Preach Interview with Ion Hazzikostas

[Ealyssa]

Ion, if you go with permanent covenants - you should remove covenant dps spells

What about not removing them ?
Players are so scared of choices, it's a good thing. Having something adding weight to the player decisions is exactly what the game needs.

Covenant aren't RNG, the spells aren't RNG, the soulbounds aren't RNG. Nothing in that choice is hidden. YOU HAVE THE CHOICE.

If you choose because of lore, it's fine
If you choose because that spell will give me 0.7% DPS more on that specific fight, it's fine too.

You are free, you can choose the best DPS, the lore you prefere, whatever. BUT you have to choose. You can have every lore and every spells.

[Demeisen]

What about not removing them ?
Players are so scared of choices, it's a good thing. Having something adding weight to the player decisions is exactly what the game needs.

Covenant aren't RNG, the spells aren't RNG, the soulbounds aren't RNG. Nothing in that choice is hidden. YOU HAVE THE CHOICE.

If you choose because of lore, it's fine
If you choose because that spell will give me 0.7% DPS more on that specific fight, it's fine too.

You are free, you can choose the best DPS, the lore you prefere, whatever. BUT you have to choose. You can have every lore and every spells.

And if I choose the best DPS, what happens if:

(i) My covenant's ability is nerfed in week 2/a hotfix/patch 9.1, invalidating the rationale for my choice?
(ii) The ability/talent my covenant synergises with is nerfed in week 2/a hotfix/patch 9.1, invalidating the rationale for my choice?
(iii) My spec is nerfed in week 2/a hotfix/patch 9.1, and my covenant choice isn't optimal for any of my other specs, invalidating the rationale for my choice?

These aren't purely hypothetical, because analogous situations have already happened with similar systems in earlier expansions. If I choose a covenant for lore, or for cosmetics, I have a reasonable confidence that my choice won't be invalidated by factors outside my control. If I choose a covenant for performance, I have no confidence whatsoever that this will be the case.

And frankly, I play with people who aren't the top 1%, but who do enjoy raiding, and who don't want to spend weeks upon weeks wiping on the same encounters. The current evidence from logs shows that there is very little divergence in players' talent choices in raiding. I expect that, for anyone who cares about performance, the same will be true of covenant choices. That means I'm not going to feel special, or different, because I'm a Venthyr Death Knight, because 90%+ of other Death Knights I interact with on a regular basis will also be Venthyr Death Knights. What, exactly, is the upside?

[Sorrowseer]

Ion is a stubborn cuck. He knows the system will fail but still just goes with his shitty design. Worst fucking dev ever.

How childish, everything is his fault alone? Grow up, blame the whole company like a real adult would ^^

[Tortuga234]

Imagine if your PC breaks.
Who do you call to fix it, a plumber, or a tech specialist? You cannot blame the plumber for being worse at fixing your PC, that was just his choice of profession. Of course he can switch his profession and become a repair technician, but that would take too much time and effort. Just stick to the plumber and in turn when your toilet gets all messed up - that will be his true time to shine!

People WILL get benched over underperforming due to their covenant choice. Not because of the covenant itself, but because of the output. Choosing between two DHs to bring to a Single Target encounter you choose the one that has an ST covenant, not AoE.
Just like you don't hire a plumber to fix your PC.

[RyudoTFO]

Ion argues that when the choice is not easily changed, pug leaders can't necessarily judge your performance based on that choice.

Oh boy, and how they can.

I don't know what to think of the team responsible for the gameplay. Are they very idealistic, to the point of self-delusion or just not very smart?

They have literally over 15 years of player feedback to look at, regarding systems that reward power, be it permanent or temporary. Sure, you could kill Nefarian without worldbuffs back in vanilla, yet people still would get them like their life depends on it and now they think that a class/spec/covenant combination that is only good for one specific situation would still be viable for anything besides THAT specific situation in the eyes of elitist and the silent majority who just blindly follows the meta?

I think the only meaningful choice should be replacing that dev team.

[Asotcha]

Funny how Ion mentioned before that their design choice for legendary acquisition in Shadowlands was inspired by the failure that it was in Legion, but he uses one of the glaring issues with Legion legendary acquisition to justify his stance on "meaningful choice". He's contradicting himself, probably willingly, because he thinks everyone else is too stupid to be right about his current design of Covenants. Yes - current - because as many people have said before me, watch him do a 180 a week before 9.3 when subs have dropped and they need new bait to reel in return customers.

That part of the interview where he said that was so stunningly brazen that I actually said 'Bullshit' in real life as I listened to the interview. How could he possibly say that the Covenant system is less of a choice then the one for Legion artifacts, when our class order hall quests were all left alone and not rolled back, let alone us being able to get each of the artifacts for our class and change them as easily as changing our spec, once we got them unlocked? I can't believe he even tried to slip that past everybody, and he absolutely should have known better then to try sailing it past Preach, of all people.

[Starscream101]

Why do we need things like Covenants in the game anyways? I don't want Azerite gear, or Essences, and holy hell no Corruption gear, and no Artifact weapons or Legion legendaries, etc...

Why can't WoW just go back to MoP style of gearing? You want better gear, you need to run Raids, LFR gets ya the basic easy stuff, Normal better, Heroic good gear, and Mythic the top of the line gear. And then the casual players have dungeon runs to gear up, which should give you good gear, but not great Raid like gear. And that's it, that's how you get the better gear, besides the lower iLvl stuff from questing and simple tasks to do in the world.

No more AP grind, or Azerite grind, or having to farm for this or that, with a weekly lockout. Stop all of that stuff.

And good PvP gear all so.

[Hibiki]

This is fake discussion. They will implement broken system again. Players will rage and quit.
Acquisition legion legendaries was fixed at end of expansion, way too late.

[thilicen]

yet another "oops, we decided to change some stuff after you pre-purchased"

Yes, the game you pre-purchased before it was finished changed. Someone call the press.

[rrayy]

I haven't watched it, but I do think Ion cares about the game. We put so much pressure on him, and wasn't there people making forum posts asking him to step down? Tweets aswell? Because of how bad BFA was? I honestly wouldn't be blaming Blizz or him. Blame Activation.

Blaming Activision proves ignorance. Again, Activision does NOT MAKE DECISIONS FOR BLIZZARD. Activision and Blizzard are two completely separate companies running independently of each other, but live under one roof. Blizzard makes it's own decisions. Period.

- - - Updated - - -

yet another "oops, we decided to change some stuff after you pre-purchased"

Ion, if you go with permanent covenants - you should remove covenant dps spells, make movement utilities equally useful in pve AND pvp -> it's harder, costs more and generates players that chose vampire theme and don't get invited

HOw dare they decide to change things during their testing phase, called Beta! Actually the oops is on you for immediately buying the game before it is finished and actually goes live.

There are no permanent covenants. You are free to change yoru covenant if you want. God forbid there be an actual choice and there to be consequences for it. Player entitlement is getting worse and worse by the day.

This is nothing more than throwing a tantrum because they don't cater the game solely to you.

- - - Updated - - -

I am on the side with Ion, there should be choice, there should not be a "best at everything spec". But that being said if the balancing of covenants do fail then they are open to making changes, it did not seem like Ion was "iron-willed" about it. I would rather blizzard launches SL with covenants the way they are, choices matter, consequence of your choice etc... and hopefully they will be able to balance and tweak as needed if we do start to see "LFM must have Venthry ability". Yes in the end maybe blizz falls flat on their face and balancing everything to do with covenants will fail- but I would rather give blizzard the ability to try first.

Finally, a reasonable take. But it falls on the deaf ears of an increasingly entitled fanbase who want everything to be given them and are unwilling to have consequences for their choices. When there are no consequences for choice being made, then it isn't a choice.

[Segus1992]

Its not hard to understand when you understand that it is.

The problem is that 40% of the playerbase assume they are in the top 1% or at least talk as like they are.

That'd make it a 40% problem though, which I'd say is fair but maybe a bit exaggerated.

- - - Updated - - -

Ion is a stubborn cuck. He knows the system will fail but still just goes with his shitty design. Worst fucking dev ever.

I really love Ion for having the balls to go through with this, despite the feedback from people like you (even though most of it is a lot less childish). He's a good dude, and really the people who will be punished the most if it doesn't work out is Blizzard - which they're obviously aware of.

[Vorkreist]

Ion is a stubborn cuck. He knows the system will fail but still just goes with his shitty design. Worst fucking dev ever.

At this point it just looks funny. Its as if they do these things out of spite. They know how bad those things are received since they get bombarded with negative feedback from alpha and on. Whats that you don't like these design decisions ? Fuck you then. Go and stew in those things for an entire expansion while we come in interviews and say how much we value player feedback. World of Warcraft: Ion's Revenge.

[Vellithe]

Personally I would like to see NO power abilities being locked behind unchangeable choices, and while he is correct that this choice isn't as heavy as comitting to ONE spec for an entire expansion like Legion, it is still not good game design for players like me and many others.

That said, I can understand WHY they are introducing Covenants anyway, because there are alot of players who do not care about that 1% damage gain, and the system besides the power choices is pretty cool. Also, props to Ion for actually accepting to be interviewed when he KNOWS that he will be hammered with rough questions and criticism on the topic, not only from Preach but other interviewers as well. He could just have said "no thanks, I'll pass".

Guess I will just have to accept and suffer through choosing the wrong covenant for that 1% power, and hopefully the rest of the expansion is enjoyable. Legion was, besides legendaries and having to play one spec for 2 years, a great expansion.

1% is fine! The problem is it's often not 1%. Specially not when there are multiple choices, all stacking. Usually big different spells like covenants are tend to have up to 5% difference in performance between them - considering the talents we've had until now. Then that's bound to be the same between conduits - and since they're stuck there, you'll suffer even worse on off-spec (since a spec-specific conduit will just be a gray item on the other spec).

So two 5% losses is not the same as 10% loss, more like 9.75% loss, and each subsequent loss becomes smaller. That's not to say that someone who's consistently making the wrong choice will not be 30-40% behind before we even take into account how well they're playing.

I personally can ignore up to 5% loss if that allows me to play the way I have the most fun with. 95% of theoretical max is still close enough that I can make do with skill alone. 10% and it's starting to look like it's no longer viable. 15% and I'll either drop or change. If we get close to the 25-50% of Legiondaries/Corruptions, it's an either you have them or it's best to not even play.

In the end, no one outside of world first guilds should really care about the 1% difference. It's meaningless for players that aren't engaging on content with strict performance checks (like undergeared day one Mythic raiding or undergeared world first highest key levels). It's about the same as a racial. The vast majority of the player base doesn't wipe to 1% less damage, they wipe to eating avoidable damage or losing 10%+ performance because they're using abilities at the wrong times.

However, I don't believe the difference between covenants will be 1%. It will be far more than that, and that scares me.

[Elim Garak]

Here's how it will go with Covenants if Ion doesn't take his head out of his ass:
Leveling:
1. They release covenants as is
2. Mythic raiders will choose based on the best covenant for their roles, leveling multiple characters to get all 4 Covenants - to suit particular encounters that favor different Covenants.
3. Hardcore players will choose based on the FOTM - some of them will end up with a Covenant they don't like thematically. Because power.
4. Normal players will choose either on what they like or what is FOTM.
5. Casuals will choose mostly what they like (they are the majority, btw)
Level 60:
1. Everyone who picked what they liked and not FOTM will get bullied in pugs.
2. They will complain on the forums as they should.
3. Since they are the majority - Ion will heed.
Patch 9.1:
1. Ion rebalances Covenants to appease the masses.
2. Mythic Raiders shrug - they already have all the Covenants covered
3. Hardcore players who picked FOTM - are fucked, those who don't like the theme of picked Covenant - fucked twice over, those of them like the Covenant that got buffed - fucked trice over. Also, they get bullied and ridiculed in pugs.
4. Normal players - mixed response
5. Casuals are happy
6. Hardcores are the most vocal of the minorities - they will start a real storm over Ion's decision to screw them over. Ion will heed.
Patch 9.2:
1. Ion tries to rebalance once again but fails
2. More cries on the forums
Patch 9.3:
1. Ion implements a catch up system that allows you to change Covenant one time only - like a spec.
2. They admit it was a broken system and they have learned a lot from the experiecne and will try to improve in the next expansion.
Next expansion announced:
1. Covenants 2.0 - called Clubs, exp theme - Dance The Evil Away

[chyide]

Like 98-99% of your DPS will come from your class+spec abilities and their interactions with legendaries, not your 30s-2minute cooldown covenant abilities. There really is no reason for *anyone* to be upset. I was bothered at first because the ability I want isn't the covenant I want, but then that's the choice isn't it? Do I care about the aesthetic more or how I play my character more? I like that choice, it isn't that bad.

[DookuDookuTree]

I don't understand how they can focus on "balancing" as the have said is extremely important and hand out so many options at the same time, they are making balancing a nightmare. imho even currrent simple 3 choice talents breaks the game.

[HCLM]

Like 98-99% of your DPS will come from your class+spec abilities and their interactions with legendaries, not your 30s-2minute cooldown covenant abilities. There really is no reason for *anyone* to be upset. I was bothered at first because the ability I want isn't the covenant I want, but then that's the choice isn't it? Do I care about the aesthetic more or how I play my character more? I like that choice, it isn't that bad.

What your assumptions are based on?

In the history of WoW there was never an active bonus talent gained from other sourxe than your own character that was doing almost no dmg.

It is completely opposite. Most of your dmg is coming from borrowed powers, like covenants.

[chyide]

What your assumptions are based on?

In the history of WoW there was never an active bonus talent gained from other sourxe than your own character that was doing almost no dmg.

It is completely opposite. Most of your dmg is coming from borrowed powers, like covenants.

I've been playing it for quite some time now: in this expansion, borrowed power comes from 1. legendaries (which you will be getting earlier than in any expansion history) and 2. interaction between your class+specialization abilities and covenant soulbinds (each covenant has 3 very competitive options and swapping between them is easy), the actual covenant abilities themselves (both the covenant ability and class ability) are pure flare. Basically, no matter which covenant you choose, you can select one of the three soulbinds that best meets your needs for the content you are doing at that time and you will always be working towards your legendaries. In other words, the real DPS modifiers are available to everyone, because the actual covenant ability is extremely insignificant.

[sugarfree]

Like 98-99% of your DPS will come from your class+spec abilities and their interactions with legendaries, not your 30s-2minute cooldown covenant abilities. There really is no reason for *anyone* to be upset. I was bothered at first because the ability I want isn't the covenant I want, but then that's the choice isn't it? Do I care about the aesthetic more or how I play my character more? I like that choice, it isn't that bad.

Lol. You haven’t seen the warlock necrolord’s spell then.

[Niwes]

Hmm, followed the whole discussion. Everything is said on the first 5 pages. The fact that most of it repeats 10 pages again, just shows up how many ppl got why this system will fail.

The interview itself was all ok. The complete god damn nature of this stuff is simply that everyone and their grandma understand that this system is not good for the game. and even Ion showed this between the lines (i.e. the self countering Legion statement ppl mentioned here).

But on the same time Ion obviously can not say „but this system caters more towards playtime and share holders, thats why we stick with it“.

So, thats that. Its simple a natural problem. All is said here and in the interview. It will happen and Blizz make their profit they calculated or have to learn that it costs em more in player loss than it was worth. Time will tell. But i for myself will not go with em.