll have an easier time than someone who didn't. (Source)

Have you ever considered a format using larger deck size limits/different deck building restrictions in HS? The success of EDH in MTG makes me curious about the possibilities there

All the time, I actually love the idea of 2v2 or EDH because they give you more things to do with your cards and they highly leverage existing development work (we make expansions anyway). (Source)

I want to try 1v1v1v1 Hearthstone and see what the gameplay is like. UI is a big concern obviously but finding the fun is the most important bit. EDH has some extra conditions that make it interesting (highlands + commander) and I'm sure we'd find mechanics that suit our game. (Source)

Since it all began from humans vs orcs, are we ever going to see humans and orcs as a tribe in Hearthstone? Will characters from Warcraft 1 story ever appear in the game? Like Lothar, Garona, Blackhand to name the few.

Doing Warcraft 1, 2, or 3 as a theme for a Hearthstone expansion actually comes up almost every time we are doing brainstorming. I read a lot of those books and would love to do a 1st or 2nd war expansion there are a lot of cool stories and characters to show off. (Source)

I think storylines like this are a matter of when, just lots of fun ideas to explore and can't do all of them at the same time! (Source)

I've always been curious if there have ever been meta impactful decks that were "missed" in playtesting? Like did you guys know that Broom Paladin and Turtle Mage would eventually materialize or did the community catch you by surprise?

We did not playtest a bunch of turtle-mage internally, we didn't do much playtesting of the stonetusk boar deck that Dog popularized, either. (Source)

The common theme with these decks is they are strategies that are overall pretty weak but they are flashy enough that they see popularity despite not being very powerful. (Source)

Were the current OTK decks predicted/intended? Did their power level surprise the team? What determines whether you jump in to adjust a meta vs letting it rock till next expansion? This year was great btw i truly enjoyed the game a ton, cheers and cant wait till next rotation!

We knew about DH, has been weak enough that it's always been unlikely to take over the game in terms of popularity. Right now, most players beat the deck when playing it and the players that play the deck still love it. Pretty decent place to be. (Source)

We weren't blindsided by ramp paladin, but it's definitely been better than we expected. (Source)

As a designer, I miss being able to go by someone’s desk and saying “hey check this out” to get instant feedback. Scheduling a meeting for that sort of thing seems pretty heavyweight. What sort of practices have you found as a team to overcome the challenges of working at home?

I like to have the team operate in whatever way makes most sense for them, so different groups have different needs. Some of them find just having an open slack call all day works and they utilize that. (Source)

Sometimes it means we have a couple daily standups to check-in, some people thrive doing a single check-in and having the rest of the time to jam on their own. (Source)

I manage 14 designers currently, so I think the biggest challenge has just been to keep track of all the projects and people. I underestimated how much information you gather by overhearing conversations around you. All that communication is just lost now. (Source)

What was the red "Banned" tag on hero portraits (collection) that appeared to be a bug from?

not sure, we use that tag to ban cards from formats they are either too powerful or unintended to work with. This doesn't happen in constructed but has happened in Tavern Brawl, Duels, etc. (Source)

The current ladder mode match system refers to internal rates and ranks (Diamond, Platinum, …), but should it also refer to ranks. If I don't play ladder for about a week at the beginning of the month, it takes me 3-5 minutes to get matched, which is annoying.

At the beginning of the month you are just matched by MMR, which is just a number on the server you can't see. There shouldn't be any reason why it should take that long to match outside of bugs…. (Source)

this is a common concern i hear from 11x mmr level players if they are non legend after 7-10 days. i think there was a safeguard added in june to not pair legend players with non-legend players at certain mmrs, but not 100% on it. good question for tian

good point, worth looking into. (Source)

I will chime in to confirm I also experience longer queue times at 11x the later in the month I am climbing to Legend, which is probably exacerbated by my time zone.

okok clear there is something up, we'll look into. (Source)

Do you think Hunter should remain the class that has no access to card draw or card generation? Every class but Hunter can quite easily draw tons of cards with little investment, or generate cards the same way.

all classes should have some amount of card draw, there is just a difference between generating a resource and always having a full hand of resources. No plans for Hunter to be a 'always full hand' class or a healing one. They are strong in tempo or aggressive based starts. (Source)

Has there been any consideration made to removing undraftable (banned) cards like Runaway Blackwing, Dragonmaw Poacher from the discover pool in Arena?

We can do it, I'm always unsure of the right thing to do. On the one hand, we can recognize cards that are so powerful they warp the entire mode. If everyone had 1-3 runaway blackwings and it became a contest of who drafted the most, I could see that being frustrating. (Source)

On the other hand, the goal isn't to just remove all powerful cards. Powerful cards are sweet, discovering one from time to time shouldn't subtract from the fun of the game, it should add to it. (Source)

Of course, if there is enough generation or discover that getting a specific minion or subset of minions made it an every deck thing that was consistent, I think it becomes an issues again. Dragon discovers in DoD were so prevalent that games often felt decided by who got more. (Source)

I don't think Blackwing is in the same camp right now. (Source)

Any plans to fix the friendlist bugs? Is the problem bigger than what we think so we have to wait more time? I would love an answer, thanks

Friendslist bugs is a little too vague for me. What issue are you referring to? (Source)

Basically to challenge a friend we have to click like five times the "challenge" button because all the stuff dissapears or move to another place constanly. Also legend ranks are bug and if a player adds you when you have the fl open 200 invites appear and you have to restart hs

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wow, this is helpful. I'll look into it. Possible the team is already working on it but I don't work very closely with the group that would be. @hypopyh might know (Source)

I think these bugs started 10-11 months ago, i hope this is helpful to fix them. Thanks for answering!

Hyped for tomorrow, what kind of difficulties do you find doing BlizzCon from home? Anything in particular to note?

they gave me a backdrop that is like 9' by 9'. It barely fits in my room and I have to squeeze by it every time I enter my office. Other than that, happy to be home with my dogs and my wife :). (Source)

What is your favorite game to play outside of Hearthstone.

Right now, League of Legends. In the past 6 months, though, I've played a bunch of games as my core game.

WoW, Stardew, Genshin Impact come to mind as the ones before League. (Source)

I was there when you announced the hero cards in KotFT, it was a really exiting moment because it was a completely new type of card. Do you plan to make another different type of card in the game?

I hope so! I was just talking with various members of the team about how exciting new card frames can be. I love, love, love sagas in MTG and part of it is just a different visual of the card. We want to explore new stuff like this but there has to be a great reason. (Source)

Out of curiosity do you have internal data on what the most picked level 50 portrait from the rewards track is and why is it Valeera?

We do, I don't remember what it is, though I'll have to go check. I picked Illidan he looks so handsome. (Source)

any reason why hearthstone hasn't taken a more cosmetic approach with monetization? Selling more skins for heroes, coins, card backs more often, maybe even alternate art for cards, platinum cards, skins for the battlefield etc, make people pay the game that way 1/2

instead of being so reliant on selling the cards. Im not advocating on making the cards free but I just always wondered why you never took that route, given that its proven to work for like riot games, gacha anime games, etc.

Well, we don't have a great pipeline set up for extended cosmetics so there is a lot of work involved there but we are doing more cosmetics than ever these days. Also, I think 'proven to work' isn't exactly true. (Source)

Gachas are almost entirely power based monetization, at least in most I've played. Genshin Impact is a recent example of that. Unless your game is the most or one of the most popular on the planet, cosmetics rarely sell well enough to support a live-game team. (Source)

Some games are just better suited for it than others. Third-person 3d games are great for cosmetics because you are staring at a model you customized for nearly the entire experience. FPS or strategy games have a harder time selling compelling customization. (Source)

why did you take away my sorry emote and how many achievement points do I need to earn to get it back?

@bbrode took it away from you I'm not responsible for his sins (Source)

Ben Brode: My Apologies (Source)

I honestly don't even know the whole story it's just fun to blame brode for things from time to time. (Source)

Could we ever see the return of the Dragon meta? Seems like the meta bounced around classes then faded away somewhat. Would love to see more Dragons!

yeah! we just did it not too long ago but dragons will be back, probably dinosaurs, too. Themes that people just generally always love. (Source)

Ok, let's do a fun one. What is the weirdest card ever went through design consideration?

"Battlecry: Add 1 to all numbers on your cards for the rest of the game." I forget how exactly it was worded. (Source)

Arcane missiles would turn into: (2) Deal 4 damage randomly split among all enemies.
Acrobatics would be: (4) Draw 3 cards. If you play both this turn, draw 3 more.
Ethereal Augmerchant would be: (2) 3/2 - Battlecry: Deal 2 damage to a minion and give it Spell Damage +2. (Source)

Was really weird, broken, and almost impossible to implement. (Source)

I have a question that bothers me for years.
Is the RNG mechanism in Hearthstone really random?

In other words, is it true that when the system finds you on a winning streak, in the next fight it deliberately sabotages your play by making you draw the card you don’t need or matching you with the worst opponent to prevent you from climbing too fast?

No, it's just random. We can barely make the content as it is, we're pretty far from being able to run experiments on utilizing engineering resources to create artificial bad luck to see how it effects monetization or some other reason. (Source)

With Shadowform returning, can we expect support cards for Shadow Priest archetype in the future?

ya (Source)

Was/is more in depth scouting in BG ever an option? We had a fun decision today about how to gauge opponents strength and comp in BG vs how it is in other auto battlers Still dreaming about a sound design thread from Andy Brock one day btw.

We thought about it originally, though honestly the tech limitation on scouting every board in real-time made it a non-starter for us. Afterwards when discussing it, not sure there is a lot of upside in having players be invested in scouting every board all the time. (Source)

Definitely some strategy there but I'm not sure it makes the game much more fun. The main reason I like doing it in other games is to watch fights that go down to the wire or look at other people's cosmetics. I actually like those aspects more than the strategy ones. (Source)

What's your favorite Beast in Hearthstone?

Misha (Source)

What is your favorite anime?

Hmm. Probably Fullmetal. Hunter X Hunter and Naruto are both up there, though. All very similar, haha. (Source)

Will the achievements from DF still give XP the next expansion?

No, there will be new achievements that do, though. (Source)

If the Sorry emote was removed because of player’s feelings … why did you guys decide to put a voice-line of “Hey loser!” On a minion that gets replayed many, many times in a match?

From a design standpoint how much thought is given to voice-lines?

A lot! Card design actually writes all the VO for the cards. My favorite point to make is to try and write VO that only that character would say. Write something that when players hear it, they'll see the card image in their head right away. (Source)

We try to steer clear of generic lines that could be said by any minion. Hard to always hit on that given the limited time we have to record a line, but we try. The gnomish playfulness of hey loser I think is hilarious. Heckling little guy that is always running back to safety. (Source)

Not sure if riots LoR monitesation model is successful in financial point of view. Its great for players, but probably not thats great for profit. I think by bundles like hero portrait + packs is fine model. You like portrait and also increase collection.

I think we'd love to have a larger focus of monetization be around cosmetics as opposed to content, I just don't think we've found a great answer yet. (Source)

Good Evening, I was wondering if Rogue would get a new hero in 2021? Valeera's gotten some nice portraits but maybe there are other characters who could fill the Rogue role?

there will be :) (Source)

Do you have a philosophy about how long games should be? There are some classes that can take the game wildly longer and while it's fun sometimes it does feel like a different game.

Generally would prefer shorter games. Most games that have lasted 20+ minutes are a result of heavy resource generation or tons of removal + lifegain. Both things we're putting more limitations on. (Source)

I know with demon hunter you tried to add fury as a resource do you ever think you may try again? Or is it to hard to find a balance with new resource vs plain mana.

New resource was awesome, the problem was that not all decks used it. If we use a new resource and create UI elements for it I'd like for it to be something the class utilizes every game. (Source)

With DH, it became clear that there were bound to be some metas where they wouldn't really interact with fury at all because fury spenders weren't meta in some environments. (Source)

The idea that we could go months with DH having some special UI element that didn't actually matter or get used made us less excited about having it at all. (Source)

Was still really fun, I would love to re-explore that space to see if we could find something that worked. (Source)