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

[bufferunderrun]

I don't hate him but i think it's personal way to play the game (and other devs have the same problem) is influencing its work and the direction of wow, this is one of the biggest problem when players become devs they sure have a real passion for the game but most time what they do is very good for a side of the playerbase and piss the hell out of all the other sides.

[Deleted]

Ion is that guy that can do everything right and still get all the aggro of the community. His face is effectively the most op AOE taunt. Personally I like him as a game director. He seems honest enough (at times) then the conspiracy theorists come out, and I like the new direction they’ve taken with the Q&As and in general more communication with the community. Not sure how much influence he can have on the game’s direction ( i know its in his tittle but he might not have as much power as you think he does) but so far Legion has been one of the better expantions. It does have a few flaws but luckily there are so many things in game to keep me busy I can avoid the unfun stuff.

[Deleted]

I've had mixed impressions of him.

To me, it seems at the start of WOD, the devs were very interested and involved.
When Distracting Shot was going to be removed and outrage broke out,
it was Ion who stepped into the fray and said:
"Whoa, let's calm down here and back up. I don't see a practical use for Distracting Shot. Am I missing something here? Please help me understand why it is still valuable to you."

We made our case, and he said: "Ah, I see now. Okay, I'll see what we can do about that."
The following beta patch, "Distracting Shot has been removed", was CROSSED OUT.
Watcher/Ion over-turned that decision based on feedback.

Yet when people hated mission tables, it stayed.
When people hated amount of RNG, he added more.

One good deed for one class doesn't excuse massive amount of bad stuff that was added on his watch and then completely ignored feedback.

In interviews he often mentions his "vision", as if there is one and only one way to play game. He tells players how they should think about feature (like being "excited" for legendaries/titanforge), like its one and only way to think. WoW used to have choices. WoW used to have depth. It doesn't now. It is shallow, following linear vision, lottery replaced reachable goals and any feedback that questions that "vision" is ignored.

[Tradu]

Legion is the most alt-friendly expansion in whole history of wow, you can roll an alt and get it raid ready in a matter of weeks, not months like it used to be

That really depends on your definition of "raid ready", because legendaries fuck with that time estimate a lot.

[SirCowdog]

Define "improve" here - you main class being buffed? I'll agree that game is improving when it gets patched regularly, old bugs get fixed, new content is added and common stuff is being change (for sake of balance, fun, consistency - whatever).

Stuff people complain about is usually irrelevant or subjective. Their beloved class being nerfed in a way they think is not justified (usually it is justified to be fair), minor inconveniences (daze effect, loot rng, flying, etc).

Fair point. Although I find it telling that you view the removal of flight and the over-use of RNG to be "minor inconveniences".

My personal view of how the game should improve, outside of purely technical advances such as better servers, netcode, latency, etc, would be to strike a better balance between player agency and Blizzard's desire to keep players on-rails in a treadmill like loop to stretch the time-played metric.

Lets take the RNG topic, for example, since that seems to be the most popular thing to argue over at the moment. We can look at the game mechanics and player tools in Blizzard's own game, Diablo 3, and see better ways to handle the RNG drops, the relics(epic gems in D3), Legendaries, and even movement around the game world(although that's a separate topic).

While D3 is by no means a perfect game, one has to wonder why the superior mechanics of similar systems aren't being applied to WoW. Why can't we reroll gear? Why can't we reforge bad stats? Why aren't there more legendaries on the drop list? Why not let players have more control over their stats?

Even if WoW doesn't just carbon copy Diablo 3's game mechanics, they should at least be able to take the concepts and adapt them for WoW. And that doesn't even look to more advanced mechanics from games outside of Blizzard's own studio.

So then comes along a Blizzard dev or CM blue poster, and despite a LOT of negative feedback on a system such as the Netherlight Crucible, says that they think it's fine and they're not going to change or improve it. That's a real headscratcher. Occam's Razor would tend to suggest that it's not because they want the game mechanic to be better, but for some other more likely reason such as profits.

You also have to distinguish large portion of community from vocal minority. And we (as players) do not have any measurement tools to get any sort of average about player, but blizzard does have it and base their decision on it , and there comes a question of entitlement - some people here want game to be better for them, and worse for majority of players. Their "fixes" are flawed and we all can only hope that they won't end up at blizzard, and if they will their "fixes" will be heard only by meeting room walls.

I don't agree that players have no way to measure the average player. Blizzard may have better access to the info and metrics, but that doesn't mean that players can't also make informed judgements as well. I absolutely do not believe that the big name company is always right. Their data might be more accurate, but how they use it isn't infallible.

I also don't believe that everyone who speaks up or criticizes is doing so out of personal gain or selfishness. We all want better games, and some people recognize that the direction larger game companies have been going lately sets an ugly trend. I need only point to the history of practices like Day 1 DLC, massive focus on pre-ordering with launch day review embargoes, or more recently the idiocy of putting LOOT BOXES that contain direct power upgrades in Shadow of War, a single player-focused game.

Sure, vocal minorities and selfish players exist, and are a definite problem. But that's not everyone. There are just as many rational, well informed, well considered arguments that have the purpose of improving the game for everyone.

No, they are not similar. Just stop, any non-ironical mention of season pass should be ridiculed and laughed at IMO. It's out of place for this conversation, it's not similar and it's really sad that people start to equal fucking season pass to a subscription.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on that point, then.

Unsubbing is not a poor solution, it's a best solution you have as a consumer to show blizzard that you are not fine with what they do with the game. Shoving WoW down your own throat and expect that blizzard will do a 180° turn in their strategy because of your angry posts (or you silently not enjoying it) (just to clarify: these "yous'" do not point and you, but at a hypothetical player, so i hope no offense taken). Devs rarely do dismiss their own playerbase, them not doing exactly what you want doesn't mean that they are dismissing their own playerbase.

I believe it's a poor solution because it comes down to being force to quit a game, that you might otherwise enjoy, out of protest, or fully and completely endorse anything and everything the company decides to do because your voice doesn't matter once they have your money. Sadly it's often the ONLY language that game companies will actually listen to.

So yeah, it's evident that blizzard do listen to proper feedback and base their judgements not only on internal mathematical data, but also run tests on feedback from playerbase

Blizzard literally changes every class every patch. You're citing that they listened to feedback on a subject that is, by it's very nature and history, constantly changing. While your example is technically true, it is nowhere in the same scope or magnitude as larger issues that effect the entire playerbase, which is where Blizzard generally completely ignores feedback. As @Binki says just a few posts above this one:

"One good deed for one class doesn't excuse massive amount of bad stuff that was added on his watch and then completely ignored feedback."

Anyway, I think we're running down to nuance at this point. We've clearly got different views on a lot of these things, and we could argue it for another 10 pages probably. Also, these posts are getting pretty massive.

[Mlz]

Because shit like https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/901073778981122050 (doesn't know what's a talent, uses reinc as an example of skillful use when it's only available in like every 10th pull or saying that shaman defensives are fine, relatively speaking, lol). The class design is garbage but it's alright because Ion lives in a fantasy land quite disconnected from reality.

[Evilmoo]

To me he is a stubborn individual who does not give a shit about what community says it needs
"i know better what you need" attitude has never been profitable for anyone, especially for a person who can not admit his failures, will often lie to temporarily relieve pressure or just outright ignore.
To activision he might be a valuable employee, to Blizzard and Warcraft he is a disaster.

[Kathranis]

Every single system has RNG baked into it.

The core endgame vertical progression systems always had RNG baked into them. You either got gear or you didn't. That's RNG.

The only real difference between then and now is that you have a reason to keep running content even after you've gotten the gear, because there's always a chance to get a better version of that gear. Naturally people who can't be satisfied unless they're fully decked out in BiS gear are never going to be satisfied by this system.

I would personally argue that that is more a problem of player perception than design -- the upgrades are meant to be happy surprises, not objects of yearning, and that's how many players view them -- but I suppose at some point you have to design around the lengths players will go to in order to min-max their characters. If you removed weekly raid lockouts, you'd have players complaining that they're "forced" to run the raids 24/7.

So, no, maybe it's not the best implementation of "perpetual progression," but it's also not something they've had much opportunity to experiment with either. My impulse is that the best approach would probably be a middleground between the random upgrade system in Legion and the token-based upgrade system in Mists of Pandaria. IE, you can get random upgrades, but you can also get "Titan's Essence" tokens that you can use to Titanforge an existing piece of gear. Let players Obliterate unwanted Titanforged Gear to get more of those tokens.


As for Legendaries... while I'm personally not too bothered due to the fact that you can only equip two of them at a time anyway, the lack of player choice is probably the biggest problem. Even if they were perfectly balanced, being pigeonholed into a particular playstyle because of the Legendary selection available to you is definitely not desirable. I think my biggest hope with Legendaries going forward is that they'd be more focused on big stats or universal improvements not modification of individual abilities. Playstyle defining abilities and effects should probably be left up to player choice, not thrust upon them by RNG. That or they should have an element of choice to them, like upgrading all of the talents on a single tier so that you can pick the effect you like the best.

At the same time, I think managing player expectation is what's really at the core of the issue. The fundamental idea behind the new Legendaries was that a player could get one at any moment, and when they finally did, it would be really exciting. But what actually happened is that all of the Legendaries were quickly datamined and analyzed to determine two were BiS, and anyone who knew that information going into the expansion was going to be disappointed if anything other than those two dropped.

[Deleted]

I would personally argue that that is more a problem of player perception than design

That's what Ion tries to make us believe too. However there is no problem of perception. Perception is purely subjective. Its not objective. Its nothing but an opinion. Having different opinion is not a problem, its normal human behaviour. Ion should understand that and stop forcing his opinion on everyone.

[mingarrubia]

To me he is a stubborn individual who does not give a shit about what community says it needs
"i know better what you need" attitude has never been profitable for anyone, especially for a person who can not admit his failures, will often lie to temporarily relieve pressure or just outright ignore.
To activision he might be a valuable employee, to Blizzard and Warcraft he is a disaster.

This sums him up pretty well IMO.

[Charge me Doctor]

Lets take the RNG topic, for example, since that seems to be the most popular thing to argue over at the moment. We can look at the game mechanics and player tools in Blizzard's own game, Diablo 3, and see better ways to handle the RNG drops, the relics(epic gems in D3), Legendaries, and even movement around the game world(although that's a separate topic).

While D3 is by no means a perfect game, one has to wonder why the superior mechanics of similar systems aren't being applied to WoW. Why can't we reroll gear? Why can't we reforge bad stats? Why aren't there more legendaries on the drop list? Why not let players have more control over their stats?

I don't think that it's fair to compare WoW to Diablo 3, they are quite different games. Diablo 3 has reforging only because of how hard it is to get a proper piece of loot. All loot in Diablo is randomized, it's already rare to obtain a double ancient legendary (or whatever they use right now), but get it with proper stats? That's ridiculous amount of luck. WoW isn't even close to that amount of RNG.
Also Diablo 3 doesn't "lock" content behind weekly/daily resets, caps and requirements for other people. Diablo 3 have dynamic difficulty setting (which you can adjust on the fly to the point to the point of breezing through it at appropriate pace) and it's hardly a multiplayer game. It's a loot game. Ridiculed version of RPG where you obtain loot to get better loot. In case of WoW - its difficulty setting is way more steep, jumping from normal raiding to heroic is not similar to jumping from torment 10 to 15 (and you don't even have torment 11-12-13-14 in WoW, so you either have to overcome difficulty by your skill&gear combo, or stay at your level for another week and keep grinding gear).

But to answer your question on reforging - we tried that already and it was a non-interactive disaster. Current loot tables in WoW are shared between armour users, so if you find the haste/vers to be bad stats - some other class/spec will find them to be great stats. In case of non-personal loot you shouldn't be getting an item with bad (for you) stats, so point of reforging is null ("i roll for this item because it's higher ilvl and i can reforge bad stat into good stat! i don't care that i roll against a dude for whom both of these stats are good"). In case of personal loot - you may very well try to engage in sOcIaL AcTiViTy and try to trade your item away for something better, or for a chance to get something better. Or equip it anyways, since main stat difference often trumps "unfarvorable" stat. Reforging was a simply bad idea for WoW, it doesn't fit its model at all. If ALL stats on gear were randomized - sure, throw reforging in, but you'll still end up with good old number crunchers passing their knowledge down to us plebs which will ruin things (remember crafted necklaces? Hunt for double crit rolls? Imagine that but not on AH or by dumping tons of mats, but with drops in raid)

Even if WoW doesn't just carbon copy Diablo 3's game mechanics, they should at least be able to take the concepts and adapt them for WoW. And that doesn't even look to more advanced mechanics from games outside of Blizzard's own studio.

and, frankly, they do. That's why we have a lot of randomized things in WoW right now, that's how we've got scaling in locations and so on.

So then comes along a Blizzard dev or CM blue poster, and despite a LOT of negative feedback on a system such as the Netherlight Crucible, says that they think it's fine and they're not going to change or improve it. That's a real headscratcher. Occam's Razor would tend to suggest that it's not because they want the game mechanic to be better, but for some other more likely reason such as profits.

I haven't heard a single decent piece of feedback against netherlight crucible - it's inevitable system for legion, it's current carrot on stick, you want to take away a carrot on stick in the mid flight, resulting in us falling down. Well, i kinda lied, i've heard about double rolls on perks concern and blizzard removed that thing afaik.

I don't agree that players have no way to measure the average player. Blizzard may have better access to the info and metrics, but that doesn't mean that players can't also make informed judgements as well. I absolutely do not believe that the big name company is always right. Their data might be more accurate, but how they use it isn't infallible.

Really? There are really many players, and on average one player will interact with, say, 100 other players per week cycle. Which is definitely not enough to make any averages. Even if you take into consideration statistic gathered via various bots - they are mostly inaccurate (compared to data that blizzard have), i'll take blizzards data over users data every day of the week. But i do agree that their decisions may not be perfect even based on real data, tho, you have to understand that their decisions pass thorough risk management and other protocols used in companies, so they are very well thought decisions. Which is hilarious for me when they come up with stuff like reforging on obligatory legendary cape quests.

I also don't believe that everyone who speaks up or criticizes is doing so out of personal gain or selfishness. We all want better games, and some people recognize that the direction larger game companies have been going lately sets an ugly trend. I need only point to the history of practices like Day 1 DLC, massive focus on pre-ordering with launch day review embargoes, or more recently the idiocy of putting LOOT BOXES that contain direct power upgrades in Shadow of War, a single player-focused game.

That's simply human nature, most people i read here want to make game better for themselves, not for everyone. I'm not saying that their opinion is invaluable, i'm saying that their opinion is subjective (duh) and blizzard have to weight this game against millions of other players, not against one player. Recent feedback i've read can be dumbed down to "Arcane mage is weak ATM, buff dmg pls", "Arcane mage sucks at cleave, buff cleave pls" (completely missing the point of the spec, completely missing the point that making a spec more powerful in one playstyle should be compensating by nerfing something else, avoiding pidgeonholing players into one cookie-cutter build spec). I agree with your concerns about current trend with what happens in game industry, but most feedback is aimed at the gameplay not at how lootboxes are worst invention in the gaming industry. But concerns are concerns - people still buy them, instead of not buying them, that's why it keeps happening. The only feedback any gaming company should get about their shitty practices are "0" on their sales numbers.

Sure, vocal minorities and selfish players exist, and are a definite problem. But that's not everyone. There are just as many rational, well informed, well considered arguments that have the purpose of improving the game for everyone.

I disagree, there are very little rational, well informed arguments, most feedback threads here (which is the best "general" wow forum) end up circlejerking same shit. I'm afraid visiting official forums to look at feedback anymore, it's just horrendous.
Then you have places like altered-time, where people really care about their class, that's where you can form opinions on classes and/or specs and get decent feedback. But you'll find lack of it there, because it's hard to distill this feedback to "TL;DR" for people to throw at each others in angry arguments.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on that point, then.

Yep. i guess so.

I believe it's a poor solution because it comes down to being force to quit a game, that you might otherwise enjoy, out of protest, or fully and completely endorse anything and everything the company decides to do because your voice doesn't matter once they have your money. Sadly it's often the ONLY language that game companies will actually listen to.

It's weird for me, if i stop enjoying doing something - i stop doing it. If WoW does a U turn into a wall and i'll stop enjoying it the very first thing i'll do is unsub, then lie down in fetal position and cry a lot over wasted hours. Blizzard will take their sales going down more seriously than angry posts of someone who says that he doesn't like WoW anymore but keeps playing. (Often because it's cool to hate WoW, but you still want to play it because you like the game, but everyone else should know that WoW is shit, but i still play it like 4 hours per day, but it's shit, you know)

Blizzard literally changes every class every patch. You're citing that they listened to feedback on a subject that is, by it's very nature and history, constantly changing. While your example is technically true, it is nowhere in the same scope or magnitude as larger issues that effect the entire playerbase, which is where Blizzard generally completely ignores feedback. As @Binki says just a few posts above this one:

"One good deed for one class doesn't excuse massive amount of bad stuff that was added on his watch and then completely ignored feedback."

Yeah, and that's one of good things with WoW - it's changing constantly, let it go stagnate it'll be forgotten quickly.
That's just one example but really a major one, they do listen to feedback but it doesn't mean that they'll address it right away, or agree with us, or don't have some sort of solution already but have to wait to push it to ptr.

Anyway, I think we're running down to nuance at this point. We've clearly got different views on a lot of these things, and we could argue it for another 10 pages probably. Also, these posts are getting pretty massive.

I don't see this as a bad thing =)

[Lightbull]

Right now I like him. He seems like a good guy from what we've seen, and he isn't afraid to talk about controversial issues, and why Blizzard does what they do.

He is arrogant selfish fucking asshole.

If you're good at something, you deserve to be arrogant.

[Deleted]

I like him. When he talks about the game it feels like he's talking with passion. He's played the game and still does at a fairly hardcore level and was even a part of one of the more famous WoW fansites back in the day (elitistjerks). So I believe he has a lot of passion for the game and it shows when he talks about it.

So, like.

Please..based on decisions made by devs, lead by Ion they don`t have a fking clue about the game itself.....

Every time when he does a Q&A the WoW losing a few hundred or thousand subscriber, because he saying ridiculously stupid things which is the living proof how the devs are far away from the game and reality...

- - - Updated - - -

Right now I like him. He seems like a good guy from what we've seen, and he isn't afraid to talk about controversial issues, and why Blizzard does what they do.



If you're good at something, you deserve to be arrogant.

If you are the best...good? That is not good enough (pun intended:P)

[Deleted]

As he keeps to make raid and open wolrd content that makes the wrath baby quit for me he is better than Santa.

Oh and ignoring the vanilla tards that ask for vanilla servers, this add a plus of 10000000 point to him.

[Deleted]

As he keeps to make raid and open wolrd content that makes the wrath baby quit for me he is better than Santa.

Oh and ignoring the vanilla tards that ask for vanilla servers, this add a plus of 10000000 point to him.

Personally I don`t give a flying fuck about vanilla servers, but I simply can`t understand this mentality..How the hell gonna hurt you an official vanilla server? Like swearing on people who wants a WC4 or D4....

[Deleted]

The class design is garbage but it's alright because Ion lives in a fantasy land quite disconnected from reality.

Can't help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don't care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you'll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I'm gone.

[Deleted]

Personally I don`t give a flying fuck about vanilla servers, but I simply can`t understand this mentality..How the hell gonna hurt you an official vanilla server? Like swearing on people who wants a WC4 or D4....

Cos only the special snowflaskes to bad to raid by today standars wants them. They cant accept the fact that they are bad and they have to git gud.

[Deleted]

Cos only the special snowflaskes to bad to raid by today standars wants them. They cant accept the fact that they are bad and they have to git gud.

Still, how the hell gonna AFFECT on you, on your life, on your gameplay, on anything related to you? I rarely logging in, because for me WoW is boring....do you have issues with that? If I`m going to play on an illegal, but fun vanilla server...is it hurting you by any way? Or if Im playing with FF14?

- - - Updated - - -

Can't help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don't care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you'll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I'm gone.

One sentence ..only one shows you are completely wrong about him and the devs of WoW. This is the level of arrogance what I can`t and won`t tolerate and especially since then, the blizz devs are lower level lifeforms in my eyes...like politicians

[Deleted]

Still, how the hell gonna AFFECT on you, on your life, on your gameplay, on anything related to you? I rarely logging in, because for me WoW is boring....do you have issues with that? If I`m going to play on an illegal, but fun vanilla server...is it hurting you by any way? Or if Im playing with FF14?

One sentence ..only one shows you are completely wrong about him and the devs of WoW. This is the level of arrogance what I can`t and won`t tolerate and especially since then, the blizz devs are lower level lifeforms in my eyes...like politician

Touching a nerve did i?
It hurts cos this mean they have to develop content for people so bad at the current one, and that means less content for the players that actualy enjoys and contents and dont complain about hiding they low skills whit "i want old talent back!!11111111!"
. And my post was about Blizzard doing that, i dont care of pirate server that will be closed or ffxiv/gw2 or any other mmorpg

[rda]

If you're good at something, you deserve to be arrogant.

But Ion isn't good. Because the game isn't good and keeps going down full swing. Quick example: PVP - ladders reduced to ~30% of their former sizes even in WoD, PVP designer had to quit, PVP is more or less shot dead.