Hearthstone's game director Ben Lee was interviewed by Coin Concede, where he talked a lot about the game and revealed that he was leaving the Hearthstone team, but he would not leave Blizzard. In addition, Ben Lee also revealed Hearthstone's plans for the next year, and there are still quite a lot of dry goods.
Hearthstone Game Director Ben Lee
Ben Lee joined the Blizzard Hearthstone team in March 2019 and has been the Director of Hearthstone Games for three years, and he has taken many measures to improve the game experience and viscosity during his tenure, such as the repeated protection mechanism for the opening of various rare cards, the promotion of ranking rewards, the free core series of cards, etc., but the reward route is also a measure taken by Ben Lee, which is still a mixed change.
Ben Lee will be taken over by production director Nathan Lyons-Smith to take over the Hearthstone team, and Ben will not leave the Blizzard team, but will take over another project of Blizzard, it is not known whether it is the survival game revealed earlier, over the years the Hearthstone team has a large number of designers and managers have been transferred to this project, including Peter, Mike, Alec and so on. Most of the designers who left Blizzard have joined the game team where Ben Brode, the former chief designer of Hearthstone, is currently working, and although there is no news about the two game bodies at present, they are still quite exciting, and inexplicably have a tit-for-tat feeling.
Ladder construction
For the ladder construction mode, Ben Lee said that the number of OTK decks will be reduced in future games, and the game will always be cyclical, sometimes introducing a large number of hero cards, and sometimes focusing more on controlling the deck or combination skills. In addition, Ben said that "can not be less than 1 point" will not become the default rule in Hearthstone, because this is not intuitive for the player, if the designer feels that the card is too strong to be limited, then the conditions will be written on the card, and the designer is also reducing the global large number of fee reduction cards, which will be controlled in a small number in the future (really?). ）。
When it comes to Hearthstone's balance, Ben Lee says it's not always easy to change some things, sometimes they're not very good at balancing, they've made some mistakes, and now the designers are reluctant to hack the cards to death because it will have a big impact on the game, and Ben also gave the example of hungry vultures. But that being said, can the tavern wargame learn the same way, this time the balance patch is a knife to cut the queen and the Lich Demon to waste ah.
Ben Lee said that the attempt at the core series was a huge success, and there will be some familiar faces returning from the core series in the new year, especially Ben Lee also said that there will be some new cards that use old heroes, Breeze understands that it is similar to the new five-color dragon orange card in the core series of the Year of the Griffin, not knowing which cards will be this time, Breeze boldly guesses a new version of the Adventurer Association members, or the New Apocalypse Four Horsemen. Incidentally, Ben Lee also said that there will be a big man coming in the new year, and twitter has been guessed from Sagras to Neozou.
And for the theme of the new version, Ben Lee said that the "Panda Man Cooking Contest" was originally a strong candidate for the theme of the new expansion pack, but in the end it did not continue to do, at least in 2022 can not see him, Qingfeng feels that saying such a specific probability will not be a fog bomb, Iksar also said before that the Panda Man version has entered the final link of the discussion many times, but in the end it has not been launched, it seems that it will take a while to play the Pandaria version. In addition, Ben also said that in the new year, new card types will be introduced, and more free content will be added to the game, can you guess what card types will be produced?
Tavern wargames
For the Tavern Wargames mode, Ben Lee only revealed that a new Companion type will soon be launched, and more content is mainly praise for this mode, Tavern Wargames, as a rising star of Hearthstone, has become Hearthstone's best advertisement, so that Hearthstone's 8-year-old game can still maintain attention in the streaming media industry. Designers are also trying to make more changes in this mode, such as the current wargame partner system, and Ben said that the armor mechanism is also an interesting thing, so when to return the armor mechanism.
Mercenary War Chronicles
Mercenary Chronicles is arguably Hearthstone's most controversial model, with Ben Lee acknowledging that Mercenary Chronicles failed to fully meet the designers' design intent, and that the upheavals of working from home and Activision Blizzard had an impact on this and subsequent releases. Ben Lee says mercenary chronicles are primarily for players who like single-player games (then you're in adventure mode!). ), and the player's performance in the mercenary war record also exceeded the designer's expectations, they did not expect the player to save a lot of excess coins so quickly, and some players completed all the mercenary cultivation within a week.
In addition, Ben Lee said that Mercenary Chronicles has been a huge success in commercialization, making a lot of money for the Hearthstone team, and Ben also said that if Hearthstone is not financially successful, there is no way to make these free content. But to be honest, the promotion and pre-order of the early crotch of the mercenary war chronicle, as well as the bad things about the actual game experience, a lot of overdraft of the player's trust in Blizzard, commercial success but loss of credibility is not necessarily a good thing, but for the second half of the sentence Breeze is still recognized, although it is known that many people are not cold to the Book of Heroes and the Book of Mercenaries, but in the breeze it seems that the Book of mercenaries in the Year of the Griffin still tells a good story, and these free content do need the support of other payment models.
Other content
Hearthstone is now 8 years old and still has a large number of active players, which is not an easy thing to do, and there are still a lot of loyal players like the arena and duel modes not mentioned above. Ben Lee also said that the current card design team has reached the largest number in history, and many designers (such as Iksar) have been working for this team for many years, and he also expects Hearthstone to continue to exist for many years. In addition, Ben Lee said that Hearthstone is more profitable than many AAA masterpieces, which Qingfeng believes, which can be seen from the growing number of brand stores now, especially since the griffin, the Hearthstone team is tilting the income structure towards the skin of the jewelry.
Finally, insert some gossip to rub a heat, in the interview Ben Lee said that he has played the Eldon Ring of Law for 40 hours, for game designers, playing a variety of different types of games is also a very important thing, and recently addicted to the old man ring is not only Ben alone, Iksar Twitter also revealed that he played 30 to 40 hours of the old man ring, and he said that the plot content of the Elden Ring made him think of the Fate series, especially the darker Fate/Zero, really worthy of the old two-dimensional ah.
The above is the main content of this hearthstone game director Ben Lee's radio interview, whether it is a ladder or a tavern wargame in the coming year, it seems that there will be more interesting content, and I also wish Ben Lee a smooth work on the new project team, and hope that Blizzard's new project can meet us as soon as possible.