Hearthstone's New Expansion Is Bringing The Game Back To Its Roots

On its surface, today's new Hearthstone expansion, Rise of Shadows, looks like just another batch of new cards. But paired with the Year of the Dragon rotation-a major rule changes that also drops today and will make some of the game's most powerful cards illegal in the game's popular Standard mode-the set looks like it can bring some of the most significant metagame changes That Hearthstone has seen in years.

Over the last two years, the average Hearthstone game has held a distinctive distinctive flavor-one that was not everyone's liking. The best decks on the cards can be used to win the game, which can be used to win bonuses, and super-powerful combos that could kill even the greediest late game decks in one fell swoop. Compared to the game's early days, where victories came through incremental advantages and smart, measured play Hearthstone'S metagame could often look like a game of rock-paper-scissors. If you had a deck that was popular in the meta, you'd play something that could beat it. If you were feeling cheeky, you'd play a deck that countered the counter.

Many of the game's strongest cards are rotating out of standard play with Rise of Shadows, from all-powerful late game cards like Rexxar Deathstalker and Frost Lich Jaina to greet Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater, which gives extremely potent Hero Powers in exchange for playing decks with odd- or even-cost cards. With all these changes on the horizon, it feels like Hearthstone is on the verge of an entirely new era.

To get a better sense of Hearthstone'S philosophy in the upcoming Year of the Dragon and Beyond, I talked with Hearthstone Senior Game Designer Dean Ayala about card design, lessons learned, and tapping the core gameplay interactions that make Hearthstone such a compelling game.

Kotaku: The rotation of Death Knight cards might represent one of the most significant power shifts in all of Hearthstone history. What kind of lessons did the team learn from the original set of Death Knights?

Ayala: In terms of what's rotating out, and Death Knights specifically, a lot of those cards filled with a role that no other cards can fulfill. I think when they are talking about Death Knights, they're talking about cards like [Deathstalker] Rexxar and [Frost Lich] Jaina, these one-card package value generators for the entire rest of the game. Cards like that are not really getting replaced; it's more like a shift for what's available for those classes.

I mean, we certainly do not regret making those cards, but I think we're happy to take a break. One of the things we've been realizing you've got a really great deal of control-you're a warrior, you've got Ysera in your deck, and you've all these different Legendaries and control cards and these late game bombs. And then you get to a point where it's turn 25 and you're losing to a Hunter like deck. They did not really make these sacrifices, they all really was Rexxar in. And while Rexxar is one of the most unique and really fun cards, it can make you think you are in your life. to do that better than your 10-card package does.

Like I said, these cards are really, really fun and really unique, and I'm glad they existed for the time they existed, but [it’s nice] If you're going to make a big sacrifice, you're gonna be paid off for that.

Kotaku: What have you learned from combo decks, and what place will they have in the upcoming expansion and beyond?

Ayala: [Combo] decks are cool, and we want them to exist, but it becomes a problem when they are eliminating a whole other archetype of deck. I think if you're building a combo deck, you should still be able to get some pretty good matchups, but sometimes you're gonna have some pretty good matchups, and that's okay.

I think specifically with Mech'athun, there was a little bit easier than a time building Mecha'thun decks than we expected. There is a lot of things to do, but cards like Cataclysm, and Warp and Naturalize going to the Hall of Fame, make it a little bit harder to achieve. And also introducing cards like Hecklebot and Unseen Saboteur-the cards that mess with the opponent's combos. Unseen Saboteur makes you cast a spell from your opponent`s hand, Hecklebot pulls cards from decks. If you want to interact with those decks-if you're just getting beat by Mecha'thun, we'd like to go from "play an aggro deck" to: "Okay, I like playing control decks. What ways are there for me to play control decks? I'm always at a disadvantage? "

Like Hecklebot and Unseen Saboteur, they're really good in some metas. Unseen Saboteur is really bad because you're playing against a Big Warrior deck that has Ripper, which summons two cards from your deck. So maybe you do not wanna play Unseen Saboteur if Big Warrior is a really big deck in the meta. And if that's the case, maybe it's time to play Mecha'thun decks. The place that we do not wanna be [where] it's really hard to be able to counter [combo decks], or have any strategies that are good against them unless you're playing an aggro deck. If your style is better, you need to be able to interact with the game in a way that you do not want to change completely.

Kotaku: With the new Specialist rule set for Hearthstone esports, has the design team changed its card design with that format in mind?

Ayala: Not specifically-indirect. The thing that makes them really easy to get to know the game and how to play it. better. We want to design our game that we want to keep things simple, but we want to keep things so they have a lot of depth, so these players can show off a lot of their skill in figuring out which cards Rise of Shadows can give them an incremental advantage that helps them beat some other decks.

With cards like Rexxar, there 's a lot of things you need to know about it. When it's a bunch of different options, I think that makes it easier for all of you. Hearthstone players.

Kotaku: With the introduction of callback cards, which re-introduce the mechanics of the previous expansions RoS feels like a return to Hearthstone'S roots. Is that something that the team was thinking about or trying to accomplish with this set?

Ayala: Something we talked about in the playtesting is … if your goal was in the last year or two years Hearthstone, it's been like: "What package of cards can I put in? What is my combo? What is the super fast way I can get the gates in order to win this game really early? And if I'm not winning really early, then what is my crazy package of things? Hearthstone, sometimes you played Ysera, and Ysera lived a turn, and that was kind of your win condition. The small amount of value, the incremental advantages, playing some bigger cards than my opponent, or playing a flamestrike at the right time.

I think when they really start to get really insane and they do not really have a way to interact, or there's cards that are just generating value for the entire rest of the game, the idea of, "I just played it and it stuck around I won the game because of "is kind of a foreign concept. In this year's playtesting, we're kind of coming back to that a little bit. I played the big minion of the set, or I played Archvillain Rafaam and stuck that, and played another couple Legendaries and won the game that way. Rexxar and Jaina do not really exist in Standard anymore.

In general, it's a lot more like original Hearthstone in that way. There's a lot of insane things you can do, but hopefully there's a lot of ways to interact with those things. You can just play oldschool Hearthstone, where you're playing giant minions, and gaining incremental advantage, and winning games that way.

Kotaku: A lot of changes in this expansion. Hunter-typically associated with aggression-got some interesting value cards, as did Rogue-a class typically associated with tempo. What are the most important tweaks we'll see in class identities in the Year of the Dragon?

Ayala: I think in general, we're just trying to get the class identities a little bit tighter. A trap I think you are a designer of a lot of time: you give an identity and you say, okay, this is a Hunter's identity. They're aggressive, or the terminology that we use is a "forward motion class": a class that's always putting on pressure. As a designer, we're always trying to figure out: what's the new cool thing we can not do before? So when you're trying to give classes identities, but you're aussi Rexxar, who are like "Gain 5 and gain strength from a control deck." I think that's something we're trying to pull back we have little.

There's cards like Master's Call that is definitely worth generators … you pay 3 [mana], you draw 3 [cards]. It's hard to argue that this is not a value generation card. But if you look at the Master's Call Hunter decks, they are not late game control decks … They are trying to deal with you as fast as you can. The existence of value generation cards does not need to change the class identity of that class, when I would argue a card like a Rexxar. So we are a little bit more careful about staying true to what these classes are about.

Kotaku: The past year has had a different range of popular metagame, but it still has been made. What has the design team been learning about, viability and diversity? Hearthstone?

Ayala: I think what is a lot of different ways of doing things? There are a lot of different classes and a lot of different decks. Diversity is a little bit even deeper than that. There really is a complex decks to play. There needs to be a crazy combo Priest deck with Stonetusk Boar that requires you to do all this crazy APM at the end of the game, which appeals to a certain type of player. And there also needs to be like, say, Jade Druid or Murloc Shaman, where you go to your collection and type in "Jade" or type in "Murloc," and you jam all the cards in.

Diversity does not mean that there's Hunter, and there's Shaman, and there's Druids, and they're playing different decks. It also means: if I'm a new player, and I gravitate towards aggressive stuff, is there a pretty easy deck for me to build that is gonna be relatively competitive for me to play? And if I'm a very seasoned player who enjoys playing the game of decks or control decks, is there something out there that makes me feel better? We do not have a dashboard that we look at that says, okay, everyone's playing all the classes, and all the win rates are 50 percent, we did a good job-it goes a lot deeper than that.

Depending on what you're playing, making sure you're out there, that's really the goal. And if that means that some of the classes are at a 45 percent rate, you can not get enough of that, that's the goal of diversity, and that gets lost. lot of the time when we're talking about balance of cards and balance of classes. Is there something out there for you that's fun? That's the goal.