Patch 6.2 Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

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Patch 6.2 Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas
Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas answered questions about Patch 6.2.


Flying
  • Flight was delayed from Patch 6.2 until Patch 6.2.x mostly for development reasons.
  • There are some quests and bugs that need to be fixed for the best gameplay experience before you can fly.
  • The decision to allow flying was too close to Patch 6.2's release to get it done in time, so Patch 6.2 would have had to been delayed to make it happen.
  • The reputation grinds required for flying will take around three weeks if you are doing the daily quest every day.
  • The way flying is unlocked in Draenor is a blueprint for how flying will be unlocked in the future. You can experience the game from the ground, explore it thoroughly, and then you will be able to fly. The exact way it is unlocked will vary on the content, but it is an idea that can be applied in a lot of contexts.
  • Flying was a hard decision for the team. Players believe that they the team was lying and the plan was to never add flying back to the game, but the reality is that it is a large design team and it was a decision made by the team as a whole. People on the team were on both sides of the issue and with Patch 6.2 being on the PTR it was a time to make a decision. It wasn't fair to players to keep the decision unresolved for so long.
  • The majority of the team was on the side of never allow flying, which is what was said in the initial interview.
  • After the initial interview, the player and team feedback made them reconsider flying. Never is a powerful word, so once it was out there, players who were fine with being on the ground started to think about the flying mounts they would never get to use again. It felt like something very valuable was being taken away from players.
  • The team is happy with the compromise that they came up with and how it is has been received.
  • The delay on communication about flying after the decision in the initial interview was because the discussion was ongoing and a decision hadn't been reached. Even saying that they were still debating the issue could have gotten hopes up and then disappointed many players if they decided to not allow flying.

Reputations
  • The Patch 6.0 reputations aren't defensible. They are complete mob grinds that were added late in the process. Originally there weren't going to be any reputations, because it didn't fit in the structure Draenor was designed around. They were mostly used as a bar to progress towards cosmetic rewards.
  • The Patch 6.2 reputations are better, there are weekly and daily quests you can do rather than endlessly killing mobs and killing rare mobs gives reputation.

Quests
  • The Apexis daily quests were a result of the classic overreaction to daily quests in Mists of Pandaria. In Warlords the team tried to go another direction and the idea behind the Apexis daily quests has promise, but the execution was flawed.
  • The Mists of Pandaria daily quests felt very structured and narrow, so the team went towards more flexibility and freedom in Warlords.
  • Instead of a quest telling you to destroy cannons like a Mists of Pandaria daily, you are sent to an area and can kill mobs, interact with objects, looting things to use elsewhere, killing rares, discovering secret phases with extra events. The idea was good, but by removing quests entirely story and context were removed, so there was no purpose behind the quests and it ended up feeling more grindy.
  • The rewards for Apexis Crystals were also bad. Most of the rewards weren't useful for players or cost far too much, so players didn't do them.
  • The Tanaan daily quests in 6.2 are better. They have more structure and better rewards for the Apexis Crystals.

Professions and Garrisons
  • The team wanted to be sure garrisons were adequately rewarding for players, as it was a core feature of the expansion. They wanted players to care about their garrison, upgrading it, building the buildings, getting resources and followers, and doing missions. Many systems that used to be part of the outdoor world were tied into the garrison this way. Professions and gathering are clear examples of this, as miners and herbalists could roam the world, gathering things to sell. Now everyone has ore and herbs in their garrison.
  • There was content in the world, but it was easier and more accessible to get the same things from your garrison.
  • Outdoor world content is the core of an MMO and tremendously important, so the lack of world content was a failing that really needs to be fixed.
  • Alts have become increasingly popular over the history of the game as leveling became faster and easier.
  • The team recognizes that many people play multiple characters. They prefer to see alts exist to serve themselves. You should have a healer alt because you want to heal, or another class PvP alt because you want to PvP as that class. The progression for each character should be on that character. Multiple alts shouldn't exist to serve your main character.
  • In Patch 6.2, the team is looking into having diminishing returns on an account wide level for missions that reward gold. It is a nerf, but alleviates some of of the pressure to have many alts. It is a problem when it scales linearly and having six characters gives you six times the amount of gold, making you feel like you have to log into them all every night.
  • Garrisons are the path of least resistance to many rewards, which is a problem. The team likes that the garrison is something for you to do when you can only log on for a short time. They don't want players to log on for hours and be unable to think of anything rewarding enough compared to spending a few minutes in your garrison taking care of things. Rewards are shifted back to the outdoor world in Patch 6.2.
  • Garrisons giving you loot from the next highest raid tier didn't work out well. When some guilds finished Normal and went to clear Heroic, they already had a good number of Heroic items and didn't need much loot.
  • Naval missions require less micromanagement. You have fewer followers, less frequent missions, and more meaningful rewards. Having to log in every 30-45 minutes to send followers out on a mission detracts from gameplay.
  • The current version of garrisons is tied to Draenor. You won't bring your buildings to Azeroth. The core gameplay of building a base, having followers, and other ideas would be nice to bring forward, but it won't take the same form as the garrison we have now.
  • The garrison and daily cooldowns constrained professions, moving away from feeling like a crafter and more like a collector of daily cooldown materials. Patch 6.2 gives you more significantly materials from your daily cooldown and sends you out into the world to find Felblight.

Guilds and Raiding
  • Guilds have disbanded in every raid tier. The glue that keeps guilds together is the officers and leader and as they move on in their lives guild break up.
  • Changing the raid sizes and structure worked well.
  • Raid participation is up in Normal and Heroic.
  • Mythic raiders have a better experience after the move to a fixed size thanks to tuning for only one size and new mechanics that are possible with a fixed size. It also settles the 10 vs 25 debate.
  • Mythic is something for people to aspire to. It allows the best players to prove who is the best.
  • Mythic only takes around 5 - 10% of the time spent on developing the raid. Most of the time is spent creating the art, gear, bosses, and doing tuning. Adding a few extra mechanics, testing, and tuning Mythic doesn't take very long.

Timewalking and Dungeons
  • The Bonus Events aren't trying to force players to do all of the different content.
  • Having a Timewalking as an event makes it a more focused activity, allowing you to gear up alts or catch up.
  • If Timewalking dungeons gave better gear than the Draenor dungeons, there wouldn't be any reason to do them.
  • If Timewalking dungeons gave you the same or worse gear, no one would do them.
  • The limited availability makes it a bonus activity and gives players the best of both worlds.
  • The old dungeons are great to go back and visit, but they wouldn't hold up to repeated visits as well as the new content.
  • Warlords of Draenor dungeons were great, but they didn't have any rewards to keep bringing players back. This is something the team needs to solve better with future dungeon releases.
  • Mythic dungeons will give players better rewards and a reason to go back and do the dungeons.
  • Valor caused you to run the exact same dungeon for better rewards over the entire expansion. The dungeon also got easier as you geared up. It wasn't a great system.
  • In the future, the difficulty of the dungeon might scale so that they aren't super easy by the end of the expansion.
  • Timewalking wasn't added instead of new dungeons. It is a feature that the team has wanted to do for a long time and most of the work was fixing scaling and done by programmers.
  • Patch 6.2 didn't have art resources to make new dungeons in time, Hellfire Citadel was the priority.
  • You can chain run Timewalking dungeons to gear up alts. The gear is similar to Raid Finder gear, but you can chain run the dungeons, unlike Raid Finder. The quest for doing five also gives you an extra bonus roll for that week during the event.

Raids
  • Fight length is determined by the nature of the fight and mechanics. If the mechanics are the same over the entire fight, it shouldn't be longer than 5-6 minutes unless it is an endurance fight.
  • If there are multiple phases in a fight, it can go on a little longer.
  • End bosses with many phases and abilities should go on around 10 minutes or so.
  • The team is happy with fight lengths in Tier 17.
  • Brackenspore's endurance aspect was okay and didn't get boring.
  • Mythic Mar'gok was too long because of the extra phase. Fights that go over 15 minutes are too long, especially when you start the final phase 13 minutes into the fight.
  • The length of Maidens was about right, but the first half of the fight felt too slow. If you rushed and pushed them to 20% it wasn't a super long fight, but if you waited for a 3rd boat phase it felt longer.

Raid Itemization
  • The vast majority of players in the game aren't going to get 735 weapons, because they won't kill Mythic Archimonde.
  • With one flat item level for the entire zone and bosses that increase in difficulty as you get deeper into the zone, kills later in the zone become less and less rewarding.
  • A guild that finally kills Heroic Blast Furnace may DE almost everything from the boss, as they already have 685 gear in other slots.
  • Other guilds would go 6/7 Highmaul and then move to Heroic rather than killing the final boss, which doesn't feel great. Making items stronger as you get deeper into the zone helps to solve this problem.
  • Itemization would not be as interesting if every boss had complete coverage for every spec.
  • Most guilds that are going to kill Normal Archimonde will move on to Heroic and have access to the first few bosses that drop the same loot as normal Archimonde.
  • The Mythic player that doesn't have a best in slot Agility weapon on Archimonde will have a 730 during progression, while other players in the raid won't even have a 730.
  • The people "harmed" by this itemization are mostly the highest end Mythic raider with all of the content on farm. If you are just trying to rank higher, you are comparing to players of the same spec who have access to the same weapons.

Classes
  • There are some concerns with how Demonology plays right now. You need addons to play it well because of how complex it is. It also was the best all around spec, so warlocks that wanted to play other specs had to go Demonology. It is still viable in Patch 6.2, but won't be the best anymore. The best spec changes over time and it is Demonology's turn to be the worst warlock spec for now.
  • Demonology will be significantly overhauled in a future patch.
  • Ability pruning may not have gone far enough. Shamans may not need the Unleash spells. Some classes had abilities pruned that shouldn't have been and the class fantasy suffered.
  • Rotations aren't designed to be engaging when you are fighting a target dummy.
  • During a PvP or boss encounter you are getting out of fire, LoSing things, interrupting, worrying about adds, and other things while doing your rotation, so keeping your rotation from becoming very complex is necessary. There is a very high skill cap and there are very few players who are at the skill cap today.
  • Rotation changes in the future will improve the fantasy of playing your class. Visuals and animations are important. Rogues suffer from the lack of unique and distinct animations.
  • The game is less dominated by absorbs than it was in Mists of Pandaria. There is more healing where people are not just full or dead.
  • Disc priests and absorb-centric healing need to be scaled back in the future.
  • If you have almost any raid comp, you need a disc priest and some other healers.
  • Holy priests are in a great place in terms of versatility right now, but if you only have one Priest in your raid, they should be discipline.
  • Absorbs come at the expense of other heals, stopping bars from becoming empty, which makes the other healers that enjoy refilling bars sad.

Patch 6.1
  • Twitter integration wasn't a high priority feature and didn't take away from outdoor content. It was a feature that a few programmers worked on. It was only a convenience added for players that already use Twitter.
  • The S.E.L.F.I.E. camera was a side project for one designer and programmer who worked on it for a few weekends. There have been many features that started as side projects, such as hard to find Hunter pets, toys, or the Brawler's guild.
  • Patch 6.1 was extremely light on content and might have better been named Patch 6.0.5. It was a small set of updates, but using a major patch number may have been misleading. The team had just launched the expansion and was going on holiday vacations, but wanted to get some fixes and improvements in before the next major patch.

Misc
  • The team is proud of the leveling content in Draenor.
  • The Adventure Journal was added to give newer and returning players an idea of what content to do. The need for it was especially clear at the end of Mists of Pandaria, when you would hit 90 and see all of the daily quests, but nothing telling you that they were a waste of time and it was better to go and get epics from Timeless Isle.
  • The team doesn't want inconvenience to stop you from doing content, but they also have to be mindful of the downsides of making everything too convenient.
  • Portals in Cataclysm made the world feel smaller because of how quick travel to each zone was.
  • The Group Finder added in Warlords is an improvement over random matchmaking, adding some of the social aspect back while avoiding spending an hour looking for a group in town.
  • Artistic integrity is important to the team.
  • The only thing that differentiated skill or accomplishment in Mists of Pandaria was color. There was one set of armor for PvP and one for PvE and then color variation in each.
  • In Patch 6.2, there is one set of armor for average accomplishments and a modified version of that set for bigger accomplishments, then color variation in those sets. The same system was in place during Burning Crusade. There are still two sets of gear, just tiers of skill rather than PvE and PvP.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 6.2 Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas started by chaud View original post
Published on 2015-06-13 08:32 PM
277 Comments
Comments 277 Comments
  1. arcaneshot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Infractomatic View Post
    Hah. So they expect the rep grind to take 3 weeks, doing daily quests every day? Fuck that noise.

    Done with WoW. .
    It's been mathed out; it really is 3 weeks for the longest one, and that's if you're not trying to grind it.
  1. Caolela's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ElDoorO View Post
    Lore *started* off with his own personality and honesty. He's transformed into a brown nosers pretty hard. He could have been removed from this and nothing would have been lost.

    He's a PR monkey now as far as I'm concerned. Nothing more. He's damage control.
    Yep. Lore was there for the sole purpose of making Ion's spin sound legit by sometimes "rephrasing" the canned, cherry-picked questions, and have his nose as far up Ion's ass as possible. That's why with Ion, they hired a former attorney instead of an actual game dev.
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ElDoorO View Post
    People are, indeed, leaving in droves. The "why" question, however, is complex and most who answer it, like you, are merely trying to use it as an excuse to further your agenda. It's more complex than just "X". It's almost never just one reason someone leaves, other than "real life".
    I don't mean everyone is leaving because of that. I meant I'm seeing everyone in my circle (guild/friends) quitting because of that. A ton of mythic raiders are bored with how the classes are and are quitting because of it. I was holding out hope they'd revert, but it looks like they're not done butchering. If your circle of friends just does LFR or levels alts then I doubt you'd be seeing the same results.

    It's not just mythic raiders leaving the game, the butchering of the skill cap is making pvpers leave as well. The classes are just not fun right now and they're telling us it will be getting worse.
  1. arcaneshot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Solvaran View Post
    The gold from garrisons is the only reason I am currently subscribed. If they nerf that (which probably needs to happen, it is ridiculous!), then some folks will go off of tokens and just cancel the account if the rest of WoD isn't compelling enough.
    If you're seriously making gold from garrisons you have enough gold to pay ahead.
  1. psyquest's Avatar
    I am annoyed beyond belief with their views on raiding. As a raid leader of a mythic guild on one big french server, all I can say is that the situation faced by those responsible for running and maintaining guilds is unprecedented. Too bad Ion cannot see the shitstorm. 10 years statue but I have had enough. Going to cancel my 10 year continueous subscription for the first time. I am that fucking annoyed and disgusted.
  1. Darkguyver2020's Avatar
    Ugh. It's sad to see so many entitled and whiny people in these forums. It makes me embarrassed to be a member of this community.
  1. deadman1's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkguyver2020 View Post
    Ugh. It's sad to see so many entitled and whiny people in these forums. It makes me embarrassed to be a member of this community.
    Ugh. It's sad to see so many Blizzard apologists and fanboys in these forums. It makes me embarrassed to be a member of this community.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Flying was a hard decision for the team. People believe that they were lying to players, but the reality is that it is a large design team and it was a decision made by the team as a whole. People were on both sides of the issue and with Patch 6.2 being on the PTR it was a time to make a decision. The majority of the team decided to never allow flying, but the player feedback made the team consider flying again and come up with a compromise that they were happy with.

    I still maintain that they were told by the higher ups to reverse the decision, over sub losses.

    The delay on communication about flying after the decision in the interview was because the discussion was ongoing.

    This is really where I call bullshit. They made a definitive statement to the press. There was NO indication there was still a 'discussion" going on about it, none. They sent out the CMS to defend the decision. There was no attempt made by them at all, in any way, to indicate the issue was unresolved. NONE.

    On this, I think Ion is flat out lying and spinning hard. I believe 100% they were forced to change their minds, because of sub losses, not over a "discussion".
  1. Oell's Avatar
    "Guilds have disbanded in every raid tier. The glue that keeps guilds together is the officers and leader, and as they move on in their lives guild break up."

    I wish they would open their eyes and actually see why guilds are dieing. This is by far not the nr.1 reason for it.
  1. deadman1's Avatar
    The reason it was delayed originally is because tannan wasn't in the game, the reason it was delayed a second time is because Blizz is out of touch.
  1. Darkguyver2020's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mush View Post
    Ugh. It's sad to see so many Blizzard apologists and fanboys in these forums. It makes me embarrassed to be a member of this community.
    Nice. Glad I could lay down the groundwork for your oh so witty comeback. Saves you having to use your own brain.
  1. Caolela's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post

    I still maintain that they were told by the higher ups to reverse the decision, over sub losses.

    The delay on communication about flying after the decision in the interview was because the discussion was ongoing.

    This is really where I call bullshit. They made a definitive statement to the press. There was NO indication there was still a 'discussion" going on about it, none. They sent out the CMS to defend the decision. There was no attempt made by them at all, in any way, to indicate the issue was unresolved. NONE.

    On this, I think Ion is flat out lying and spinning hard. I believe 100% they were forced to change their minds, because of sub losses, not over a "discussion".
    Absolutely. That's why he is/was a lawyer, and now he's trying another stab at revisionist history.

    It's so obvious that idk how anyone can try to argue otherwise.
  1. mmoc2469da80bf's Avatar
    I think they need to release the patch before june 30th .
    They dont care if this or that is wrong with it , it simply HAS to go out before june 30th .
    At june 30th the second quarter 2015 closes , so they need to boost their numbers .
    Lets hope is a bit balanced , because once its out they tend to not care anymore .
    Proof on that is the dps balance of last patch . Just look at logs .
  1. Osmeric's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shudder View Post
    People are leaving this game in droves because of how dumb down they have made the rotations. With how he answered those questions, that they feel MORE ability pruning needs to be done and rotations need to be less complex that settles it for me. I'm cancelling. Joining many others. The skill cap right now is WAY too low and they're planning on making it even worse. Pathetic. Destroying a once great game.
    They undoubtedly have data on how well people are doing the "dumbed down" rotations. And the data are almost certainly telling them that people are, by and large, NOT doing them very well. He basically said as much, comparing the performance of players in top guilds to average players.

    So: more simplification incoming.
  1. Honeyprime's Avatar
    Even though there is a couple things I don't quite believe them completely on, overall I'm happy with the interview. They seem to be on the ball about the stuff that is wrong with WoD. I'm glad they figured out they went to the extreme from MoP to WoD when it comes to dailies, outside world content, professions, etc, but:

    I'm not sure I like what I'm hearing about alts.
    I'm absolutely floored they where actually going to never allow flying. I guess I never actually wanted to believe they would do it, especially with selling cash shop flying mounts and a few rewards in WoD are flying mounts. I guess they wanted those of us who like flying to keep paying and stay in old content?
    Didn't beta testers try to warn them about a lot of these things?

    I'm getting the impression they are now actually listening more to feedback. A little bit of my faith has been restored.

    Edit: For the record, I'm totally fine with the flying compromise.
  1. mmoc1bb4059732's Avatar
    People need to quit crying and bitching about what blizz do, i agree that the content is slow as fuck for a company of their size + the money they get each month from millions of subs but there nothing you can do about it because at the end of the day its their game, i played this game for good 4 years so me reading comments that people are threatning to quit and all that kind of shit is just bullshit, there isnt a better MMO out there than WoW atm, yh a new MMO that comes out is pretty fun for few weeks but in the end people quit it and then they sub back to WoW.

    its the same story all the time but most of the whiny bitches here are 10 year old kids man, other MMO's might have diffrent stuff but wow is the complete package so it cant be beaten right now, the game is so old yet alot of people still play the game so that tells you alot.

    Whatever they do you just gotta accept the facts and move on, its simple as that.
  1. Expectations's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkdeii View Post
    And a majority of us players who don't have the time to spend logging in everyday are getting sick and tired of people like you who can't comprehend both sides of an argument. It's sad, really.
    Them maybe MMOs are not the game for you then? The point of any game is to get what you put into it, and Blizzard does a really good job at making sure you get plenty even if you can only log in for an hour or so each day. If three weeks of doing dailies to unlock exaulted with a faction is considered too much time to spend then you would hate some of the rep grinds in other games.
  1. Osmeric's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by maldini View Post
    People need to quit crying and bitching about what blizz do,
    In what sense do people "need" to do that? What vital purpose of theirs would it serve to do that?

    Oh wait, you're using "need to" to mean "would make me happy if they".
  1. mmoc1bb4059732's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shambulanced View Post
    Fixed that for you.

    Honestly, the Q&A surprised me...they were more frank than I thought they'd be. That said, Typical spin spin spin revisionist rhetoric. No surprises there. The way Fuzzykoalas puts it, it sounds like it actually went to a vote and the majority of devs (no flying) won. That would be a really interesting way to design a game, frankly, but not an effective one.

    The problem with big democracies is there is too much dissent and not enough direction. It sounds like Blizz is lacking some top-down leadership, direction, and vision, which may explain why the decline has been so steady since Wrath. Maybe. Who knows?
    whats your problem bitch ? cant take the heat, stay out the kitchen

    Infracted
  1. Clozer's Avatar
    What's up with that poster? Any hint or something?
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