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. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post
    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.
    Ion just get's blamed because he's the mouthpiece, if it wasn't him it would be someone else. And he's not really the head of it, he's still got bosses, if you really want to blame someone, blame J. Allen Brack, he was executive producer going into BfA, or blame whoever is taking his spot. Blame Mike because he was the President and CEO going into BfA. Blame Bobby because he is the one making them cater to MAU's. But really no, not everything is on Ion, it's on the team as a whole.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Ion just get's blamed because he's the mouthpiece, if it wasn't him it would be someone else. And he's not really the head of it, he's still got bosses, if you really want to blame someone, blame J. Allen Brack, he was executive producer going into BfA, or blame whoever is taking his spot. But really no, not everything is on Ion, it's on the team as a whole.
    Why are you so invested in shifting blame away from Ion?

    From Ion's Reddit AMA:

    "I am accountable for everything that goes into WoW, so that should begin with me."

    https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...ux&sh=14b39d0a

    Ion said "It's on me", and you're sitting here saying "No, it's no!".

    (edited to avoid getting the mods pissed at me)
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post
    Why are you so invested in shifting blame away from Ion?

    From Ion's Reddit AMA:

    "I am accountable for everything that goes into WoW, so that should begin with me."

    https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...ux&sh=14b39d0a

    Ion said "It's on me", and you're sitting here saying "No, it's no!".

    (edited to avoid getting the mods pissed at me)
    Rofl, because he's not the top level. Nor does everything go through him. If you believe that, you have no idea how a real business works.

    Funniest thing ever is, people blame all the MAU stuff on him, people blame all the casual stuff on him. You think if he had his way that Raids wouldn't still be the only way to gear? That shaman wouldn't be OP? MAU's come from Bobby and ActiBlizz as a whole, not the WoW team. MAU's are what's ruining wow, not Ion.

    So unless you figure out how to get Bobby and his "I want to remove the fun from making games" self out of there, Actiblizz is doomed in the end.
  1. hyphnos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Rofl, because he's not the top level. Nor does everything go through him. If you believe that, you have no idea how a real business works.

    Funniest thing ever is, people blame all the MAU stuff on him, people blame all the casual stuff on him. You think if he had his way that Raids wouldn't still be the only way to gear? That shaman wouldn't be OP? MAU's come from Bobby and ActiBlizz as a whole, not the WoW team. MAU's are what's ruining wow, not Ion.

    So unless you figure out how to get Bobby and his "I want to remove the fun from making games" self out of there, Actiblizz is doomed in the end.
    I agree up to a point. However, Bobby Kotick doesn't give a shit HOW the dev team generates their MAUs or the player engagement or how they monetize people via the cash shop, just that they do it.

    There are many, many paths to getting players to spend time in a game and probably the best reason would be that they are having so much fun they lose track of time. Apparently these devs have little to no confidence that they can in fact make content that is fun and so they just make content in such a way that time inputs are mandatory to access the parts of the game where they hold a competitive advantage.

    If gameplay was fun then they wouldn't have to participation gate everything and steal tiny bits of player time for no design reason other than if we make this take 5 seconds longer and that take 10 seconds longer for no reason, if you multiply that times millions of players doing it then you got some real "engagement" going on.

    It's just sad to watch. Probably if they spent half the time they spend fretting about players doing something out of the box or thinking up cute ways to waste 10 to 15 seconds times millions here or there they could probably produce more players playing more and playing longer. They don't even have to think up anything new - they've tossed the fucking baby out with the bathwater enough times by now that they could just find the good shit they tossed and bring it back and never think up a single new thing. (other than of course flying foxes etc for $25.00)
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by hyphnos View Post
    I agree up to a point. However, Bobby Kotick doesn't give a shit HOW the dev team generates their MAUs or the player engagement or how they monetize people via the cash shop, just that they do it.

    There are many, many paths to getting players to spend time in a game and probably the best reason would be that they are having so much fun they lose track of time. Apparently these devs have little to no confidence that they can in fact make content that is fun and so they just make content in such a way that time inputs are mandatory to access the parts of the game where they hold a competitive advantage.

    If gameplay was fun then they wouldn't have to participation gate everything and steal tiny bits of player time for no design reason other than if we make this take 5 seconds longer and that take 10 seconds longer for no reason, if you multiply that times millions of players doing it then you got some real "engagement" going on.

    It's just sad to watch. Probably if they spent half the time they spend fretting about players doing something out of the box or thinking up cute ways to waste 10 to 15 seconds times millions here or there they could probably produce more players playing more and playing longer. They don't even have to think up anything new - they've tossed the fucking baby out with the bathwater enough times by now that they could just find the good shit they tossed and bring it back and never think up a single new thing. (other than of course flying foxes etc for $25.00)
    Problem is they have to create the maus in the cheapest way possible. Something that takes a lot of time or money (like something hard to balance) won't fly. And on top of that you don't want to try something too new (or too old) because, like ea rushing far too many games or killing things before they even started picking up (RIP warhammer), Bobby could just end it if he felt like it

    They've made cost cutting measures and its starting to backfire, thankfully they're backtracking on some of them now. It's like blizzards motto is... it's too hard to balance
  1. Jasper Kazai's Avatar
    "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." Players who actually play the game would be able to benefit from doing so?! Well, we surely can't let that happen!
    Can't fathom how anyone could say that with a straight face and actually believe it to boot.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Rofl, because he's not the top level. Nor does everything go through him. If you believe that, you have no idea how a real business works.

    Funniest thing ever is, people blame all the MAU stuff on him, people blame all the casual stuff on him. You think if he had his way that Raids wouldn't still be the only way to gear? That shaman wouldn't be OP? MAU's come from Bobby and ActiBlizz as a whole, not the WoW team. MAU's are what's ruining wow, not Ion.

    So unless you figure out how to get Bobby and his "I want to remove the fun from making games" self out of there, Actiblizz is doomed in the end.
    I get it. You're just making things up, to avoid admitting you're wrong.

    Moving on...
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post
    I get it. You're just making things up, to avoid admitting you're wrong.

    Moving on...
    Made absolutely nothing up, this is what happens when a game company is headed by someone who wants to take the fun out of making games.

    And in case you're too lazy to find it yourself:

    "I don't think it is specific to video games. I think that if you look at how much volatility there is in the economy and, dependent upon your view about macroeconomic picture and I think we have a real culture of thrift. And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

    "I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
  1. mmoc419a7752f2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gadzooks View Post
    Why are you so invested in shifting blame away from Ion?

    From Ion's Reddit AMA:

    "I am accountable for everything that goes into WoW, so that should begin with me."
    There is a difference to being accountable and being involved. Example: A CFO is accountable for how the company's budget is spend but he is not involved in every single budget request or negotiation.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Hemario View Post
    There is a difference to being accountable and being involved. Example: A CFO is accountable for how the company's budget is spend but he is not involved in every single budget request or negotiation.
    I guess we're at the inevitable "nitpick everything to support your own favorite conspiracy theory" stage of the thread, so it's time to move on.

    It's been real.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Hemario View Post
    There is a difference to being accountable and being involved. Example: A CFO is accountable for how the company's budget is spend but he is not involved in every single budget request or negotiation.
    Just can't get through to some people, better off giving up.
  1. Theoris's Avatar
    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.
    Is there a reason why it doesn't work on live while it did on the BfA PTR?
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Theoris View Post
    Is there a reason why it doesn't work on live while it did on the BfA PTR?
    Probably broke something else, that's what happens a lot in programming, sure the thing you were trying to fix worked but something else horribly broke in the process
  1. dewd's Avatar
    cool. makes sense. sounds good.
  1. Trumpcat's Avatar
    In short: gonna stick with the fundamentally flawed game design in the expansion and will keep adding more of the same to it. But next expansion could be different if we keep losing subs.
  1. Morbys's Avatar
    "It's hard to keep every spec unique."
    It really isn't, utilize your class forums, there are a ton, or were a ton of feedback on making a class viable without breaking it. A lot of disillusioned individuals now since their classes are STILL trash even after 8.1
  1. Azshira's Avatar
    I really dislike Lore on these. He’s unprofessional, dresses like a teenage kid, and can barely speak (fumbles over questions, names, seems to be limited on vocab etc), and repeats himself far too often: ‘that makes sense’. Can they at least try rotating people around, and maybe someone more lively? Like who wears a hoodie with the hood up and a hat on at the same time in a professional company, not to mind a broadcast. You can still look respectful and wear blizzard clothing without looking like a kid. He’s a manager, not an intern, act like one. Ion tries to do a good job as always, but anytime I hear Lore in these I just zone out.
  1. Niwes's Avatar
    dont know why ppl have a problem with ion. at least he tries to communicate their intentions, their philosophy behind, tries that ppl understand the why and agree when they failed.

    the problem is not ion. it is the management and the marketing that controls what he can say and what not and that allow or disallow the apropriate questions. these questions are sorted out by marketing. and even this ppl seem not getting (guy in page 1 that asking which idiots asked that questions, lol).

    most ppl forget what we can have INSTEAD ion. if you change ion, the outcomings would be the same. you still will be get a pushed up version from marketing of a greedy multi billion dollar company. you still will not get the info you want. but this time it is presented as „eat or die“. hard facts. baam. here you have it. with no background explanation of why and how.

    ppl should get back tom chilton or a new guy just for one week. hell, they would cry for ion to come back.

    or in short: you are barking at the wrong tree. it is not an ion problem (that is just the face you see), it is a actvision blizzard problem.

    cheesus....

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Azshira View Post
    I really dislike Lore on these. He’s unprofessional, dresses like a teenage kid, and can barely speak (fumbles over questions, names, seems to be limited on vocab etc), and repeats himself far too often: ‘that makes sense’. Can they at least try rotating people around, and maybe someone more lively? Like who wears a hoodie with the hood up and a hat on at the same time in a professional company, not to mind a broadcast. You can still look respectful and wear blizzard clothing without looking like a kid. He’s a manager, not an intern, act like one. Ion tries to do a good job as always, but anytime I hear Lore in these I just zone out.

    the „that makes sense“ thing is the same like the „thats awesome“ thing at apple or microsoft speaks. they are trained to tattoo in visiters brains that its good, by repeating it endlessly.

    or in short: thats shit marketing stuff of giant companies. not a lore thing.
  1. DrMcNinja's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Niwes View Post
    dont know why ppl have a problem with ion. at least he tries to communicate their intentions, their philosophy behind, tries that ppl understand the why and agree when they failed.
    And what can we conclude from all of these Q&A's combined together? That they hear us? That they're looking into it but not for this patch? That "in the long term, it will be fine"?

    It's the same riddle every single time, he talks a lot but says very little. Even if he's a mere messenger, he's a horrible one. I'd rather have a person who is a good speaker convey these pre-scripted messages than this monotone machine.
  1. Dracullus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Niwes View Post
    dont know why ppl have a problem with ion.
    He's tanking whole WoW dev team. Forum hate is loud, but mostly mindless. If team would put janitor in these Q&As, they would think that janitor is source of all problems.

    For example, I saw many post from people who thought that Ghostcrawler was better game director and he got too much hate. But he was NEVER game director, he just interacted with community the most.

    I like that Ion take more reponsibility than Chilton, who just send people like Cory Stockton to do interviews, so hate was focused on them.
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