Recently, Dean "Iksar" Ayala and Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig were interviewed by ShackNews and we got some great new insights. 2021 has been a very positive year so far for the developers' communication with the players: it really seems like they're putting much more effort than in the past, and it also helps us to understand their work philosophies and balance criteria we wouldn't be aware of otherwise. Great job Team 5.
Design Insights
- They scrap more card designs than the cards they ship.
- Single cards are more likely to get discarded than whole mechanics.
- Ysera, Unleashed's previous designs involved turning your deck into a Dream Portal that summoned Dragons each turn, but that brought up so many game-play questions that they decided to move on from that idea.
New Classes
- There are a lot of factors that go into determining when the right time for a new class is.
- They have to make sure that the new mechanics are fun and that they feel different than what already exists.
- They wouldn't want to add Monk if it's the same thing as Druid, for example. Monk hinted!
- It's a lot of work to create a new class and not something they could do every year.
- Another class being added to the game is a matter of "when" not "if".
Battlegrounds
- Both Constructed and Battlegrounds see a ton of play: they don't eclipse each other.
- A lot of the people that are playing Battlegrounds are either coming into Hearthstone fresh or are coming back to the game without playing constructed at all anymore.
- There are still many questions opened: how frequently should they update the mode? Seems like a good opportunity to show some feedback.
- Battlegrounds will be out of beta when it will be out of beta. Yep, you read that right.
Full interview
Here's a concise review of the whole interview for anyone who's interested - have a good read!
Quote From ShackNews At any point in the design phase, have you ever happened to think about a really cool mechanic, but then abandon it because you feared it would've completely broken everything or just wouldn't have worked from a software game perspective?
Iksar - There are always individual card designs that we think are interesting or we might just talk about, but then we figure "there's no way we can make this work”. It happens pretty frequently from just brainstorming cards, a little less where we put them in our Excel sheet and then we go to implement them. Moreover, it happens more on the individual card level than on mechanics - we cut things from mechanics all the time: we scrap far more things than we actually ship.
Celestalon - I think that when we have those weird things that we don't have tech for already is also a good indicator that there's probably a lot of weird edge cases as far as the gameplay goes.
I'll give you an example: Descent of Dragon’s Ysera, Unleashed - One of the ideas we had for that card was “Battlecry: transform your deck into a Dream Portal.” that just spits out a random Dragon every turn: so instead of a deck you had a portal. We thought it was an interesting design, but there were a lot of edge cases like “how exactly does a Dream Portal interact with effects like destroying the top card of the deck?” or what if you draw a spell? The gameplay was really creative in terms of design but not super worth all those different questions we’d have to come up with answers for, so we went with the design that we shipped instead.
Would you guys determine what is a good time to add a new class to the game? You have most of the classes in Warcraft: the only one you're missing is Monk [edit: and Death Knight].
Iksar - There are a lot of factors that go into determining when the right time for new class is. The first question is “is that even compelling at all?”. When we look at Demon Hunter, based on all the metrics and data we had and all the reception we tried to quantify from articles online, it seems like it was a pretty positive experience. There's a bunch of excitement that comes with adding a new class that makes people want to come back and makes people want to try it, whether you're new or you're coming back to the game.
In terms of timing, I think we just want to space those things out: I think the next class is probably a matter of when rather than if - Demon Hunter went over pretty. We just have to find the right expansion and the right theme for it, as well as the right mechanics.
In the end, we'd rather find something that's really fun and then decide to ship it versus deciding to add a new class and then figure out later if it's really fun or not. We have to do the exploration first and find some mechanics that are really fun and that are also different than what already exists: we wouldn't want to add Monk if it's the same thing as Druid, but we’d want to find some hook for them to feel significantly different than everything else, so it just doesn't feel like we're rehashing a lot of the same stuff. First, the idea has to come and then the right timing is usually a little spaced out from when the previous class was introduced.
Celestalon - It's also just a lot of work: it's not something we couldn't do every expansion or every year.
Battlegrounds has been a huge success: how has that affected the meta? Do you see more people playing Battlegrounds than constructed?
Celestalon - I can tell you that both Constructed and Battlegrounds are super healthy: both see a ton of play and it's not like one is completely dominating the other. We like that they work well together: if you're tired of playing Constructed you can play Battlegrounds; Duels is also another mode and we're adding Mercenaries as well.
Iksar - Battlegrounds does not cannibalize than much on other game modes’ population: it wasn't as likely you were a Constructed player then stopped playing it to come and play Battlegrounds - a lot of the people that are playing Battlegrounds either are coming into Hearthstone fresh or are coming back to the game without playing Constructed at all anymore.
From that perspective, the population of both modes is super healthy: it seems like if you’re really excited about Constructed as your main game mode, maybe you moved a little to Battlegrounds, but for the most part you're still a Constructed player, and what Battlegrounds did was just grabbing a whole bunch of people that either left or coming in from the first time.
Battlegrounds is still a very fresh mode and there are a lot of questions opened: how frequently should we update it? We don't want to fall into the trap of being like “this works for Constructed Hearthstone so we should do the same thing for Battlegrounds”, while they are really different games.
Celestalon - And in the theme of Forged in the Barents we do have more updates to battlegrounds coming, like the addition of Quillboar and we're going to keep supporting and developing battlegrounds.
Battlegrounds is still technically in beta is it not? is there a timetable for when it will exit beta?
Will be done when it's done.
Comments
How is it exciting that Monk is "hinted"? It's the only WoW class left to add to HS.
The only interesting part of that is that it was hinted in a negative, which might imply that they would rather skip Monk and add something non-WoW (i.e., unique to HS) instead.
Either way, I very sincerely hope they are a lot more careful with the next class than they were with Demon Hunter. DH is probably going to be fairly reasonable after rotation, but this first year has been pretty unpleasant.
Death knight is a class in wow(and is older then monk and dh)
They already did Death Knight. It isn't a "class" per se, but it's already in Hearthstone, and it would be super weird to add it a second time in a different way.
Why would it be weird? They could just rename the current Death Knight cards to "Lich King cards" or something to not change how those work.
I'd prefer Monk over Death Knight currently for the same reason, but I hope they also become a real class one day.
One of the best side effects of the Core Set is that adding a new class with the set rotation means they can add tons of new cards for the new class to make up for it not existing the previous year. Then, remove a bunch at the next cycle once it equals the other classes in expansion card count.
My guess is we will see a new class next year and it will probably be monk since we just got a kind of edgy darker theme with demon hunter it makes sense they would go a more mellow and calm route with monk next. Every other year for a new class sounds good. Demon Hunter was pretty much Warlock/Hunter so my guess for monk would be Druid/Shaman/Priest
If not a new class we will definitely get something cool because Blizzard always want to start the new year with a bang.
When DH was released, I was apprehensive to the idea of a new class. At this point, I have accepted it and look forward to Monks and DKs being added. My only concern with the inclusion of monks is how they would make it unique because monk is the least interesting class (imo). It is like a jack-of-all-trades class, but they are worse than druid.
Edit: I mean they are the least interesting class in WoW. If you are curious there are three specs for monks: brewmaster (tank), windwalker (dps), and mistweaver (healer). I personally think druid does it better because it can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, and more. Also you get to be a dinosaur if you play as a zandalari troll, which is inherently cooler than being a weird fat panda.
Makes me think Monk would get a hero power with 3 different effects and it swaps every turn like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius
It's not like you swap roles every 5 seconds in WoW.
What they really need to do is let you choose from several different hero powers when you build a deck. In fact, this is something they should be doing in all classes at this point. Just think how many times we've tried to build archetypes that almost work but lack support from the hero power, so they never quite get there. I mean, they've flirted with this idea from the beginning with Shadow Priest, and obviously it's already a thing in Duels. Why not just take the plunge already?
They will 100% want to create some kind of unique mechanic for the class more complex than a keyword; and most likely tied to the hero power.
They said that they actually didnt spend as much time on DH as they wanted and had to scrap some more complex ideas to make deadline. They also said they would want to single out a small team dedicated to development of just the new class when the time comes, they definitely learned a lot from making DH in terms of time and ppl requieremets.