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Hearthstone Developer Insights Q&A: A Short Summary

by - 7 years ago

Yesterday, Dean Ayala and Ben Brode broadcasted a Hearthstone Developer Q&A. It was the first one that was not recorded in Ben’s bedroom and later put on youtube but from a studio live at Blizzard. There was a lot of good communication about the state of the game and some information what will come to Hearthstone in the future. They first talked about the state of the game and recent community topics. After that, they took questions from the community and the live audience and answered them on stream. If you like to watch the full VOD, you can do it here or read a (short) summary after the break.

Key facts (not a complete transcript):

  • the developer Q&A could become a regular thing to communicate with the players
  • Small-Time Buccaneer is on their watch list
  • Reno Jackson will move to Wild and will not be an evergreen; other heals can shine more without him
  • Kun, the Forgotten King, was tested a lot
  • More Jade and Reno cards are unlikely in the new set
  • More handbuff cards are likely to come
  • Overall balance is good right now, Top 11 decks within 3% win-rate with the highest being 52%; over 55% would be dangerous most likely resulting in an intervention
  • new player experience has been adjusted by changing matchmaking (e.g. matching new players against new players frequently)
  • the ladder is too greedy, and they have a lot of ideas how to change it, but they do not want to devaluate the Legend rank and most likely not change the timeframe of a season; there can be short-term fixes as well as long-term fixes later on
  • Arena balance has high priority; they have a lot of ideas
    • considering Standard Arena
    • reducing frequency of “useless” cards
    • improving “synergy” and implementing less “curve play”
    • some changes are already near release
  • Hunter is too slow for the meta and not good right now; lacks a good 2-drop weapon to run pirates
  • Paladin is almost fine, can be good if meta slows down
  • Different advantages and disadvantages of nerf over rotating cards to wild were discussed
  • They want to improve the popularity of Wild format; Ben loves the idea of Wild events; Standard twice as popular as Wild
  • Team 5 increased from a few to over 75, almost doubles every year
  • Insight on how a workday of Ben and Dean were given; also some fun details about team events
  • They like non-competitive cards like Weasel Tunneler

That’s about it. I highly recommend seeing it for yourself though because a summary like that cannot catch all the facts and the honesty of the stream.

 


Martin "OtakuMZ" Z.

Real life physician and afterhour card battler. Martin "OtakuMZ" contributes to the Hearthstone team of BlizzPro since late 2015. Additionally, he contributes analytic articles for Hearthstone and Gwent as a member of Fade2Karma and in his collumn on the Gwentlemen site. He is best known for his infographics which can be accessed at a glance at https://www.facebook.com/hsinfographics and https://www.facebook.com/gwentinfographics


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