Hearthstone's temporary game director Iksar tweeted some time ago, laughing at himself that the ideal of being remembered by everyone is "good designer and leader", but in fact, everyone remembers the passage crawler. It seems that the passage creeper card has become a black history that Iksar cannot forget. In fact, hearthstone also has many such iconic cards, they record the designers' once embarrassing black history.
Iksar with the Passage Crawler
The article was inspired by a tweet Iksar posted the other day in which Iksar laughed at himself that the points he imagined would be remembered were "good designers, game managers, and leaders," but it was actually the passage crawlers who were remembered. This tweet can be said to be quite true, it can be said that many old players who do not pay attention to hearthstone designers, when Iksar is mentioned, think of this card except "we think this is normal".
Passage Creeper is a "dog-headed man and the underground world" card, when it was first launched, the figure was 7 fees 5/5, in the preview season, some anchors were not optimistic about this card, but in fact, after the line, this card directly swept the ladder, one of the most important points is that everyone understands that this card is the same as the old version of Berval, only the death of friendly entourage will be reduced, but in fact, both sides of the entourage will give him a fee reduction. This card also created such a stem as "Master Wang's one-point card", in fact, the anchor who attacked the arena at that time scored this card quite high.
At that time, the dog-headed version was exactly the first version of Iksar's upgrade to the chief balance designer, according to Iksar's recollection, when other designers proposed that this card might be abnormally strong, he brought this card into the deck to fight a few times, felt that there was no problem, plus the construction period was tight and passed, but Iksar ignored the point, he brought into the deck at that time was a weakened version of the channel crawler, and Iksar also understood that only friendly entourage would give this card a fee reduction, It is precisely because of these oversights that the passage creepers killed all sides of the ladder as soon as they went online.
Finally, in the Balance Patch, the Passage Crawler is weakened to 2 Attacks, and this card becomes Iksar's eternal black history. In the later Twitter Q&A, Iksar also said that he had made many mistakes when he first took over the team, including many detours in some single cards and version strength, such as the weakest version of Iksar's personal admission, "Rastaha's Great Brawl", which made Iksar realize that saving the environment could not be saved by designing a version with too low intensity. Hopefully, Iksar will really grow from his mistakes, but judging by the werewolf of the early Otranch version, it's hard to say whether the design team learned a lesson...
Parity system
The other two cards that will embarrass Iksar should be the Wolf King and Baku, the designer's idea is to give the hero system a stronger skill effect by restricting the construction, but in fact, the parity system does not have a good restriction on the construction, especially as the card pool becomes deeper, this restriction will become weaker and weaker, which eventually leads to a rather deformed environment at that time, and the designer finally has to send the parity system into the wild in advance. Later, in the discussion between Iksar and the foreign service anchor Frodan, Frodan said that the Witch Forest version almost destroyed Hearthstone, and Iksar said that the move to retire the parity system early was only for the design space of the next year.
cleanse
Hearthstone has a lot of professions have experienced ups and downs, such as shamans, often strong several versions overloaded with several versions, the other is the priest, before the Karazan version of the priest's card set is very weak, remember that the pastor can only take out a set of ring pastors in the game at that time, when everyone thought that the Karazan version how to strengthen the priest, the priest got a "purification", directly let the priest players numb. At that time, the strength of the fool's pastoral has not been remembered, but the impression of the breeze is more general, and then the new version is also pushing the foolish pastoral, and it is not very good from the current winning rate...
Before Karazan, in the face of feedback from players in the community that the priest was too weak, designer Mike (ben Brode was the chief designer for a while after leaving) also said a "famous saying": there is always a profession to be at the bottom, and then this "purification" was launched, which led to the same crazy spit on Iksar's "We think this is normal".
Shining horses
Speaking of the priest and Ben Brode, it was also the era when the priest was very weak, when Ben Brode mentioned the flash horse card in the interview, indicating that there may be some powerful card sets in the game that the player has not yet discovered, such as "Unicorn Shepherd", but in the end no one has developed the so-called "Unicorn Shepherd", resulting in every time the priest appears a slightly stronger deck, the player will ridicule "Is this the powerful priest card deck that the player mentioned by the BB has not yet developed?" And this meme was also selected as the content of this year's April Fool's Day patch announcement.
Battle Song Commander
However, when it comes to the card that most embarrassing to BB, it may still be the Battle Song Commander, in ancient times, the effect of the War Song was to let all the entourage get the charge, so the Rolling Stones were born after the war, and the cost limit for summoning followers was increased, but in the slave owner's version, the War Song Commander still shines. However, as a very competitive deck, slave warfare has a very high status in the minds of old players, especially old Chinese players. Although the wind was registered as Hearthstone in the internal test, it was not officially entered the pit a few days before the war song was cut, and then one day the housemate who pulled the breeze into the pit said that the slave war was scrapped, and scolded the designer, and later he did not touch the hearthstone much, and many old players were retired from the pit during this period.
summary
Of course, there are many cards that are embarrassing to designers because of design errors or strength estimation errors, such as the first forbidden card soul thief of the wild, the successive emperors such as crab art, farmer technique, dark magic, mission technique, gear method, and now the player complains a lot of wild heart Gufu, all record the designer's mistakes and black history, can only say that I hope that designers can learn more from these black history.
In fact, just a month after the slave war mentioned above was cut, the most excellent and interesting version of Hearthstone in the history of "Explorers Association" was launched, the "Discovery" mechanism born by the Explorers Association was preserved to this day, and the four protagonists of the Explorers Association also appeared frequently in Hearthstone, and it can even be said that the Explorers Association revitalized Hearthstone. The weakening of the Battle Song Commander and the design of the Explorers Association are both the handiwork of Ben Brode, so it is better to look at the achievements of a designer than just see his black history, even if it is Iksar, who is often scolded, he also planned a Twitter Q&A session and promoted communication and communication between the entire team and players.
Finally, let's mention a card that is equally iconic, but not black history: Werewolf Fraudster. Once used as the Witch Forest version of the Kanban "Wolf", Iksar has mentioned him many times, saying that card games will inevitably have cards like werewolf fraudsters (that is, counting cards), but with the change of Hearthstone, this card is getting less and less, like the relatively small number of drag walrus in the new version, now it is the top two cards in the appearance rate.
In this year's April Fool's Day announcement, the original 4 fee 6/3 hunter fraudster was strengthened to 4 fee 6/4, but what I didn't expect was that this joking change was actually really implemented, and the current werewolf fraudster really became 464, but it had no impact on the game at all - no one really took him, right?