Peter Whalen Interview Summary - Titans Were Axed, Herald Volazj Copied Your Opponent

Hearthstone Publié 26/05/2016 à 13:09 par Skiffington

The Golden Wisp podcasthis TwitterInterview Notes

Because of how unfamiliar some folks were with the Old Gods, they needed to make sure to ground the set with corrupted versions of other Hearthstone cards.

Peter is very happy with the reception of Old Gods, particularly with .

Cards that they didn't think were going to be competitive like and have really found a home in the casual community.

Every designer on the team made lists of cards they wanted to change in the round of nerfs and there up being "a ton." But they cut them down to the group that went live.

The team definitely thought about nerfing and as most of the community says, but they also thought about tackling . Peter says these cards that completely change the way you're playing in the middle of the game are what they looked at.

" we change them ever, well we'll see. We're always evaluating how things are going..."

They don't necessarily think they have to change basic cards for popular archetypes like Miracle Rogue and Freeze Mage. Peter cites the popularity of Face Hunter as an example of fixing the issue simply by releasing more cards rather than changing old ones.

's nerf originally upped it to five mana before they settled on making it a 2/2.

"We tried some crazy things with to try and keep it intact in what it used to do, or in versions of what it used to do. We tried doing a single target version where you just threw your dagger at a thing instead of having it do an AoE and making it cheaper. A little bit like except it destroyed so we could make it even cheaper and put it in a class like Rogue that's very, very good at buffing their weapon."

The nerf was a bit rough, but they wanted to make sure Druid feels different each year.

Direct QuotesWhy don't you introduce yourself?Dream QuestHow did you arrive at the Old Gods theme?everybody picked their favorite one which was Old Gods vs. The Titans. We were going to do another combat - good versus evil - the most powerful things in Warcraft history fighting each other. And then we actually started designing cards and we realized Titans are an awesome kit on their own and there's so much stuff there and Old Gods are an awesome kit. We just couldn't figure out how to keep that conflict in 130 cards, so we had to settle on which one was coolerWhen did you realize when you wanted to do something different with this set?Why no new mechanics?For a long time the C'Thun mechanic was a keyword: we called it Ritual or Ritualist or some form of that as time went on.Every time we add a new keyword it's harder for a new person to pick up the game and play it so we try to figure out if there's value when we add a new keyword.Do you think you ever want to limit the number of keywords you're introducing?It's definitely possible to have too many keywords.Any awesome stories from coming up with the cards in Old Gods?We had versions that ate your hero at the start of the game and gave you a new hero power. We had a version that when you played it, it replaced your hero power with 'Do one damage (doubles every use).' That was actually not that much fun. We had versions that totally replaced your whole deck, so you could replace your deck with a bunch of tentacles.The initial design for that was 'Become a copy of your opponent.' And so your hero portrait, all of your minions, all of your cards in hand and in your deck would become exact mirrors of your opponent.