Following the reveal of Hearthstone's new expansion, Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, Liv Breeden and Cora Georgiou from the Hearthstone team recently did an interview where they talk more about the new expansion, game mode, mechanics and progression system. We've listed the highlights down below.
Everything below has been paraphrased and should not be considered a direct quote.
Quote From Liv Breeden and Cora Georgiou Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
- Fans who are familiar with corruption and Old Gods are in for a treat.
- Y'Shaarj, the Defiler went through different designs. They knew it was going to be a Corrupt build-around.
- Return them back to your hand. They cost (0) permanently."
- "Return the first one, and it costs (0)."
- They wanted the cards to cost 0, but that can be dangerous, so they went with the temporary reduction.
- C'Thun, the Shattered went through many changes as well.
- It was always the idea to make him deal tons of damage, but they weren't sure how to get there.
- First it supposed to have an interaction with Corrupted cards as well.
- Once they settled on the "broken apart" mechanic, it was a question what would individual parts do.
- One idea was to split it in 5 parts that would summon a 5/5 minion.
- The final result is so much better, where there is more interaction and makes the deck more interesting.
Expansions Mini-Sets
- They didn't like the slow release of Galakrond's Awakening unlocking few cards every week so they are dropping the entire mini-set all at once this time.
- You will get cards from the mini-set via Madness at the Darkmoon Faire card packs.
- Duplicate protection will guarantee if you've collected all the commons from Darkmoon Faire when the mini-set drops, you will get commons from the new mini-set.
- Mini-sets are to keep players engaged throughout the entire expansion cycle and have something new for returning and current players alike.
- Even though the Scholomance meta was fairly balanced, the decks felt comparable to each other.
- They want to make things feel fresh more often.
- They can experiment with a new keyword they like more, they can create a baseline for it in the main set for everyone to get familiar with it and then goof around in the mini-set.
- Mini-sets are part of their corresponding expansion, which means they will also rotate with said expansion when the time comes.
New Keyword: Corrupt
- The keyword had several iterations:
- "What if these minions cost health instead of mana?"
- "What if there was a deck-building restriction like 'No 4-cost minions?'"
- They settled on the current version of Corrupt because they liked how through the keyword, they can tell a story.
- Further down in the development process, they realized it could become very difficult to activate high-cost Corrupt cards and had to adapt.
- There will be a 9-Cost Corrupted card with a crazy effect!
Balancing for Standard vs Wild
- Standard is their first priority, but they absolutely keep Wild in mind.
- They make a lot of changes in final design that could break things in Wild.
- Balancing happens ahead of time on two teams; The Initial Design team and the Final Design team.
- Initial Design has a bit more free reign, they get to design the "cool stuff"
- Final Design has to be the "bad guy" and shoot some of those things down not to break the game.
- There is also a "final final" design, right before the new set releases.
- They try to predict how will the meta shape up and have their eye set on few potential offenders like Potion of Illusion during Scholomance, but ultimately it is on the players to show them to what extent can different cards be used.
New Game Mode: Duels
- Battlegrounds, and how the community received it, paved the way for Duels and other new game modes to come.
- They shot in the dark and hit a bullseye, that got them excited and wanted to try that again.
- The community was asking for a PvP Dungeon Run forever, so here you go :)
- They are experimenting with different sizes of game modes.
- Duels have a lot of similarities with Arena, and because they know the boundaries of that mode, they had a good idea of how to go from there.
- They wanted you to be able to use your collection, but also keep the spirit of the Dungeon run, so now you can do both!
- With rotating sets, the game mode will stay fresh because you will need to build your deck from different cards.
- They like the idea of unlocking a unique Hero Powers by owning a specific card.
- There is a lot of wiggle room for balance and adjustment, be it treasures, their occurrence or power and so on.
- Community feedback is the most important and can help steer the new game mode in a certain direction.
New Progression System
- The goal is to ensure that players never lose something.
- They want to be more transparent with how much gold and other rewards you (can) get over the course of an expansion.
- Before, you would get 10 gold per 3 wins, but how many times did you actually get that during an expansion?
- Now you can track your progress easily and see exactly how much you got and how much you can still get.
- If you like to save up gold and buy a bunch of packs when new expansion launches, that is not going to change.
- In fact, you should be getting more gold and cosmetics at the end of the season, that is the goal.
- It also lets them do more awesome Hero skins and different versions for The Coin (Editor's note: maybe more different card art in the future?)
- The new system is more rewarding to players who like to play different game modes.
- If you play a lot of Battlegrounds, you don't get 10 gold for 3 wins very often, now you'll get rewarded better for playing the game mode you like!
- Liv is very excited about achievements and just wants to OTK someone with C'Thun, the Shattered :)
- Achievements are going to be tailored for each expansion and should let you experience it to the fullest and show you what might be possible.
And there you have it, folks. What are you most excited about in the new expansion?
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Comments
I don't know why they couldn't go down the same route at MtGArena and just have daily quests give gold AND battle pass experience and remove gold from the battle pass. This way, people know that they're not going to lose anything, and the amount of rewards you're going to get has only increased. By doing it this way, it's cast a lot of doubt on people, and how secretive they're being of it makes it seem as if the rewards aren't actually on par with the current system.
Personally, I have faith that Blizzard did their calculations properly and they know that an average person completing all their dailies and winning a couple of games should earn 7-8000 gold per expansion cycle. If they guarantee that we're going to get the same amount of gold in this new system, I am willing to put my trust in Blizzard if that means more sick cosmetics.
Hero Powers - "They like the idea of having unique hero powers locked behind owning certain cards." But... why? How? If you want to help players feel rewarded for their accomplishments, lock hero powers behind something in Duels, please, not behind how much money you've given to Blizzard.
Miniset - I've still got the same feelings about the miniset - shaking up the meta is a great idea, but you don't need to print legendaries for that to happen. Buying 20 packs midcycle is well worth the fun. Spending thousands of dust is not. Like all HS players, I am a territorial dust bunny.
Progression - And like others said, I wish they'd just show us the progression track instead of continuing to promise, promise, and promise. It makes me suspect that they know it's worse and plan to release everything at once, so that bad publicity gets drowned out by new expansion giddiness.
That said, I'm excited to see how this all goes. I can't wait to put all four old gods in a deck! I wonder if we'll have enough tribal Corrupt minions to make Y'shaarj and N'zoth work together?
Honestly, this interview, at least as far as the new progression system is concerned, is just piecemeal. There's plenty of nice statements, but it kinda feels like they are trying very hard to put a nice little spin before exposing us to reality. If its supposed to be a positive move, why not be more transparent and just let us see the entire 50 levels (I think this is the cap) of progression and its rewards. Of course, I'm not discounting any possibilities that this can actually end up better than we feared.
What really concerns me is the introduction of new 35 cards mid expansion. Kinda feels like trying to shoehorn in mini-expansions to make more money. At very least they're not doing the same shit as with Galakrond's awakening where a mandatory 20 bucks is required to just stay on par with others. There's obviously more than a few implications, like do you buy as many packs as you can at launch, then save up for the mid expansion, thereby jeopardizing your savings for the next expansion? It won't surprise me one bit if there's a convenient bundle sold at 20 bucks just right after the mid-expansion launches; we need only pray that they are packs from the current expansion.
One last thing I got from the interview;
I think that's a subtle hint that that 10 gold every 3 wins is kaput in the new system.
But until they release the full progression, or until 12 Nov when we find out for ourselves, I guess we will never know.
It's not a subtle hint - it's almost an explicit statement that 10 gold is done. Which I'm fine with - bring on the new system! I think it's better in every way.
In my mind, iv always expect that to be true from the beginning to be honest. I dont think it would matter much if they left it in and could be a nice addition, but i can understand them wanting to "clean up" the process.
That was what i thought as well. The 10g per 3 wins is replaced by a little xp at the end of each game. How much xp you get should be calculated from time spent or if you win or lose
I don't care, i just know that i always manage to save 9k gold between expansions. So as long as i keep getting my 9k, i'm ok with this new system. If i get only half of this, i'm quitting the game for good.
This.
I can't wait to see all out and try it myself. I care little about comsetics, but a lot about daily quest's gold. I should start a spreadsheet to check how much gold I will be making with the new system.
Corrupt really feels like the original Old Gods were you had "transformed" minions into twisted-more powerful beings, but done in a refined more interesting way.
Hopefully the above doesn't imply you don't get any gold for 3 wins anymore - over an expansion cycle it can add up. Then again if we get more gold overall anyway I won't miss it much. It was kinda handy to get that last 10g for a pack/arena run etc though.
Will be interesting to see the rarity distribution of the miniset. Perhaps it will be the same as Galakrond's Awakening. I need to have an idea of how many packs to save for it's release so I can fill in the new commons/rares at least.
Shifting the meta drastically is great for keeping things fresh like the say. It does make crafting cards more risky though ahead of it's release as what can be safe crafts suddenly aren't anymore. But then what's the point if you don't want to play in a stale meta anymore. So overall a good thing? Plus more card reveals yay! :)
I'm still overjoyed about achievements - it's one of things I wanted to have most.
OK if the same as GA I think it would be:
- 30 commons
- 24 rares
- 8 epics
- 4 legendaries
So 22 packs or so assuming you already filled out the commons/rares of the set before miniset release.
Or buy less packs and perhaps just craft any missing rares (and epics/legendaries of course) you feel are needed with dust which is probably what I'll do. It's great we can do that rather than uncraftable cards behind a PVE content paywall.
But consider saving pack rewards from end of season and XP progression for the miniset release if you can.
I offered advice above. Usually mine is suspect.