In an interview with IGN's Cam Shea, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft senior game designer Mike Donais and associate designer Dean Ayala discussed a variety of topic concerning the current and future state of the massively popular digital card game.
One of the issues put on the spotlight is Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, a legendary card from the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion. The 10-cost 7/5 minion has a Battlecry ability that casts a random spell for each spell that the player has cast for the game, with spells that require targets also choosing them randomly.
Yogg-Saron has brought one of the core elements of Hearthstone up for debate, and that is the game's RNG, or random number generator. The usage of RNG in Hearthstone has been controversial and is said to be hurting the competitive scene due to skill being overshadowed by luck. Currently, Yogg-Saron is the poster child of RNG and the luck-versus-skill discussion.
According to Donais, Yogg-Saron is definitely on their radar. While the legendary generated a lot of excitement when Hearthstone's most recent expansion was released, some people have shifted their opinions on the card. The Hearthstone team is always trying to keep all players happy, though, and is trying to find a solution for the presence of Yogg-Saron.
Donais, however, said that it is still too early to determine what kind of solution is needed. Proposed actions, however, include taking Yogg-Saron out of the current Standard format and only making it playable in the Wild format, nerfing the card's ability and simply doing nothing.
Another card that was discussed in the interview was Call of the Wild, an 8-mana Hunter spell that summoned all three of the animal companions of the class. Specifically, these are the 3-mana 4/2 Huffer with charge, the 3-mana 4/4 Misha with taunt and the 3-mana 2/4 Leokk, which gives all other friendly minions +1 attack.
Ayala admitted that Call of the Wild is a strong card, but in some cases, it is fine for a class to have access to such. According to Ayala, the game's designers have talked about at least 15 cards over the past couple of weeks, with Call of the Wild always being brought up. Donais, however, noted that cards in expansions are being brought up more because they are new compared with cards in the classic set that have been around for a longer period of time.
On the topic of the changes that were recently made to Hearthstone's Arena mode, Ayala said that the designers are feeling pretty good about the changes, but it would be very hard to forecast what the impact will be.
Ayala revealed that the process that went into the decisions behind the changes were based on a multitude of statistics and dashboards, with discussions going into specific cards that were taken out and left inside the Arena.
The interview also covered the topics of the health of the meta, the rise of Shaman and the possibility of an in-game tournament mode.
