Tides of Vengeance Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas
Ion Hazzikostas answered Tides of Vengeance questions today. The next Q&A is coming in early January to talk about Story and Lore.



Communication
  • Patch notes were thorough, but not complete.
  • Profession requirements on crafted gear wasn't an intended change in the form it took.
  • Patch 8.0 crafted gear didn't have the profession requirement like previous expansions, this was fixed as being a bug without the entire team being involved. This was fixed as soon as the team realized what happened.
  • Going forward, in Season 2 crafted gear will have the profession requirement.
  • Some changes would clutter the notes, like belt clipping or typos.
  • Some changes were missed, such as Stealth detection on Underrot mobs. This change was made a while back, and the team forgot by the time the notes were being created.
  • Going forward, the team will try to ensure the notes are more complete.
  • One of the challenges for the WoW team has been evolving their processes as the team size grew. It used to be 5-6 people working on a certain feature, so everyone was aware of what was going on. This is no longer the case, as more people that are spread out are involved with the game.
  • The team wants to provide more reasoning in hotfix or patch notes when changes are made. They have been trying to do that for class changes, but will do it for more things in the future.

Cross-Faction Communication
  • There was a change that broke an addon that allowed players to talk cross-faction for RP reasons.
  • Cross-Faction communication has the potential for toxicity, but it's very different when there is consent. If you are friends with someone or in a community, you can talk to them.
  • The team didn't mean to break the addon, but can't restore the functionality.
  • The team is looking at adding the Elixir of Tongues, allowing you to understand the opposite faction for an amount of time.
  • This Elixir should go out in a hotfix this weekend or early next week.

Deleting Mythic+ Keys
  • This was a quick change that wasn't fully thought out on the team's part. It was hotfixed in at the start of the season.
  • Deleting keystones caused some bugs and led to emerging social issues, where players would cherry pick what seemed like the easier dungeons.
  • Since Burning Crusade, the team has tried to point players at different dungeons. Remember the Mechanar problem? It wasn't the most fun, but it was the best place to go and farm badges.
  • Some Affixes will make some dungeons easier than others, but the goal is for most dungeons to be similarly difficult.

Mythic+ Changes
  • The team made many changes over the months to make dungeons less punishing.
  • Hopefully at the start of next week, another large set of changes is coming focusing on trash packs and abilities.
  • It feels like now there are a lot more pulls that offer challenges than in Legion. The team wanted to get away from AoE stun, cleave, and move on being the solution to all trash pulls.
  • In the past few days, the team got some more logs and analytics for dungeons. They had lots of good analytics on boss encounters, but not as much visibility on what was going on between bosses.
  • The team can see the most lethal trash mobs, which stretches of dungeons take the longest to get through, what areas are deadly, where difficulty changes too much with Teeming. Removing Infested from lieutenant mobs and some trash mobs are some of the changes coming.
  • A lot of the changes that go into a patch were made months ago, sometimes before the team has seen much gameplay in the Mythic+ dungeons.
  • The team balances hotfixing the live game and working on the next patch.

Mythic+ PuG Experience
  • High end Mythic Keystones are meant for coordinated groups.
  • What can the team do to improve the integrated voice chat experience?
  • The first time around, the voice chat integration was not great.
  • This time around, voice chat should be much better and a good solution for PuGs.
  • Are players not aware that they can use the in-game voice chat for their PuG?
  • Do players just not want to use voice chat at all?

Mythic+ and Azerite Trait Timing
  • Cutting Uldir short at this point would be too soon. It's a healthy tier and guilds are still progressing through it.
  • Three months for the first raid tier would be too short.
  • In-game rewards from Mythic+ progress in parallel with raiding.
  • When a new Mythic+ season starts, the item level cap goes up, so it would invalidate Uldir, current PvP gear, and some of the new raid.
  • New raid tier, Mythic+ and PvP seasons all will happen at the same time.
  • The new Azerite traits are tied into the new gear so that people won't have to go and replace existing gear to get the new traits.

Titan Residuum
  • There may not be a way to add a repeatable source that won't lead to the community trying to endlessly grind it.
  • The system was designed to solve only getting Azerite from your weekly chest.
  • In a raid you can bonus roll or focus on specific bosses.
  • The system that has been set up gives you a piece of gear every 2.5 weeks or so.
  • The current setup is one of the most efficient and lucrative systems for getting Azerite gear.
  • The team wants to see how the current system plays out before making changes.
  • Previous in-game currencies were hard capped or a new currency was introduced for the next season.
  • The team will continue to inflate the prices as new seasons start, so each successive season of gear will cost ~10x more than the previous one.
  • It will keep taking you ~2.5 weeks to get another piece of gear in Season 2.
  • If you buy nothing and wait for the new raid, you might get a small head start.

Artifact Knowledge
  • This is the same way it worked in Legion. When Legion came out, the cap was 25, then raised to 40 in Patch 7.2.
  • In BfA, Knowledge is paced to match available content and the needs.
  • Season 2 will come out and Knowledge will resume increasing then.
  • If Knowledge kept increasing until then, there would be a bigger gap. Players that kept farming would be able to unlock all the powers right away.
  • When Battle for Azeroth launched, the team planned for 15 weeks of Knowledge, it happened to line up with the patch.
  • The same thing will happen next season, there will be a pause before Season 3.
  • The team forgot to tell players about this at the start of Battle for Azeroth.

Heart of Azeroth
  • The team has plans to make the Heart of Azeroth more engaging.
  • On the story side, this was initially a B plot. It wasn't essential like the Legion Artifact weapon was. This will change with Rise of Azshara and beyond.
  • A neck is less visible than a weapon, but the team didn't want to use the weapon slot all expansion again.
  • The team has a lot of work to do on the Azerite system side. Deeper and more interesting.
  • There is one central flaw. On one hand, AP should be relevant and you should have goals to work towards.
  • AP in Legion gave you something to progress towards. What felt best was when you had a new gold medal talent to work towards, giving you a power boost. The desire for AP and the appeal of your artifact weapon faded after getting the gold traits.
  • The system works best when there are exciting goals to chase.
  • It feels really bad if you get a new piece of armor and the powers on it are locked.
  • All you have to look forward to is utility abilities.
  • As the team looks ahead, they want to significantly change how they are approaching the system.
  • This will be the last tier that you'll have to unlock the powers on. Moving forward, they will probably be unlocked, giving you armor that presents choice.
  • The team will shift AP to the Heart itself, allowing you to make choices about permanent powers, potentially active abilities. More to share in the future!

Warfronts
  • Arathi Warfront is going to stay at the current item levels.
  • Darkshore Warfront will have rewards bumped up 15 item levels once Season 2 starts.
  • If you want, you can go back for alts, cosmetic things, or achievements.
  • World Quest rewards will go up based on the item level ceiling. This is just keeping the outdoor world relevant, but is based on gear you got from other sources.
  • Warfronts are like raids, this is the one for each tier, and they don't change.
  • Heroic Warfronts might make an old Warfront relevant again for a tier.
  • The team looked at the rotation rate, but in Patch 8.1 there are now two Warfronts. Every week or two you'll have a new Warfront to contribute to.
  • The team is trying to balance giving players a chance to play a Warfront with the rotation speed.
  • If you could do Warfronts more frequently, the rewards couldn't be as good.

War Mode
  • War Mode faction bonuses are region wide. Every weekly reset the system looks at participation in War Mode during the previous week and will adjust the bonuses.
  • Early on, War Mode participation was better, but some bugs and quirks caused players to turn it off.
  • In the last couple of days, players have been brought together by Assaults.

Island Expeditions
  • Rewards from Island Expeditions will continue to evolve over the expansion.
  • It's likely the team will use the vendor to allow you to target more right before the expansion is over so players that are missing a few items can get them.

Vicious Saddles
  • In Season 2, you'll have your progress bar towards the season mount, but this time the bar will reset and go to a Vicious Saddle. You can keep doing this throughout the season.

Class Design
  • The team is never truly satisfied with the state of class design.
  • At a macro level, there was a change 8 years ago in how class design worked.
  • For the first few years, every expansion kept providing more spells and talents. Action bars started to hit their limits.
  • It was no longer clear what classes needed, as they had all of the tools they needed.
  • Getting new stuff is cool and exciting, and something big was lost when the team pulled away from that.
  • There are effectively 36 distinct classes. Years ago the specs weren't as different.
  • In the last couple of expansions, the team went forward with expansion specific systems that gave you abilities. This wasn't as satisfying as the team had hoped.
  • The team is trying to balance short term excitement vs long term sustainability.
  • The pruning was very controversial, so the team took a step back from that in Battle for Azeroth. They actually added a few things back. Currently the team doesn't think they need to simplify any more right now.
  • The team wants classes to not have prohibitive weaknesses that results them in being excluded from groups.
  • It's hard to keep every spec unique.

Legendary Items
  • No legendary items are planned right now, but they could be added where it fits the story and content.

Artifact Pairs and Transmog
  • The team did a lot of work to make Artifact transmog work, but nothing new to share about splitting the pairs right now.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Tides of Vengeance Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas started by chaud View original post
Published on 2018-12-14 06:54 PM
132 Comments
Comments 131 Comments
  1. Unlockmyhrt's Avatar
    What a joke!
  1. Dystemper's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Right, and who knows how much restraint on what the heads can do comes from up higher. Ion is a mythic raiding shaman, if he had full control you would think the game would be leaning more towards mythic raiding and shamans wouldn't be one of the worst classes in the game right now, wouldn't you? Firing Ion would accomplish nothing.
    Game Director for WOw "is dedicated to ensuring that World of Warcraft is as enjoyable as possible for all of its players. This includes holding and carrying forward the vision for the game while overseeing the work of the design, art, and engineering teams."
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    I don't understand the need to fob responsibility from Ion onto Activision Blizzard. Ion is more than capable of mismanaging the teams all on his lonesome.
  1. Boricha's Avatar
    There are effectively 36 distinct classes. Years ago the specs weren't as different.
    Is that really a bad thing? Is it too much for a destro lock to toss out a corruption when they have to move? Or for a frost mage to finish off a target with a quick fire blast? I think it was a bad decision to effectively turn specs into classes. Specs should increase the damage of certain abilities over the others, but there's value to keeping the weaker ones in the spell book.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shambulanced View Post
    I suspect Brack has bigger problems/fish to fry than WoW, right now, which is at least relatively stable compared to some of the other IPs.

    Activision is breathing down their necks.
    Possibly. Or, more than likely. Blizzard has nothing new and shiny to put on store shelves in 2019, just updates and patches to existing games, and two classic versions of old games, which may or may not sell a lot. Their stock price gut it's guts kicked out. Activision has had several large flops.

    There's a lot of other stuff going on, too, I'm sure. Blizzard was printing cash for years, and they may be seeing it dry up in a serious way for the first time, and are being told to stop wasting money for the first time, too. Valleyball courts and orc statues are fun, but when profits are down, the first cuts are always the perks. Then it's programs (hello HOTS). Will we see layoffs in 2019? We'll see.

    But I was just talking about the Q&As, in context of just WoW. They're pointless, they're just ammo for the youtubers to get clicks. Maybe Ion sees them as a way to defuse the anger overall, but it's not really working out that way, it just gets people more upset. Brack, if he's an effective president, HAS to see that Ion's hamhanded attempts to placate an already upset customer base is just driving away subs, not retaining them. Brack needs subs right now, as many as he can get, to keep ATVI happy, across the board. They're bleeding players from all of their titles - and now HOTS as well, after yesterday's announcement.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dystemper View Post
    You do know as Game Director , he signs off on every change or system introduced in Wow dont you? Literally his Jpb is being responsible for everything that happens in WOW . The buck stops with him. Its his fucking job
    You do know there's this thing called "delegation". In no way is Ion getting bothered with "should we fix this bug", "should we nerf this mobs dmg by 10%". Fuck no, that's up to the dungeon lead. Ion approves things like, who goes into a raid as a boss, if HUGE class changes are needed, etc. He has a lot more to deal with the "we're buffing aimed shot by 10%" shit like that goes to the class leader.

    He had to approve of Azerite and a general proper range of AP gains. He doesn't approve of every source and how much you get from it.

    Or do you think that every problem a cubicle worker gets goes to the CEO for approval and not their direct manager only?
  1. Logwyn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by baseballfan View Post
    Why do they want cross faction communication? Even in an RP experience... It doesn't make sense.
    Gnome Warlock, "Looking for 1 more need tank for Mythic Hold".
    Orc Monk, "I'll go tank it for you little guy!!"

    Something like that is coming. Many other MMOs out there allow for cross faction partying and communication.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by City Pop View Post
    Is that really a bad thing? Is it too much for a destro lock to toss out a corruption when they have to move? Or for a frost mage to finish off a target with a quick fire blast? I think it was a bad decision to effectively turn specs into classes. Specs should increase the damage of certain abilities over the others, but there's value to keeping the weaker ones in the spell book.
    An easy way to do this would be to give each class either a tank or healer spec if it doesn't have one.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by baseballfan View Post
    Why do they want cross faction communication? Even in an RP experience... It doesn't make sense.
    It's purely for gameplay reasons that cross faction chat doesn't exist. Forsaken really shouldn't stop speaking common just cause they died. All elves should really be able to talk to each other. Our characters understand the other faction in cutscenes, etc. RPers set up a whole events around these facts, and it's especially important for them now seeing as this story is about horde vs. alliance.
  1. ManiaCCC's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by City Pop View Post
    Is that really a bad thing? Is it too much for a destro lock to toss out a corruption when they have to move? Or for a frost mage to finish off a target with a quick fire blast? I think it was a bad decision to effectively turn specs into classes. Specs should increase the damage of certain abilities over the others, but there's value to keeping the weaker ones in the spell book.
    They should really return to core classes design and just let us mix and match talents across all specializations. It seems like they were degrading wow year by year and now there is this mess. On one hand, they are overcomplicating systems and adding more stupid "enter and leave" systems into the game, while removing important parts of both MMO and RPG genre.
  1. TheramoreIsTheBomb's Avatar
    Josh Allen looks like a homeless PoS.
  1. Topornic's Avatar
    and the team forgot by the time the notes were being created.
    The team forgot to tell players about this at the start of Battle for Azeroth.
    They really beter have not forgotten to note that. If they have really forgotten to do that than that means they have HUGE management issues. If any competent person would lead the team of a multi-billion dollar company responsible for creating a MMO game that supposedly a few million people play on a daily basis and pay monthly fee to do so then they would probably do it this way:
    - Hey folks of Blizzard WoW team, you might be responsible for raid design, quest design, art design - whatever it is - whatever you do - you need to report any saved changes to this squad of guys/to this one guy who is responsible for creating our inside patch notes. You fix some bug? - Write a quick report to this guy what you've done.
    Then when the patch day comes we will take all those notes and compile it into public, outside patch notes (while maybe obscuring some stuff to keep it secret)! This way we can keep track of everything!

    IRL Ion says: "WE FORGOT SOZ GUYS". This means they either don't keep a record of what they do or they do keep track but do not care to review it every few months when they fucking release these patches. I don't know what is worse.


    They are fucking pathetic. Blizzard is either absolutely 100% cynical and lying in these matters or Ion is absolutely the worst game developer leader in the world. Can we get rid of this lawyer finally?
  1. Orby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheramoreIsTheBomb View Post
    Josh Allen looks like a homeless PoS.
    well are you not a lovely ray of sunshine
  1. Seramore's Avatar
    Working at Blizzard must be a dream job. Imagine being a developer who makes a change without telling anybody, just to have Ion defend you on a Q&A basically saying "we didn't realize this happened sorry guys hehe."

    No wonder communication is so shitty with BfA. There's not much to communicate on when the team can't even communicate with themselves and keep track of what they're doing.
  1. Psygon's Avatar
    Why keep blaming his team?

    Clearly no one is in charge. Clowns!

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by TheramoreIsTheBomb View Post
    Josh Allen looks like a homeless PoS.
    He’s wearing Idiot Ware.

    It’s the new style. Dress like you’re 7.
  1. oathy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post
    Brack needs to step in and stop these Q&As, they do more harm than good. Ion is so obtuse, he can't communicate simple ideas, and every time, he relights the dumpster fire with a flamethrower. His obfuscating way of talking is good for leading juries in courtrooms, but it stinks on ice for customers who want to know why he and his team are so incompetent, and want some hope for the future and their $15 a month.

    They don't have to fire Ion (although i think it's inevitable at this point), but shut him up. He's not accomplishing anything here.

    Lore needs to go work in a surf shop in Seal Beach, where he can pretend his perm is still cool, brah, and he can call the tourists who buy SexWax and overpriced t-shirts "douchebags" to his heart's content.
    agree totally.
    Its a Q&A on his terms. And given his former profession they turn into a deposition
  1. Lei's Avatar
    I love how they are trying to figure out how to communicate better since... hmm. When was that time when they said they had a worker shortage due to something something and they got many new faces who didn't know what to do? That was years ago. And if anything, it's getting worse and worse. They talk like hungover college boys in the mcdonalds (it's a meme at this point but like a small indie company...): Josh "Yeah, we've been talking about trying to be better in communication"....... WTF? Yeah, no pressure, dude, just keep trying to do your JOB. Hilarious.

    Poor Ion has aged like 10-15 years in the last ~3 years.

    I wonder if they keep track on Q&A reception in the community, or whether they care. This is indeed painful to watch.

    Also, love how they had 3 months to think about the azerite armor, decided to continue with it despite the players hating it, and only really care about it in 8.2, when the resource put into it is 100000% "consumed". That's just heartbreaking.
  1. RangerDaz's Avatar
    Boring as hell again. The only good thing was the Heart of Azeroth future change. Cross faction talking ideas also need to be further developed. I'm also not sure if Warfronts having different ilevel between them is a good move...

    I feel sorry for them that, after all the unhappy feedback from their playerbase, this Q&A is the best they can come up with. Or maybe should i feel sorry for us players instead...
  1. Dystemper's Avatar
    Wonder how many people they have lost because of the pay cuts and the shitty work environment ?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    You do know there's this thing called "delegation". In no way is Ion getting bothered with "should we fix this bug", "should we nerf this mobs dmg by 10%". Fuck no, that's up to the dungeon lead. Ion approves things like, who goes into a raid as a boss, if HUGE class changes are needed, etc. He has a lot more to deal with the "we're buffing aimed shot by 10%" shit like that goes to the class leader.

    He had to approve of Azerite and a general proper range of AP gains. He doesn't approve of every source and how much you get from it.

    Or do you think that every problem a cubicle worker gets goes to the CEO for approval and not their direct manager only?
    Ion is that you? Or are you his boyfriend?
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    You do know there's this thing called "delegation". In no way is Ion getting bothered with "should we fix this bug", "should we nerf this mobs dmg by 10%". Fuck no, that's up to the dungeon lead. Ion approves things like, who goes into a raid as a boss, if HUGE class changes are needed, etc. He has a lot more to deal with the "we're buffing aimed shot by 10%" shit like that goes to the class leader.

    He had to approve of Azerite and a general proper range of AP gains. He doesn't approve of every source and how much you get from it.

    Or do you think that every problem a cubicle worker gets goes to the CEO for approval and not their direct manager only?
    Delegation only goes so far. Ion is the head of the franchise. If things aren't working, it's on him to fix it.

    I don't understand why people are so invested on blaming everyone except the actual guy who's job description says he's in charge of everything in the franchise, good or bad.
  1. huehuehue's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dystemper View Post


    Ion is that you? Or are you his boyfriend?
    just seems like someone who can reason, to me
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