Developer Interview - Ion Hazzikostas
Sloot talked to Ion tonight about a wide range of topics.



Launch
  • It's been a pretty smooth launch for the most part. There were a few server issues early on, but engineers worked through them.
  • The Great Vault, Adventure system, and other systems have some small problems. There isn't a huge fire to put out this time.

Covenants
  • Covenants are an overall success. They aren't perfect. No one expected a perfectly even split.
  • There has been a lot of feedback across the community from people who found picking a Covenant hard.
  • Changing Covenants isn't that big of an undertaking.
  • No regrets with Covenant design so far.
  • The team is keeping an eye on Conduits, especially as the third Soulbind unlocks.
  • You may have a percent or two edge with ideal Conduits, but it isn't the end of the world.
  • If someone feels like there is only one Soulbind that is viable for PvP, and that same one is the only one viable for Raid DPS, the team wants to hear about it.

PvP
  • Subtlety PvP changes and Rogue buffs are coming via hotfix soon.
  • The team doesn't want people to get killed before they have a chance to react, but they don't want to swing the pendulum back too far the other way. They'll look at outliers of trinket + legendary combos and other things and tune them.

Tanks
  • Threat should exist as a mechanic, but not something tanks should have to manage from minute to minute.
  • As long as you are putting forth minimal effort to hit mobs, tanks should be able to hold them.
  • You don't want threat to be so easy that a little bit of AoE damage is all you need to kite mobs from 90% to 0%.
  • Being able to trade off damage for survivability is an interesting choice.
  • Having tanks being #1 in damage in dungeons feels wrong.
  • Tanks should be able to kill things in the world in a respectable amount of time.
  • Trying to pull away from BfA situation where a tank's primary job was pumping out damage rather than surviving.

Misc
  • Legendaries can be socketed.
  • Loud sound on entering the Maw is fixed.
  • The team hasn't come up with a design that would solve all of the problems that Master Loot had.
  • In organized guilds the amount of control exerted over loot caused a negative experience for a large number of players, especially for trials.
  • Getting people to use Personal Loot instead of Master Loot just wasn't going to happen through incentives.
  • If you don't get an item from a boss, now you can blame Blizzard instead of the guild / Master Looter.
  • If you have a conduit installed in your forge, you should never see a dupe. If you just have one in your bags, you can see a dupe. There isn't a way to make those sellable without making them all sellable right now.
  • World Bosses are a set rotation.
  • No plans to add more checkpoints to dungeons.
  • Faction balance is something the team talks about a lot, but there isn't a solution to talk about right now. The damage was done years ago, Troll racials in Throne of Thunder should have been nerfed.
  • Faction balance isn't driven by power balance anymore, just by social structures.
  • How does Blizzard get players that went from Alliance to Horde to go back to Alliance? Buffing Alliance racials isn't the right answer.
  • Old raid tuning had a bug in the first week of Shadowlands for Legion content that made it harder as you leveled.
  • Old raids might be a little harder at max level now, but part of that is from your stats going down as you level. Things should get better as you get more gear and Soulbinds. Eventually your player power will exceed what it was at the end of the last expansion.

Gearing
  • The team is happy with how gear has played out over the last few weeks. It'll be interesting to see how people feel after the Great Vault.
  • The team should do more with using Mythic+ to provide rewards that aren't direct player power. PvP participants have a system with lots of accomplishments, so Mythic+ should offer something like that (or more)
  • Tier sets will be coming in a later Shadowlands patch. The art is awesome! Return of class sets.
  • The old tier set system is a starting point, but the team wants to come up with something better. Items monopolized slots that they were in.
  • Tier sets mean a class based aesthetic and a completion mechanic that will change your gameplay. There are ways to do this beyond just adding a 2 and 4 piece set bonus.
  • The team wants to be conservative with changing legendaries. It'll be with a patch, on the PTR, plenty of time for feedback.

World Quests
  • The team is okay where things are right now. A lot of players can fill in gaps and get more conduits.
  • Graduating out of clearing your world quests every day is fine.
  • There should be something (reputation, boxes, something else) that make world quests still feel relevant.

Torghast
  • No plans to make floor unlocks account wide right now. Maybe in the future.
  • No plans to allow leveling in Torghast, but it's a cool idea.
  • Twisting Corridors (Challenge mode) is coming soon, unlock is account wide.
  • Twisting Corridors will be more challenging than what you saw on beta. You should be in epics before you get there.
  • 18 floors is a long run. There is no true infinite mode right now (Layer 8), but they may revisit this later in the expansion.
  • The team wants to see how Torghast plays out before they make assumptions and build things.
  • Right now the reward system is more like the mage tower, work towards a single reward to show off. In the future, the team may revisit this.
  • Most players still have a ton of content left in the Maw.
  • There is more planned for the Maw in the future.

Raids
  • The team is really happy with where tuning has landed. There were some bugs and hotfixes needed.
  • Raids have always been tuned for certain item levels and endgame system progression states.
  • Heroic has always been tuned for players with Normal difficulty raid gear. In past expansions, Warforging and more widespread loot had people geared up for Heroic/Mythic faster.

Mission Table
  • Some of the Adventure testing and tuning was using a wider range of unlocks.
  • The team didn't pay enough attention to the first few week experience, especially the order that you unlock things. It'll be okay in the long run.
  • The team is looking at the UI.
  • Some of the more challenging missions that scale with your levels, such as the Soul Ash ones, feel bad. The team may change them to more static missions. Easier version with less rewards that you can always beat and a higher level one that is harder but more rewarding.

Thanks
  • Thanks for the feedback, thanks for the chance (even after disappointing people in the past), thanks for making the community what it is.
  • The team wants to make your time in Azeroth as great as it can be.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Developer Interview - Ion Hazzikostas started by chaud View original post
Comments 79 Comments
  1. Revamp Man's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Stickiler View Post
    If there wasn't a problem, they wouldn't have spent time and money on changing it.
    really??

    Because they changed stuff that wasnt an issue in the game before and reversed it because they realized they were wrong. They also said something wasnt an issue and changed it once the players spent months pointing out that it was a problem.
  1. leorana's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by topitopi View Post
    Uhhh, no Ion. Covenants aren't balanced. There is a clear optimal choice, and in the case of my monk it's above a 1% difference.

    Disappointed he doesn't even acknowledge players have wanted flight whistle back for a while now
    ohhh! Flight whistle! How could I forget about that. This is one of the first (and easiest) things they should do. The 'wormhole' fast animation isn't fooling anyone either...fp takes even longer now, which is the same as no mount in the maw BS
  1. Revamp Man's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Warning View Post
    This masterloot thing is so dumb, just let it die. It makes no sense that someone who gets lucky should somehow be forced to cancel out another persons bad luck. That feels shit to them and this stuff is always abused by officers or informed by guild politics to some degree. Raids can be balanced around personal loot instead of masterloot so any perceived raid performance increase by "perfect distribution" is purely illusory anyway.
    the developers can not say they are better at distributing loot in my group than i am

    personal loot wouldnt even be much of an issue if they didnt have the retarded ilvl restriction because they "dont want players feeling pressured to trade loot"
    If i have 5 trials in a raid and we are on farm boss 3 for the 3rd month and we get a BiS drop for one of them its going to the trial. If we are on a boss and a piece of loot drops taht is a downgrade for the trial but a slight upgrade for a member i am going to give it to the member...then the trial bitches for the rest of the night because they are too dumb to realize that the loot they have is already better and then they complain that they never get loot even though for farm Trials get a ton of loot because the main raid has already geared through those bosses.

    I also get told by blizz "you cant trade that gear because its a 1 ilvl increase" on gear taht is a downgrade for me but a huge upgrade for a guildie.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kathranis View Post
    Well, you kind of have to assume that it was a big enough issue that they would rather remove it than deal with CS tickets asking for loot drama intervention.
    no i assume it was a change made to appease the overall community perception. "trials deserve loot too" is something that everyone agrees with and wasnt an actual issue for a vast vast majority of players once legion added the guild group requirement. Trials get loot from farm bosses and loot that otherwise isnt an upgrade for the guys that killed that boss. A new trial that comes into a boss in progression on pull 34 and kills it does not have any right to complain if the BiS trinket goes to the officer that was there every pull and didnt die 15 times. On average a trial would get at least 2 pieces of loot in even a half clear of most raids with farm content and things like a pair of gloves dropping but the others that can use it had better.

    I never ran into a situation where a trial never got loot through their entire trial process and a majority of the stories on the forums were debunked in the same thread. Example my trial week i got 3 upgrades and it wasnt even farm simply because it wasnt really an upgrade for others due to tier and crap. A trial did complain when they didnt get a trinket that was an actual downgrade even though they got 2 pieces the night before and the reasoning with them was "its better for the raid" even though it was a huge downgrade.
  1. Ringthane's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by october breeze View Post
    hmmm, tiers sets are coming back? ... hmmm... shall I resub?
    I wouldn't - the rest of it is so boring and dull I'd rather watch paint dry. I've been playing since Classic and I've never felt more like "why am I doing this and why should I care what happens" than I have with this expansion.
  1. Drusin's Avatar
    Old raids might be a little harder at max level now, but part of that is from your stats going down as you level. Things should get better as you get more gear and Soulbinds. Eventually your player power will exceed what it was at the end of the last expansion.
    Yeah because that makes perfect fucking sense. If there were no squish there wouldn't have been a problem. Legion would have been 110 and we'd be 125 or 130 and life would be great, so the next time a squish gets mentioned I'll be sure no one forgets
  1. Stickiler's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by zantheus1993 View Post
    really??

    Because they changed stuff that wasn't an issue in the game before and reversed it because they realized they were wrong. They also said something wasnt an issue and changed it once the players spent months pointing out that it was a problem.
    Neither thing you said disagrees with me.

    For the first: Just because you don't believe it's an issue with the game, doesn't mean they don't see issues with it internally.

    For the second: The design team can believe that something isn't an issue, but then re-evaluate it and change their minds when players point out scenarios or situations where it definitely is an issue.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by leorana View Post
    The great vault is a step in the right direction to help players target an actual upgrade. Let's agree (just for argument sake) that those complaining about too much loot aren't completely idiots, but not getting loot for entire lockout (s) isn't fun either. There's a slight difference between I didn't get any loot for weeks and That damm BIS trinket didn't drop the entire patch (but overall I did get something)
    Except the great vault absolutely guarantees that you'll receive a piece of loot each lockout(Any loot from the vault is included as loot for the previous week, for the sake of this argument), no matter what. The only situation where you don't get any loot is: You kill <3 raid bosses, did zero M+, and received <1250 honor from rated PvP.

    The question of whether that gear is useful is separate to the discussion about receiving no loot at all.
  1. Prag's Avatar
    The dungeon damage difference between my Prot Pala and Prot War is pretty significant, but the tradeoff is definitely in ST where it seems to all balance out. I'm not sure how they bring Prot Pala in line without capping abilities (which feels like absolute shit) or nerfing DT (which means I'm just going Ven'thyr).
  1. Valkaneer's Avatar
    There has been a lot of feedback across the community from people who found picking a Covenant hard.
    Not because they were good, but because they were bad. The only covenant I find worthy of joining is Necro, and the Necro abilities are so bad that you are seriously shooting yourself in the foot. The other choices are, "The Slave Labor Union", "Some need to die for the good of the many", or "Don't trust us farther than you can throw us".

    Ya, great choices there, that is a hard choice....... /endsarcasm
  1. Goat7's Avatar
    Forgot professions. Most are dog poo. Prolly why they didnt talk about it
  1. hulkgor's Avatar
    Great fun so far.

    Well done Mr Hazzikostas, looking forward to what's coming next.
  1. Nzx's Avatar
    I haven't really got any problem with any of this personally, but I do find the line about legendary changes "being on the PTR, lots of time for feedback" being said on literally the same day they hotfix nerf a legendary pretty funny
  1. Tesshin20's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by zantheus1993 View Post
    that "masterloot caused problems especially for trials" is BS and you know it Ion
    Trials got plenty of loot from farm content just because Timmy lost the BiS trinket from a progression boss where he was in 5% of the pulls and died 30 seconds into the fight to Chad the officer who has been there every night and always performs well doesnt mean theres a problem.
    They are the ones who get the feedback. They know this better than your anecdotal personal experience.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Valkaneer View Post
    Not because they were good, but because they were bad. The only covenant I find worthy of joining is Necro, and the Necro abilities are so bad that you are seriously shooting yourself in the foot. The other choices are, "The Slave Labor Union", "Some need to die for the good of the many", or "Don't trust us farther than you can throw us".

    Ya, great choices there, that is a hard choice....... /endsarcasm
    Wrong. They are quite balanced as you add the soulbinds to the mix.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by zantheus1993 View Post
    the developers can not say they are better at distributing loot in my group than i am

    personal loot wouldnt even be much of an issue if they didnt have the retarded ilvl restriction because they "dont want players feeling pressured to trade loot"
    If i have 5 trials in a raid and we are on farm boss 3 for the 3rd month and we get a BiS drop for one of them its going to the trial. If we are on a boss and a piece of loot drops taht is a downgrade for the trial but a slight upgrade for a member i am going to give it to the member...then the trial bitches for the rest of the night because they are too dumb to realize that the loot they have is already better and then they complain that they never get loot even though for farm Trials get a ton of loot because the main raid has already geared through those bosses.

    I also get told by blizz "you cant trade that gear because its a 1 ilvl increase" on gear taht is a downgrade for me but a huge upgrade for a guildie.

    - - - Updated - - -



    no i assume it was a change made to appease the overall community perception. "trials deserve loot too" is something that everyone agrees with and wasnt an actual issue for a vast vast majority of players once legion added the guild group requirement. Trials get loot from farm bosses and loot that otherwise isnt an upgrade for the guys that killed that boss. A new trial that comes into a boss in progression on pull 34 and kills it does not have any right to complain if the BiS trinket goes to the officer that was there every pull and didnt die 15 times. On average a trial would get at least 2 pieces of loot in even a half clear of most raids with farm content and things like a pair of gloves dropping but the others that can use it had better.

    I never ran into a situation where a trial never got loot through their entire trial process and a majority of the stories on the forums were debunked in the same thread. Example my trial week i got 3 upgrades and it wasnt even farm simply because it wasnt really an upgrade for others due to tier and crap. A trial did complain when they didnt get a trinket that was an actual downgrade even though they got 2 pieces the night before and the reasoning with them was "its better for the raid" even though it was a huge downgrade.
    Oh believe me. People should trust Blizzard a lot more handing out loot than you. I would say with 99% confidence that you have a lot more subjective feelings into handing out loot, than Blizzard have, which will distort your ability to hand out loot in an objective manner.
  1. Razorice's Avatar
    Really enjoyed the interview.

    Also, take a drink everytime Ion says "Systems".
  1. huldu's Avatar
    What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.
  1. Sorrior's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by leorana View Post
    "eventually your player power will exceed what it used to be in the end of the last expansion...." .

    Sorry, fail to see the logic where I leveled 10 levels only to be weaker than I used to be on old content. Just fix this please.
    This right here it makes NO sense at all that we are weaker then before..like seriously how the f do they even think this makes sense
  1. doodle90's Avatar
    Wow "Old raids werent scaling at lvl 60 now thats fixed" Shows he has no clue. The raids literally one shot you at 60 still. If they don't buff it you wont be able to solo legion content till like 9.4
  1. leorana's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by rhrrngt View Post
    Wow "Old raids werent scaling at lvl 60 now thats fixed" Shows he has no clue. The raids literally one shot you at 60 still. If they don't buff it you wont be able to solo legion content till like 9.4
    I wish that was the case, but I was soloing legion raids as 110 in mediocre bfa gear. Presumably, legion raids are harder now so fact is we actually got weaker due to the squish.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by huldu View Post
    What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.
    /Agreed.
    Going almost full hour for higher layers just to get 70 soul ash feels like it ain't worth the effort. Put a chest in the end of it like visions and it would feel much more rewarding.
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    "small fires"

    people are leaving the game left and right because pvers have 0 way of progressing their chars outside of raiding/vault - but everything is ok

    called it back then calling it now - its WoD 2.0 catered only to raiders - because there is 0 point in doing anything then raid atm .
  1. shadowmatrix's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by huldu View Post
    What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.
    So players can then start whining that they are forced to run it? Oh wait, some already are.
  1. Tesshin83's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    "small fires"

    people are leaving the game left and right because pvers have 0 way of progressing their chars outside of raiding/vault - but everything is ok

    called it back then calling it now - its WoD 2.0 catered only to raiders - because there is 0 point in doing anything then raid atm .
    What? You have renown, covenant sanctum stuff, mythic+, pvp, alts leveling, achievement hunting, profession grinding, torghast, maw farming... The list goes on and on.

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