Interview with Hearthstone Developers: Eric Dodds & Ben Brode
Author - Gnimsh On - Twitter | Facebook | Twitch.TV | Youtube
Gnimsh: Can you name a card that you designed after the art because the art was very cool and you created mechanics for the card because of that?
Ben Brode: I know there was one I specifically remember but we actually cut it right before going to Beta. Basically the card was Ozumat, the giant octopus thing. We had some great art for that guy and we just couldn’t fit him into the game.
Gnimsh: Yeah I know that guy, the art for Ozumat is amazing. Thrall has a lot of art from different eras of Warcraft. How did you pick the final art he would have in game?
Ben Brode: Well, I felt like he’s been through a pretty big transformation around the time of Cataclysm. He changed from
wearing the armor he got from Doomhammer to his shamanistic outfit. Because he’s a Shaman and we wanted him to feel iconically shamanistic in Hearthstone, that outfit felt like a better fit for Thrall for Hearthstone so that cut a lot of the older Thrall art out of our options. As far as the new Thrall art, you’re right, there’s a lot of great pieces by a lot of great artists but this piece I felt fit the unique shape of our heroes. They’re not a triangle, but more of a bent triangle. His pose had a really unique silhouette, really great color scheme that was different from other heroes, it was very colorful and Glen Reed is just super talented. That piece of art is just amazing. I thought it fit perfectly.
Gnimsh: Yeah I agree, this is a cool piece of art. Last question about art; Why was the art for Voidwalker changed?
Ben Brode: We had two pieces of Voidwalker art in the game, one for Void Terror (which is actually not a Voidwalker in the Warcraft lore) so we wanted to use a Void Terror piece of art on that card and we actually felt like the art we HAD been using on Void Terror looked a little bit better for our classic Voidwalker. The colors were a little more iconically Voidwalker so we switched it over to that card as well.
Gnimsh: Ah okay, that’s cool. Next question! Based on the winrates and the large number of possible matchups, how do you handle deciding what needs to be fixed? Obviously there’s a lot of matches going on daily so if you feel something is too powerful or too popular, how do you decide to fix it?
Eric Dodds: For us, we’ve been in a great position with the metagame shifting even before the recent balance changes, the metagame is still shifting at a high level. Most of the balance changes we’ve been making we’ve been making not based on “Class A is winning over Class B X percent of the time“ most of the time. It’s been “There’s a high level deck that is successful of a certain archetype and it’s just no fun to play against that archetype and so while we don’t want to make that class non-viable, we do want to make that archetype less viable. For instance, the AoE Frost Mage with Pyro. That’s not a fun archetype to play against. A lot of these changes we’ve been making, I’d say most of them, have been based around improving the experience of both of the players and making it a more interactive game rather than based around high level balance. At this point, frankly, from a high level balance perspective, day to day and week to week we see different classes at the top. I think it’d be dangerous for us to do too much balancing based on the game or the slice of the game at any given moment. We can make changes and then two weeks later the meta would have shifted and we’re doing exactly the wrong thing. In a lot of ways it’s great because the metagame is shifting and so, so far it’s looking very balanced and fluid but I guess we’ll have to see what it looks like tomorrow.
Gnimsh: Great answer, I think every player would like to hear this from a developer. Thank you for that answer.
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i’m a bit disappointed that they still do not have any plans on a reward system for ranked play. For me, that would’ve been one of the top things on my to-do list after the card bug fixing simply to have another profitable gamemode for players apart from arena.
Right now you’re simply playing for prestige and even that lasts only for the ongoing season since there is no achievement or history system yet. Overall it sounds in the interview like they do not have any bigger updates for HS in planning for the release and the weeks after which is on the one hand understandable for a transition from beta to launch. On the other hand i wish they have something new up their sleves for the release.
When asked about banning Pagle and Tinkmaster, they talk about them increasing fun and skill…
HOW IS NAT PAGLE FUN OR SKILLED AT ALL
I am hoping that they have something that they aren’t telling us about. It seems like they aren’t really working on a whole lot for the release. They just seem to be fixing everything that is currently not working. I am glad that they will be getting rid of flying cards, minion dancing, and cards overlapping, but I would also like to see some of the team focusing elsewhere.
Adventure mode would be amazing at launch. I am so confused about the theory behind not releasing it. They keep saying that they are holding back, because they don’t want to introduce a ton of new content to new players. If they are new, then they probably don’t realize that it is new content, and just accept it as part of the game. That is like saying that they didn’t want to have arena in the closed beta, because it would flood players with too many game modes. It really does not make a lot of sense, to me, at least. I know that players that have been in the beta for a long time, are getting a little tired of the cards, and would like a little more.
I also would not mind seeing more rewards for Ranked play. I would like to see new players able to get dust, gold, cards, and whatever by playing without the risk involved in Arena. I know that Arena is intimidating for a lot of new players, because they feel like they will just go 0-3 and lose a lot of gold, which is important in getting new cards. If there were rewards in Ranked for hitting a certain rank for the first time, new players would jump in and really try to get farther in the ranks.
Lastly, I really wish that they would work on an observer client, because the way that people have to record and cut/paste hands and whatever to make tournaments actually work. Hearthstone is getting so much scene time, whether that be in big tournaments, or local events. I think they should recognize this and put more focus into the observer client. Big tournaments will follow, and publicity will be insane. It is just good for the game in general. Worst case scenario, they will have it before next Blizzcon, right?
In the software development community, we refer to things like the above as “I want a pony”.
https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IwantaPony
I do not think Blizzard is telling us the whole story. There will be one more major point before release that we did not expect! Kind of like the novice engineer nerf .
I am not going to flame Blizz but I’d rather say: Job well done Gnimsh! The interview is awesome. Unlike most other interviews this one is not tunnel visioning the eSports theme but actually includes really interesting information for the game we like. It is really refreshing and entertaining.
Great interview Marcin, a job well done.
I’ve watched or read every Hearthstone developer interview and this one was the best and most entertaining by far. Loved your obscure questions about the artwork and development process. Great job Gnimsh! Can’t wait for your next interview,
Nice interview, Mr. Gnimsh. Looking forward to more from you.
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