Legion Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[Deleted]

"We here at Blizzard read a bit about operant conditioning in our Introduction to Psychology textbooks and boy we can really translate that into fun for everyone. Man that mouse will hit that lever hard when there's a tiny chance of a slightly bigger pellet coming down the chute!"

And I can add as someone with a degree in psychology: There are phenomenons similar to the learned helplesness, which also neatly correspond to a totally different outcome of such lotteries. If people try for some time to get the achieved result, and they fail, and they don't even know if they could succeed anyhow, because the chance is so small, then they just give up. Such things are of course also not fun at all.

Operant conditioning works best if you don't get your goodies every time you do something, but quite often. So, if you have a reasonable chance to get something, then you will try again if you don't get it on the first, second or third time. But if chances drop, then people just stop to care. This comes along with disappointment.

There are exceptions, in cases where the reward is that good, so you are willing to invest a bunch of time (like 1% mount drops in case of mount collectors). But these are niche situations for a niche audience, specially tailored to such kind of people with a special interest. But to generalise such concepts over the whole game is a very bad idea.

And yes, just like someone here already mentionned - it is very fulfilling to finally get a reputation to exalted, or to finish a legendary questline, or to collect all mats for an expensive crafted item or whatever. Such things are quite deterministic (even with some random elements within), and they still bring the joy of reaching the final goal.

You even have a motivational bonus in such cases, because you see the progress of your achievement on various reputation steps, on the progress in the questline, or in the progress of collecting the amount(s) of material(s). In case of a totally random item, you don't have such a motivation bonus. It's an inferior solution to keeping players motivated to repeat a task.

[Deleted]

they are using some pretty strong stuff there... delusions and contradictions everywhere.

[Alexeht]

Personal Loot
Players liked the social feeling from group loot and being able to pass along items they don't need to other players.
In Legion, if you get an item from a dungeon or raid with personal loot that isn't an upgrade for you (lower or equal item level for that slot), you can trade it to another eligible player.

Really love this change

[Deleted]

I think Ion meant to say, "There are player that are double crafting professions wishing that the devs would take their heads out of their own asses".

Seriously, BoP items that can only be acquired by gatherers and are needed by crafters is asinine. This does three things:

1) People who've invested years (and in many cases, gold) into collecting recipes on double crafting professions are now SoL (full disclosure: I have several characters impacted thusly)
2) Removes one of the first handful of choices a new character has to make: self-sufficiency, reliance on the market/alt for crafting resources or supplying the market with resources for income.
3) Alts now need to farm mats in addition to your main(s). Nothing I love more than having to go mining for my Blacksmith toon then having to do it all again for my Engineering toon.

And for what purpose? Blizz's expectation seems now to be, "We don't want there to be a market for crafting resources" and I just can't wrap my head around why.

Prior to WoD, I began every expac knowing I'd be spending tens of thousands of gold on crafting mats so I could get my professions leveled and items crafted so I could be raid ready and I knew full well this was a choice I not only made when I rolled my toon, but that I made again every time in the period of preparing for a new expansion. Judging by the prices I needed to pay in those first two weeks of an expansion, the gatherers felt similarly about their choices to supply my demand. In fact, I still occasionally give a guildmate of mine some tongue-in-cheek grief over him gouging the ores market at the beginning of MoP that resulted in me basically giving him about 75K in gold for what I needed to get Blacksmithing leveled and producing Living Steel that my raid team would need.

Why remove this from the players?

Also, Tailoring (no gathering profession supplement, only occasionally needing herbs or leather) and Enchanting (gathering skill integrated into the profession) are heavily affected. This was always a perfect match for clothies, and was especially a reasonable pick for my BE mage (because BE get a profession bonus on enchanting). What now? It will take ages to get the fishing artifact and all traits to be able to fish BoS.

They want to make professions better and at the same time pull such thing? This is either totally stupid, or a malevolent move. Like they don't know the history of their own game anymore.

[solshine2510]

I've probably spent a couple hundred thousand gold for rare and unobtainable tailoring and enchanting recipes over the years and now "I'm not supposed to have 2 crafting professions!"

[Xtrm]

The best part of this Q&A was seeing that they're not going to attempt to yearly expansions. It obviously does not work and just gives us half assed expansions (*cough*WoD*cough*). If I'm going to shell out $50 for an expansion, it had better be worth the money.

[Hoodzilla]

They are delusional to think that its ok for offspecs to suffer, most top end raid guilds will just replace that person who isnt 100 percent the right spec.

[Mhyroth]

"The team decided to allow legendary items from the start of raid progression because WoW is a RPG and the power you get from items should matter. The team wants to let you use the items you have when possible."

Good Game...

So now classes will be unbalanced because of Artifact Traits, Legendary items and Blizzards overall shitty history of balancing classes/specs.
This will be fun.

I'm scared of that too. I even made a question about it for the Q & A but it seems most relevant questions and the ones which actually mattered were ignored (again). It's good they do communicate but for me it's no different as no communication if you don't answer questions people are really talkative about. Might aswell just not say anything at all.

[ElDoorO]

WoD is the least I've ever logged into an expansion. If Legion isn't *spec-fucking-tacular* then I'm done.
Odds are this means I'm done anyways but I'm an optimist.
I made the moronic decision to pre-order Legion so I *kind of* feel committed already :/

What I want I doubt I'll be able to find. A casual guild that just does e-z mode normals and the occasional rated bg. I don't care which faction. I don't care which realm. Not anymore.

[Guyviroth]

ITT: half of the stupid side of MMO-C coming out to bitch about Thal'Dranath without even commenting on the fact that Blizzard are replacing it with something "even better". It's like half of you morons work for Fox News the way you rip things out of context.

[Rindrae]

Cutting Thal'Dranath? So it begins again...

[Jimjam38]

"With randomness, there is a chance for surprise, excitement, unexpected outcomes, and variety."
"In Warlords, if you were going to daily quests or run a dungeon you knew at the start of that session that nothing exciting could happen. Warforged, Titanforged, and legendary items should help to add the possibility of some excitement."

RNG is so frustrating when there's no other way to get something. I've raided for like 8 months of HFC on my Monk through Heroic and then 9/13 Mythic with the same guild the entire time, as the only leather user in the team for a large portion of that time, and in that entire time I didn't get a single gem slot, and only got 2 warforged items. I'm sure that I'm in the more extreme cases of bad luck, but I can tell you there was nothing fun or exciting about that.

But that's not even the real issue. Even if I'd had 3-4 gems and 3-4 warforged items its still not BIS. Because BIS is near impossible to get with this RNG system, and that's what I find the most frustrating. Getting BIS in past expansions was one of the biggest senses of achievement you could get as a PvE player, and now that's gone. Even with Warforged in MoP, at least for 25M the probablity of WF items was high enough that by the end of SoO most players in 25M guilds were full Warforged BIS. But now with the RNG of not just WF/Titanforged procs, but variable proc ilvl, AND gem procs, it's almost statistically impossible to get true BIS, and that's just the most disappointing thing.

[Xtrm]

Cutting Thal'Dranath? So it begins again...

Assuming they're correct in stating that Thal'Dranath was replaced with something better, people shouldn't be upset about it. The main issue with Farahlon was that it was cut and nothing took it's place.

[Laylriana]

I think Ion meant to say, "There are player that are double crafting professions wishing that the devs would take their heads out of their own asses".

Seriously, BoP items that can only be acquired by gatherers and are needed by crafters is asinine. This does three things:

1) People who've invested years (and in many cases, gold) into collecting recipes on double crafting professions are now SoL (full disclosure: I have several characters impacted thusly)
2) Removes one of the first handful of choices a new character has to make: self-sufficiency, reliance on the market/alt for crafting resources or supplying the market with resources for income.
3) Alts now need to farm mats in addition to your main(s). Nothing I love more than having to go mining for my Blacksmith toon then having to do it all again for my Engineering toon.

And for what purpose? Blizz's expectation seems now to be, "We don't want there to be a market for crafting resources" and I just can't wrap my head around why.

Prior to WoD, I began every expac knowing I'd be spending tens of thousands of gold on crafting mats so I could get my professions leveled and items crafted so I could be raid ready and I knew full well this was a choice I not only made when I rolled my toon, but that I made again every time in the period of preparing for a new expansion. Judging by the prices I needed to pay in those first two weeks of an expansion, the gatherers felt similarly about their choices to supply my demand. In fact, I still occasionally give a guildmate of mine some tongue-in-cheek grief over him gouging the ores market at the beginning of MoP that resulted in me basically giving him about 75K in gold for what I needed to get Blacksmithing leveled and producing Living Steel that my raid team would need.

Why remove this from the players?

It sounded like the main reason for this was so the crafter could make more money from what he crafts. I, too, remember in WOTLK having players bring me the mats for me to craft an item and getting a tip for doing so. I still was able to sell items on the AH for players who did not gather mats and make money. If the goal is for a crafter to be able to make gold from his goods, why couldn't they at least make the crafting reagent account wide so we can have alts who do the gathering for our craft toons? This is what I always did and it worked very well. Just making it so we can only transfer the ore or skins or cloth or whatever between our alts and not to other players would accomplish the same thing of making gold for a player. Or so it seems to me.

[Shudder]

ITT: half of the stupid side of MMO-C coming out to bitch about Thal'Dranath without even commenting on the fact that Blizzard are replacing it with something "even better". It's like half of you morons work for Fox News the way you rip things out of context.

We're supposed to take them at their word? With all the lies they've told in the last few years? They just admitted they charged us 10 bucks more for an expansion they abandoned and act like it's no big deal. People no longer trust them. I am 90% sure they have nothing else planned and are trying to soften the blow.

[Flurryfang]

He said normal mode can drop mythic. That is 3 tier-level above normal. So can the same happen to mythic? So rare drops of items that are WAY higher itemlevel than mythic drops? That there always is warforged is not the question.

No, things can only drop higher item lvl, not lower. As he said, mythic lvl gear can drop in lower difficulties, but mythic will still be drop mythic.

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It really shouldn't though to that thing you quoted. It should allow freedom and the bloods should be sellable. Basically anyone with 2 crafting professions on one toon is screwed now because they cannot obtain bloods without giving one up and going to a gatherer. Or level fishing I suppose.

Blood is going to drop from a lot of activity, so you don't really have to choose a gathering profession if you don't have 1. The blood being BoP just makes it so that crafted items are going to have time value, aswell as resourse value. You are going to be able to sell your items, dependent on how much time you have played the game. This is really not gonna change anything for most players, who have double crafting on their mains, since you are proberly gonna drown in blood when you play a lot, but it will pretty much stop players from making alts, just to have a crafting spec on it.

I think it is great, that you can't sell it. It makes stuff more valueable, and people are not doing to deflate the prices of items, just because people are farming the blood on mass. I would not mind it being BoA, since i think as long as you play the game, it should not matter which character you play on.... But this is fine aswell.

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It's cute how you cut off the part that specifically countered your comment. Adorable.

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Doubt it, he's the one who came out and lied and said it wasn't cut when it was removed from the map.

It proberly was not completly cut, when he came out with that comment. It might have been decided some time after that.

[Deleted]

These Q&A are really negative PR for Blizzard. They shouldn't do these... (cut, cut, cut, it will be more simpler because we don't have time to balance those)
And this Ian kid, they should remove from the company. That scornful behavior is really bad for everyone.

Maybe a twitch streamer girl would be nice if you know what I mean. When she gives us the bad news we could watch something at least.

[Shudder]

If you don't want people selling it but don't want to screw everyone over the simple solution is to make bloods account bound. This is painfully obvious to anyone with a brain but sadly the people working at Blizzard don't have one.

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No, things can only drop higher item lvl, not lower. As he said, mythic lvl gear can drop in lower difficulties, but mythic will still be drop mythic.

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Blood is going to drop from a lot of activity, so you don't really have to choose a gathering profession if you don't have 1. The blood being BoP just makes it so that crafted items are going to have time value, aswell as resourse value. You are going to be able to sell your items, dependent on how much time you have played the game. This is really not gonna change anything for most players, who have double crafting on their mains, since you are proberly gonna drown in blood when you play a lot, but it will pretty much stop players from making alts, just to have a crafting spec on it.

I think it is great, that you can't sell it. It makes stuff more valueable, and people are not doing to deflate the prices of items, just because people are farming the blood on mass. I would not mind it being BoA, since i think as long as you play the game, it should not matter which character you play on.... But this is fine aswell.

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It proberly was not completly cut, when he came out with that comment. It might have been decided some time after that.

So you think it's just a coincidence they removed a zone they ended up cutting from the map?

[Zephre]

I wouldn't be worried but their idea of cool is Jar Jar Binks, Me'dan ect levels.

[Flurryfang]

Sorry if this has been asked, but with the changes to the Personal Loot system, is there any information about how it works for tier gear?

IE, if I get a duplicate tier helmet can I only trade it to people of my own class and spec? Or does it function like a tier token that can be traded to anybody eligible for that token? I'm assuming it's probably the former, which really limits the usefulness I think. (In my guild, at least, it seems to be the tier gear that people struggle to get even after we go Master Loot later on.)

You will proberly be able to trade it with any other player in your group. It will proberly follow the rules, which items are using today on normal master loot. For a set amount of time, you will be able to trade the item to any other member of your group/raid. This is just going to apply for Personal Loot now, with items which are lower item lvl then your current.

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If you don't want people selling it but don't want to screw everyone over the simple solution is to make bloods account bound. This is painfully obvious to anyone with a brain but sadly the people working at Blizzard don't have one.

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So you think it's just a coincidence they removed a zone they ended up cutting from the map?

Blizzard makes a lot of cuts during the making of their expansions and games. Even back to TBC, they have always made more stuff then they could finish, and a lot of stuff also did not really work as it should have. So yeah, i do believe that it was a coincidence. I do also believe, that it was proberly set in static, because they did not know if they could finish it in time. The devs proberly told Lore to say, that it was not deleted/cut, because it actually was not at that point, but that keeping it in might give a fake view of how the final product would look like.

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And this Ian kid, they should remove from the company. That scornful behavior is really bad for everyone.

I really the guy. He might bring bad news once in a while, but he always have arguments for their actions. He speaks with a clear voice and he really seems like he knows the game through and through. When he talks about changes, that might badly affect some playerbase, he always talks about the playerbase, that benifits, so there is never a lose/lose situation. He is by far my favority Blizz dev, even over Kaplan.

I really like these Q&A pieces, because it feels like we, as a community, are getting to know more and more about the game. The less closed the expansion/patch production is, the better.

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People who are defending blizzard about content cuts are pure fan boys who don't care about themselves. Look around. You are only fooling yourself and others and nothing good comes out of it in the end. There probably wont be any replacement content for Tha'dranath that's going to be better than taan/timeless isle. They scrapped an area in mop too. These are all business tactics. If they just gave players everything , they'd be closing up shop. Making WoD so contentless makes Legion's content ok, even though it isn't that much. An ideal expansion will be with 3 tiers but more side raids. But we are only getting 2 additional raids instead of 4 .

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Would you rather have a terrible zone like Gorgrond(or even worse) or would you rather have them to focus on zones, they actually care about and want to make better. Blizz always cuts stuff, even more then we see in-game, but it mostly because it is shit content and it would be bad for the game.

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"Options were removed for clarity, so that you could find the important options that you are looking for."

Translation: We think you're idiots, and your opinions are meaningless. We tell you what is important, and you either agree or you're wrong.

More like "We know you guys are idiots". Proberly from the 1000s of GM tickets about not being able to fix their UI, even after looking it through multiple times. The UI is a mess for most people, sometimes pushing a button or pulling a lever without really knowing what has changed undtil later. Them cleaing up the UI for normal play is good, and if you are a person to change your UI/options a lot, then you will proberly have an easy time getting the addons, which opens them up, anyway.

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So many Blizzard sheep: "ohh that will be a better Expansion, yeah!"
"Thal'dranath will not be part of Legion." and the list goes on...
They are already erasing the promises... Where is our Netherstorm? Hmm?

How can these people wake up and look into their mirrors? "I work at a company which steal every penny from our customers, Yay!" A bunch of thieves and liars, shame on this whole activison trash.
Look at CD project Red, you are the opposite site of the world, Blizzard.

Making an MMO vs a single player RPG is also very different. CD project Red is an amazing company in pretty much all aspekts, but i would not agree, that they would have an easier time making Witcher 3 amount of content inside an MMO, with blizz quality.