PCGamer Ion Interview - Make Dungeon/Raids Satisfying, New Battle.net Launcher

Ion: So we destroyed loot drops and our players will to play by removing a system that didnt need to be removed (warforge/titanforge) and making loot much less common.
Ion: So in order to fix this system that we broke we will introduce, at a later date (maybe) a BRAND NEW** system to fix the system we broke allll the way back when we removed badge gear.
Ion: It will not be a badge/token gear system though, something new.. better... we listen to you

Hard for me to believe any words from Ion based on some of the disjointed responses received during BfA

Originally Posted by brigada

"Ion thinks they can do more to make the experience of running dungeons and raids feel more satisfying when you don't get a specific item you were hoping for."

A SPECIFIC item? Ive done two back-to-back 10/10 HCs without ANY loot at all that's just ridiculous. How about 7x m10's without any loot?

I get that they want to make getting loot feeling more rewarding and epic and what not but this is bs

I stopped running M+ as it isn't worth the effort or time to get pretty much nothing.
I've switched to leveling alts and getting them through the 3 others for the zones story lines.
I've tried to run an alt through Torghast to get BiS memory and ash for the lengedary. I got to layer 3.. pulled two trash packs then hearthed out. Too bored.

I like the story, hate the time gating, and no loot drops.

Originally Posted by Doffen

But the low amount of anima in dungeons and raid is a hot topic. And to increase the amount significantly might be on the block for an incentive to do them and it will be some sort of a no loot reward.

Your analogy is maybe a right one for you(and I like it) but to me that analogy does not work because I think gearing is spot on atm.

Increasing the amount of anima you get is a good contender for what the devs might have in mind. As an example, I don't want valor vendor with gear as good as what you get from raid and m+. As catch up, with few ilvl behind, fine, but nothing more than that. If we do get some sort of vendor however, I bet the currency will be:

Anima

It’s a hot topic but it’s also another completely different one.

I won’t be happier if I’ll receive the same (zero) amount of loot but 350 anima instead of 35, I cannot buy loot with anima. I’m not doing M+ for anima (no one is, of course).

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Originally Posted by det

Agree.

Whatever goes as a "community" - the never speak with one voice. NEVER.

But maybe that is the big thing. You listen to all these voices in the community like:

-gearing is too fast
-gearing is too slow
-I want flying now
-flying needs to be removed
-covenants suck as they are
-covenants are fine
-feature xyz is the worst ever for me
-feature xyz works fine for me


etc...

...and they you just pick whatever....and you instantly listened to "the community". Come to think of it the "community" in relation to games is the word that makes me instantly vomit and I hate it more than life itself.

Finding a good balance in a 200% gear based mmorpg like WoW is, is a difficult task.

Sometimes I wonder if they would again take this gear > all road since day one, if they could start from scratch again.

Originally Posted by chiddie

It’s a hot topic but it’s also another completely different one.

I won’t be happier if I’ll receive the same (zero) amount of loot but 350 anima instead of 35, I cannot buy loot with anima. I’m not doing M+ for anima (no one is, of course).

It is the same topic entirely, because what was said is that they don't want you to do dungeons and be disappointed when you don't get loot. That does not mean they talk about increasing the amount of loot, but they want to make it more satisfying to do them.

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Originally Posted by Glorious Leader

A vendor with gear as good as you get from raid and m+ is exactly what this game needs.

Strong disagree. It is not what the game needs since it now has close to perfect design when it comes to loot.

A catch up is okay, but having the game going vendor mode is going to make the game really boring. Going into dungeons and raids knowing that you will get what you want in the end anyway is not really what the genre MMORPG needs. It breaks ANY immersion that gearing up has to offer. A PvP vendor is fine because you can't target items through doing Battlegrounds and Arenas, while for PvE you can actually do that. That boss drops that, I'll go and do that.

Imo.

Originally Posted by Doffen

It is the same topic entirely, because what was said is that they don't want you to do dungeons and be disappointed when you don't get loot. That does not mean they talk about increasing the amount of loot, but they want to make it more satisfying to do them.

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Strong disagree. It is not what the game needs since it now has close to perfect design when it comes to loot.

A catch up is okay, but having the game going vendor mode is going to make the game really boring. Going into dungeons and raids knowing that you will get what you want in the end anyway is not really what the genre MMORPG needs. It breaks ANY immersion that gearing up has to offer. A PvP vendor is fine because you can't target items through doing Battlegrounds and Arenas, while for PvE you can actually do that. That boss drops that, I'll go and do that.

Imo.

Since you do m+ basically for the loot, whatever reward is not loot related it won’t make players “satisfied”.

You like the actual loot management, I don’t, neither of us can do much about this.

Originally Posted by chiddie

Since you do m+ basically for the loot, whatever reward is not loot related it won’t make players “satisfied”.

You like the actual loot management, I don’t, neither of us can do much about this.

That is true, we'll see what they come up with

Originally Posted by Aerisot

Ion's interviews always crack me up, especially when he talks about listening to the community.

If that was true, Conduits wouldn't be so awful.

Listening does not = caving to your every demand. Listening means they merely hear what everyone has to say and use it as part of the decision making process. You thinking something is awful does not mean it actually is as other players and devs disagree with you.

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Originally Posted by det

Agree.

Whatever goes as a "community" - the never speak with one voice. NEVER.

But maybe that is the big thing. You listen to all these voices in the community like:

-gearing is too fast
-gearing is too slow
-I want flying now
-flying needs to be removed
-covenants suck as they are
-covenants are fine
-feature xyz is the worst ever for me
-feature xyz works fine for me


etc...

...and they you just pick whatever....and you instantly listened to "the community". Come to think of it the "community" in relation to games is the word that makes me instantly vomit and I hate it more than life itself.

People need to stop equating listening with "Give me everything I want" because that isn't what listening is. Listening is merely hearing all the feedback and choosing the course of action that they think pleases the most people. Caving to message board demands will never lead to pleasing the most people.

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Originally Posted by aceperson

is ion and his management team just a bunch of pure idiots?!

"Ion thinks they can do more to make the experience of running dungeons and raids feel more satisfying when you don't get a specific item you were hoping for."

JUST GIVE US THE LOOT WE EARNED! if we go in to a 4 boss dungeon and only get 1 or 2 pieces, that isn't proper distribution. it should be one piece of loot PER BOSS that is given at the end (and no, i don't mean one piece per boss for each person). and raise the amount of loot from raids from 3 pieces per 20 people back to 5 pieces per 20 people. it's so freaking simple! STOP TRYING TO REMAKE THE WHEEL EVERY FREAKING TIME!

This is player entitlement at it's worst. you did not earn loot. You earned a chance at getting loot. BIG difference. IF it instantly gave you loot, you would run each dungeon once and never again. What you want is TERRIBLE design.

If I recall correctly, Ion became director during the middle of Pandaria. One of the first things he did was to get rid of tokens as he didn't see the value of them.

Before that people were running dungeons to get the tokens so they could get better gear. After the change, there was no point in running said dungeon.

but the most noteworthy aspect was Ion mentioning that more can be done to make dungeons and raids feel satisfying even when not getting a specific piece of loot that run.

Bring back badges. At least then we can work towards a specific piece while waiting for a drop. It would also make heroic dungeons relevant again as a way to get badges instead of immediately dying off as people progress to mythics.

Originally Posted by rrayy

This is player entitlement at it's worst. you did not earn loot. You earned a chance at getting loot. BIG difference. IF it instantly gave you loot, you would run each dungeon once and never again. What you want is TERRIBLE design.

i'm not being entitled about this. i'm not saying give us all the loot we want or even shower us in loot like they did in legion and bfa. what i'm saying is we used to kill raid bosses back in wod and before the shower of loot came and we got 2 (around 10 people) -5 (around 25 people) pieces of loot for a kill and now we get 3 per 20 and we used to get one item per boss which is now reduced to 2 per 3-5 bosses if you time a key or 1 per 3-5 bosses if you don't. we ARE earning the chances at loot that we aren't getting. you got hung up on the literal meaning of my phrasing instead of taking the context into account.

So with daily questing having no rewards, callings give empty bags of gold, torghast rewards absolutely nothing, anima redirection rewards nothing, command table rewards nothing, queen's conservatory (or whatever other covenants have) rewards nothing and they think the problem is with Dungeons/Raids rewards?

Originally Posted by AtomR

So with daily questing having no rewards, callings give empty bags of gold, torghast rewards absolutely nothing, anima redirection rewards nothing, command table rewards nothing, queen's conservatory (or whatever other covenants have) rewards nothing and they think the problem is with Dungeons/Raids rewards?

What do you want conservatory to give us? Because atm it gives us materials, pets, cosmetics and mounts with no effort.

Should it give power as in gear? Then it will be either low ilvl gear which is useless or it will become "mandatory" if the gear is valid.

I'd love either a Valor point vendor or Valor point ilvl upgrades like we had in MoP and WoD. Have each item dropped in raids and dungeons be able to be upgraded up to 2 times for a max of 7 ilvls, IE from 200->203->207 or 207-210-213 etc.

If Blizzard wants the absolute ilvl cap to remain at 233 they can just prevent loot from generals and denathius Mthic from being upgraded.

It'll also serve as a soft nerf to content as people upgrade their gear over time. But upgrades should be limited, so make each upgrade cost like 250 Valor with a weekly cap of 500 so you can only fully upgrade 1 item every week.

Additionally it'll serve as an incentive to run LFR or heroic dungeons for people who are already outgearing content if they make it a reward for using the group finder.

My sub runs out next week, and I'm already fed up with the loot drought. Two weeks of 10/10 N, one week of 6/10 HC and at least 5 M+ runs a week - for nothing, except a headpiece, where I'm already rocking my leggo lul. If it wasn't for vault/pvp gear, I'd have been hard stuck in 180 ilvl or so.

Honestly, &*#@ this #$&%

Originally Posted by Unlimited Power

Additionally it'll serve as an incentive to run LFR or heroic dungeons for people who are already outgearing content if they make it a reward for using the group finder.

Please no. I don't want to do content that I overgear and is behind me just because of maximising grind....

I don't mind the rest, but don't incentivize doing trivial stuff.

Too bad Ion's a bitch.

Ion and his fellows didn't like to see the majority of the players running 1 x M+15 for the weekly in S4 BFA, so they had the bright idea to decrease loot to make people play more. Sure, they call it "more satifying experience" but it's just a Diablo inspired grindfest. And they have achived that, plenty people in the guild run more than 30-40 M+ dungeons per week. It is satisfying indeed, but mostly for Ion, who's going to introduce that to the Activision board as great "player involvement". Until lots of people will burn-out and he will blaim it on the end of the pandemic. It is clearly not satifying at all for the non-meta classes who have to spend lot more time looking for a group.
Ion is all in for a promotion and a bonus in 2021! Hurray!

Originally Posted by Kumorii

Please no. I don't want to do content that I overgear and is behind me just because of maximising grind....

I don't mind the rest, but don't incentivize doing trivial stuff.

Obviously it wouldn't exclusively be available from heroic dungeons or LFR. The entire point of this thread is finding some worthwhile reward for players not getting loot from PvE content, so it'd have to drop from raid bosses and M+ as well, but for people farming Renown where they don't really need gear in heroic dungeons etc, it might serve as a nice alternative incentive.

Originally Posted by Kumorii

Please no. I don't want to do content that I overgear and is behind me just because of maximising grind....

I don't mind the rest, but don't incentivize doing trivial stuff.

How bout just don't fucking do it if you don't want to. People like you are exactly the reason why the rest of us can't have nice shit.

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Originally Posted by Doffen

It is the same topic entirely, because what was said is that they don't want you to do dungeons and be disappointed when you don't get loot. That does not mean they talk about increasing the amount of loot, but they want to make it more satisfying to do them.

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Strong disagree. It is not what the game needs since it now has close to perfect design when it comes to loot.

A catch up is okay, but having the game going vendor mode is going to make the game really boring. Going into dungeons and raids knowing that you will get what you want in the end anyway is not really what the genre MMORPG needs. It breaks ANY immersion that gearing up has to offer. A PvP vendor is fine because you can't target items through doing Battlegrounds and Arenas, while for PvE you can actually do that. That boss drops that, I'll go and do that.

Imo.

You could always just not buy anything from the vendor...