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

[kary]

I'm actually a little surprised they haven't started selling loot boxes in WoW. Seems like that's the way it's going.

in your delusional headcanon, maybe.

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This describes the people who dislike him.

100% this.

[xanzul]

He keeps funneling RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG from loot drops to class mechanics...

Also he's listening to community and then disregard everything we said because it contradicts with his vision of the game

I remember back in WoD when arms warriors were complaining that 1/3 of the time they haven't got a button to press and his words were: "And what's wrong about it?"
Same as he was beeing paranoid about water striders in beta (and HAD to cave in)

He's allways telling "we learned" but then comes another patch and they can go learning again...

Perhaps the players need to learn a bit as well. Just because players dislike something or want something doesn't make them right. This goes both ways not that any of you arrogant armchair developers will ever acknowledge or comprehend this.

[Eurhetemec]

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

Oh, I thought they updated the mechanics and stuff, oh well.

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.

I like RNG and grind, yes, I always have. Not to a terminal extent, but I think Legion is a long way short of say, Diablo 2, in this regard.

What I'd say is that you seem to agree that most of the systems are, conceptually, pretty decent, and your main complaint seems to be the lack of any mechanism to allow one to "fix" the RNG. I agree that that's an issue, and I will be surprised if they don't address it in Nexpansion.

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)

No, that's not how it is.

I wish it was. That is absolutely not how it is, though. Never really has been either. The worst players in GW2 are some of the most elitist - you know the kind - couldn't figure out how to open a fridge without a detailed spec guide and a video telling them what buttons to press and when. These are the sort of people who, when they fail at a skip, rather than spending the 45 seconds to do it the "right way" (i.e. not skip, kill 1-2 packs), they spend 5+ minutes failing at the skip. And they get into a screaming rage if anyone suggests maybe just don't keep trying that.

I discussed it at length in another thread so don't really feel like repeating myself (can probably find it with search but I'm too lazy right now), but the elitism is of the "if you haven't done this content literally dozens or hundreds of times, fuck off" kind. That's not about skill or knowledge - I've played with some of the people who do this, and frankly, some of them are pretty shit wizards just like Khadgar - what it's about is being part of this elitist community, having "paid your dues", and excluding everyone else. There are virtually no paths in beyond lying and/or having a friend on the inside (NA has it a bit better than EU here). This is true for both Raiding and Fractals.

With HoT GW2 became more gear-based, too - because a lot of specs require stuff that isn't just Exotic Zerker. You tend to have to play fairly bizarre specs, too, not enjoyable ones, generally speaking.

Maybe PoF has fixed some of this but... to judge from the GW2 reddit and the GW2 forum, no it hasn't. Still, better to join now when no-one can demand evidence of your 100+ raid victories than in a few months, I guess.

WvW has the same issue - skill means very little - following the etiquette of the server, kowtowing to the right people, knowing your place (scum), and so on are what matters. Doesn't matter if you're terrible so long as you're a bootlicker and keep your hands inside the cart in WvW. I preferred DAoC's RvR, where a single 8-man could say "Fucking idiots, let's do this right". That's not really viable in WvW though.

GW2 is even worse than WoW in "time played metric"-design though, just go play the new zones they add with the Living Story and you tell me it isn't. It's all about keeping people playing and trying to twist their arm so they buy basic QoL stuff at extortionate prices and/or cool costumes because they stopped adding cool-looking non-cash-shop/lootbox gear to the game in 2012. I mean, it is a game that literally has lootboxes.

[xanzul]

A "huge plus"? Jesus, he plays on a fucking Wacom tablet with a pen not a mouse last I knew. Awesome kekage right there, eh?

What does that tell you about the dumbing down of the game that's happened on his watch?

Then as others have said here he has an arrogant air about him and a "my way or the highway" outlook about the game. He's a goddamned lawyer, not a game developer - fully on board with his bean-counting masters at the top that see WoW just as something to be drained for max profit and pleasing shareholders, which is a far cry from the days of Blizzard North.

Legion of RNG Hamster Wheel has proven that.

People with a lack of reading comprehension have no business talking about dumbing down of anything. Either that or you are trolling. The tablet thing has been explained ad nauseum and the mods seriously need to start infracting you jackasses you continually spam this nonsense and misconstrue what was actually said.

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personally i can not stand his hurky jerky hand movements when he talks

Sad thing is you people think this is constructive discussion. Physical mannerisms have fuck all to do with game development.

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All of this. I'm happy with the rest of the game for the most part.. I could deal with the RNG fest if the class design was not a hot mess... Great content is great and all, but if the vessel through which I traverse that content is in a bad state, it's not very enjoyable.

People have whined about class design for as long as Wow has had classes. I'm not sure why people act like this is remotely new.

[Eurhetemec]

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.

Wow, you have no idea who WoW's previous designers have been do you? That's amazing.

Let me help you out a bit here:

Jeffrey Kaplan - An unemployed arts student/bum, who was playing EQ in his dad's basement, that had no education in software, but played a game, was hired to be a major designer for WoW.

Alex Afrasiabi - Basically the same story as Jeffrey.

A huge number of Blizzard's hires have been of people outside the main gaming industry, people who are, by normal standards, completely unqualified.

Go on, name a Blizzard lead developer you like. Let's look at their history.

Ghostcrawler (Greg Street) was totally unqualified in anything to do with games (by his own proud admission), he was fucking marine science professor who got hired by Ensemble largely because they liked him.

[xanzul]

People cling to the belief that blizzard decisions are one-man choices and not team choices, and the "logical" person to blame is the one at the top.

Or worse that the "bean counters" make the decisions which couldn't be any further from the truth. This just simply isn't how any business rooted in any form of creative art functions at least not at the level the simpletons here claim it is.

[xanzul]

Ian, here is why I dislike him. Ian was not one of the original WoW developers. He came in off of the coat tails of the original warcraft developers and he came right around the time that the game started implementing all of these convenience changes. The same changes like LFR, LFG, flying, IE taking people out of the world and reducing the player incentive to form a community. That said, even though I think these changes ruined WoW, the real reason I dislike him was a series of developer interviews from 2016 to current. In which he basically lied through his teeth about legacy and continued to beat the drum of pristine realms. This was after the whole Nost debacle in which the community had basically told J Allen Brack, no we don't like you crappy pristine server idea. Then, when people went in to the live stream developer interview and overwhelmingly turned the feed in pro legacy, he lied to the community implying it was coming. Then, in the same interview he went on to discuss some big changes to Legion. These were changes in which the live feed, and the community had been strongly against. Instead of thinking maybe these changes were not for the better, he took a minute to justify (in classic blizzard fashion) everything he just said they were doing.

Who exactly is it you think hired him in the first place?

[xanzul]

Ion doesn't accept his mistakes and he contradicts so much. The community say this and that about what is wrong with the classes (dmg of feral, demos locks shards, the slow dps of UH dk and more). and he do nothing until the middle of expansion, also i remember the answer of Ion when he explain why is the nerfing of Demonology Warlocks
I know is hard to be lead game designer but sometimes he need to accept his mistakes and listen more often.

He admits to mistakes constantly but none of you haters acknowledge it because it blows your lazy simple minded narrative out of the water.

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So much this. This is exactly what he does in every Q&A.

Because you people totally aren't dismissive of what anyone from Blizzard says. Some of you really need to take a long hard look at yourselves and what you are doing before worrying about what Ion or anyone else is doing.

[xanzul]

Simple fact is this Jay.

People want a scapegoat. Someone to blame. They don't realize Blizzard designs as a collective.

Not to mention the fact that the "A team" everyone prattles on about never "abandoned" wow for "greener pastures". They all routinely sit in on meetings concerning Wow development to give advice or ideas or improve on existing concepts (this is common for all Blizzard games actually not just Wow). People can't deal with the idea that their sainted gods the original developers just might actually have no issue with the current state of the game.

[Eurhetemec]

Instead of thinking maybe these changes were not for the better, he took a minute to justify (in classic blizzard fashion) everything he just said they were doing.

Only on internet game forums is explaining why you're making changes a sign that you're a bad person...

[xanzul]

when it makes it a nuisance to play solo, that's fucking when.

i don't give a shit about the meters, i play alone 90% of the time and shaman feels shit right now, in enhance and elemental.

Sounds more like a personal issue to me. Maybe learn to play?

[Eurhetemec]

"We hear your overwhelmingly negative feedback and look... We aren't changing a thing. Eat shit"

Why is that though?

It's because you're not representative of the playerbase. They can afford not to listen to you - indeed listening to you would lose them money. There are loads of people here who have said stuff like "I wouldn't mind if WoW only had enough players to fill my raidgroup" or the like. Those are the sort of people who are incredibly loud and angry. They'd rather see WoW lose 99% of it's players than not be precisely what they want it to be.

You seem to be taking the same approach - you think your opinion is >>>>>> everything else, including the success of the game. Every complaint you've made about Ion seems to acknowledge that he is a competent businessman who knows what he is doing, yet, you seem to think this makes him some sort of criminal?

[xanzul]

He's not talented or experienced enough to head WoW's development. Legion shows this.

Tom Chilton should not have left.

Implying Tom Chilton didn't have a say in his replacement not to mention the fact you are implying all of upper management at Blizzard being incapable of making major hiring decisions like this and yet it is Ion that is arrogant. What a fucking crock of shit.

[derpkitteh]

Sounds more like a personal issue to me. Maybe learn to play?

i play the exact same way i played in WoD when i didn't have a fucking problem.

it's not that i'm dying constantly or nonsense like that. it's that i noticeably take more damage compared to WoD. it's comparable to the damage i take on a mage from one hit from a mob.

[xanzul]

People at Blizzard above Ion's pay grade made a conscious choice to make him the public face along with that CM who looks like a clown that "conducts" the interviews with Ion.

Personally I believe it is a huge mistake as Ion comes across as an arrogant self righteous asshole, meanwhile that CM looks like someone dragged off the friggen warm street vent in downtown NYC and tossed a mic.

The image these two project is not favorable to Blizzard.

Blizzard seems to be doing just fine. It is ironic you people accuse Blizzard devs of being "arrogant self righteous assholes" not realizing the shit you spew out on these forums makes you what you are accusing others of being. Honest to god the mods need to start perm banning the whole lot of you. Personally attacking developers because you don't get what you want is fucking childish. Grow the fuck up.

[Eurhetemec]

The image these two project is not favorable to Blizzard.

So when Jeffrey Kaplan and Tom Chilton were verbally abusing people and behaving like particularly spoilt little kids on the WoW forums back in say, 2004/2005, did you think they projected a favourable image for Blizzard?

[khazmodan]

Wow, you have no idea who WoW's previous designers have been do you? That's amazing.

Let me help you out a bit here:

Jeffrey Kaplan - An unemployed arts student/bum, who was playing EQ in his dad's basement, that had no education in software, but played a game, was hired to be a major designer for WoW.

Alex Afrasiabi - Basically the same story as Jeffrey.

A huge number of Blizzard's hires have been of people outside the main gaming industry, people who are, by normal standards, completely unqualified.

Go on, name a Blizzard lead developer you like. Let's look at their history.

Ghostcrawler (Greg Street) was totally unqualified in anything to do with games (by his own proud admission), he was fucking marine science professor who got hired by Ensemble largely because they liked him.

Mike Morhaime

[xanzul]

Ah yes playing hardcore. Like playing wow with his tablet ... hardcore for shure.

It is a fucking shame the mods let people like you troll like this. This whole fucking thread needs to be locked.

[digichi]

People cling to the belief that blizzard decisions are one-man choices and not team choices, and the "logical" person to blame is the one at the top.

^^^^^^^^^^that

if we're critiquing his presentation; ill say he seems really invested and cares a LOT. and he shows it consistently when he talks about the game, which is a + in my book.

[Eurhetemec]

Thanks for proving my point.

Game isn't a game anymore. The old WoW is dead.

Long live Casino gaming!

Funny how I've played since beta and I think WoW is still a pretty good game. When did you start?

You're also proving my point that you don't care what happens to WoW, you don't care how successful it is, you just want it to be what you want it to be which is what? A return to MoP-style play or something?