Preach Interview with Ion Hazzikostas

[phattsao]

"they want to give players a more "identity" choice over just "loadout" choices"

This is such a cop out. The real answer is "we want to force people to spend as much time playing as possible to hide the lack of content". It's clear as day that people are going to be switching around covenants, Blizzard just doesn't want everyone unsubbing between patches.

"players whose play style emphasizes player power"

You mean every player in the game? Isn't that the point?

[Easo]

Oh boys my covenant ability did 4.8% of my total damage and my friend's covenant ability did 5.0%. GG UNSUB STUPID GAME.

Please stop.

You cannot make people stop being stupid. Pugs will still do this, no matter how far they are removed from the actual top 1% to whom the small difference actually matters.

Everything on the great altar of "make the pug as easy as possible". To them it does not matter if they are being unreasonable.

[goldentforce]

Oh boys my covenant ability did 4.8% of my total damage and my friend's covenant ability did 5.0%. GG UNSUB STUPID GAME.

Please stop.

Why do you think the difference would be .2% between the two? Go look at azerite, legion legendaries, essences, and corruption and tell which the delta between the variety in each respectively is .2%. If it was .2% no one would be talking about it.

[Clozer]

With how it is currently, its more like ur friend did 15% more dmg than u, while being the same gear, same spec, same skill level.

Yes, also hunters and wl doing 3 times as much damage as anyone else. That's a good bias to go by.

[bledgor]

It always amuses me how much people on this forum forget that Wow isn't just an MMO, and is an RPG. Some of you guys wants covenants/conduits/whatever to be changeable on the fly, that sounds FUCKING AWFUL to me. I don't care if I do 3-5% less dps (more than this is an issue) on one fight over another, or in pvp versus raiding, compared to after every boss fight, whenever i pvp/dungeon/whatever having to change a dozen different things (or at least feeling compelled to because they make it easy).

Having semi permanent choices makes them choices, instead of a pre-event checkbox. I mean if everyone that is on here that complains about being benched because they picked x talent, y covenant, z conduit was actually benched pretty sure no raid would be able to run.

[Tojara]

The interview completely sucked and Ion basically had to arm bar his way in on the end so that he could actually give new information. The first 90% of the interview had nothing new to say, and the same issue kept being reiterated over and over again. Pressing or bringing up the issue about covenants (at least how he believes they're bad) is absolutely fine, but going on and on about them for most the interview just made my eyes glaze over if I'm being honest. At some point I just wanted Preach to shut up and/or move on, because it's clear that Blizzards going to go in this direction in regards to covenants.

You can call people Blizzard apologists or whatever you want to call them, but the majority of Ion's answers about the subject were fine. I've been playing a DK since WoTLK, and I have no worldly idea what Preach was talking about when he claiming that WoD had massive RNG factors for the class, and it was hard to compare himself to other DKs. As somebody who played a DK during every major period of the game and logged with the best of them, I had to basically facepalm, especially when considering he was talking about BRF era, and not the era of HFC where some particularly powerful trinkets were introduced to the game. If he was talking HFC era, he might have had a point, but he wasn't. Regardless of that, there's a history of WoW since the very beginning where Ion (rightfully so) points out that particular pieces of gear or trinkets can skew your comparisons to others within your class. Whatever the point is, comparing yourself is difficult when one guild has universally better players than another, pushing kill times to points where the uptime on particular buffs is massively inflated.

WoWs obsession with RNG procs and systems tied progression really didn't start until Legion, and was essentially baked into the game hard with the last patch of BFA. WoD for as shitty as people might claim (granted PoF was completely broken) was fairly sound class design wise and the best players, were simply the best players.

To me it's obvious they're going to stick with the covenant system and try to balance it to the best of their abilities, whether it's close or not, who could honestly know?

I think there's some extreme hyperbole going around from the pug scene though in regards to what people look for. In pure PUGS I actually doubt people are going to exclude you based on the covenant you choose, just like nobody excludes people based on the essences or azerite traits people pick right now. PUGS literally look for meta classes with high raid progression and/or IO score and leave it at that. Why? Because PUG leaders aren't fucking detectives. If they were detectives they would take some godly shadow priest over pants on head retarded demon hunter, but they don't. Why? Because Shadow Priests have a stigma in dungeons, and DPS DHs are seen as broken.

If Blizzard fucks up the balance and there's some MASSIVE delta between the best and worst covenant in regards to throughput, sure, maybe people will take that into consideration. But if you expect pugs to decline people because they don't have the Venthyr blink to like, skip a pack or something, please let me know what pugs you're doing so I can tell my friends who occasionally pug things where to look. The thought of much organization going into a pug just simply happens, let alone them doing precise skips/pulls that only work if everybody has the exact same covenant.

Obviously it's not exactly the same because choosing a covenant isn't as extreme as some of the examples Ion gave, but the overlying idea is still sound. How many groups on Alliance do people get declined on because they aren't NE so they can do particular skips they saw in an MDI tournament? Like zero. Same idea is likely going to apply to covenants to, although not as extreme as the NE skip scenario. Could it happen? Yeah, it could. Is it likely to happen? No. Pug leaders are lazy and the only way you get your foot in the door with these people is just rolling a good class to begin with, just like it's always been. People in TBC who were bad would LITERALLY look for 1-2 mages when pugging dungeons because mages had the best CC in the game.

TLDR in regards to pug group leaders is simply this;

Meta classes go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Non-meta classes are bad

And it ends at that. Not in the history of the world do they bring up your IO page and see what essences you pick, corruptions you have or azerite traits you pick. Ions example of fire mage = good, any other mage = bad, is exactly how the pug scene works right now. And that very fire mage could have every other aspect I listed above completely wrong and be a vers stacking fire mage, with all the wrong talents, with infinite stars as his corruption of choice.

[Sluvs]

Locking a choice as preach said has never been like this. As preach pointed out, the abilities of covenants are not a sub class, each ability does not have an equal niche. The current system does not enhance or enable the idea that there is value in being a necrolord dk vs a kyrian dk. Each covenant ability is not unique or comparable, how does an ability that just pulls people and do damage for a dk compares to a strength amp or runic power generation which synthesizes with the actual class. As preach continued to point out the consequence, which is what is the ideal blizz wants to make, is not equal for everyone. If someone does not care about their performance, the consequence is meaningless. Whereas someone who just wants to have the best tools so they feel prepared the system has massive consequences. If someone wants to change specs the system has massive consequences. If someone wants to try to perform the best in different types of content(which they should be able to its a mmo) the system has massive consequences. This system does not enable a choice where you decide how you want to play the game, its too minuscule and generalized and the pieces are locked into set bundles. The ideal of diversity of subspecing and the ideal of consequence may be able to be achieved, but it will not happen through this system in my eyes. Massive respect to Ion for doing this though. Shadowlands still looks great and can't wait to play.

I think the main problem, IMO, is that when all the choices are available to you, you will always pick the most optimized one for the situation, taking away your choice in the end. This discussion is getting more and more interesting to be honest, at the start of the conversation I was a little bit more on Ion's side, now I'm not so sure anymore, both side have excellent points IMO.

[Martymark]

"We made a system that is going to screw you over. It's our top priority that it doesn't screw you over. But we aren't changing it."

[Bomba the Shaman]

Oh boys my covenant ability did 4.8% of my total damage and my friend's covenant ability did 5.0%. GG UNSUB STUPID GAME.

Please stop.

If you actually followed the alpha/beta, you'd know that the difference between covenants can go as much as 30% in damage values, depending on the class and spec, which is quite a bit more then 0,2%, I'm sure you'd agree.

[Nagawithlegs]

I think there's some extreme hyperbole going around from the pug scene though in regards to what people look for. In pure PUGS I actually doubt people are going to exclude you based on the covenant you choose, just like nobody excludes people based on the essences or azerite traits people pick right now. PUGS literally look for meta classes with high raid progression and/or IO score and leave it at that. Why? Because PUG leaders aren't fucking detectives. If they were detectives they would take some godly shadow priest over pants on head retarded demon hunter, but they don't. Why? Because Shadow Priests have a stigma in dungeons, and DPS DHs are seen as broken.

If Blizzard fucks up the balance and there's some MASSIVE delta between the best and worst covenant in regards to throughput, sure, maybe people will take that into consideration. But if you expect pugs to decline people because they don't have the Venthyr blink to like, skip a pack or something, please let me know what pugs you're doing so I can tell my friends who occasionally pug things where to look. The thought of much organization going into a pug just simply happens, let alone them doing precise skips/pulls that only work if everybody has the exact same covenant.

Obviously it's not exactly the same because choosing a covenant isn't as extreme as some of the examples Ion gave, but the overlying idea is still sound. How many groups on Alliance do people get declined on because they aren't NE so they can do particular skips they saw in an MDI tournament? Like zero. Same idea is likely going to apply to covenants to, although not as extreme as the NE skip scenario. Could it happen? Yeah, it could. Is it likely to happen? No. Pug leaders are lazy and the only way you get your foot in the door with these people is just rolling a good class to begin with, just like it's always been. People in TBC who were bad would LITERALLY look for 1-2 mages when pugging dungeons because mages had the best CC in the game.

I'm going to have to agree with this. There is a good amount of fear about people being benched over their covenant picks, and while understandable it is very unrealistic. The average pug team does not care what race, trinkets/leggos or talents you have, and unless an ability is absolutely legendarily terrible you very likely aren't going to get uninvited over being a Kyrian Shadow Priest versus a Venthyr Shadow Priest. It's MUCH more likely you're not getting invited because you're a SHADOW PRIEST.

There absolutely are a few abilities that either look broken (Venthyr teleport) or completely useless (Venthyr Mage) and could create a stigma, but the ramping fear that every pug leader is going to be checking Bloodmallet to see how your active ability stacks up when you apply for their group just isn't feasible enough.

A much more concrete criticism is that some people will actively feel shitty playing certain abilities versus others. Not so much "but I won't get into groups!"

[Biggles Worth]

I absolutely love World of Warcraft but I just don't have time for the small annoyances in the systems they're creating. Their existence frustrates me enough already to where I'm just going to not play the expansion, just like BFA.

[beanman12345]

"We made a system that is going to screw you over. It's our top priority that it doesn't screw you over. But we aren't changing it."

When they announce the next expansion they will say "we realized it was a mistake now, but we learned a lot so we can improve the game from the future." Meanwhile they introduce something similar in said expansion or the one just after. This shit is getting formulaic at this point.

[Tojara]

I'm going to have to agree with this. There is a good amount of fear about people being benched over their covenant picks, and while understandable it is very unrealistic. The average pug team does not care what race, trinkets/leggos or talents you have, and unless an ability is absolutely legendarily terrible you very likely aren't going to get uninvited over being a Kyrian Shadow Priest versus a Venthyr Shadow Priest. It's MUCH more likely you're not getting invited because you're a SHADOW PRIEST.

There absolutely are a few abilities that either look broken (Venthyr teleport) or completely useless (Venthyr Mage) and could create a stigma, but the ramping fear that every pug leader is going to be checking Bloodmallet to see how your active ability stacks up when you apply for their group just isn't feasible enough.

A much more concrete criticism is that some people will actively feel shitty playing certain abilities versus others. Not so much "but I won't get into groups!"

And it's not like a disagree with some of the sentiment people bring up either. It's very possible that they could fuck balance up so much that there might be a stigma based on a certain covenant, to which point, I'd agree with some of the fear that people are pointing out in this very thread.

Historically however, people, especially in the pug scene discriminate based on two factors. iLvL and what specialization you play, and it's been like that since the game launched over 15 years ago and iLvL wasn't a thing until WoTLK.

[phattsao]

It always amuses me how much people on this forum forget that Wow isn't just an MMO, and is an RPG. Some of you guys wants covenants/conduits/whatever to be changeable on the fly, that sounds FUCKING AWFUL to me. I don't care if I do 3-5% less dps (more than this is an issue) on one fight over another, or in pvp versus raiding, compared to after every boss fight, whenever i pvp/dungeon/whatever having to change a dozen different things (or at least feeling compelled to because they make it easy).

Having semi permanent choices makes them choices, instead of a pre-event checkbox. I mean if everyone that is on here that complains about being benched because they picked x talent, y covenant, z conduit was actually benched pretty sure no raid would be able to run.

Try running something above LFR and you may feel differently. These aren't 3% differences, they're up to 30%.

Incidentally the system that sounds "FUCKING ALL CAPS AWFUL" to you is the system that's been in place for the past three expansions. At least.

[Runstarr]

-

I think you watched another interview bro.

[Kallisto]

You cannot make people stop being stupid. Pugs will still do this, no matter how far they are removed from the actual top 1% to whom the small difference actually matters.

Everything on the great altar of "make the pug as easy as possible". To them it does not matter if they are being unreasonable.

Then people need to change the attitude of pugs or better yet join fucking guilds. Catering to these people is like catering to the brain dead over the guys who actually bothered to educate themselves. One must never cater to the stupid or lazy even if they make up the numbers.

[Lora]

honestly dont give a flying fuck about what other people think about my covenant choices. I'm fully doing it based on what appeals to me specifically and not choosing the X is 100% increase vs Y is 98% increase bullshit. That is just absurdity.

[Clozer]

If you actually followed the alpha/beta, you'd know that the difference between covenants can go as much as 30% in damage values, depending on the class and spec, which is quite a bit more then 0,2%, I'm sure you'd agree.

You mean the beta where certain specs do 3 times as much damage as other specs? Yes, if this goes live, I won't bother with my covenant ability but with rerolling.

[goldentforce]

I think the main problem, IMO, is that when all the choices are available to you, you will always pick the most optimized one for the situation, taking away your choice in the end. This discussion is getting more and more interesting to be honest, at the start of the conversation I was a little bit more on Ion's side, now I'm not so sure anymore, both side have excellent points IMO.

IMO the ideal ion has is fine but would probably require a more indepth subspec system. A lot of the aspects of the covenant abilities is just damage, and the abilities don't create a feeling of certain covenants excelling in certain situations. As I said maybe the ideals can succeed but I dont think it will happen with how covenants are.

[Tojara]

I think you watched another interview bro.

Oh shit, you're right.

Do you mind linking me to the one where they discussed something new, and didn't talk about covenants for the majority of it? Thank you.