Reddit AMA with Ion Hazzikostas

[Mafic]

Is watcher trolling people at this point? If fun was their metric of success then they wouldn't have rushed out the expansion launch and patch 8.1 would be heavily talked about.

[Deleted]

*The only metric we care about as a development team is whether you're having fun.*


I'm done, i cannot stop laughing. Drink more of your own cool aid Ion....

If that were true then we wouldn't have mobs scaling hard with ilvl.........we wouldn't have world quest ginds for rep..........we wouldn't have time gating on everything.

[Awsyme]

Out of 100 people.

So here is how your logic is faulty

"I asked my 100 american neighbors what the best country in the world is... They all said america, that must mean every single person in the world thinks america is the best country in the world"

You literally are doing the same with islands and warfronts, your guild simply is filled with alot of like minded people who dont like that content, as you all like 1 or 2 types of content that you arei n a guild for.

In this context I'm perfectly willing to accept you and your friends enjoy the content. And taking you all as a sample I'm also perfectly willing to accept there's a lot of players like you enjoying it as much.

But the flip side applies. A lot of us on this forum aren't. Which implies there's a large portion of players not enjoying themselves or doing it purely because they feel they have to.

And if a significant portion of the player-base is having problems with things that are meant to be the major feature of an expansion I'd argue there's a large problem. Now... I suspect nothing I say is going to convince you I'm right. You're happy and see the negative voices on the forums as outliers rather than significant enough to matter. I guess time will tell, eh? If you're right subs will stay up. If we're right the player base will drop quickly and this expansion will be considered another WoD. But what I'd fling out is that if you do have a vocal group here, on the forums and reddit (as well as the majority of youtube streamers) then its worth Blizzard at least trying to allay their concerns. And this Q&A hasn't done a particularly good job of it IMO otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[Gadzooks]

This is how I can tell you have never worked in software before. Broken shit gets released ALL THE TIME that, in retrospect, totally defies common sense. You also seem to think that Ion is aware of every single thing his team is doing at all times and can see all of these details and closely works on all of them. He does not. He tells his managers what needs to get done, the managers tell their workers and then shit gets done. Sometimes those workers forget common sense or don't think fully from the player/end user perspective, and THAT is when shit like this happens. And they don't get fired for it either usually since the issue does not impede from use of the software. If you had ever worked in a software company AT ALL, you would know that shit like this happens on a weekly basis and the support team has to damage control.

People in this community don't seem to understand the difference between user experience issues and actual design flaws. The warfronts thing is a user experience issue. Azerite armor being a garbage system is an actual design FLAW.

Warfronts were a brand new, shiny feature, that was touted HEAVILY in the marketing for the expansion, but a basic thing like what level a character has to be to get into was overlooked in the beta testing and the first initial hours of release, when they should have been monitoring it?

Bullshit!

I don't have to work in programming to know they fucked up, and fucked up hard.

(edited because you're not worth the infraction)

[Zantos]

I...if they were missing 340's in one or two slots... They are already about the 320 requirment, and therefore can still do it...
what the fuck you talking about?
see this is why i dont think you read the actual post.

And this is why I don't think you see the point. Depending on what you couldn't upgrade, you could be below the 320 requirements. I had a guild memmber who still had a 300 ilevel weapon and trinket. With a few other pieces like 325 azerite gear equipped, he wouldn't have been at 320. He had better azerite ilevel wise, but couldn't use the traits so didn't use them. 1-2 are a low ball. Realistically, more had more missing that were not 340. Anyone who was not 320 could spam these. Again, that wouldn't have been just fresh 120s.

So sure, I will concede that some may have been over that 320 ilevel, but my point remains. Fresh 120s aren't the only ones who benefited. People with bad rng did as well.

He still didn't even mention that the alliance will miss out on that. Even if it would just be for alts.

You seem keen on ignoring the nitty gritty and defending their statements. The bottom line is, hes doing a lot of dodging. Just with his latest answer, he didn't explain why the time gating is there or so heavy right now. Just their design philosophy and what they think. Not the why. He gets that players need content they want to keep playing, but didn't tell us why they think time gating things will cause that effect.

This Q&A is a bust. Nothing of real subsistence from them thus far. I had high hopes given how AMA can usually go.

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The only metric we care about as a development team is whether you're having fun.

The problem is, Ion is the type who finds color coding stuff with highlighters and collating documents to be fun...

And - bullshit, Ion. Oure, unadulterated, 100%, undeniable BULLSHIT. Your overlord gushes about MAUs and player interaction numbers during the investor's calls every business quarter. It's abundantly clear what metric the company is focused on.

Obviously. He didn't even address why the time gates exist then instead of content that keeps us engaged and wanting to play.

[bewbew]

This AMA just Shows how addicted this community is. It's time to finally end WoW for the greater good.

Srsly at this Point People are just downvoting Ion for no reason. Downvotes aren't designed as a "I disagree" button.

Pathetic community

I Downvoted a lot of his replies because they are bullshit no-answers or damage control answers, while being incapable of saying "This and this is bad, we are doing that and that to fix it".

The downvote is mine and I will use it as I please.

[tangers58]

Summary-

Timegating? What timegating? We just care about fun.
Warfronts? We understand players think the process of unlocking it takes too long and are going to do nothing about it.
Azerite armor is working as intended and if your 370 gear isn't as useful as 340 then tough shit.
Island Expeditions are fun and engaging content and nothing is wrong.

He manages to do nothing but take softball questions and still can't answer them.

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Although there's a lot of genuinely good questions being asked. Far better than the fluff stuff he normally replies to in a video.

Plenty of good questions being asked... none of them being answered. I'm surprised we didn't get a "Do you agree with me that BFA is the best thing in the world and you are doing a great job"

[Deleted]

I am not surprised, but I am surprised so few answers so far for an AMA.

Even answers are time gated nowadays

[Mafic]

Even answers are time gated nowadays

LOL!

One would think that they would change their approach. Status quo is going to make BFA feel bad.

[Deleted]

He didn't answer the timegate at all. The question wasn't about what if players had more or less time to play. The question wasn't regarding how fast can you gear (and with M+ gearing kinda makes Raid lockout obselete). The question wasn't how much time you had to do WQs.
Out of all the answers he has provided so far, this one was a complete miss from his part.

[Hitei]

If that were true then we wouldn't have mobs scaling hard with ilvl.........we wouldn't have world quest ginds for rep..........we wouldn't have time gating on everything.

Making everything trivial and built for instant gratification is a good way to have fun for all of 10 seconds.

[Gadzooks]

Summary-

Timegating? What timegating? We just care about fun.
Warfronts? We understand players think the process of unlocking it takes too long and are going to do nothing about it.
Azerite armor is working as intended and if your 370 gear isn't as useful as 340 then tough shit.
Island Expeditions are fun and engaging content and nothing is wrong.

He manages to do nothing but take softball questions and still can't answer them.

- - - Updated - - -



Plenty of good questions being asked... none of them being answered. I'm surprised we didn't get a "Do you agree with me that BFA is the best thing in the world and you are doing a great job"

I'm sure he'll sign off in a couple of minutes (5pm yo, Ion doesn't do overtime), and go have some beers with his dev buddies, and high five each other about how he "nailed it".

But I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict a WOD or higher level of exodus from the game.

I don't see how anyone would be satisfied with this AMA in any way.

[Deleted]

Making everything trivial and built for instant gratification is a good way to have fun for all of 10 seconds.

Timegating is different from grinding though. Give players a choice to spend 18 hours a day to grind for e.g. reputation instead of gating it through World Quest for example. Regardless how you do it it won't be instant gratification, but you can dedicate the time you have to either get the reward faster or do it leisurely.

[SoSuMe]

You have a very poor concept of barely.

We know a fair amount of bad azerite traits will be removed, replaced with more active instead of just "10% more damage on this spell"
We know that he has nothing to do with shamans but that they will be getting hopefully fixed in 8.1
we know that island expeditions are seen as a problem for them, and they plan to overhaul reward, system, and mechanics for it.

Holy white knight batman.....Tell us what he really means.

[Mojo03]

They are seriously the most unsatisfying company in every aspect other than art.

[Ragashii]

Making everything trivial and built for instant gratification is a good way to have fun for all of 10 seconds.

and whose fault would that be if the world is undertuned? The player? Who designs the content and releases it? At the end of the day any failings with the game rest with Blizzard and Blizzard alone.

[Socialhealer]

"Finally, on the class front, I'm not sure any class has even been something we'd say is "finished" - there's always room for refinement, tweaking talents to improve unpopular ones or fix rows that feel dead because there's just one dominant choice, fixing awkward mechanical interactions, adding new tools, and so forth. We do have plans in the works for the classes you mentioned, informed by both these communities' feedback and data from the first month of BfA. I do wish we could have gotten to addressing this feedback sooner, and I'm sorry for that - it sucks to feel like you're last in line, but hopefully the end result will be worth it."

if i don't get MoP elemental it's not worth it.

literally copy MoP elemental, lightning bolt on the move, ascendance hits twice as hard, stormlash/AG/healing tide etc.

if i don't get all of those, this shithole of elemental class design in wod+bfa won't have been worth it.

good luck reaching those expectations blizzard, nvm i know you've failed already, fucking losers.

[Gadzooks]

They are seriously the most unsatisfying company in every aspect.

The WoW team, yes. Ion was a bad hire for the job. I have no doubt he's an asset for the company in other roles, but he's doing a piss poor job as game director.

[Mafic]

Making everything trivial and built for instant gratification is a good way to have fun for all of 10 seconds.

No one is saying they want to make things trivial. But wasting players time with a gear upgrade that sits in your bag trivialized the progression of WoW and the MMORPG genre.

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They are seriously the most unsatisfying company in every aspect other than art.

My theory is that they are very insulated bubble company and that they have lost the ability to interact with the outside world. They are very defensive and slow to react to key problems while other companies with less than 20 devs are lightning quick in comparison.

[Ragashii]

I just don't understand why they feel like they have to rework the classes every expansion. It seems like too much work for little gain. Other MMOs have expansions without big sweeping class changes and still have players. I would argue that it is good for the game to pick it up years later and not have to go to external sites to figure out how your class works now. Look at FF, I was away from that game for years and when I went back the class I mained still played the same so I got to jump right back into the action.