On July 14, 2022, we had the opportunity to join a group interview featuring two of Hearthstone’s lead developers, Lead Designer Liv Breeden and Game Designer Cora Georgiou regarding the upcoming expansion Murder At Castle Nathria. Liv and Cora gave us an interesting look into the development behind Murder At Castle Nathria and their excitement with implementing such a strange concept within a table-top board game. This article will highlight an overview of some of the most interesting questions. Hearthstone’s newest expansion puts the player at the center of a murder mystery, helping the great detective Murloc Holmes determine which of the 10 suspects are guilty of the mysterious murder of Sire Denathrius at Castle Nathria.
The discussion started off with questions regarding the creative process that went into creating Murder At Castle Nathria. Cora cited that their inspiration came from various classic murder mystery party tropes from fiction and other video games. “I tried to cram as many references to as many types. You know, mystery media as I possibly could in that flavor text,” said Cora. “I love subverting expectations of dark material of a murder mystery but making it into something light and silly, and that’s Hearthstone does very well.” She added on this expansion had been something that she wanted to do in Hearthstone for some time.
Liv noted that 2022 has been a “refreshing year so far”, in that they can be more creative with their ideas. “We’re seeing alot of card names and themes that we’ve never been able to do before because its just such a unique space where the exploration is really creatively fulfilling,” said Liv. Cora then ventured into the core goal that the Hearthstone team established for this year, and how Castle Nathria is an example of what future game-play could look like. With the wide variety of strategies introduced into the game since its inception, Cora explained that its an opportunity to go back to the fundamentals:
“We are a card game that thrives on minion-based combat and we want to incentivize that, but to present it in a new way…We’ve done wonderful things with combo-style gameplay in the last year and that’s something that we want to keep doing, but we want to make it so that new strategies and new decks will thrive with every year and every expansion.”
Liv added that while these interactions that we something players haven’t seen in Hearthstone before, it goes all back to the roots of what makes Hearthstone special. “We’re doing things that we can’t do outside a digital space, we are doing things that are new and exciting for even Hearthstone players, and we want to make things that players are excited to log in and play with.” said Liv.
While players can expect many things within this new expansion, there are some things that didn’t make the cut. Liv made the unfortunate confirmation that there’d be no solo content within Murder At Castle Nathria, but not without good reason. Liv cited a bad work environment for their solo content designers do to the amount of work they had from the previous year. “It was leading to a really bad work environment for them because the last year was the book of mercenaries and it’s so much content and it requires a lot of work, but that also means that like they were running up against deadlines and they were doing overtime and that’s not the thing that we want to do,” said Liv.
Players will still have the ability to experience the expansion’s story in other ways, with Liv pointing out the already released screenplay that gave players insight on what the story would be. While players will be exploring the expansions mystery within game-play, Liv explained that there would be other avenues outside of game-play for team to build on the expansion’s story.
The discussion switched back to the new expansion’s game-play, specifically regarding the newest card types. Liv gave her thoughts on the impact rare location cards will give to on Hearthstone’s game-play and what players can expect from now on. “Because this is something new and exciting. So we wanted to make sure that players had access to it on a pretty, pretty low barrier of entry to play with these new card types. So some people are like, why weren’t they legendary? It’s like, honestly, we just wanted more people to play with them and make it more accessible,” Liv said.
mxdwn: With the new card types that are being introduced, infuse and location card types, will they be continued after this update or are they exclusive to, this is expansion?
Liv: We don’t add new card types very often, this is once in a four years, five years thing. So I’m like that. We’ve wanted to capture the idea of, of a setting. We can do people pretty well. We can do characters, we can do spells or silly things happening. But settings and locations have been kind of difficult for us to make gameplay around.
We’ve been trying and testing a bunch of things along the way, but we landed on something where it’s really exciting. You get these portals into another world, so you can play them out on the board. They give you this landscape shot of a place and then you click on them. You can use the ability that’s associated with that place and they shutter up like a window.
It’s a really cool way to capture what it’s like to go to a place. Like I said we’ve been chasing it for a long time, so this is something that we wanna keep doing going forward. It’s not necessarily something we wanna do all the time where it’s like, you’re gonna have 10 locations and standard at any point, cuz filling up your board with those sorts of things we found wasn’t very fun. But, if we have one or two in rotation per class, I think that’s pretty reasonable. As for infuse we really like to make mechanics that fit the setting, and infuse really fits the setting for Nathria. But I don’t imagine we would revisit it, especially right away, but nothing’s off the table. If the game plays really solid out of it, then we can take a look at it again.
Cora: We’re sort of always on the look for, if a keyword resonates with our players and the gameplay is really good, and it’s something that we as designers find ourselves wanting to revisit; We’re always open to making keywords evergreen, which is sort of how we refer to keywords that we use continuously things like: discover, battle cry or death rattle.
There’s always that opportunity if we want to, I don’t know that we’ll do that with infuse. It seems quite specific to this setting. With locations, absolutely. We’re going to be bringing those back. We have some fun ideas going forward, but it was really important to us that we sort of established the baseline for locations within this set. It’s a brand new card type.
There’s a lot of rules, very specific to locations, and we want to give players the opportunity; to learn those rules and to establish those rules before we then eventually break those rules and make locations that do crazy things that players don’t expect. So it was really important for us to yeah. It’s a brand new card type. There’s a lot of rules, very specific to locations, and we want to give players the opportunity. To learn those rules and to establish those rules before we then eventually break those rules and make locations that do crazy things that players don’t expect. So it was really important for us to establish that baseline with locations that are simple enough yet still very exciting and pretty flashy before we in the future decide how we wanna grow with them.
mxdwn: So I’ve seen a lot of speculation around the Relic cards and I’m wondering if you can give a bit more explanation as to what they are, cause I’ve noticed from research, I’ve done that players seem underwhelmed when looking at them.
Cora: I will say that was the funniest couple of days…
Liv: It was the best week, yeah. They revealed just the one and, oh my god, the community reaction was so incredible. All the shit posting cards. It was my, honestly, one of my favorite times in Hearthstone.
Cora: Yeah Alkali Layke, our community manager was like, “Wait, we revealed the Relic while we didn’t reveal any of the relics? Oh no. Is this bad?” And I’m like, “Eh, I think it’s fine.” Players really rolled with it and it was really entertaining.
Liv: But as far as the actual relics go, like the design on those came around with somewhere in the space of Jade Golems. So back in Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan, a previous expansion; summoning, a Jade Golem would summon a one, one, then a two, two, then a three, three, whenever you summon a Jade Golem it would just increase the number and somebody on our team, I think it was Edward, was like, what if we did this for spells. Like we had. Yeah. Yeah. We’re so many and even larger men day nine’s amazing.
So the concept came around with like, what if we could make a scaling effect? So relics built off each other and they do something more. But we gave it a little bit more texture this time around cuz, summoning at 2020 and then a 2121. Like that’s exciting in the fact that it’s huge, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is like, I’m making vanilla minions and I’m not, you know, getting to choose between this vanilla minion or this vanilla minion.
But with relics, it’s really exciting cuz you can go between drying cards or dealing damage. So you get a lot more choices and the order that you play them can influence, you know, that specific game, but you always feel good because it’s always improving the next one. Yeah.
Cora: Yeah. And there were a couple of different goals behind the relics. Originally. I really wanted to do relics and demon hunter and warlock and have them be a like small package that each class has some different relics. Dual class would’ve been sweet, but because we weren’t doing it for all the classes, it didn’t make sense. But Rafa. Having relics just made so much sense for him. But the Relic designs actually came pretty late in the game and we had 10 Warlock cards that we really liked by that point. So we ended up just doing them for demon hunter and for quite a while, we wanted to make them different from jades by having two numbers go up. So it was, you know, the relic of phantasm was summon 1, 1, 1 spirit, then 2, 2, 2 spirits, 3, 3, 3 spirits, 4, 4, 4 spirits.
And it turns out when you’re summoning 7, 7, 7 spirits, like four times in a game. It’s a lot and it just scaled too quickly. It was too hard to keep track of. So we decided to pair back a little bit and just gate everything; You know, two instances of damage, two cards, two spirits and then we were sort of able to support them a little bit more, because we weren’t so worried about having. Too many instances of the effects and that’s when the Relic vault design came in, which is allowing you to cast your relics twice. And that’s actually pretty fun because it improves between casts. So even the Relic fault improves them. They improve within the cast of the infused artificer Xy’mox.
And I really like that there’s sort of this package of cards that, is unique to Demon hunter that feels different for demon hunter than what they’ve had access to before, but that you can put into different demon hunter shells. Essentially, if you want to try to do combo stuff with the Relic of dimensions in a combo demon hunter, you can do that.
If you wanna try to play an aggressive game plan with the relic of phantasm, you can do that. It’s sort of up to our players, how they choose to build with the relics. And I think that’s pretty fun.
Liv: I, uh, I remember the feedback sessions where people are like, back when we had two numbers scaling; they’re like, it’s either too weak and it doesn’t matter. Or it’s op and too strong. What do we do? And it’s like, let’s just take one of the numbers off, you know. Sometimes the answer is just pull it back, make it. You know, over the top, but then the game plays a lot better. But yeah, the little bit about it being in warlock and demon hunter is fun because even if those cards didn’t make it, you got the little, like, this is a secret secret thing between all of you guys, but, you know, Xy’mox and Rafaam working together with the fist bump, you know,
Cora: So yeah, that was sort of the intention, but we have built up some different lore for Rafaam now. I know players were really excited, but also kind of just made to see him in the shadow ends. Cause I’m like, oh no, Rafaam is dead? What happened after Descent of dragons? And we don’t wanna play all of our cards just yet, but I will say Rafaam is always up to some sneaky stuff. He’s got an army of imps that are pretty flashy right now, but you never know what he’s gonna get himself up to.
mxdwn: Going into more of the general aspects of Hearthstone, I noticed that you’re introducing in-game reporting in Hearthstone apparently after a long time. Why did it take so long for that to be implemented? Maybe you can go into more detail about that.
Liv: Yeah, I could go into detail. Sure. So I think on some level, Hearthstone was made with a really small team and with a lot of the core tenants in mind; you can really only emote to people. So levels of communication are pretty slim, um, that doesn’t, you know, make up for like, Offensive names or things like that.
But it’s a mixture of things, but it’s largely, we didn’t have the resources to spend towards it. Given how much interaction you have with your opponent. Most of the interaction is just done on the board and if you wanna communicate and talk with them after the match, you have to be friends. And I think you can go through battle note at that point in time. It is a thing that we’ve, you know, I think we were sorely missing and I’m glad that it’s coming to the game now. But it was, it’s just a matter of resourcing, honestly.
Cora: Yeah. It’s something that the features team was very eager to get in as quickly as we could, with the new sort of structure that we’ve taken on, we have this wonderful, dedicated features team now, and a features pod, and it’s something that they really wanted to prioritize. So very happy that it’s in. I don’t think anybody should be afraid to add their opponent as a friend.
And I’m glad that now there’s some recourse if they’re mean to you. Cuz that’s, that’s not okay.
mxdwn: So like looking at the grounds for reporting. I noticed that people are interested if roping: purposefully waiting until a player’s turn is out repeatedly, would be included as grounds for reporting?
Cora: Yeah. That’s tough. Slow play. I mean it’s a problem across physical card games and it’s a, an actionable issue across physical card games within Hearthstone. It’s a little tough to say because, certainly not to say that people don’t do it on purpose. Some people are jerks, but you know, a lot of the time I myself will think that I hit end turn and I didn’t and I tabbed out and I’m like aw jeez I suck, I made the wait.
Liv: That happens all the time for me. Then you, sorry. And then you hope it’s better, but you feel bad.
Cora: Yeah. So that’s a tougher problem to solve.
Liv: Yeah. I don’t know what the rules are, cuz the feature team, I think handles that more than, you know, card design team. But I imagine since it’s within the, the realm of like what you’re allowed to do in the game, it’s kind of hard to punish people for letting them do what the game lets them do, unless it’s like an exploit in which case, you know, that’s cheating