Ion Hazzikostas: Why do you like or dislike him as a game designer?

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Except they doubled down with the Shipyard, so where does that leave your theory? Are you telling me they couldn't change that despite having almost the entire expansion worth of negative feedback on it? Come on now. It's a perfect illustration of EXACTLY what Gwiez said.

It was an extension of the Garrison, they couldn't really change it way through. Besides, the Shipyard was the least of WoD's problems.

[Magnagarde]

"Impossible Change".

What a joke. Legenadaries could have been fixed a 1000 times over by now. Yet all they did was add more to dilute the pool.

He doubles down on EVERYTHING he does. Because this dev team literally can't admit anything they came up with was anything less than the "best idea ever".

Then he has the gall to basically laugh in players faces via Q&As.

Watch the Q&A tomorrow will be an absolute joke. Blowing steam up their own asses.

They placed their bet on players re-running content and spending a lot of time in the game by going for legendaries. If they changed this, there would be no reason to do emissary quests, there would no reason to run raids on multiple difficulties, there would be no reason to spend time on alts doing these either and much more. The entire expansion is based around a RNG system that awards you one legendary at a time.

They realized they had to do something when they increased the drop chance for legendaries and especially for the first two per character. That is as much as they could've done at this point. If they keep the same system in the next expansion, then a post like yours would be the best way to describe their actions and the logic behind them.

[Eurhetemec]

You are correct. I never said "MMO" specifically. I said "games". Unlike many WoW players, I'm completely open to many different types of gaming. Singleplayer. Multiplayer. Tabletop pen and paper(I play in a Starfinder game once a week). Hell, I even get out of my basement and go outside(shocking, I know).

Total off-topic - I didn't like PF because it was like the worst aspects of 3E made worse, but I liked 4E and 5E (and 2E, of course), do you think I would like StarFinder?

Personally for me, when I want to play an MMO, I want to play an MMO, and when I want to play a game, I want to play a game (and I always want to play P&P RPGs over everything else but organising it when everyone has jobs and kids and stuff isn't easy!). And of the MMOs out there? It's easy-ass choice. I wish it wasn't but pfffft to all the rest.

I just feel like WoW has sold its soul for better profits, and Ion is the head guy responsible for that. It's not that WoW isn't a good game currently. It's just that it seems like it could be better if it wasn't so overburdened with attempts to squeeze every extra minute out of players for the chance at another month of sub. I get it. I really do! WoW is an MMO and there's going to be some amount of treadmill. But FFS Legion takes it to the next level and crosses a line, IMO.

I guess, for me, what you see as "squeezing out another month of sub" is more "making the game like I like it". I mean, almost everything that I disliked in earlier expansions has been dealt with pretty well in this in various ways. I do think some elements were too grind-y, but I'm pretty sure Ion will learn from them, and make a better game, rather than, say, making Nexpansion even more grindy.

Part of it is that I recently played GW2 in HoT, and saw what WoW might be like without a gear treadmill and so on. I once liked that kind of game, but god, no, please no. GW2 has the most stratified and elitist (in the bad sense) community I've ever seen in an MMO. Without a conventional gear treadmill (just a massive, terrifying grind then suddenly you have "final" gear, potentially), without real difficulty modes, with near-totally-non-RNG loot. It's not pretty. It's not a place I want to be. I thought it was a good idea, but I feel like I was some sort of brave Marxist, only Trotsky and Lenin and so on are dead and Stalin is in charge and I'm regretting my life choices. I guess I'm saying trying to be part of GW2's endgame is like being put in a gulag...

[Magnagarde]

Except they doubled down with the Shipyard, so where does that leave your theory? Are you telling me they couldn't change that despite having almost the entire expansion worth of negative feedback on it? Come on now. It's a perfect illustration of EXACTLY what Gwiez said.

The shipyard is literally an extention of the garrison that they surely planned beforehand and tied it into the garrison system.

They had two options; not introduce a shipyard and send you to Tanaan without it or introduce a feature they already made because they'll send you to Tanaan either way, without scrapping it.

[Klingers]

Mainly because I can't help comparing and contrasting his mannerisms and interview style to that of Jeff Kaplan, who is very open and honest. Jeff's oine of the original leaders of the WoW team and now heads Overwatch.

Ion's problem is he always ends up going into defensive "Lawyer Speak" mode (Guess what his previous profession was) when confronted with opposition to some of his less well-received design calls. He tends to double down on bad ideas, dislike outright admittance of mistakes and is well known for his "You think it's what you want, but you don't" line. He's also got this weird body language inhaling/posturing thing he does before he opens his mouth to answer a question, sort of a "Well here we go again..." vibe like he doesn't want to be answering uncomfortable questions.

He's also overseen and justified all the delays and cuts during WoD, championed layer upon layer of grind and RNG in the modern game and been a big advocate of flying's removal. I don't like his game systems. He seems to be a big fan of arbitrary single-expansion (and now even sometimes single patch) systems which require large time investents, grinding of Arbitrary MAgic Fun Points to maintain, are largely de-coupled from old-school things like simple reputations and require constant maintenance. He keeps moving goalposts for players. You can't just "Get" a piece of gear and go "Good enough" until the next raid tier. Everything needs constant attention from the player in terms of, well, maintenance or upgrades.

I won't say I disagree with every decision he's made or even that more than 50% of the time he makes good design decisions. But I find him very unlikable on a personal level. I don't in general like the direction he's taking game systems and I don't like his interview style. That's it.

[Eurhetemec]

Except they doubled down with the Shipyard, so where does that leave your theory? Are you telling me they couldn't change that despite having almost the entire expansion worth of negative feedback on it? Come on now. It's a perfect illustration of EXACTLY what Gwiez said.

I think maybe a different perspective is that they weren't "doubling down", but rather sticking with an idea for a single expansion, then changing, rather than dropping an idea mid-expansion. I feel like Legendaries are on the same path right now. The Shipyard was a lot less awful and a bit more fun than the Garrison (well, kinda at least!). We've seen changes which make Legendaries less awful, and we're going to see more (what with the updates to Legendary tokens in 7.3.2). They won't ditch the system entirely this expansion, but I'm saying that's not "doubling down", that's just sticking with a mechanic. Doubling down would be making it even more severe, by say, letting us equip four Legendaries and adding 2x as many Legendaries with no increase in drop chance.

There's no way they'll keep the current system in the next expansion, either. It'll change significantly. My suspicion is we'll be able to pick Legendaries and gradually upgrade them, artifact-style.

[lockybalboa]

He's the absolute worst, even worse than ghostcrawler.

[Eurhetemec]

Mainly because I can't help comparing and contrasting his mannerisms and interview style to that of Jeff Kaplan, who is very open and honest. Jeff's oine of the original leaders of the WoW team and now heads Overwatch.

It's worth noting that this is Jeff Kaplan 2.0.

Jeff Kaplan 1.0, Tigole, was a terrible awful jerk. He single-handedly made the beta and vanilla forums into a significantly worse place. He was casually abusive, a bit stupid, incredibly arrogant, and just kind of all-round nasty. He'd bust into some thread where a calm discussion was going on (the internet in general was less XXXTREEMEEEEE back then, outside of Somethingawful anyway) and just say telling everyone they were retards (literally - at one point he got into a public argument with one of the CMs over this), just started flame wars and generally made things worse.

At some point, I forget if it was vanilla or TBC, he vanished from the forums. I dunno what happened to him, whether just got a damn good talking to, whether something in his life made him grow up, or what, but he changed. And now? He seems like a nice guy. How is this the same person who used to troll horribly and nastily on the EQ forums? Who organised sit-ins to crash servers in EQ just because he REALLY HATED hybrids? I guess people can change.

I don't think your characterization of Ion is very fair, but it is interesting to see what you say re: Kaplan, given his history.

[Wyrt]

Considering he plays Shaman at a Mythic level. I'm going to side with him on this.

Which makes it even more sad that he has no fucking clue what he's talking about.

[RuneDK]

Can't stand him. Although he is a scapegoat and it's typical to hate the scapegoat...I never hated GC like I do Ion. Ion comes off as an arrogant prick and that he knows more than everyone else and refuses to take community input.

[Eurhetemec]

Ion comes off as an arrogant prick and that he knows more than everyone else and refuses to take community input.

The key difference from GC is that Ion acts like a professional, generally, and knows that WoW is his job, and an important job, but that it's not his actual baby. Whereas GC often edged toward the emo side of things, and took stuff pretty personally. He was certainly no better at "taking community input", but where Ion, as a professional, simply acknowledges it and moves on (or dismisses it), GC would get upset over it - only mildly upset, but upset nonetheless - and strangely I think that made some people like him better, even ones who disagreed with him. They felt they'd connected emotionally, not been ignored.

Pretty weird but there you are.

[Klingers]

I don't know anything about what he does so I have no reason to like or dislike him. He is a great actual communicator though, even though he is so pale he looks dead.

I'd say a good way to put it for me is that he communicates bad ideas and the flawed reasoning behind those bad ideas very well. I understand exactly why they make certain decisions, which is rare in the AAA space, but I rarely agree with those decisions nor think they're in players' best interests.

[kary]

100% sure that people will call anyone that disagrees with their idea arrogant after reading this thread.

[Daffan]

I liked him originally A LOT because one of his answers in his 2008 Curse Interview when he was a part of EJ was incredible, really good MMO design foresight, even 9 years later it is a rock solid answer.

Then he actually became a WoW Dev and pushed the complete opposite of what he said back then. sooo I'm indifferent and don't really care about any dev. Prob all about dat $$$$$$$$ now.

[khazmodan]

I want Ghostcrawler back to be honest.

Ion used to be a lawyer and you can tell. He's the king of question dodging and double speak. Not to mention every Q&A is with cherry picked questions.

If you think he seems genuine you're not a very good judge of character.

This expansion has been filled with denial about major issues, lies and just general disillusion about their own game. They seem so out of touch.


Most recent example being the Netherlight Crucible. Ignored overwhelming NEGATIVE feedback on PTR forums. It makes it to live. Now they are receiving more negative feedback about it and their response was.

"We are right, you are wrong. Eat your shit and enjoy it".

This is exactly right, hiring Ion; a lawyer that has no education in software, but played the game..., is about the same as electing a president that has no experience in politics whatsoever and expecting the job to be done competently. Ion truly fits "the peter principle" which is "thou shalt rise to thy level of incompetence". At least Metzen understood that he was never going to be as good of a software developer as the ones that spent years learning it in college so he worked mostly on lore and voice acting.

[SirCowdog]

Total off-topic - I didn't like PF because it was like the worst aspects of 3E made worse, but I liked 4E and 5E (and 2E, of course), do you think I would like StarFinder?

Starfinder is literally pathfinder with spaceships and laser guns. If you didn't like PF, you wont like SF.

I guess, for me, what you see as "squeezing out another month of sub" is more "making the game like I like it". I mean, almost everything that I disliked in earlier expansions has been dealt with pretty well in this in various ways. I do think some elements were too grind-y, but I'm pretty sure Ion will learn from them, and make a better game, rather than, say, making Nexpansion even more grindy.

The problem is not within the core systems of the game. I think a lot of the class improvements, and especially the AP system are really good at a fundamental level. It's the implementation that I don't like. WF/TF, and the Cruicible, as well as Legendaries are the same. The problem arises with how the RNG is handled(getting back on topic here).

It's not that Titanforging is bad. It's that there's no alternative to optimizing your gear except to run the dungeon again. There's no way to mitigate a badly rolled piece of gear. You can't upgrade it. You can't reroll it using currency. You can't reforge it, or gem it. Your only option is to go back and pull the lever on the slot machine again.

It's not that Legendaries are intrinsically bad. It's that all too often a single Leg is outright better than anything else, and there's no way to target or control getting it. If there were more legendaries to choose from at the top end of performance, or if there was a way to mitigate not getting one through drops other than trusting the black box of Bad Luck Protection, maybe this wouldn't be an issue. The only way to try and get optimal Legs is to keep pulling the lever on the slot machine.

The same problem arises with the Cruicible. It's just pulling the lever, again and again and again and again.

Everything about Legion is hellbent on taking away agency from the player. Heavy use of Timegates, removal of flight, heavy use of RNG, almost no mitigating factors for the slot machine of loot. It all starts to fall into a pattern that clearly is set up to allow Blizzard more and more control of how much time it takes for players to progress, so they can better calculate and squeeze more profit out of the game.

Maybe you like the grind? I can't account for that. Different people like different things. But I personally can't just ignore that the design of the game is being effected so much.

Part of it is that I recently played GW2 in HoT, and saw what WoW might be like without a gear treadmill and so on. I once liked that kind of game, but god, no, please no. GW2 has the most stratified and elitist (in the bad sense) community I've ever seen in an MMO. Without a conventional gear treadmill (just a massive, terrifying grind then suddenly you have "final" gear, potentially), without real difficulty modes, with near-totally-non-RNG loot. It's not pretty. It's not a place I want to be. I thought it was a good idea, but I feel like I was some sort of brave Marxist, only Trotsky and Lenin and so on are dead and Stalin is in charge and I'm regretting my life choices. I guess I'm saying trying to be part of GW2's endgame is like being put in a gulag...

I haven't played GW2 in awhile. I never bought Heart of Thorns, but I'm considering picking up the combo pack for it and the new expansion. But what I remember is that GW2 has a MUCH larger percentage of player success and progress based on personal skill and ability to play the game. Pulling numbers out of my ass here, but if WoW is 90% gear and 10% skill, GW2 is more like 50/50.

If you're legitimately good at playing the game, gear matters less(although build and teamwork is still VERY important). But in my mind it doesn't lead to any greater split in elitism. In WoW you're a shitnoobscrub if the RNGesus doesn't bless you with BiS gear. In GW2 the elitism split is still there, but more based on player skill and build than anything else.(although apparently entire classes sometimes still get shat upon if a patch nerfs them out of the meta)

[jrf773]

Because he wears a funny hat. You know what they say about people with funny hats...

[SirCowdog]

The shipyard is literally an extention of the garrison that they surely planned beforehand and tied it into the garrison system.

They had two options; not introduce a shipyard and send you to Tanaan without it or introduce a feature they already made because they'll send you to Tanaan either way, without scrapping it.

Then they should have scrapped it for the betterment of the game. I suspect that there are a few reasons why they didn't:

• WoD was already so bereft of anything to do that leaving the shipyard out would have created an even larger void.
• It was actually an amazing design in terms of wasting player time and boosting potential time spent on the game because of the RNG chance of losing ships. Keep pulling the lever on that one-armed-bandit, kids!
• Probably Ion was performing exactly as described: Not willing to accept criticism and negative feedback on the idea, and doubling down.

- - - Updated - - -

All control has been removed from the player and put in the Casinos hands.


7.3.2 PTR just added Legendary Tokens. I think this is so you can farm currency on your main, buy one and mail it to an alt.

The problem? All the token does is identify a RANDOM LEGENDARY FROM THE POOL.

Hahahahaha...... Oh my fucking god.

I'm actually a little surprised they haven't started selling loot boxes in WoW. Seems like that's the way it's going. Although I guess the WoW token sort of fills that niche?

[Logwyn]

I like him because he looks like a young Yoda and doesn't have that mop mullet that Lore has on his head.

[xanzul]

He is arrogant selfish fucking asshole.

This describes the people who dislike him.