Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas

Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas
Ion Hazzikostas answered some questions today!




Patch 7.3 Content Release Timeline
  • The team learned a lot from how Patch 7.2 unfolded. It wasn't clear what you were supposed to do after the intro.
  • Argus has five chapters and three sub-zones and a ton of stuff available right away.
  • You will be able to play through the first two chapters on Day 1 and unlock world quests and other world content.
  • Week 2 unlocks Chapters 3 and 4, which includes Mac'aree, invasion points, and new world quests.
  • Week 3 you get the final chapter, the dungeon, and Netherlight Crucible.
  • There is a lot to do on Argus and the team wants it to be clear what you should be focused on rather than having many things competing for your attention right away.
  • Many players mostly care about power and would race through the content to unlock the Netherlight Crucible if they could do it on Day 1.
  • The first few weeks allow you to experience all of Argus and then on Day 14 it is a short bit at the end to unlock the Netherlight Crucible.
  • Many of the content unlocks on Argus are account wide, such as the dungeon, travel to the sub-zones, and the Netherlight Crucible.
  • There are some specific world quests that won't or can't be unlocked account wide

Artifact Unlocks
  • In Patch 7.3, as soon as you hit Level 110 on a character, all of your relic slots are unlocked right away.
  • You no longer have to do the Broken Shore quest line to allow your artifact to go beyond 34 points.
  • As soon as you hit 110 in Patch 7.3 you will have Level 41 Artifact Knowledge. After that it will increase weekly automatically, no more research required.

Legion Invasions
  • Invasions will remain active in Patch 7.3.

Order Hall Champions
  • There will be catch up tokens from missions and chests that help you quickly increase the item level of your followers.

Netherlight Crucible
  • The Artifact Trait tree is a steady form of progression.
  • The team wanted to offer two trait relics in Patch 7.2, but ended up removing it.
  • Relics point to a trait by index (1-9). Each class and spec in the game has a relic that maps to trait 5, but that is a different trait for each class or spec. This means relics can't be customized as much as the team wanted to.
  • Relics in the Netherlight Crucible solve some of the problem of Relic availability. Any relic can now have another trait that you wanted.
  • In Patch 7.2 players didn't have enough choice or control over the RNG.
  • In Patch 7.3 you can use the Netherlight Crucible to make a choice, giving you some level of control instead of total randomness. You won't have to have your worst trait, because you can choose not to pick a bad trait.
  • You won't be able to get the same trait twice on one Relic.

Reforging
  • Reforging had lots of downsides, such as trying to perfectly get the hit or expertise cap and reforging all of your items every time you got a new item.
  • Every item that doesn't have your best two stats you would reforge to have your best stat. This didn't really make for interesting choices.
  • This also narrowed the distinction between items, making them feel more similar.
  • It also made it harder to evaluate upgrades, as you had to look at the item in its current state as well as how you could reforge it.
  • There were some good parts, such as giving players choices to make.

Artifact Power and PvP
  • The Netherlight Crucible traits don't work in Rated PvP.
  • The item level upgrades (+5) from the Netherlight Crucible do work in Rated PvP, but it is a very small power bump.

Artifact Appearances and Transmog
  • The team doesn't want you to feel like you have to rush to collect all of the Artifact appearances on your alts before Legion is over.
  • The team is looking at a different system that allows you to unlock the appearances by completing Legion content in later expansions, as well as keeping the appearances you already have unlocked.
  • The exception to this is the appearances from the skill challenge and the +15 Mythic ones.

Artifact Appearances
  • The team is done creating new Artifact Appearances.

Prestige and Artifact Appearances
  • Prestige isn't account wide because PvP on different characters means something different.
  • The experience you have when playing a Rogue vs a healer is very different.
  • Unlocking things per character reflects the experience you had on that specific character.
  • If prestige was account wide, you would probably focus on getting a high rating on one character, but what would you have to work towards on other characters if everything was already unlocked?

Mythic+ Changes
  • The team is very satisfied with the changes they made to the Mythic+ system in Patch 7.2.5.
  • Now the most challenging content gives the best rewards.
  • If you wanted the gear from doing a +8 or +10, you previously needed better gear than was rewarded by the +8 or +10.
  • Mythic+ participation is up across the board in all regions.
  • People are actually doing higher keystones now.
  • The system was structured differently than challenge modes because they didn't want it to be about speed runs again. All that mattered previously was cleave and AoE, making the single target specialists not valuable.
  • There has been a lot of positive feedback from people doing higher keystone runs.

Mythic+ Rewards
  • Tier sets have always been one of the things you can get from raiding. Even if you can get similar item level loot from other sources, you had to organize a larger group to earn the sets.
  • There are mini-sets from Mythic+ dungeons that you can earn, such as the items from Court of Stars.
  • Raids and Mythic+ dungeons are parallel but not identical loot systems.
  • The team doesn't want to remove too much of the incentive from raiding by providing the same rewards to players doing Mythic+

Mythic+ and Older Content
  • The team isn't currently planning on expanding the Mythic+ system to dungeons from older expansions.
  • The Mythic+ system allows dungeons to remain relevant during the entire expansion.
  • This is something that could be expanded on in the future, maybe tying it in with Timewalking.
  • It would be strange to do Mythic+ Underbog as part of your weekly Legion activities.

Augment Runes
  • There is a permanent Augment Rune in Patch 7.3 from Exalted Army of the Light.
  • Augment Runes are there for the top end raiders, something that people running Raid Finder to sell.

Timewalking Raids
  • Raids should let you pick up where the leader left off, just like normal raids.

World First Race
  • A week and a half to two weeks is a reasonable time for the world first race.
  • Heroic Ragnaros took around that long to kill and people thought it was a well tuned boss, but Paragon was the only one to kill it in that time. Otherwise he would have lived much longer.
  • The main goal of the encounter design team is to create fights for the broad audience.
  • When the team tunes the last few Mythic bosses of a new tier, they are keeping the world first race in mind.
  • Those bosses should be hard enough to allow the top guilds in the world to distinguish themselves from each other. This is a very hard target to hit and evolves over time, especially as guilds do more split runs or stack classes.
  • The internal testing team has lots of people that pushed for world firsts in the past.
  • Mythic Kil'jaeden was overtuned. They made it a little too hard, allowing them to nerf it. Hundreds of hours of testing took place internally.
  • This tier increased healing requirements across the board by increasing raid damage, but they went a little bit too far.
  • The internal testing team was better than anticipated on the Mythic Kil'jaeden fight and has been getting better over the years, so when they increased everything by a percentage to make it challenging for the top guilds that was a little bit too much.
  • Should the team tune the end bosses to be very challenging for the world first race and then nerf them a bit so that regular guilds can kill them?

Raid Damage
  • Fights are designed and then mechanics are added or removed to address problems.
  • There wasn't enough coordination between encounter designers, resulting in similar solutions (lots of soak mechanics) to problems.
  • The team realized this too late, but it shouldn't be a problem in Argus.
  • The team was happy with the individual fights in Tomb, but want to create a more diverse set of fights in the raid.

Nethershards
  • Nethershards will continue to be used on catch-up gear and cosmetics.
  • The Relinquished vendor is moving to Argus to find Argunite that he will trade for item level 910 items. He also allows you to target a specific relic, like a Holy relic.
  • Existing Relinquished items won't be expanded or upgraded.
  • Don't hold on to Nethershards or worry about them, Patch 7.3 has a new system.

Class Design
  • If your role is damage dealer, you can compete as a damage dealer.
  • There is a disparity between the utility different specs bring. The team would like to address this by shoring up the utility of some specs.
  • Rogues have individual survival utility, which can be useful for the group if they use them to soak mechanics.

Spec Damage Auras
  • Rather than manually adjusting all of the abilities for a spec, they now use a single aura to increase the damage on all of those abilities.
  • In previous expansions the team would focus buffs on specific abilities, but that would change how things played.
  • The team still targets individual abilities when the ability needs to be changed, but there isn't a need to change all of the spells individually to bump up damage by a few percent anymore.
  • Changing all of the individual spells resulted in errors in the past, so this also helps to reduce errors.

Class Balance Changes
  • The team is mostly happy with how often class balance is tweaked.
  • Cathedral of Eternal night probably took too long to nerf. It probably could have been done faster and more aggressively. The team wasn't sure if it was new and unfamiliar or just too hard initially.
  • The team doesn't want to make players feel like their spec or class is constantly changing due to hotfixes.
  • Changes are bundled up to make all of the hotfixes happen at once rather than adjusting things more frequently.
  • If a certain spec is seen as being slightly better, all of the best players will switch to that spec. This makes the other specs look significantly weaker, as the people logging other specs aren't as strong of players.
  • Balance is always a moving target.

Raid Finder Difficulty
  • Keeping all of the mechanics for Raid Finder difficulty but making them weak didn't feel great. There were a lot of mechanics that you could just ignore.
  • The team's biggest balance concern is for the people that are only doing Raid Finder difficulty.
  • Instead, the team moved to having fewer mechanics but making them meaningful and challenging.
  • There is no longer a desire to make Raid Finder a tourist mode.
  • The team is hoping to make difficulty closer to Mists of Pandaria difficulty than Warlords. There are some fights that are too easy still.

Challenge Artifact Appearances
  • Any unlocks that require doing a thing while using another appearance are being changed to doing the thing after earning the base appearance.
  • Now you can get your 10 Rated Battlegrounds wins as any spec or appearance.

Split Raids
  • Both the developers and players don't enjoy split raids.
  • The team wants to make sure that the cure isn't worse than the disease.
  • This is a behavior that takes place in a tiny percent of the playerbase, maybe a couple thousand players in the world and only takes place for a few weeks.
  • Sharing loot lockouts across difficulties would have a big negative impact.
  • The team doesn't want to punish the entire playerbase because of the actions of a few.

Worgen and Goblin Models
  • The team hasn't forgotten about the new models.
  • The priority right now is the new casting animations, but Goblin and Worgen models are still on the high priority list!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas started by chaud View original post
Published on 2017-08-03 06:03 PM
183 Comments
Comments 183 Comments
  1. clevin's Avatar
    Mythic Kil'jaeden was overtuned. They made it a little too hard, but that allowed them to nerf it. Hundreds of hours of testing took place internally.
    This tier increased healing requirements across the board by increasing raid damage, but they went a little bit too far.
    The internal testing team was better than anticipated on this fight and has been getting better over the years, so when they increased everything by a percentage to make it challenging for the top guilds that was a little bit too much.
    Really? Are they arguing that their internal test team is WF level? Better than Method etc? And if they tested for hundred of hours how did they mistune the fight so badly??

    The team learned a lot from how Patch 7.2 unfolded. Day 1 it felt like there wasn't a lot to do after the intro.
    SO tired of this line. I knew that 7.2 felt bad the first day I played it - it was dead obvious that there wasn't a lot you could do. How the hell did they not get this internally/
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    I read it as "those who already unlocked the skins in Legion, will not be able to *unlock* those they have, only in later xpacs, where they fit the theme, the m15+ and challenge ones, will be unlockable in the next xpac, if you alrdy did them"?
    The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.

    The team is looking at a different system that allows you to unlock the appearances by completing Legion content in later expansions.

    The exception to this is the appearances from the skill challenge and the +15 Mythic ones.

    The EXCEPTION is to those 2 skins. Aka you cannot get them once Legion is done. No matter what. As for the rest of the skins post Legion it's fair game.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    As I understand it, we will be able to unlock, those we alrdy unlocked, when and if and xpac theme, fits the theme of said skins, so in theory, we could be waiting for 3-4 xpacs, before getting the skins, we unlocked in Legion, which is why I am fucking furious right now, with those fuckheads, going back on what they said, earlier in Leion, during a Q&A.
    They didn't go back on anything lol. They stated at first Artifacts were not going to be carried over. They said specific skins would possibly carry over. Possibly meaning not a guarantee.

    Right now all the skins except the Mythic +15 and Challenge one will be obtainable after Legion.

    They are just looking at ways we can go back to Legion content to do them to keep a bit of relevance.

    You are literally "furious" over nothing here. They haven't gone back on anything.
  1. MrWiki's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by derpkitteh View Post
    "Artifact Knowledge will be unlocked automatically, there won't be any more need to research, just wait."

    he says this like it's a good thing. this increases the "research" time even more than it was before, the current system of 4 hours is so much better than that.

    everything else so far, good to see more account wide stuff. what i've done on ptr, that is an ok amount of questing upfront, that's pretty good.
    Anyone who is level 110 well automically go to AK40 when they Ding, or whatever AK we are on that week, for example, If someone just starts playing when 7.3 hit they will hit 110 and be AK 41. If some hit 110 2 week after, they will be 43, like everyone else.
  1. mmoc1615415e70's Avatar
    It's absolutely pathetic all this micro stuff they are pushing as content. Some of these guys making this were there when the game was good but they push this as if it was as good. I remember in vanilla when we read the patch notes, each chapter was like a new game, they were adding, creating, amazing us all. But since WOTLK and only until first half as second half was poor, something very bad happened and the game suffered. We have every right to complain. If you had bottled WOTLK you would still be making as much. I bought CE, I have seen the prod work behind the scenes. That is clearly not the case now. So one wonders, and I have just prooved it to myself by logging in on my last free offerd day to see how many people are on on a major merged server (that never was a good idea) and it's totally dead - what is the plan.

    What is clear the major creatvity behind Wow has left for one to two years already. What is also clear is that this is one of the biggest gaming franchises ever. And it's dead. Also, nothing new from blizz for a while.

    What happens next is Wow 2. I say it every month but it's so obvious.

    ALL the wow players will come back. They will get 20 million subs in one week after launch, ok month after free launch. Feautures:\

    - Dynamic world: quest zones dynamically spread, friendly zones might not be same day after - ongoing struggle but home bases still fighting opposition
    - war zones - factions advance and retreat
    - sub classes/sub races -cusrtomisable class identitities
    - professions - etude/uni - long path to excellemce, no 60 min AH buy/max, have to make it to the top
    - improved AH
    - back to vanilla dungeons like strat/dm/

    christ I will stop there. It's so sad - Blizz why kill the game, YOU CAN TURN THIS AROUND. Wow 2 will be announced this year.
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by segoplout View Post
    -snip-
    No WoW 2 won't be while WoW is still successful.

    But if you want to believe they are killing the game because you don't agree with the direction then go for it I guess. You are entitled to an opinion after all.

    And if you really think they will go back to Vanilla design then that is hilarious. Vanilla design is dated at best.
  1. Svad1287's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.

    The team is looking at a different system that allows you to unlock the appearances by completing Legion content in later expansions.

    The exception to this is the appearances from the skill challenge and the +15 Mythic ones.

    The EXCEPTION is to those 2 skins. Aka you cannot get them once Legion is done. No matter what. As for the rest of the skins post Legion it's fair game.

    - - - Updated - - -



    They didn't go back on anything lol. They stated at first Artifacts were not going to be carried over. They said specific skins would possibly carry over. Possibly meaning not a guarantee.

    Right now all the skins except the Mythic +15 and Challenge one will be obtainable after Legion.

    They are just looking at ways we can go back to Legion content to do them to keep a bit of relevance.
    English isnt my first language, but, does it mean, that if I alrdy unlocked all the different skins for the 12 classes, we currently have ingame, I will be able to use them as Tmog's, when the xpac, after Legion, goes live, via X method, and not have to wait for X theme, in order to unlock those I alrdy unlocked?

    If so, I apologise for my "hissy fit"
  1. Flurryfang's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by UcanDoSht View Post
    Just blame your player base if you're too incompetent and impotent to balance more than 4 classes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    He is right you know, to some extent.
  1. mmoc3b6f00007c's Avatar
    when are you thinking about implementing 10 man mythic raids? that was the most fun in firelands with HC mode
  1. Musta's Avatar
    The community sucks, this post proves Ion's point. Some of the people here dont even read the stuff.
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    English isnt my first language, but, does it mean, that if I alrdy unlocked all the different skins for the 12 classes, we currently have ingame, I will be able to use them as Tmog's, when the xpac, after Legion, goes live, via X method, and not have to wait for X theme, in order to unlock those I alrdy unlocked?

    If so, I apologise for my "hissy fit"
    Ok so basically.

    After Legion. The +15 skins and Mage Tower challenge ones will be unobtainable. If you already have them then you don't have anything to worry about.

    After Legion. Any other skin can be obtained but it will still be tied to Legion related content. According to that interview the devs are trying to decide how to tie it in.
  1. Svad1287's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    Ok so basically.

    After Legion. The +15 skins and Mage Tower challenge ones will be unobtainable. If you already have them then you don't have anything to worry about.

    After Legion. Any other skin can be obtained but it will still be tied to Legion related content. According to that interview the devs are trying to decide how to tie it in.
    Arh, So I did read it correctly.

    Having to do the skin farming all over again, is just... I dont really have words for it...

    In WoD, we spent like 10-15 hours getting the Gold CM, and in Legion, some of us, spent hundreads of hours, getting the different skins, for the 12 classes, and then we have to do it all over again... maybe not the same way as we did in Legion, but still. Its like getting your pay check, but you wont recieve the money, until 2-3 years from now, lol. /headdesk.
  1. Pooti's Avatar
    Stuff you have unlocked now you have forever as xmog. You have no need to "rush to unlock all the skins" as you will be able to get them by doing the Legion content later. The only skins that must be unlocked before the next xpac are the challenge mode and the +15 mythic skins.
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    Arh, So I did read it correctly.

    Having to do the skin farming all over again, is just... I dont really have words for it...

    In WoD, we spent like 10-15 hours getting the Gold CM, and in Legion, some of us, spent hundreads of hours, getting the different skins, for the 12 classes, and then we have to do it all over again... maybe not the same way as we did in Legion, but still. Its like getting your pay check, but you wont recieve the money, until 2-3 years from now, lol. /headdesk.
    No you don't have to do it again. The skins you have now you can use as Xmog.

    They just meant the challenge ones and +15 ones after Legion cannot be obtained in any way.

    The other skins can still be obtained after Legion. And if you want to go back and get them you can but anything you have now you keep.
  1. Thelyron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bamboozler View Post
    I agree. I like the artifact system. I'd rather keep this than have to wait for two perfect weapons to drop again, have to enchant them, etc. I played Rogue in HFC and I felt like I could never get my 2nd BIS dagger to drop.

    Plus it feels bad to go back to greens, blues, epics... meh. Oh well, we'll see how it unfolds.
    I like the artifact system, too, but in the end i'd be okay with going back to normal weapon drops.... as long as we get to keep our artifact apperances. If we don't get all unlocked appearances as a transmog apperance, i'm going to throw a giant shitfit.
  1. Svad1287's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pooti View Post
    Stuff you have unlocked now you have forever as xmog. You have no need to "rush to unlock all the skins" as you will be able to get them by doing the Legion content later. The only skins that must be unlocked before the next xpac are the challenge mode and the +15 mythic skins.
    Yeah, but.

    *The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.*

    I read this as in, we wont keep the skins, but will be able to unlock them (again) further down the road, xcept the Mythic+ and Challenge ones.

    I cant see, how I am reading it wrong, but maybe I am.
  1. Svad1287's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    No you don't have to do it again. The skins you have now you can use as Xmog.

    They just meant the challenge ones and +15 ones after Legion cannot be obtained in any way.

    The other skins can still be obtained after Legion. And if you want to go back and get them you can but anything you have now you keep.
    Right mate, I will trust you on this one, and go to bed, maybe I will see stuff clearer on the morrow, its 00.11 here atm, and I have been up since 04.30 yesterday morning.

    Thanks for clearing it up, and sleep well, when the time comes.
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    Yeah, but.

    *The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.*

    I read this as in, we wont keep the skins, but will be able to unlock them (again) further down the road, xcept the Mythic+ and Challenge ones.

    I cant see, how I am reading it wrong, but maybe I am.
    Dude don't worry. The dev team isn't stupid enough to take ones that we already have away

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    Right mate, I will trust you on this one, and go to bed, maybe I will see stuff clearer on the morrow, its 00.11 here atm, and I have been up since 04.30 yesterday morning.

    Thanks for clearing it up, and sleep well, when the time comes.
    Insomniac here. I'm up nearly all the damn time hehe.
  1. chaud's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    Yeah, but.

    *The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.*

    I read this as in, we wont keep the skins, but will be able to unlock them (again) further down the road, xcept the Mythic+ and Challenge ones.

    I cant see, how I am reading it wrong, but maybe I am.
    Nah, they don't want you to have to rush to collect them all before Legion. Will change the wording there to make it clearer as I finish up this pass on the recap!
  1. snackfeat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Svad1287 View Post
    Yeah, but.

    *The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion, as you feel like you have to rush and unlock all the appearances before the expansion is over.*

    I read this as in, we wont keep the skins, but will be able to unlock them (again) further down the road, xcept the Mythic+ and Challenge ones.

    I cant see, how I am reading it wrong, but maybe I am.
    You are reading it wrong. "The team isn't satisfied with just letting you keep the Artifact Appearances you have unlocked during Legion" this is the part that makes it clear that they mean you will get to keep them.
  1. Snorri's Avatar
    I wonder what they will do with the prestige artifact skins. I am grinding to prestige level 15. I want to know if they will reset prestige levels after Legion or just keep on adding more levels.
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