Developer Interview - Ion Hazzikostas, Lunar Festival 2019

[sharon420]

Ion, we DO remember Legion and it wasn't very enjoyable at times either. The repetitive grinding was more than boring. The zones are too small. There aren't enough zones. Not flying until half way through the expansion is a bunch of bull. That doesn't make it harder. It makes it more annoying. Especially when people have bought multiple mounts from your online store. We're getting screwed. You've lost more than half of your subs & people will keep leaving. We don't want to repeat the same boring quests every single week to make a necklace increase ilvl. You guys need to look back at WOTK, Cataclysm, & MOP. Those were much better times imo. Most of the guilds I join break up after a few months because people get bored and leave for other games. Sure they eventually come back sometimes but they don't until new patches come out. Then they leave a few months later because of the boring grind. This is costing you a loss in revenue & a loss of players permanently. These island expeditions & mindless "boss" kills in Arathi are just a joke. Just more azerite grinding. Instead of adding more ways to grind azerite. Add more zones, add more dungeons, add more things to do in the world other than looking for azerite. Add more raids at a faster pace. Come on guys. If you are really listening then stop playing the victim & blaming us for being upset. Yes we're upset. We're paying fifteen dollars a month to be bored. I've been here since Vanilla, left to go back to EQ2. I came back for BC and have been here ever since so I've seen the downfall of this game over the years. People I played EQ1 & EQ2 have even stopped playing and it started w/Draenor.

[Seriousdoom]

I see no problem with the content itself, but when it comes to playing your class, its incredibly boring.

The GCD changes they did in BFA needs to be fixed, having to do 1 ability every 1.5 seconds is driving me away from the game, as soon as they added that back in the prepatch my WoW game time per day got reduced by about 90%. It is so, so boring to play the game, that it doesnt matter what kind of content they throw at us. The GCD has to go.

[Echoherb]

I think at this point people on wow forums get angry at Ion no matter what he says. And really this topic proves his point about the internet being negative and hyperbolic compared to the average player.

- - - Updated - - -

"The team wants everyone to be as happy as possible"

This right here is the issue. The focus shifted from making a good MMORPG to making people happy. The game became heavily casualized and a total joke. All the depth is gone. All the RPG elements are gone. Not only is the game as shallow as a puddle in the Sahara, but the guide websites like Wowhead and MMO-Champ make it even moreso.

Making a good MMORPG is what will contribute to making people happy. Whether you like it or not the vast majority of players are likely more casual.

[Beatman]

I think at this point people on wow forums get angry at Ion no matter what he says. And really this topic proves his point about the internet being negative and hyperbolic compared to the average player.

Well, the average players just leave when the game stops being fun. Four of my friends I started BfA with left a few months ago, saying that the game isn't fun in its current state. Their feedback is completely in line with the 'negative and hyperbolic' feedback we can read in the forums.

[crusadernero]

Im happy with BfA overall.

My gripe is the GCD change. I dislike that very much.

[relaxok]

I can’t believe people’s solution for gear rng is just having currency vendors where you buy all your bis gear.

That is the exact thing Blizzard added before that everyone complained about as a casualization.

Now even people like Asmongold want vendors for everything again... hilarious.

[problemed]

I think the best way for them to fix professions like Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring would be to have them craft cosmetic gear. That way it doesn't compete with raid gear, but isn't completely useless like it is now.

[Blur4stuff]

There should be a couple of gear slots that are crafting only. They could add back the relic slot or make up a new one and/or designate a current slot for crafting.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

Stop trying to make the game for everyone The people at the bottom makes the game less complex and deep

[IRobertus]

And for his next performance Ion will pull a rabbit out of his hat! Oh wait you expected a rabbit! How about Azurite 3.0! Whoooooooo

[oland138]

The vast majority of the playerbase are the casuals. They are also the easiest to cater for. Building a game that only appeals to the one-percenters makes no sense whatsoever.

Wrong. It makes perfect sense and they already do it. Mythic raids are for a small portion of the playerbase, and the same content is repurposed for the majority. There is no reason they can't extend this design to more of the game. I think it would be reasonable for them to pursue different realm types.

[Sigxy]

WotLK was the beginning of Wow easy mode loot fest as it is today. Don't get me wrong WotLK was good story Wise but for the rest, was known as the beginning of the downfall of Wow!

Oh yeah, easy mode is when it began, I can agree with that. But the game still had a focus (Dungeons, raids and the PvP). Compare it to now when we have dungeons, raids, pvp, table missions, island expeditions, war front, pet battles, etc... they just seem to throw up a lot of ideas as of late and as we see in this expansion alone, Island Expeditions and War Fronts are being talked about pretty badly. :<

[Pacster]

On the point of the Lunar Festival: if you want all the seven new toys, you're going to have to either have a stockpile of coins from previous years or you're going to have to break out the alts. There are 150 coins worth of new items this year and you can only earn 84 per character each year. Time to break out those alts and run across the world two or three times.

That's the reason I left the game at the end of last expansion. Instead of introducing something interesting or new we get recolors with ever increasing time sinks(everywhere, not just at seasonal events). If they slap it in their paying customers face that a paid designer has to spend MUCH less time on creating something than each player has to spend on getting it, then they don't need to be surprised if players get pissed. Dull, ever repeating and non-challenging grind IS work at the end of the day. We pay for fun...unlike their designers we are not getting paid.
After pets and clothes their new lazy way is hearthstone-toys. We don't need more of it but that is not even the problem. The problem is that mass products like these need to be cheap. If they don't really put work into it then they should not expect players to do so. The "if you don't like it or you would have to spend too much time, leave it and never look back"-formula does not work with a lot of players...and Blizz knows that or they would not keep introducing time sink after time sink since the day they started to measure "ingame time" instead of paid accounts. They know the carrot on a stick and the social pressure of getting something that not everyone has is much, much stronger.
Blizzard crossed my red line there long ago and it's getting more crazy and ot of touch with customers and reality with every expansion.

[Confucius]

Every Q&A is essentially the same. They just change the key words. I bet if someone took one of the Legion Q&A's and changed the names there to correspond with BfA, no one could tell

[Kyphael]

Customers critique game.

Game developers blame the internet communities and say things aren't as bad as they say it is.

I'm going to go work at McDonalds and when I fuck up a cheeseburger and the customer complaints, I'm going to tell him he's being toxic and that we at McDonalds make cheeseburgers for a general taste and not that one specific customer's taste.

Apples and oranges, I know, but same basic idea.

[Constraint]

[*]The team tried to move away from mixing utility and throughput, as putting utility as an option against something that lets you do more damage isn't an interesting choice. [*]The team has pulled away from talents that gave classes utility in an area that was traditionally weak for them. Someone has to be very mobile, someone has to be less mobile. [*]Classes don't have too many abilities anymore, that isn't a problem they are trying to solve. The team is open to moving some talents back to baseline abilities where it makes sense.

I seriously have zero faith whatsoever in his ability as a game designer, reading shit like this. The most fun I and many others have had is from providing utility, and not just everyone doing the exact same amount of damage on average over all encounter scenarios. TBC Spriest is probably my fav iteration of a class/spec in the history of WoW.

But no, that's not an interesting choice, so it doesn't exist anymore. Ah well, thanks for clearing my mind on that one. There was silly old me, thinking it was an excellent and amazing choice. How foolish I have been.

And I'm sure the classes/specs whose class fantasy is to be "less mobile" yet not actually have any positives to make up for these can sleep easier at night knowing that it's intended.

[JacobMarley]

I've never encountered this group of players he speaks about that are the polar opposite to the rest of society.

The ones who enjoy personal, random loot with random stats and overall the most convoluted gear systems of all time.

Ive been around a long, long time in this game and never had I ever heard (when loot was working nice and simply) someone ask for more gear randomisation, or to have our weekly PvP gear predetermined and selected for us.

I suspect it is because this suggested target audience doesn't actually exist, and hence why absolutely nobody I know online or in real life actually plays WoW anymore.

[-aiko-]

words

Nothing in your little rant addressed my problem with your post. They don't always appear to be listening to feedback. They don't always make good decisions. The game is in an awful state right now because of it.

But your post is essentially doing the same thing from the other side, and you don't even realize it. In your anger you aren't even listening to what HE said and made something up. That isn't any more helpful than what they are doing. That is what I am frustrated with in the community.

So you have developers who don't listen to players and players that don't listen to developers.

[Trumpcat]

I disagree with just about every line regarding their design choices. Not because I know better than the devs, but because I don't find the game design in BfA fun. Many threads here and many discussions over the Internet, describe why the game design feels flawed. Bottom line is he is saying to basically wait (pay) through two thirds of the expansion because then it will be made fun. Should it not have released like that?

Yes, I do love the game, which is why I haven't quit like the twenty people from my guild. We are few left and we all agree that if there isn't a clear steer away of the dull design we are seeing BfA will be our last expansion.

I want the game remain successful, but I'm not a masochist, nor I feel like charity for Activision.

[Archmage Alodi]

What?! Did this already exist in game?!

Why would they remove it?!!!

Not that i agree with them but here this is why.