Legion Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[snige]

The fact that the legendary system hasnt been changed already makes me think they insist on keeping this design for the entire expansion.

What Ion does NOT understand is this: People play this game because they want to roleplay in a fanfasy world, as a char of their own choosing, and making said char more powerful - its the feeling of PROGRESS and having a goal that people enjoy. There is a major feeling of satisfaction involved in reaching a goal for players. Clearing all mythic dungeons, getting into your first raid, getting full epic quality gear, killing xavious on heroic etc etc. All those GOALS are a part of your character progress, and people want to see it THROUGH to the end.

When you mix in very powerful optainable legendary items into this progress, you force people into doing an unhealthy amount of farm content because of the chance of getting that very powerful item. The idea that players have some items to work on finding throughout the entire expansion is great, but those items should never give you a massive edge over others in your over-all preformance. BUT THEY DO! and thats the problem!

The most pathetic point about this whole topic, is the fact that it would be so damn easy to fix. Targetable legendaries og a vendor that would let you trade your excisting legendaries ONCE for another are just two quick ideas.

I have currently around 400 mythic+ dungeon clears on my main, been raiding on mythic diff. almost since release, and doing emmisary quests every day. With a total of /played 30 days at max lvl, im still only sitting with two avarage legendaries for ONE spec.
My alt has a total of 4 days at max level - so i'll just let you imagine how little i've played that character and yet, I ALSO have two legendaries on that toon. That should not be fucking possible! I dont mind some healthy RNG, but this is retarded.

Do I feel motivated to farm even more mythic+ dungeons for NEW legendaries when they add them to the game? Fuck off.
Do I feel motivated to play off-specs without legendaries, knowing that I'll obviously preform below what my mainspec would do? Fuck off.
I play Feral druid with two avarage legendaries. Do I feel motivated to farm more content form better legendaries when I know there is a 50% chance that my next legendary will be a worthless ring/neck? Fuck off.

Blizzard is killing this expansion slowly, and I pains me to see it happen, since it really did have so much potential.

[Gyrotex]

The fact that the legendary system hasnt been changed already makes me think they insist on keeping this design for the entire expansion.

What Ion does NOT understand is this: People play this game because they want to roleplay in a fanfasy world, as a char of their own choosing, and making said char more powerful - its the feeling of PROGRESS and having a goal that people enjoy. There is a major feeling of satisfaction involved in reaching a goal for players. Clearing all mythic dungeons, getting into your first raid, getting full epic quality gear, killing xavious on heroic etc etc. All those GOALS are a part of your character progress, and people want to see it THROUGH to the end.

When you mix in very powerful optainable legendary items into this progress, you force people into doing an unhealthy amount of farm content because of the chance of getting that very powerful item. The idea that players have some items to work on finding throughout the entire expansion is great, but those items should never give you a massive edge over others in your over-all preformance. BUT THEY DO! and thats the problem!

The most pathetic point about this whole topic, is the fact that it would be so damn easy to fix. Targetable legendaries og a vendor that would let you trade your excisting legendaries ONCE for another are just two quick ideas.

I have currently around 400 mythic+ dungeon clears on my main, been raiding on mythic diff. almost since release, and doing emmisary quests every day. With a total of /played 30 days at max lvl, im still only sitting with two avarage legendaries for ONE spec.
My alt has a total of 4 days at max level - so i'll just let you imagine how little i've played that character and yet, I ALSO have two legendaries on that toon. That should not be fucking possible! I dont mind some healthy RNG, but this is retarded.

Do I feel motivated to farm even more mythic+ dungeons for NEW legendaries when they add them to the game? Fuck off.
Do I feel motivated to play off-specs without legendaries, knowing that I'll obviously preform below what my mainspec would do? Fuck off.
I play Feral druid with two avarage legendaries. Do I feel motivated to farm more content form better legendaries when I know there is a 50% chance that my next legendary will be a worthless ring/neck? Fuck off.

Blizzard is killing this expansion slowly, and I pains me to see it happen, since it really did have so much potential.

This is a very well written post, that summarises my thoughts precisely.

I haven't played as much as you did this expansion, but agree that when effort != result, it feels shit overall.

Also, token system for legendaries that allows anyone "buy" a legendary that they want - DPS or utility one, depending on what rocks their boat would immediately stop the whole Sephuz-Prydaz debate.

They are stubborn. Haven't you learned from the whole No-Flying in Draenor debacle?

[Redecle]

Looking at the last intended version of Slice and Dice, the +15% energy regen on top of Attack Speed. I don't even care what you do with RTB anymore.
I haven't touched RTB, i will not touch it, it deserves to die in the last level of hell. Keep it in or don't, i don't care.
But if you want to make SnD a choice, keep at it. Somehow i doubt that +15% regen is not enough, even though it's stable improvement, RtB will still have True Bearing.
I'd wish we'd have Ruthlessness as it was and all would be forgiven, RtB could float on his own magnificence at that point, rolling the animation on endless loop, in some dark corner of the Twisting Nether, never to be seen again.
Possibly more haste.. Come on then let's have it. The world has unlimited haste resources, take some and place it here, I want to see passive 100% uptime Adrenaline Rush on steroids from all that haste, on top of the normal AR cooldown. Go crazy with it, let's see how many people really, I mean really love RtB after that, or any other class at that point. Who needs to be skill capped when you can be energy capped. You'd need at least 7 parallel monitors to occupy all the UI energy bars.

The legendaries, now after receiving 2 completely useless ones, i'm done. I'm going to put on my warglaives go to the woods and chop some boars.
Glad that Sephuz is at least getting some sort of interesting buff with interrupts being in the mix, cause the cc trigger was absolutely pointless in a game where there's no cc needed, not even in pvp cause everything dies inside of a global. At least being a 10 year Kick "robot" finally has a meaning.
Still not happy that a human error cost me my second legendary, if you accidentally forget to be in the right loot spec, gaining a legendary on your spec that you never use is even more painful than getting one of the shitty ones, cause it's just completely pointless at that point. From that you can guess what my 2nd legendary was. Sin boots for my outlaw. Why aren't they dynamic? When you change the spec the boots for rogues as an example change to match the spec. Just like the tier bonuses do. Or make a gigantic notification that fills the entire screen at all times that the player is in the wrong loot specialization. Since that's the main tool that affects what is on the personal loot table, doing constant transmog runs and just current instance runs, I at least am constantly on every boss bases changing the loot spec. Forgetting it to a wrong setting was pretty much just a question of when more than if. And of course it's the time the legendary comes. I already know that i'm a moron, i don't need the game reminding me of that everytime a legendary drops.

[Copey]

No addressing PVP? No Sub, Sin rogue discussions?

Welcome to the Fury Warrior domain!
Please take a number and have a seat, just dont expect that number to ever be called upon.

[Kellorion]

I have 1 legendary, foot on my prot pallys, wasnt looking for, didnt work for it (got it from random small treasure chest) could really care less if I had it.
This MoP/WoD/Legion everyone gets a legendary but rng horseshit needs to go.

[JIMM-]

Not surprised to see these goons still not recognizing the #1 problem in Legion , legendary items. It is blatantly obvious blizz is not capable of balancing them, so why not just stop trying to balance them and fix this mess by adding a vendor instead of putting them all behind the RNG wall.

Keep being stubborn and continue shoving the most useless legendary duo sephuz n prydaz down to players' throats, keep making these retarded decisions and see more players leave.

Also reforging is literally THE SOLUTION to all these secondary stats and high ilvl gear not being an upgrade issue, but for some fucking reason these goons chose to ignore the most logical solution, reforging and went forward to wasting all time, effort and resources creating a half-assed solution. Mind boggling really.

No effort needed , perfect solution vs quadruple ++ amount of effort to derive a half-assed solution no one knows whether it would work , and these devs went with the latter. I am seriously doubting their decision-making skills as devs. All these resources could've been directed towards class + specs balancing

[Deleted]

Why isnt Feral beeing talked about at all?

Rotation, talents, AoE, legendaries and so on....

[chillshock]

I'm seriously feeling hate... once again they act as if warriors are fine. They performance is 'ok' - but they play like shit! Huge difference! And appearantly they are really happy with what they've built. :/
#nottheclassIonceliked

[Trumpcat]

So, Sephuz's Secret is bad because there are better alternatives. The fix is to make the better alternatives more bad, so Sephuz's Secret looks less horrible in comparison.

Okay, but we are the 4th month of the expansion, many people have good legendaries and many people have Sephuz's Secret, making them less good than the other players. Their rng chance was spent on Sephuz's Secret, whereas other folks weren't so unlucky and got nice items. Regardless of what the dev team thinks, the issue stands in the current game and no amount of "we know players are unhappy getting it" is doing anything to improve the bad experience.

In the video Ion mentioned they can't go about deleting items now, referring to Sephuz's Secret. Only that they can and nobody will be sorry if they bloody deleted that misunderstanding and just gave a "legendary token" to compensate - you use the token and randomly get one of the other legendary items.
Done!
Fixd!

[gregorbasse]

Hey, Blizz, you wanna do an easy fix to balance legendary items so people do not camplain about being worse then others just due to leg RNG? Rework all special effects so none of them are increasing damage in any way shape or form. Let all legendary items have interesting utility effects. Also let us somehow choose our secondary stats on them. Then everyone is happy.

[Alanious]

Ion has potential fix a lot of current problems that exist in game atm. The first step in fixing a problem is understanding you have one. If the community reaches out free of charge, while your team gets paid to redesign a class"to shit" and be ignorant about it, what incentive does a subscriber have to continue playing?. We're talking about a massive amount of players pointing out "Easy" fixable problems. Four months has already passed and you guys made close to no changes that actually work. You claim "not everything can be done at once", of course you cant work 24/7. Your team is not delivering any results to reassure any player that current problems are being fixed, instead you butter up everyone in an interview as to "a lot more changes are coming". I play an Arms warrior you know what our rotation is?, CS>MS>Slam>Lets not talk about FR. How do we gain rage? an auto swing, charge, and Legendary gloves. How does one hold it together after hearing all the bullshit you speak and don't deliver?.

[Deleted]

Jeez, just change the damn utility legos into DPS ones. Everyone will be happy. Nobody asked for "utility" useless "legendaries".

Would rather they changed the DPS legendaries to utility ones, much easier to balance, more ground for variety and choice instead of "the one that produces the highest numbers", and less support for the already unhealthy mindset that damage is everything.

- - - Updated - - -

you use the token and randomly get one of the other legendary items.
Done!
Fixd!

And people would immediately start complaining about not getting whichever legendary that provides the highest numbers for them. Don't think that they wouldn't, people, especially on this forum, are super quick at jumping the gun to complain about just about anything they dislike, and immediately threaten to "unsub" if it's not changed.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Well that's bullshit, I have 49% crit on Live and 41% on PTR (Minus the 5% across the board) It's still 3% less from that alone, plus another 2-3% from other secondaries.

He literally just said you should lose 1-2% secondaries and it's confirmed i'll be losing 5-6%.

"If you have 47% Crit right now, you are probably only going to lose a few percent after this change. This will be offset by the extra primary stats you get. Your overall power shouldn't be meaningfully affected."

[Sencha]

Looking forward to hearing those useless PR answers.

[Deleted]

Man I'm so glad we have a Lead Dev that is willing to say no and defend the decisions with design philosophy instead of just bending over backwards and giving in to every retard demand made.

It also helps that I tend to agree with alot of Ion's game view.

Quoting because I agree wholeheartedly. He has been doing a good job. Must take a strong character to do Q&As as a game director of such a game.
Inb4 "Blizz doesnt care"

[xindralol]

You mean confirmed? On a test realm? Where they already said the scaling isn't finished yet?

Holy shit.

PTR usually doesn't change much. (Same with "beta" in that respect) - the only time they make real changes is during theiir internal testing.

[Deleted]

PTR usually doesn't change much. (Same with "beta" in that respect) - the only time they make real changes is during theiir internal testing.

This just isn't true at all.

Anyway fuck rtb and their stance on it being great. Blizzard needs to stop it with the rng love

[Doomaz]

sure, leave survival hunter as it is, people dont want us anyways

[Christinaki]

Not only did I unsub... I also deleted wow from my pc... Forever... This rng/farm fest. Unfriendly alt environment is making people sick. Wow has become the streamers cash cow game. Ion go suck your boyfriend's dick you pr tard. You are worthless

[Deleted]

"Legendary effects are intended to be exciting and valuable"

Standing still causes you to send deep roots into the ground, healing you for 4% of your maximum health every 3 sec.

So exciting!