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 Tesshin20 View Post
    They are the ones who get the feedback. They know this better than your anecdotal personal experience.

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    Wrong. They are quite balanced as you add the soulbinds to the mix.

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    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.
    ive seen some of the feedback they get.
    You can look at the forums and find maybe 1/10 raid groups had someone complain about loot and most of the time they got debunked from players from that group coming in and pointing out "hey youre lying here is what happened"

    I do not trust blizzard especially when they had it to where i couldnt trade a staff i got from a boss to my buddy that needed it in palace because i didnt have a higher ilvl staff in my bags since my MS would DW. This was just fixed in SL but we had that issue for 2 years and they justified it by saying "we dont want people pressured out of loot" I want to be in control of my loot. I want to be able to change loot spec and trade it and not get told "hey its 1ilvl higher than your current gear so you cant trade it even though its a downgrade for you and a big upgrade for your buddy"

    remove the ilvl restriction entirely or make it to how it was in legion because at least then players were able to see if they were in a masterloot group.

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    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 .
    pvp gear
    m+ gear
    you have to do things like callings for those extra conduits

    if you see only raid and die then you have some serious issues and i wanna see why people think players are leaving the game left and right lol
  1. TheLucky1's Avatar
    Hmm yeah, as expected of mmoc members a lot of differentiated and thought out comments of the matter at hand.
  1. schwarzkopf's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aerisot View Post
    I don't understand, just incorporate a version of RC Loot Council into the game.
    Doesn't solve the problem, just transfers it.

    Right now - they could at least allow master looter for items that are tradeable to avoid all the mess and time spent assigning items that can be traded.
  1. RoKPaNda's Avatar
    Gearing feels like shit this expansion but other than that it's a great expansion so far.
  1. pewpmeiser'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

    Not really my dude. Covenants are fine.
  1. VinceVega'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 .
    That is simply not true. But go one. Just leave. If you don't want to see it you won't ever.
    There are exactly the same ways to get gear now, bfa and legion. No change. Just less drops because TF is gone. Otherwise we would be done way to fast.
  1. Grimalkin of Old's Avatar
    That's cool and all, but when are we going to talk about the terrain design?
  1. Redroniksre's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shadowmatrix View Post
    So players can then start whining that they are forced to run it? Oh wait, some already are.
    This is the sad part. I really like Torghast but once you have your legendary there is really no point except to upgrade. Blizzard is really pushing the big three but i dont think they intend to encourage solo play anymore. Without Titanforging or Visions there is nothing for solo players until next patch
  1. aeuhe4yxzhds'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.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sorrior View Post
    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
    None of you have actually played the game? Or any earlier expansions?

    Leveling up reduces the effectiveness of your items.

    Holy hell, do you two not know how the game works?

    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.

    What about every time randoms are invited to guild runs and loot is not distributed to them? Also trails usually do not get items, even if everyone has them and instead is disenchanted or given to alts/off spec

    It is extremely clear that it did, in fact, cause problems. Stop fucking lying.
  1. Eggroll's Avatar
    You've read one Ion Hazzikostas interview, you've read them all. Just update the talking points and that's it.

    We're happy with that, we're happy with this yadda yadda..

    Well, at least tier sets are coming back.

    And I'd like the camera distance restriction removed pretty please, thank you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Grimalkin of Old View Post
    That's cool and all, but when are we going to talk about the terrain design?
    Yeah, terrible, absolutely made to antagonize the player. I loathe it,
  1. Segus1992's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Thokri View Post
    Buffing alliance racials isn't right answer?

    Like nerfing dwarf racial instantly ONE top guild faction changed?

    Ion is full of BS. I could bet he has orc or troll skin-coloured adult toys..


    Covenants and current loot system are success? We know he does not play game but come on!
    Ah yes, the "correct answer" is to abuse your playerbase and make one faction objectively stronger to make people pay for a faction change. Great idea. Sure would shine a great light on Blizzard as a company.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Redroniksre View Post
    This is the sad part. I really like Torghast but once you have your legendary there is really no point except to upgrade. Blizzard is really pushing the big three but i dont think they intend to encourage solo play anymore. Without Titanforging or Visions there is nothing for solo players until next patch
    I agree Torghast should have more rewards than just Soul Ash, though I definitely don't think it should be power rewards, or at least comparable power rewards to actual MMO content. People who play completely solo should never be comparable to people who don't, in an MMO.
  1. Master Factician's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Thokri View Post
    Buffing alliance racials isn't right answer?

    Like nerfing dwarf racial instantly ONE top guild faction changed?

    Ion is full of BS. I could bet he has orc or troll skin-coloured adult toys..


    Covenants and current loot system are success? We know he does not play game but come on!
    Ion is currently 10/10 Normal and 7/10 Heroic with an ilvl of 189. I think that qualifies as "playing the game."
  1. AcidX's Avatar
    1.) Why not removing all the racials and choosing a race by style?

    2.) You cant trust him. You cant believe a single word that comes out of his mouth. This guy is a total liar when it comes to World of Warcraft. I really hate him what he did in BfA back then. All he wanted was his Ny'alotha-Raid.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEINk89xM6s
  1. LordVargK'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 .
    I mean, some people don't play for gear but just for fun... Gear is a tool to achive fun, not the other way around. And SL offers great fun without the reliance on gear.
  1. Quaade's Avatar
    "Being able to trade off damage for survivability is an interesting choice."

    This is the dumbest statement ever when it only applies to ONE tank. Everyone else does their damage to increase their survivability. There's no trade-off for ANYONE except Prot Warriors. Which makes them an infinitely unviable choice.
  1. ashblond'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.
    The remove of master loot and introduction of personal loot, is the single best thing has ever happened to wow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Goat7 View Post
    Forgot professions. Most are dog poo. Prolly why they didnt talk about it
    Professions have been shit for years, and they will continue to be.
  1. Velshin'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.
    It was a problem tbh. What you are talking about is the exception of the rule not in general. Many progressing guild and many officers and guild masters only care for their inner circle raiders friends when it comes to loot who the hell do they think they are judging other newer players if they deserve the loot or not? everyone should have a fair and just chance to get loot if they participate into the progress and if they gave it their all when it comes to raiding and progress (being new trial player into the guild or being an officer or gm is not relevant when it comes loot, everyone should have a fair chance).
  1. Redroniksre's Avatar
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    I agree Torghast should have more rewards than just Soul Ash, though I definitely don't think it should be power rewards, or at least comparable power rewards to actual MMO content. People who play completely solo should never be comparable to people who don't, in an MMO.
    I mean i don't see why not, every other MMO does it that way. Punishing people for playing solo basically gives people no reason to play unless friends are on. Not to mention if Twisting Corridors is as hard as they are saying (requiring higher end gear) then solo players will be restricted from their one piece of content.
  1. czarek's Avatar
    Soul ash from mission table? I play everyday since launch. Got lvled up companions etc. I havent seen any sould ash mission xD Thats just bait. I havent seen any other way to obtain soul ash except regular thorgast runs. And the world questes and mission table quest rewards are just gold vendor crap nothin more. Ok maybe some conduits but mostly in 95% its just quicksell "grey" crap.
  1. T-34's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Velshin View Post
    It was a problem tbh. What you are talking about is the exception of the rule not in general. Many progressing guild and many officers and guild masters only care for their inner circle raiders friends when it comes to loot who the hell do they think they are judging other newer players if they deserve the loot or not? everyone should have a fair and just chance to get loot if they participate into the progress and if they gave it their all when it comes to raiding and progress (being new trial player into the guild or being an officer or gm is not relevant when it comes loot, everyone should have a fair chance).
    On the other hand guilds now have no reason whatsoever to bring socials/not the best players along for raids.
    Before those people could "pay" for a "carry" with giving raiders priority for loot, so there was an incitement to bring them along.
    Now those people are "benched" and often don't get to do the raids as their is no material gain for bringing them along.
    In the 2 guilds I have been in since this new system the "wall" between the raiders and "the rabble" in the guild has become air-tight because of this.

    And I don't believe for one second that "fairness" was the reason that Blizzard changed the loot system.
    Blizzard simply did it because of all the tickets, fair or not, about loot. And each ticket costs Blizz money.

    So to sum up: The loot system is more "fair" now, but on the other hand the good players have even less reason to carry bad players than they had before, to the detriment of the bad players.

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