Reddit AMA with Ion Hazzikostas

[Mafic]

I wouldn't know, I rerolled Holy two days after the launch.

I ask the same question whenever I see one in the world. I certainly discourage RLs from inviting them.

ouch.

GG.

At least Holy and Disc have some identity at the moment.

Poor Shadow.

[Kazdum]

Honestly by playing game and talking to my friends and guildies who are immensely happy to play BfA and love everything about it, I can feel that actual players and forum posters are far apart LoL.

I dont have a problem with people enoying the game, but the game core design has flaws that no other Blizzard game had, it's just a fact

[FelPlague]

I love how you can't figure out that I just said they could have launched with two. I don't really care how long they last. Hell just rotate the same two. Launching with two would have been the best choice, avoided the PR they are enduring, and placated their crowd. It is okay to admit they aren't perfect.

Everyone gets it. Blizzard does no wrong in your eyes and we are all morons. Even when they themselves recognize they should have done better.

They could have launched with two.
but the game would have launched in september instead of august.

[Zoldor]

or they can stop being stupid and bring Azerite in M+.

The argument of "we don't want people to farm M+ for azerite gear" doesn't work when people are currently farming M+ for heroic and mythic equivalent gear for literally every other slot.

I would welcome this and enjoy targeting some Azerite gear outside the raid. People are going to over farm no matter what. Let em burn themselves out, only the top end is going to do it and they aren't going to quit because a lot of them profit from streaming.

Even if they unlocked this post the launch of mythic to keep the world killers and raid should be best folks from going crazy I'd welcome it.

[vsb]

I dont have a problem with people enoying the game, but the game core design has flaws that no other Blizzard game had, it's just a fact

I don't see any major flaws in BfA. What are those flaws?

[Torto]

No way, 5 days per month of content from warfronts? But that's... TOO MUCH CONTENT FOR ME TO HANDLE! Omg blizz please nerf your content.

Treat it like a world boss you do once a week. It's side content for loot, nothing more.

[iamthedevil]

I don't see any major flaws in BfA. What are those flaws?

lol yeah this sudden QA happened because their are no flaws. Did ya not read anything?

[MakeMeLaugh]

it takes 6+ months to fix THOUSANDS of things.

its not "1 problem that took then 6 months to fix"
its "oh yeah this thing took 6 months to fix cause there were thousands of things before it"

- - - Updated - - -



5 days now, 10 days come 8.1 15 days come 8.2, 20 days come 8.3....

We don't have 5 days now, we have 1. So with 5 warfronts that's 5 days.

[Deleted]

Are you implying that legendaries were inherently bad? I don't think so. The only bad part about it is difference between good and bad legendary setup. That was fixed and even more fixes are incoming. Azerite gear got everything good about legendaries and removed bad parts. I don't think we would return to pre-Legion playstyle with simple stat sticks in every slot. That's so old.

The only bad part about legendaries was the fact that with bad RNG you could get majorly fucked. The positive was that almost every legendary was interesting and fun. With Azerite armor they kept most of the RNG but almost none of the effects are interesting or fun. Complete opposite of what you're saying; as it is right now azerite armor has none of the positives of legendaries, but the negatives are still there

Yes, I know they said they're going to "make more interesting traits and remove boring ones". They said the same during beta. And their answer to the RNG was that they'll just balance the pieces properly, something they're god awful at. Pardon my skepticism

[hyphnos]

I don't see any major flaws in BfA. What are those flaws?

Even Hazzikostas isn't denying the flaws. Why the fuck are you ?

[The Stormbringer]

I wish he'd answer this one.

The banner on r/wow had "Beta for Azeroth" as of yesterday, which I see was updated since. The general polish of the game is noticably lacking, especially in stark contrast to Legion which offered:

class hall stories

main story

multiple artifacts (the unlocking grind still added SOMETHING periodically)

suramar questline

compelling pre-launch event

new and engaging world quests

brutal, new, m+ concept

a new class

new class abilities

legendaries

i'll leave the subjectivity about "compelling storyline" out of this, but mention... yea, so far the activities feel 1. inefficient for what we're supposed to be doing and 2. a tangent from the story we signed up for.

This was all at launch, and for the most part functioned as advertised.

The lack of polish + lack of content in BFA thus far is largely not subjective, I had the full list here but it's fairly obvious... as the novel parts of BFA are really rehashes or simplifications of previous systems, aside from the misbalanced warmode, everything existed in an expanded form in the game before.

People have even speculated that there was a bug with the bug tracker, as things that were constantly posted about (just an example but druid bear artifact appearances on the character that unlocked them have only 2 animations, and this has been a bug since the mage tower was put in), videos posted, people commenting, etc.

What is your response to this clear lack of polish + innovation of the expansion?

[Awsyme]

it takes 6+ months to fix THOUSANDS of things.

its not "1 problem that took then 6 months to fix"
its "oh yeah this thing took 6 months to fix cause there were thousands of things before it"

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5 days now, 10 days come 8.1 15 days come 8.2, 20 days come 8.3....

Sure. But these problems appeared in alpha/beta. Or, if I'm being honest, at last years Blizzcon. I remember watching the launch video with my guild and almost everyone going 'Oooohhh! Oh. Huh. Islands and a BG? Maybe? Hummm. Well... okay I guess.'

As one youtuber commentated, I can't imagine anyone internally got up each morning excited to do either of them. They could have been fun. Warfronts would have made a great pvp zone for example that would have been wildly popular. Islands could have been slower, or competitive where you race other teams to the center and try to claim a reward.

As it is the team stuck to their guns from a year ago and the results feel very underwhelming.

[Sastank]

I loved his example of Hunters have mobility as a strength. Yeah that's great and all but even if you place an Elemental Shaman and a BM Hunter next to each other and they don't need to move while hitting a target dummy the BM hunter is going to come out on top.

Another 5%-8nerf for BM needed

[Khaza-R]

I dont have a problem with people enoying the game, but the game core design has flaws that no other Blizzard game had, it's just a fact

Oh you poor thing. You never experienced release D3.

[FelPlague]

We don't have 5 days now, we have 1. So with 5 warfronts that's 5 days.

we have 2.
one to do bosses and rares
one to do warfronts
one to do contributions, but well that takes literally no time at all so..

- - - Updated - - -

Sure. But these problems appeared in alpha/beta. Or, if I'm being honest, at last years Blizzcon. I remember watching the launch video with my guild and almost everyone going 'Oooohhh! Oh. Huh. Islands and a BG? Maybe? Hummm. Well... okay I guess.'

As one youtuber commentated, I can't imagine anyone internally got up each morning excited to do either of them. They could have been fun. Warfronts would have made a great pvp zone for example that would have been wildly popular. Islands could have been slower, or competitive where you race other teams to the center and try to claim a reward.

As it is the team stuck to their guns from a year ago and the results feel very underwhelming.

I find it funny you think no one fines islands or warfronts fun.

[Deleted]

it takes 6+ months to fix THOUSANDS of things.

its not "1 problem that took then 6 months to fix"
its "oh yeah this thing took 6 months to fix cause there were thousands of things before it"

- - - Updated - - -



5 days now, 10 days come 8.1 15 days come 8.2, 20 days come 8.3....

Thousands? Have they got that many things wrong? Oh wow...

On a serious note: They don't have 1 designer on their team. They have multiple. They can fix multiple issues simultaniously. Some things that needs fixing are quite major, which people are surprised stuck throughout all of Alpha and Beta, and are still apparent in Live. Of course they can't fix them all, but so far it feels they are more focused in bringing new and additional features to a game instead of putting focus in fixing it.
Secondly, you missed my point: They could've skipped a lot of backtracking and fixing if they would actually do proper game design. The current game design of many areas (Warfront included) were bad from start, which now forces them to focus on it more and put more time on it, which they could've avoided.

[Kelathos]

I've been saying for a while that Ion is overly fixated on micromanaging every experience in the game, from a developer standpoint, and his M+ answer demonstrates that. He's trying to micromanage RNG with 'bad luck protection" because of "feels bad", which is a bizarre and overly OCD perspective to take from a design standpoint. They've had systems in place that WORKED just fine, and they've removed them for this, which doesn't work, feels bad, but he's gonna "try to do better in the future". He's on a wild goose chase to some mythical world where drops will satisfy some weird level of perfection he thinks he can create. Which is even more bizarre in that WoW is entirely loot based. Diablo 3 is too, and we all saw how throttled drops worked previous to Loot 2.0.

Defined goals are not a bad thing. Too much of WoW is RNG based, and they're creating the "feels bad" moments at the same time Ion is trying to fix them.

Just bring back badges already. They work. Let a player grind towards a reward they can choose. It's all a waste of time.

WoW already had a much better system in place for YEARS.

Tokens and currency. Bad luck protection = players roll up to the shop and just grab what they need to complete their gear.

Maybe Blizzard should stop pruning good systems, and fix their mistake by restoring them.

[FelPlague]

Thousands? Have they got that many things wrong? Oh wow...

On a serious note: They don't have 1 designer on their team. They have multiple. They can fix multiple issues simultaniously. Some things that needs fixing are quite major, which people are surprised stuck throughout all of Alpha and Beta, and are still apparent in Live. Of course they can't fix them all, but so far it feels they are more focused in bringing new and additional features to a game instead of putting focus in fixing it.
Secondly, you missed my point: They could've skipped a lot of backtracking and fixing if they would actually do proper game design. The current game design of many areas (Warfront included) were bad from start, which now forces them to focus on it more and put more time on it, which they could've avoided.

You didnt play Alpha did you?

[Awsyme]

we have 2.
one to do bosses and rares
one to do warfronts
one to do contributions, but well that takes literally no time at all so..

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I find it funny you think no one fines islands or warfronts fun.

hey - if you do, go wild. Enjoy. I'm possibly missing the guildies doing islands for enjoyment or the hundreds of forum posts praising the system. I'm sure the selfie camera had it's fans too...

[FelPlague]

hey - if you do, go wild. Enjoy. I'm possibly missing the guildies doing islands for enjoyment or the hundreds of forum posts praising the system. I'm sure the selfie camera had it's fans too...

Because the people enjoying them are... just that enjoying them.
they are enjoying the islands, they want to do them, so why waste time telling us on the forums?
people who dont like them arnt doing them... so they are not doing them, and therefore on the forum complaining about them...

I dont think you understand how human emotions work.