by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Welcome to #PlayHearthstone day! One of the major events was a Q&A between @CM_Zeriyah (Christina Sims), Jason Chayes, and Eric Dodds. Community members on Twitter were invited to ask questions directly to the developers.

Topics included Esports, card backs, adventure mode, and different Hearthstone platforms.

Here’s a summary of the major points that were discussed during the Q&A.

Spectator mode — “Relatively quick”. No details on when, but this is something that’s important to them. Now the developers are looking at the features that the community wants.

iPad version — Very close. Down to their final builds. Further than a few days. But not months. Probably a few weeks. Nothing concrete for Android devices yet.

Phone version — Very early stages of development. Want to make sure experience holds up on phone and PC. Looking at second half of this year for phones.

Shared collections on devices — iPad and PC Hearthstone card collections are share&d. Same arena run if you wanted even. And Battle Net friends.

Esports and Tournament play — Early discussion about that. Nothing concrete yet. Tournament structure will come later, but discussions are starting.

Secrets — Why trigger on opponent’s turn only? It was done for a larger reason. When designing a secret, the developers were looking at cards and how it would be an awesome card if it weren’t just a secret. It was significantly limiting design space because secrets could be triggered on either turn. It had nothing to do balance wise with the current environment.

Heroes — What goes into selecting the heroes that represent each class deck? They were just trying to figure out which characters were the most iconic and would fit into the class they represent most. For example, Tyrande as a hunter? But she is also a Priestess of the moon.

Card backs — They’ll be animated. Can be earned primarily by participating in ranked play. But we want them as rewards for just participating from rank 25 to 20. You’ll get the back for that season. Since you can’t lose from 25 – 20, you’ll be able to earn to them easily. The Legend card back can only be earned when you reach Legend. But you keep that one forever. First card back available is the Pandaren one once we’re out of test season 4. Which means it’ll be next season after the current one ends.

Adventure mode — Various bosses, earn cards by defeating them (as an idea), but they’re going to keep discussing adventure mode. And yes to expansions. More to share in the next few months.

Other franchises — No plans to add Starcraft or Diablo lore. Enough material within the Warcraft world. It can keep Hearthstone going a long time just by building from the Warcraft universe.

What mechanics didn’t make the cut? — Discard never went in. Too strong of a negative emotional impact on the other player. Never went down a counterspell road either. Critical strike was aMechanic that if a minion attacked, it had a CHANCE of doing double damage. Didn’t go down that path because they felt they were pushing the RNG too much. “If you mouse over the card, the player would take 1 point of damage”. Also didn’t last very long.

Nat Pagle and Tinkmaster Overspark nerfs — Made for specific reasons. Lots of Nat cards seen. Gave additional card draw. Thinned out everyone decks. Added more options. Fewer cards left in the deck. Felt the pacing of acquiring cards was fine without him. If everyone is running him, then it’s something that they’re nervous about so they lowered it a bit. As for theTinkmaster, the developers like having lots of big creatures in the game (Tirion Fordring, Ragnaros, etc). What it was doing was that it made players at a high level less interested in playing big creatures in a late game deck because no matter what happens, it would get neutralized. They felt that Tinkmaster was almost a requirement. But it freed up players to put back their big creatures again.

Source: PlayHearthstone on Twitch