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

[Gadzooks]

My opinion: No personal thoughts, don't know the guy, seems to be nice enough. As director of the game - he's done well meeting deadlines and pumping out content on a regular basis. WoW is a large team, and running a team like that is a lot of work. As far as communication...yeah, he's okay. He uses a lot of lawyerly doublespeak to make it seem like he's saying one thing, but means another (lawyers are trained this way, for speaking to juries.) (There's a reason his lap dog Lore is there every Q&A to tell everyone what Ion really meant to say.) He also navel gazes too much, and rambles. He also pointedly avoids a lot of subjects, he only talks about what he cares to. People must be around really bad communicators, if they think that's one of his strong points. But, he's not obnoxious, like Celestalon, or a dick, like Holinka, so there's no reason to hate the guy - and he's learned his lesson of putting his feet in his mouth, like he did several times during WoD.

I don't like what he and his team have steered WoW into, as a game, so I don't play, and don't plan on playing the next expansion, unless some massive, groundbreaking changes are made. (I'm not holding my breath.) Ion, and his team, care far, far, far too much about micromanaging the player's game experience, and reliance on using "missions" in a UI drop down menu to replace actually moving your character around and doing things, and I loathe questing in rails. But I don't harbor a grudge against the guy (and his team) for that, I just don't buy his product. I also, looking at the expansion as a whole now, don't care for the storyline they've chosen. It's simply not that interesting.

[Sliske]

I've seen very polarizing views about Ion as a game designer, and this thread isn't to bash or aggrandize him as a person, but why do or don't you like him as a game designer? (speaking specifically about his work and his job, not about the person).

To me, he's done a very good job with the game and he was responsible for some very iconic raids like Ulduar, and Throne of Thunder.

Where are people not liking him? Is it just his confidence that people don't like? Am I missing something here? @Eleccybubb

I dislike him - hes fog. He rides the fence on every topic, which in itself is seen as cowardly, but he does so while leading the development of a game that isn't riding the fence, but rather taking actions.

I don't want him to do what I want. I want him to just explain why hes doing them. I want him to give his opinion on why certain things are implemented and why certain things are changed. That'd be great. What isn't great is giving him my opinion and having him tell me 'yeah... you could be right'. Mate, you don't need to tell me my opinion is right - i already believe it is right. What I want you to do is to give me the logic behind you believing your opinion (and thus your choice) is right.

[Caolela]

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.

The "tablet thing" has been obfuscated as usual by the Blizz fanboy crowd here, where nearly anything Blizz and its employees do is somehow made to be OK. No one has to "misconstrue" anything, it's quite obvious.

[Dystemper]

He has no passion for the game, his arrogant attitude is " you play the game the way we tell you too and you will have fun the way we tell you too." Horrible decisions made in this expansion, namely the excessive RNG. The Flight/No flight situation for 2 expansions in a row should have had him removed from the game. Glass balancing and pruning , broken professions , lying to tthe customers .

[Maybach]

People have short memories
No one remember all the crap he came out with a couple of blizzcons ago about content?
Really honest..........
The acid test is take a look at him and would you by a used car from him?

[Yunaqt]

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.

Yeah pretty much sums up what I was going to add.
I like him, clearly is passionate about the game.

He's in the role that generally gets a finger pointed at when a players unsatisfied so cops a lot of shit, much like his predecessors.

[SirCowdog]

I love Ion, it's clear he cares about WoW and I like his frank approach to how the game is rather than how players wish it was. So far everything he wants with WoW has alligned with what I want for it to so I'm happy

Serious question here: Do you think that you'd still like him as much if he was making changes that you didn't want, even if they were "to make the game better"?

Just sayin that it's VERY easy to like someone when they're doing what you want.

[Lightbull]

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.

That's just not true. We've seen statistical proof that Legion is doing better than WoD, so the game is improving.

Yes there are some flaws, but you can't expect someone to miraculously fix all problems at once.

[Raiju]

Comparing Legion to WoD.

Hilarious.

It isn't hard to be better than WoD.

There's no other valid comparison until the next expansion is released. You're not going to see a TBC surge again, and for all it's love WOTLK was a small rise in numbers. Everything after iirc has been decline of some amounts, but the decline doesn't mean every one of those expansions was bad. It's product lifecycle.

[SirCowdog]

Yes. What's your point

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Isn't that how it works with people you've never met - since I can't speak for his character I have to speak for what I do see

I already said my point: It's very easy to like someone when they're doing what you want.

And I asked a question which you answered. There wasn't anything past that.

- - - Updated - - -

That's just not true. We've seen statistical proof that Legion is doing better than WoD, so the game is improving.

Yes there are some flaws, but you can't expect someone to miraculously fix all problems at once.

"Slightly better", and based on what metric, exactly? That's thing I wonder about. In terms of profit I have no doubt that it's performing better. But in terms of subs? Player activity or approval? These are things we don't know with much accuracy(although we can make some educated guesses).

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Comparing Legion to WoD.

Hilarious.

It isn't hard to be better than WoD.

Also this. LOL!

[Kathranis]

Why is that guy using an Intous tablet with a Cintiq? He can use the pen directly on the screen. I own one. I know this. He's using a $200 tablet instead of his $2500 tablet-screen.

I think it's just a stock photo. Don't think about it.

[Gadzooks]

I think it's just a stock photo. Don't think about it.

It's extremely hard to, lol. It breaks my brain. It's like those stock photos of people "fixing" computers holding the hot end of a soldering iron.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Pretty sure Ion knew when he took the job that it meant getting flamed in the forums. Comes with the job.

[Charge me Doctor]

I don't see this as a bad thing. Timelocks exist for one reason and one reason only: To promote subscription fees.

Timelocks (gearlocks) used to exist to make sure that players consume content in "proper" way. For community it makes sure that "day one" players won't be too far away from others. With current catch up mechanics it does work kinda nice, but with removal on weekly reset it'll be even harder to manage guilds raid time for one.

And what do you think M+ is supposed to be? An alternative loot path to organized raiding that doesn't necessarily require a static group. Pretty damn similar, if you ask me.

People used to think about M+ as about rifts of wow - it gave immediate reward after finishing it. But it didn't scale up properly (in sense they can't add infinite scaling on reward like they can in D3), so people end up running low key MoS for cheap artifact power. Which was a fucking huge problem.
Current iteration rewards you for finishing at least one high key M+ per week (giving you huge reward at the beginning of next week, instead of spreading it out through the week). You have no incentive to run 15+ keys except your own satisfaction and enjoyment from doing M+s.
So yeah, it different content, alternative to raiding, but it's by no means diablo 3 style of torment, where reward scales up with difficulty. M+ reward is capped at "one per week" and at 15(10? i dunno, we do 15 every week) key, with supplementary artifact power (which is hardly a reward at this point). Random loot at the end of dungeon is hardly a reward too (at least at the point where i find myself, i need to do a lot of rolls to benefit from an item out of GIANT loot table of a dungeon)

And WoW isn't? o_O

No, loot is still just a tool for players to progress. I mean, players themselves decide what their goal. And blizzard decided that "there will be base ilvl where everyone begin even content cycle!". But in general you need gear and skill to enter and finish raids.
But to be fair there are players who see loot as the point of the game, i disagree, because game design doesn't support that notion much.

Refer to my point about M+. The only place what you describe even matters is in heroic and mythic raiding, which is actually a MUCH smaller portion of the game than almost anything else. I don't think it's fair to use only the highest end of the raiding scene to define the entire game.

For most social (friends&family) guilds - heroic raiding is something to look up to. Most wow players don't spend much time raiding and normal into heroic is their natural progression during the beginning on content cycle. Then maybe 3 first mythic bosses. I never judge by end of the raiding scene, because "end of raiding scene" is ridiculed with their account sharing and shit.
I also don't think that 50%+ damage and health boost from normal to heroic raiding is not a big step in difficulty for appropriately geared majority of wow community

I haven't played in long enough that I don't actually know the inner nuances of how loot randomization of stats works anymore. It was my understanding that stats like haste, crit, mastery, etc, are all determined randomly, while only primary stats such as STR, INT, SPI, etc are set by specialization. Therefore it's entirely possible to get random secondary stats which are sub-optimal for your current spec. Which is then exacerbated by getting a TF piece of gear with the wrong stats.

Is this not how it currently works? Also, I don't remember, but did Reforging ever exist at the same time as WF/TF?

http://www.wowhead.com/item=146995/s...onus=3561:1482
http://www.wowhead.com/item=147148/l...onus=3561:1482
No, they have fixed main and secondary stats. You can get tertiary stat via the roll, but it's irrelevant (unbreakable item, self-healing or movement speed boost).
Random stats are from crafted gear, that's where you can get an item with two rolls of one stat which is cheesy as fuck.

How is that different from now? There's still BiS rolls for gear. And as far as I can tell the only real difference is that instead of taking an item and getting it rerolled/reforged, you have to go pull the lever on the slot machine again by running the entire dungeon/WQ/whatever.

Just to clarify what i'm talking about:
I as a fire mage have literally no interested into belt piece from Inquisition (http://www.wowhead.com/item=146998/b...onus=3563:1512), so i just say to all cloth wearing players in raid that i'm willing to trade it for shoulder (http://www.wowhead.com/item=146996/m...onus=3563:1512) in case i'll get the belt. That's kind of player interaction i like wow for.
But back to reforging - basically, it devalues items and makes it harder for developers to balance loot tables for players. Say there is a piece with critx1,5/masteryx0,5, i as a fire mage REALLY want this piece for my M+ runs. But we also have a shadow priest, who doesn't benefit much from crit or mastery, but benefits greatly from haste.
What happens now? Priest will pass on this item because he doesn't value this item as much as i do.
What happens with reforging? Priest will roll on this item anyways, because he sees this item as critx0,9/hastex0,6/mastery0,5. Both of us will be unhappy, because i didn't get item that i will benefit greatly from, and he isn't happy because he didn't get a hastex1,5/masteryx0,5 piece from the same boss.
That's literally what happened in pandaria, people been grabbing items they wouldn't naturally need, reforge them because addon says he will be able to ALLOCATE EXTRA 50 CRIT STAT AT EXPENSE OF HIT THAT IS CURRENTLY SITS OVER THE CAP.
Reforging simply makes creating loot tables for bosses/raids a nightmare, we end up with inbalanced (loot-wise) loot tables. Which isn't the case if all your loot is randomized (why it works in D3). But in WoW loot is not randomized yet (and ho

The main problem I see is that the NLC creates a double layer of RNG: Layering titanforge relic on top of BiS traits. It's the same problem with the rest of the WF/TF drop system.

Well they completely fixed previous NLC problem of stacking traits, so NLC is not a problem at all.
Say, you already have the best trait on your relic - slapping it into a NLC will simply give you a nice bonus. On the other hand, if you have shitty cauterize blink relic (i have three of those, u jelly yet?) - you have an option to slap in into NLC and get a trait that will actually positively affect your DPS. How is that bad? It's good, you get a free trait.

And just on context of "BiS" traits that is often blown out of proportion - mine BiS trait is pyroclasmic paranoia and it sims... 6k DPS above no trait at all. It's akin to me interrupting a cast to move when out of shimmer. Maybe there are some ridiculously cheesy traits but that's a case of poor balancing, not system being shit.

Without having extensive experience with it, I can only speculate on potential ways to help with this problem. My first instinct is to suggest that there be an option to break TF relics you don't want into some kind of currency, then use that currency to upgrade non-TF relics to TF levels. That way you're still using the original Crucible system of random drops, but you're also getting what's effectively bad-luck protection.

That sort of thing seems to be entirely against Blizzard's methodology this expansion, however. For whatever reason they don't seem to want players to have a fallback system in case RNG screws them continuously.

Except not getting a forged procs on your items is not bad luck, having these procs is good luck, not having reliable warforged procs is not something that should compensated like in case of gear drops (i even doubt that this happens with gear, maybe with legendaries, because you are supposed to have them, but you are not supposed to have a lot of warforged procs and ergo there is no reason for this kind of system to be in the game).
There is no downside in using NLC and shouldn't be any compensation for not sacrificing anything. Certain players feeling lucky and cheesing traits they want are free to do so, but sensible players will be at least not disappointed to get another high ilvl relic with shitty trait. At least not until its fully developed.

But when you look at larger issues like flying(I know I know, dead horse), it effects everyone, and almost all aspects of the open world. The same goes for something like the Crucible. Or Legendary drops. Or making more aspects of the game account wide. Things like that.

I don't understand outrage on flying, it's nice to have, but i won't be missing it. It adds convenience but takes away immersion and exploration. I like all of these things, so in any binary situation (no vlying vs all the flying) i'm fine.

You'll have to sift through it if you want to reach the good stuff. But I assure you it's out there.

Through what? I've browsed through PTR hunter forum once (because i've been told that there is "shitton of feedback") but found literally two posts with feedback and couple of dozens pages of whine, insults and circlejerk. But everyone still says that there is "ton of feedback". And while i agree that it still there (feedback), blizzard not doing exactly what they are told to do right now - doesn't mean that they don't take it.

Sadly, all too few people actually have any principles to stand on, and of those that do, very few are willing to give up on their multi-year time investment in order to make a point. Like I said, that leaves two options: Suck it up and quit something you probably still enjoy to make that point, or keep playing and effectively approve of what Blizzard is doing regardless of how you feel or what you say about the parts you don't like. This is why Blizzard can continue to do whatever the hell they want and ignore as much feedback as they please.

Psychologically it's really dangerous way of thinking, that by playing WoW you "invest" anything. It's basically a waste (yes, even considering "fun", "i've met my bro/GF/whatever here" and other stuff) of time and all these achievements are in blizzards hands, and when they'll decide to close MMO in next 5 years you should be ready to let it go.

There are not just two options - you may very well sound your concerns, but it doesn't mean that everything will be changed right away. Or, if everything is shit - stop doing that shit. If you don't like Ret paladin design - why the fuck are you playing it? If you don't like something - don't do it. I didn't like SoO, i didn't like scorch-spamming iteration of fire, i didn't like legendary cape quest - none of these things i've been participating, i reduced their subscribe number simply by "1" but it takes more attention from blizzard that numerous forum posts. Even if you don't want to unsub - you are free to, say, voice you concern and don't do stuff you don't like, it'll show up in their statistic, if they change one spec and its representation drops 15% they'll change it immediately, but if there is a rise of "druid tank imba" threads on local forum with no change to statistics of druid tanks becoming more popular or prevalent - they'll hardly do anything, if anything this issue will be the very last to pick from their backlog, probably with some green sticker "unimportant" near "expanding main backpack size"

Most of the time if it's gone to PTR it doesn't change. I don't believe for a second that Blizzard listens to feedback unless it comes in the form of mass subscription cancellations like we saw in WoD. Or the rare unified community revolt like with RealID.


I don't think Blizzard should bow before the whims of the forums, or anything like that. But FFS it shouldn't take massive financial dents or an issue so bad that the ENTIRE community turns against an idea before feedback is acted upon. But that's how it seems to go with any major issue.

Yeah, and i understand why it doesn't change. Throwing changed into a, basically "ready to ship" version of the game and reverting it back to "well we probably fucked something up and need another week of testing" is not an option for blizzard.
I actively participated only in MoP PTR, pointing out numerous mistakes in translation, "%s"'s, flying mobs, immortal fish and other crap in open world and literally everything but 24h polymorph glyph not working on shit like polymorphig bug (or was it live already? Can't remember). I've filed extensive lists with coordinates of problematic NPCs, visual bugs, quests and most of them were fixed during PTR, because they didn't need to do major changes to the patch, like some PTR testers want (yeah, remove a talent and replace it with something new, great feedback)

[Deleted]

His lawyerly additude towards game design is not to my taste.

He is the culprit of such insane RNG.

[Jujudrood]

It literally has nothing to do with needing a scapegoat. He says things and then the team doesn't deliver on them. Most recent example most World Quests on Argus were supposed to be account wide. https://youtu.be/BiLkgp1ImUs?t=4m58s

But guess what?
It wasn't solely his call to say something would happen.
There's an entire team, he's just the voice box for that team.
They have goals and plans, they aim for them, and sometimes they fall short.

I work in a tech company developing software for customer needs.
Sometimes we tell them something will happen, but due to unforeseen circumstances (or straight up bugs), that something doesn't happen.
It's not that the account manager communicating is a terrible liar and should go straight to hell, it's that these things happen.
Blizz tends to aim high, and they deliver for the most part.
People exacerbate the misses, however minor they may be (like your WQ example... if you do the hour or two long quest chain, you get them).
Sure, it's frustrating when they miss something big (or perceived as big), but you can't blame one dude who basically had very little to do with it in the grand scheme of things when the Blizz/Activison overlords pull the strings in the background.

[MrMatticus]

I'd like him more if his parents had spelled Ian correctly.

[Nuvuk]

He doesnt seem like a bad dude, hes just not that great of a presenter.

[Deleted]

I think he's a great guy, really.

Obviously a passionate player himself, with a longstanding player 'career'. Still actively raids too. And yeah I generally agree with what he says and he tends to explain things too.

As I said, he's really a great guy.

[Zyky]

But guess what?
It wasn't solely his call to say something would happen.
There's an entire team, he's just the voice box for that team.
They have goals and plans, they aim for them, and sometimes they fall short.

I work in a tech company developing software for customer needs.
Sometimes we tell them something will happen, but due to unforeseen circumstances (or straight up bugs), that something doesn't happen.
It's not that the account manager communicating is a terrible liar and should go straight to hell, it's that these things happen.
Blizz tends to aim high, and they deliver for the most part.
People exacerbate the misses, however minor they may be (like your WQ example... if you do the hour or two long quest chain, you get them).
Sure, it's frustrating when they miss something big (or perceived as big), but you can't blame one dude who basically had very little to do with it in the grand scheme of things when the Blizz/Activison overlords pull the strings in the background.

Gratz you work in a tech company, -.- people like you are so obnoxious thinking you actually know how other companies work. Guess what, you don't. Now to address the whole post, he's the head designer, the game director, him saying something to the community should be absolute, not bullshit. He isn't "just a voice", he's the game director, so please shut up, thanks.