Preach Developer Interview with Ion Hazzikostas - Patch 9.1

[Goat7]

The devs do understand and are tuned to the feedback.
That is good to see.

lol this might be joke of the year 2021.

[Swnem]

warcraftlogs, Sludgefist heroic, boomkins.

200-202 ilvl: 4192 DPS 75%, 4956 DPS 95%, 5665 DPS 99%.
209-211 ilvl: 5041 DPS 75% (+20%), 5916 DPS 95% (+19%), 6421 DPS 99% (+13%)
221-223 ilvl: 6909 DPS 75% (+37%), 7802 DPS 95% (+31%), 8319 DPS 99% (+29%)
227-229 ilvl: 8407 DPS 75% (+21%), 9149 DPS 95% (+17%), 10101 DPS 99% (+21%)

1 ilvl does NOT equal to 1% performance. It seems that Ion has no idea about his own game.

I think he meant the stat budget of the ilvl increase. They tried to budget talents, conduits, sould binds and legendaries.
With that said, i would rather you used a different encounter because Sludgefist has extra damage taken phases, so that is gonna inflate the numbers and make them scale madly.
That also happens in the first boss of the mists dungeon. I have hit 30k dps on it, i'm sure better geared players have done more. Keep in mind the duration of those fights gets dramatically shortened as the burst in those phases gets multiplied and the boss just dies faster.

Now, i am not disagreeing with you necessarely. That data is showing over 100% damage increase in 30 ilvls, but i'd rather you showed a fight like destroyer before burning the man.

[FelPlague]

Scenarios did lead to gear, so wrong.
MoP challenge mode had cosmetic rewards, mounts, titles, and teleportation. It also wasnt a wholly seperate feature needing large sums of dev time but rather an addition to an already existing thing: dungeons.

Scenarios did not, they lead to currencies which could be used for gear. almost like soul ash leading to legendaries...
Mop challenge mode had cosmetic rewards. just like how torghast has cosmetic rewards!
also yes it was a wholly seperate feature, it took them a fair bit of work to get it set up.

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https://www.wowhead.com/news/mists-o...e-modes-206398

Challenge mode gave some of the best looking transmog gear. Plus some other useful stuff for the expansion.

Bored-ghast gives you jack beef nothing. And Soul Ash is dumb.

I'm just saying for running Bored-ghast and waisting your time in that useless place, you should be rewarded at least something cool. Not saying it needs to be top end gear, of course not.

Torghast gives you one of the only mounts to work in the maw
it also gives you a title, a pet, and a toy that transforms you.
and also we are getting much more added to it in 9.1. reminder that challenge mode wasnt even in launch of mop.

[Kathranis]

I'm just saying for running Bored-ghast and waisting your time in that useless place, you should be rewarded at least something cool. Not saying it needs to be top end gear, of course not.

Torghast does have cosmetic rewards, though I do think it needs to have its own unique sets.

[Ankaran]

I think people are mainly talking about PvP, where the gap is significant I've heard (don't quote me, I hate it PvP the plague).

I’ve never heard such nonsense... the difference between DPS taking ilvl in to account is extremely disproportionate (I almost choked when he said skill was playing the biggest part in that).

Whilst I agree that skill is a varying factor indeed, all you need to do is look at the top 1% of players in each Ilvl bracket and it becomes fairly evident to see that Ilvl is worth far more than 1ilvl = 1%dps.

To illustrate my point further consider the following logs across the top 1% of players averaged through the entirety of heroic castle Nathria ...

Elemental shaman Ilvl 200-202 = 4596.39
Elemental shaman ilvl 224-226 = 7076.78

Shadow priest ilvl 200-202 = 4692.11
Shadow priest ilvl 224-226 = 7787.41

Fire mage ilvl 200-202 = 4408.60
Fire mage ilvl 224-226 = 7512.64

Outlaw rogue ilvl 200-202 = 4505.23
Outlaw rogue ilvl 224-226 = 6861.83

Balance Druid ilvl 200-202 = 4683.06
Balance Druid ilvl 224-226 = 7737.62

These are just some examples with some classes affected worse by this disparity than others, this is not a 22-24% difference!!!!!!!!!

In the instance of Balance Druid it’s a 65.21% difference for fire mage it’s a 70.4% increase. I thought Ian could do maths? Wasn’t this the guy who worked out that c’thun was mathematically impossible to beat before nerf / the beginning of his career as a game developer?

[Ankaran]

I’ve never heard such nonsense... the difference between DPS taking ilvl in to account is extremely disproportionate (I almost choked when he said skill was playing the biggest part in that).

Whilst I agree that skill is a varying factor indeed, all you need to do is look at the top 1% of players in each Ilvl bracket and it becomes fairly evident to see that Ilvl is worth far more than 1ilvl = 1%dps.

To illustrate my point further consider the following logs across the top 1% of players averaged through the entirety of heroic castle Nathria ...

Elemental shaman Ilvl 200-202 = 4596.39
Elemental shaman ilvl 224-226 = 7076.78

Shadow priest ilvl 200-202 = 4692.11
Shadow priest ilvl 224-226 = 7787.41

Fire mage ilvl 200-202 = 4408.60
Fire mage ilvl 224-226 = 7512.64

Outlaw rogue ilvl 200-202 = 4505.23
Outlaw rogue ilvl 224-226 = 6861.83

Balance Druid ilvl 200-202 = 4683.06
Balance Druid ilvl 224-226 = 7737.62

These are just some examples with some classes affected worse by this disparity than others, this is not a 22-24% difference!!!!!!!!!

In the instance of Balance Druid it’s a 65.21% difference for fire mage it’s a 70.4% increase. I thought Ian could do maths? Wasn’t this the guy who worked out that c’thun was mathematically impossible to beat before nerf / the beginning of his career as a game developer?

[Swnem]

lol this might be joke of the year 2021.

Did you listen to the interview? Knowing and actually delivering is not the same.
Never before have i seen them recognise that the design didn't quite hit the mark this early in the cycle and sharing how they will tackle it next expansion/s.

The joke here is your mindless hate.

They shared that they basically want to have narrative paths and choices but not necessarely connected to each other and permanent progression systems rather than a new one every expansion.
These, in theory are very good things.

Shadowlands has been lost for a while. It was too late to change course. The conversation on what the next expansion is/will be being discussed this early is exactly what we need.

[Aggressive]

Living up to the username I see.

You're way up there, while I'm down here. Meet me in the middle okay?

I just want raiding to be more rewarding than it is right now.

I apologize. Maybe I came off a little too harsh. I do agree with you. Raiding right now is NOT rewarding enough IMO. The amount of loot to drop per boss is asinine. Some would agree with my statement and some like the way loot is, which is stupid. But they are entitled to their opinion. I just know this expansion started off fun but the developers quickly threw a monkey wrench into the party and quickly fucked that up..........royally. I got super damn lucky to have friends who said we will teach you about the +15 dungeons and help you time them all so that you can upgrade your gear. However I know some players are not so lucky as I was and are still struggling. So IMO the valor system is straight shit as it is right now.

[Jahaga]

At the same time it's also bad design to allow players to flip conduits on a per boss basis. Just take M+ as a case study: Once started, you can't easily swap out talents or gear unless you also want to take the time to step out of the dungeon and then rezone in.

I wouldn't say it's bad design to allow swapping conduits around as often as you want. You can swap talents around how often you please. Yeah, your talents are locked while inside a M+, but this makes sense and you're not punished for changing talents between dungeons.

The limitations on switching conduits within the same soulbind should be less of an issue moving forward as the soulbind trees are expanded in 9.1.

Less of an issue, but still an issue. Just redesign it to work like talents and be done with it. It doesn't make sense to punish players for optimizing their soulbinds based on the content they're doing.

[Zorachus]

LOL at the white knights simps, defending Shittylands and Ion on this craptastic expansion.

I waana see WoW go back to MoP type design. Eliminate all "systems" like Artifact, Azerite, Covenants, Netherlight Crucibles, Necklaces, Essences, Corruption, Soulbinds, Anima, Conduits, Soul Ash, etc...

None of the above should be in WoW.

Nuke it from space, it's the only way to be sure.

[Argorwal]

M+ absolutely does bring a lot more to the table, but like I stated above, it also dampens raid progression. There's just not much incentive to go get AOTC other than an achievement/mount/title that a good amount of people pay for anyways.

There's got to be a way to synergize the two forms of endgame content. As of right now, raiding offers nothing in comparison. So instead of waiting once a week for a few months to progress through a raid, you're gonna come to a halt and ditch the moment you get your one or two BIS items.

Is this an indication that maybe the “raiders” weren’t actually all that interested in raiding in the first place?

[bloodykiller86]

Remove conduits, put in actual cosmetic rewards for Torghast, reduce ilvl rewards for M+, and give us real valor points for raids. That's it. That's all you gotta do, Ion.

His comment about borrowed power so far is the only step in the right direction here. How they choose to move away from it and what they'll replace it with is a careful step they'll have to make, however.

why the hell would you lower ilvl rewards from m+?

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Is this an indication that maybe the “raiders” weren’t actually all that interested in raiding in the first place?

facts raiding is a challenge in of itself. i do it for gear but also because its challenging and its fun!

[Raugnaut]

My thoughts...

Tier sets - I miss the power bonus granted from Tier Sets. I do not miss the class-specific Transmogs though.

Ilvl increase - First, 1 ilvl is 1% stronger then the previous ilvl - So a 20 ilvl difference is slightly above 22% overall power increase. And keep in mind that it's not just 22% increased damage, but also 22% increase health and healing as well, meaning that a player with 20 ilvls on someone is at least 44% stronger.

Borrowed Power - Everyone hates it. Yes, giving new abilities every expansion is not sustainable. However, upping the power of said abilities akin to what we saw with Ranks IS sustainable and very nice.

[Niwes]

TL;DR: They're happy with everything bar maybe DKs, Holy Pala Dmg and Torghast. Everything else is just about perfect.
9.1 is gonna be the same as 9.0, and 9.2 is gonna be just like that as well - but hey, Tier Sets, they're gonna do the trick! Other than that, stick around and stay subbed till 10.0 because that's when everything's gonna be great.

you forgot „buy a lot of tokens until then and give us 7-9 bugs for free by doing nothing. thx“

[Sorshen]

Valor system needs adjustments.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Well that is most certainly true. In the +10-+13 region are a lot of bad players. You can quite easily beat them even though you have 10-15 ilvl less.

He said 20 ilvl, and no you people are just as clueless as he is. I saw players like Venruki, Cdew, Zilea, all former blizzcon champions go through the gearing process with their alts and they couldn't win games when they had 200-210 ilvl playing against fully geared players.

His statement is outright moronic. If you have two players of equal skill, one at 206 ilvl and one at 226, the one with 226 will win 100 out of 100 times. And even when the 206 player is a lot more skilled they still lose, I actually saw it happen live on twitch.

[Niwes]

LOL at the white knights simps, defending Shittylands and Ion on this craptastic expansion.

I waana see WoW go back to MoP type design. Eliminate all "systems" like Artifact, Azerite, Covenants, Netherlight Crucibles, Necklaces, Essences, Corruption, Soulbinds, Anima, Conduits, Soul Ash, etc...

None of the above should be in WoW.

Nuke it from space, it's the only way to be sure.

yeah, sign that. but if you kill the treadmill design and

- stop recycling of gfx and content
- remove borrowed power systems
- remove cheap UI and DB based „systems“
- stop cheap shit story
- remove all the „reward systems“
- put in effort and time
- stop milking the cow mode
- stop doing cost effective development
- increase product quality
- stop bad writing
- stop producing cheap shit stuff to create a longer „feature“ list
...

so, if they finally do ALL of this, i ask you 2 questions:

1)
how can you differ WoW Retail from WoW Classic TBC then ?

2)
and most important: behind WHAT they should hide their „smart cash grab supporting game design“ then ?

heh?



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Valor system needs adjustments.

you mean stuff like making it rather useless for 80%+ of the players ? stuff like that ?

[Stormspellz]

Learn some maths. It isn't.

reading comprehension, he made two statements that directly contradict each other not me

[callipygoustp]

"Players loved X, and we loved X, so we're not doing X."

It does certainly feel that way at times.

[Fuiking]

My health issues made me take a break from WoW.. and what im seeing here.. im not missing much