Q&A mit Dean Ayala

[VBrainstone-2538]

Dean Ayala’s Community Q&A #9 - Main Menu Revamp, Demon Hunter, Battlegrounds Cosmetics, Daily Deals

Forged in the Barrens

• The rewards track will reset when the expansion launches.
• Classic mode will go live with the expansion launches.

Demon Hunter

• They didn’t have as much lead time on Demon Hunter as Dean would have liked.
• Demon Hunter was created in a similar timeline that a regular expansion would have been.
• They had some really crazy ideas for the hero power that they may have been able to do if they had more time.
• Much of the time spent on the development of the class was nailing the basic design that not much was spent on archetype balance.
• Dean is happy with how Demon Hunter turned out, but if they do a new class they should break off a small team earlier to work on it.

Achievements

• Adding achievements for old adventures is something they will eventually do.
• Dean thinks old adventure heroes would make great rewards for achievements.

Battlegrounds

• They are working on cosmetics in Battlegrounds.
• They have written art descriptions for cosmetics but it will be a while before we get them.
• Dean would love to show Battlegrounds info on the friendslist in place of the Standard and Wild ranks.
  • They have art and UI questions to solve.
  • If it is something that won’t require a lot of work and require them to cut something else, they’ll do it.
• Queen Wagtoggle and Hooktusk will be added back into the pool. No timeline provided.

Cosmetics

• They are working on a new cosmetic that is coming soon.
• Dean is excited to see what people think about the new cosmetic.
• The rewards track is primarily a way to earn new cosmetics. They didn’t want to harm their other revenue stream with it.

Cards

• Dean fought against a certain card that has Charge in the nerf reverts.
• Leeching Poison was not reverted because they thought wild would be less fun.
• „If 10-15% of decks are Tickatus decks I think that’s probably a bad thing, regardless of whether they win or not.“
• Whizbang the Wonderful isn’t the only solution to making it easy to jump in and play Hearthstone.
  • Dean thinks it would be sad if he remained in Standard and players didn’t care about cards outside of the ones in his pool.

Dual Class

• A dual-class secret could happen but Hunter/Rogue isn’t currently a shared cross-over.
• Dean would love to do an entire year with dual-class cards.
• He thinks it would be hard to do the entire year, but it is fun to think about.

Insights

• Doom in the Tomb went on too long. If they do another one like it, it has to be shorter.
• Dean considers minisets an evolution of doing meta-shakeup events.
• He used to think that it would get harder over time to create new keywords; Not anymore!
• They tried to remove most of the major win conditions out of the core set. Things get stale otherwise.

The Future

• They have thought about having a character in a 3D space within Hearthstone. Decorate, explore, meet friends.
• A rework of the main menu is on the to-do list.
• Daily Deals in the shop are something they have talked about. They aren’t exactly sure how to do it yet.

Dean

• The meaning of life is to make money to watch anime, eat good food in a good house with good dogs.
• Is a „sucker“ for top x-style content online.

https://outof.cards/hearthstone/2771-dean-ayalas-community-qa-9-main-menu-revamp-demon-hunter-battlegrounds-cosmetics-daily-deals