Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth

[Celista]

Actually, the reason why raiding is dying is :

1/ The design of the classes and battle system is more solo oriented than group oriented in their gameplay, as it used to be back in the pre wotlk era,
2/ The relevant raids are designed with hard limitations related to the number of players required to complete them,
3/ For mythic raiding, you actually need 20 people that have the same skill level.

The combination of all these factors make raiding in wow an antisocial experience. Because due to the fact the gameplay is more and more solo oriented even in raid, 1) the swift completion of said raid is more based on the individual skill of the players rather than teamwork, and 2) as such, as the number of players in M raiding is hardcaped, you basically need to replace your underperfoming players to progress instead of allowing their skill level to grow while practicing (as it was the case in old MMORPG where raiding worked well, namely everquest, FFXI or wow vanilla, you could carry learning players in those games).

It really isn't a problem with the players; The issue is with how the content is designed (and I m not even talking about the fact that due to the oversimplification of the battle system in modern MMORPG, the difficulty must lie elsewhere in the encounters)...

In old mmorpg bringing more players to a raid wasn't a liability as it can be in the modern one, because back in the day you could give the key roles to a few key players who knew what they were doing and tell the new guys to make themselves useful by doing lesser tasks in the raid. It's something you cannot do in moderns MMO and the first raid in wow where things changed was during sunwell in TBC.

I disagree with almost everything you said. I don't see any evidence regarding class design being more solo oriented and raiders don't care about solo content anyways, most raiders are motivated to raid because they care achieving things that showcase that they are better than everyone else (achievements, raid mounts, mythic gear, server/world rankings). #2 and #3 have been true for most of the history of the game. Content design is likely relevant but developers have been good about listening to player feedback and designing raid content based on that feedback; the raid design/content has generally been considered to be of good quality by most of the playerbase for the last two expansions.

I think it's simply due to player burnout. Younger gamers aren't flocking to the MMORPG genre and raiding is time-consuming, the game's core playerbase is aging and with children and work schedules raiding can be difficult to commit to.

[Crutos]

"They don't want to undo class pruning as much as wanting to add unique class abilities."
"Some classes don't necessarily need the abilities from their artifact weapons."
"Giving classes new abilities usually involves giving them something that they need, and after awhile it leads to everyone feeling the same."

So the entire philosophy of class design in the current expansions is asking themselves "what is actually NEEDED by the class/spec", instead of "what differentiates this class'/specs playstyle/gameplay from the rest, and what makes it fun to play?"? A skill or passive might add fun mechanics or changes to the core rotation but since that's fun and not a necessity for the class/spec to work/function, blizzard thinks it is good design to prune that away and only keep/add (but lets not fool ourselves into thinking they will actually add something new) what a class actually needs in order to be barely functional?

That's is a glaring issue with current design, so because something is not on a need by need basis blizzard thinks it's redundant?
What kind of lazy people are designing classes at blizzard? Did they think "oh overwatch is very popular, lets apply the same design philosophy to classes in WoW!"..
When did FUN and INTERACTIVE get removed from the equation of class design? Where did complexity go?
Why does blizzard think we want these horribly simplified classes that have maybe MAX a total of 18 abilities with 4/5th of them being really really situational 1m+ CDs that does something boring like increases your haste by X% for 5 seconds.
Some of the more interesting ones are then giving much longer CDs because we shouldn't have fun too often right? Like Army of the Dead.. 10 min CD. No point in using this outside of raids or the occasional World PVP.

The team wants to double down on strengths rather than emphasize weaknesses.

So in a match-up between a ranged class with Mobility as a strength and a melee where mobility is not considered a strength it becomes a rock/paper/scissors game where you just lose as melee and win as ranged by default because you don't have the toolkit as melee in this scenario to actually outplay the "strength" of the other class.
what ever happened to "bring the player not the class". Oh right, blizzard just gave all classes everything, then decided it was a mistake because it homogenized classes, removed almost everything from some of the classes and gave others a ton. Like mages insane mobility, warlocks barely anything. without compensation.

[Lucetia]

We are getting Paladin, I will make a bet on it lol.

I didn't say they would or wouldn't. :P

I was referring to this part you said:

they are being tight lipped about it because they don't want Alliance cry babies to shit themselves.

When I said "Like they did when they saw Zandalari Druid forms?" Because I heard so many people complain that it was Horde only and Alliance got nothing unique.

[Nexsa]

Q: Do you guys like the color green?

A: Ah, well. Well, green, it's something in the spectrum, it's something we look at and it's there, but it's not something we look at often.. *5 minutes later* and that's why green is alright.

[Deleted]

I disagree with almost everything you said. I don't see any evidence regarding class design being more solo oriented and raiders don't care about solo content anyways, most raiders are motivated to raid because they care achieving things that showcase that they are better than everyone else (achievements, raid mounts, mythic gear, server/world rankings). #2 and #3 have been true for most of the history of the game. Content design is likely relevant but developers have been good about listening to player feedback and designing raid content based on that feedback; the raid design/content has generally been considered to be of good quality by most of the playerbase for the last two expansions.

I think it's simply due to player burnout. Younger gamers aren't flocking to the MMORPG genre and raiding is time-consuming, the game's core playerbase is aging and with children and work schedules raiding can be difficult to commit to.

Classes are solo oriented because most of what you re doing in raid is micromanaging your output while handling the boss abilities (that are mostly positional based nowadays) in order to maximize said output.

In no way your gameplay is oriented toward your group as it used to be when raiding was at its best and everybody wanted to raid. As an example, as dps, you never think about not pulling aggro of the tank nowaday.

While wow has always been more solo oriented than older mmo, most of what made wow a team based game during vanilla and tbc in its battle system has been pruned out over the years. Thus making raid some sort of underwhelming afterthought for nostalgics (Argus is a good exemple of underwhelming raid encounter, but it is so due to the limitations of the battle system that isn t deep enough anymore).

[tripleh]

Maybe if they stopped with all the class changes every expansion. They could focus on actual content like heritage armor for current races. I feel as if the whole class tuning is just there as filler. Something for Ion to throw in there for an excuse slack off without doing any actual work. You can already tell that the devs are treating the game as if its an old worn out truck that only has a few miles left on it. Ion seems like hes waiting for something to open up just so he can leave.

[Onikaroshi]

Maybe if they stopped with all the class changes every expansion. They could focus on actual content like heritage armor for current races.

Art team is plenty busy every expansion, and trust me, it's not redesigning classes, you wouldn't want them doing that. Instead it's, you know, making all the new art assets that com with ANY expansion.

[Celista]

Maybe if they stopped with all the class changes every expansion. They could focus on actual content like heritage armor for current races. I feel as if the whole class tuning is just there as filler. Something for Ion to throw in there for an excuse slack off without doing any actual work. You can already tell that the devs are treating the game as if its an old worn out truck that only has a few miles left on it. Ion seems like hes waiting for something to open up just so he can leave.

I have a feeling that other players might disagree on your definition of "actual content", myself included.

[Sundreamer]

"When 8.0 launches, the traits on artifact weapons will be disabled. The weapon and relics will stay, but not talents." oh, gee...so i'm gonna get fall dmg again as sub Dx

[Unholyground]

I didn't say they would or wouldn't. :P

I was referring to this part you said:



When I said "Like they did when they saw Zandalari Druid forms?" Because I heard so many people complain that it was Horde only and Alliance got nothing unique.

Oh ya lol, well people seem to freak out about everything at this point in WoW.

[Venivici]

Personal loot is a terrible idea. Guilds will just take all the loot and redistribute it via loot council. Blizzard can ofc curb this by not making loot tradable, but this also is s terrible idea, because then you might wind up getting 5 rings or multiples of stuff you already have. It's gonna backfire bad.

I agree that having only personal loot is a terrible Idea. Individuals joining a guild raid team are agreeing that loot shall be distributed in a fashion that benefits the group and not solely the individual. It is understood by many raiders that joining a guild raid team is to adopt their loot rules. Master looter allows consideration of performance, readiness, attendance, viability of gear for a specific class, etc. with the consent of the group.

[Terahertz]

"If a talent choice is taken by everyone and mandatory, then it could shift to baseline or change it."

If only they actually practiced what they preach. Fists of Fury stun is mandatory as can be for WW monks in PvP yet it's not made base line. So many things that were mandatory in Legion haven't been made base line.

[Crutos]

"If a talent choice is taken by everyone and mandatory, then it could shift to baseline or change it."

If only they actually practiced what they preach. Fists of Fury stun is mandatory as can be for WW monks in PvP yet it's not made base line. So many things that were mandatory in Legion haven't been made base line.

When blizzard makes a statement you have to look at it in its extremely literal meaning. It technically 'could' but it wont.

[therealbowser]

Just now noticing the comments about "WoW communities". That's actually kind of exciting. I'd love to hear more about them.

[Stockers]

They won't. That's the entire point of removing Master Loot. A guild just starting out on BFA raids can just funnel all the loot to the RL and do LC/any other method.

The interview specifically mentions that they're targeting split runs and other loot funneling methods.

Cool, so a loot system perfect for slowing down a small % of raiding guilds, but us average Joes who are still working through Mythic raid, long after the world 1st/realm 1st challengers have stopped and unsubbed (if they even pay a sub), we're getting shat on when it comes to loot. Loot is already a delicate subject in raiding. Can't wait for the shit storm to start.

[RWJ]

Mythic 20 killed many guilds. As a player who has always raided at the highest difficulty, Mythic 20 was the beginning of the end of my top-end raiding experience. It is simply too much work to keep a roster of 25 skilled people and as a result, guilds fall apart. Me and many of my fellow guildies decided to go "casual" for Legion. Not because we didn't want to raid Mythic, but because it was too much roster work. If Mythic 10 was an option, we would do it in a heartbeat. That is my request to the Dev team, please add Mythic 10 to the game!!

And I'm sure Blizzard can find many ways to incentive Mythic 20 over Mythic 10... (gear, mounts, achievements). I just want to raid Mythic 10!

[Vaze0]

Awesome!