New Ion Hazzikostas intervew

[Dracullus]

^^This guy gets it.

It's funny to see people who have more experience with game playing than game design trying to tell designers how to do their jobs. The player lives in the game space; and will try to exploit the game space. The designer makes the space and tries to reduce exploitation.

You can't switch roles to a designer who likes to exploit.

Well, many people here have this disgusting "I'm best player, best designer, also I'm always right and world shoul.. no, world revolves around me" attitude.

Some thinks that wow is all about mythic raiding, some thinks that vanilla has best design, some hate LFR/LFD, some hate non-queable content, etc.. all opinions from them go straight to trash, because WoW was, is and always will be game for maany different kinds of people.

[glowpipe]

Why do you people keep complaining about EVERY single thing he say or does and still play the game ? complaining won't do jack shit to change anything, but yet you play ? I just don't get it. If you are this butthurt everytime they change something in wow just stop playing

[Pipboi]

"Play the way we want you to or don't play at all."

Okay. That's fine if you want that to be your business philosophy but I'm going to go ahead and choose the latter.

[gcsmith]

Being able to change gear around—to have the trash set, the set for this boss, the defensive set for this boss, in some ways it makes decisions less interesting, because there’s clearly a single right answer for each of those niche situations, versus thinking about the dungeon in its totality and coming up with a balanced solution for that.

"Makes decisions less interesting....so we take away all the decisions and lock you into a single spec/gear for the entire run"

Wut? Does he actually believe this bullshit? What is this unhealthy fixation with taking away options and decisions and choices?

People will just approach it with a different decision space in mind.

And what space would that be? Instead of deciding on gear and making dymanic decisions and swaps on the fly and incorporating THAT into the UI and gameplay, all we'll do is just equip the one, single most-powerful and all around set possible and ignore everything else. There won't be ANY decisions to make besides "Is this drop higher iLVL than what I'm wearing?" or "Is my spec the community approved and tested most optimal"?

What a joke.

He is right, if you can change everything for each pack, talent choices and gear choices are actually less important and interesting.

[burek]

I wonder how many people actually were this kind of minmaxing autismos with a specific gear set for each and every trash pack and boss, and how many are just hopping on the bandwagon, bitching for sake of bitching. Lol.

Same here. I guess most of them are just hopping to bitch

[Onikaroshi]

I think it will be hilarious when the top 100 for Horde locks a full month or more before the one for Alliance

Bout that too lol, 100th horde Argus kill was Feb 5, 100th Alliance kill was Mar 12, over a month and 300 horde kills later.

[Unholyground]

It also seems like a lazy way to not have to create a proper gear wardrobe which we asked for ages ago when gear swapping was far more prevalent.

[clevin]

Wait... is it REALLY any fun to have to get and maintain several different gear sets? Do some of you really find that to the compelling gameplay?

Sorry, but this complaining is idiotic. Ion's right here - it's more challenging and more interesting to think about how to defeat the entire place vs tweaking each encounter. Yeah, that means you won't have your optimal gear each time... you might have to use.... gasp!... tactics and adapt!!

"But my choice!!!" Choice is always limited. To a certain degree, those limitations make things more interesting since you have to figure out how to work within the limits to still achieve your goals. Unless you're afraid of actually thinking about things like that.

[Understarmor]

Exactly this.

Also toxicity is a myth.

no, it's not....

[Santti]

Being able to change gear around—to have the trash set, the set for this boss, the defensive set for this boss, in some ways it makes decisions less interesting, because there’s clearly a single right answer for each of those niche situations, versus thinking about the dungeon in its totality and coming up with a balanced solution for that.

"Makes decisions less interesting....so we take away all the decisions and lock you into a single spec/gear for the entire run"

Wut? Does he actually believe this bullshit? What is this unhealthy fixation with taking away options and decisions and choices?

Honestly, I agree with him. It is more interesting, and I have argued this position before. He isn't taking away choices by removing gear swapping. He is adding choices, you muppet. You have to balance between AoE, single target and survivability now. But what gear balance you take with you in this dungeon, with this group, with these affixes and difficulty? The choices are actually meaningful now.

Gear swapping is not good gameplay. It's just hitting a different macro for situation X Y Z. What kind of choices does that promote, when the choice is more often than not, obvious?

[Karamok]

Wait... is it REALLY any fun to have to get and maintain several different gear sets? Do some of you really find that to the compelling gameplay?

Sorry, but this complaining is idiotic. Ion's right here - it's more challenging and more interesting to think about how to defeat the entire place vs tweaking each encounter. Yeah, that means you won't have your optimal gear each time... you might have to use.... gasp!... tactics and adapt!!

"But my choice!!!" Choice is always limited. To a certain degree, those limitations make things more interesting since you have to figure out how to work within the limits to still achieve your goals. Unless you're afraid of actually thinking about things like that.

The insinuation in your argument is that gear trumps tactics in every situation when it demonstrably does not. At the upper levels, tactics and skillful play are the keys to success. Gear simply increased the upper limits you could reach.

With the upcoming design the deadliest boss or trash pack and your comp will determine what gear you can wear. What sort of personal and external cd's are available to a class will determine what sort of gear they can wear. While this is no different from Legion, at least with legendaries you can be a liability a few times per dungeon and still shine elsewhere. It's likely in BfA that you'll be geared to deal with being a liability without having the chance to be stellar anywhere else in the dungeon.

For example, imagine if you couldn't swap gear in Halls of Valor Tyrannical, you'd probably have to gear with Hyrja in mind. Some classes can deal with Hyrja using personal cd's and can gear for extra dps. Other classes will have to gear defensively which could prohibit their overall dps output for the dungeon, making them less viable than classes that can do both. I fear that immunities will make certain classes even more desirable.

[trm90]

Can any beta people clarify if blue Azerite armor contains spec specific bonuses, or only the purple Azerite armor that supposedly only drops in raids/m+ cache?

[Katsutomai]

At this point I can honestly say I think Ion, or whoever the hell is making these decisions, is TRYING to kill WoW.

[Beazy]

This will be Ions last expansion. He will be doing a "greener pastures" post within the next 9 months. He has produced three shit expansions. No idea how he still has a job.

[gcsmith]

Can any beta people clarify if blue Azerite armor contains spec specific bonuses, or only the purple Azerite armor that supposedly only drops in raids/m+ cache?

Rare stuff can contain spec specific stuff, depends on the source.

[Jorgee]

People keep saying they want choice, but it's disingenuous because we all know the "choice" providing the most dps will be mandatory, and then they'll force others to do so or be called trash/disinvited. And that's just the kind of environment for toxicity to spread.

[Santti]

This will be Ions last expansion. He will be doing a "greener pastures" post within the next 9 months. He has produced three shit expansions. No idea how he still has a job.

Ion? He became the Game Director after Legion was launched.

And in my opinion, Legion is one of the better ones. If not the best.

[Talon8669]

No man you just don't get it. When you have an option to be ever so slightly in advantage to someone who isn't using it - that becomes THE WAY TO PLAY. Of course you can play casually and do whatever you want, I'm telling you they sometimes have to curb the ways people come up with to play the game because it becomes the way to play. It becomes the meta of running M+ at a high level.

High end guilds actually hate doing split runs. They do it because they get advantage in gear to push into mythic because they race. Method members said they'd be relieved if Blizzard managed to kill it so they don't have to do it anymore. The same way I'm relieved I don't have to collect High-x-stat gear set for 8 targets or more, high-x-stat gear for single target, and high-x-stat for 2 target cleave etc.

This right here. The majority of players don't min/max to the nth degree. They want to throw on their "best" set and just do content. If you curb the ability to min/max it narrows the gap between casual and harder core. Is this good? Many will say yes this is great and many others will say this hurts the game. I personally like it since I don't min/max anymore. Not because I can't or because it's hard, I simply don't because I don't want to and the effect it has is minimal when compared to the people I am playing with and their skill caps; tank pulling slow, DPS more or less uncoordinated.

[Darth Belias]

This will be Ions last expansion. He will be doing a "greener pastures" post within the next 9 months. He has produced three shit expansions. No idea how he still has a job.

Legion was great and so was MoP. WoD's biggest fault was its lack of content and the garrison.

Posts like this make me wonder about the BFA whining's legitimacy.

[vorchun]

At this point I can honestly say I think Ion, or whoever the hell is making these decisions, is TRYING to kill WoW.

Idiots' mantra since Burning Crusade - "WTF, are you trying to kill WoW???!! Yes, I think WoW is dead!!!" How WoW is still alive if it should be dead for 10 years?