Patch 9.2 GamesBeat Interview With Ion Hazzikostas and Sara Wons

Live Posted 2022/02/23 at 1:11 AM by perculia

interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Senior Level Designer Sara WonsPatch 9.2 Design Goals

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

First off, we’re adding a ton of new content. But in a lot of ways it’s carrying forward the philosophies that we pivoted to, in many cases, in 9.1.5 in response to player feedback over the course of Shadowlands. Building a whole new ecosystem, a whole new piece of content from the ground up with those in mind.

We’re bringing back class sets. How will players feel two months into the patch when they want to switch characters or their friends are coming back and they feel like they’re behind with no way to catch up on getting their set pieces? Okay, let’s add a system, the sort of thing we previously patched in down the line, from the start. We have this creation catalyst that players will be able to unlock using currency a couple months in to target and specifically accelerate their acquisition of set pieces, build their own sets in a deterministic, non-RNG way.

We’ve made most of our unlocks account-wide, whether it’s flying in the zone or access to content. In general, just trying to get ahead of what we have been hearing from players in recent years and taking those lessons to heart and building them into the content from the ground up.Untested Raid Bosses

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

Something that’s really fun that we haven’t had a chance to do in quite a while is the final three bosses of the raid have never been seen in the public test realm. They’ve been thoroughly tested internally, but in this zone, full of secrets and mysteries, we wanted to try to preserve some of that sense of mystery that’s been so lacking in this age of data mining and broad knowledge. When players go into the last section of the raid on the third week of the patch, they’re not going to know what awaits them. They’ll figure it out. People will write their guides. There will be YouTube videos. That’s inevitable. But on those first couple of days, it’s going to be a truly novel experience. That’s not something that WoW has seen in a long time.

Beyond that, there are amazing encounters. I think Anduin could be an end boss in most other raid zones, but in this one he’s just a major boss two-thirds of the way through. The team has gone above and beyond with environmental integration on a lot of these encounters. The Jailer fight in particular makes impressive use of very unique gameplay space and elements in the room. But anything more I could say would be a spoiler.More Account-wide Progressionaccount wide skip was added to Zereth Mortis

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

The core character base progression is power progression. It’s getting gear, just getting stronger, that central RPG experience that’s part of what we think players are often looking for when they make a new character. They’ve reached a plateau. They’re done with their goals on one character. They want to experience the journey again with another. If you’re not feeling rewarded by running dungeons and getting item upgrades because you already have it all, that feels like it takes out a big piece of that repeat experience.

If you have to do some content to unlock quests in this area or unlock access to this dungeon or unlock the ability to fly, re-earning those things doesn’t feel like a reward when we ask you to do it the second or third time. It just feels like a penalty we inflict, and that’s not what rewards should feel like.

You have big epic quest lines that go all the way through Zereth Mortis and lead to the conclusion of many of the events in Shadowlands, the fate of the Jailer, the fate of the Shadowlands as a whole. Awesome quests. Once you’ve done them, you the player have done them. We don’t want to make every character, every alt go through those experiences unless they want to replay them. That’s something where we make sure the major unlocks there are account-wide.Gameplay Beyond Power Progression

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

But we understand, and we certainly heard loud and clear from the community, that if we put power that will increase your damage in a dungeon or damage in a raid behind a system, it now becomes mandatory, whether that’s gameplay you enjoy or not. And so having this as something that is, for hardcore power gamers, optional, but still deep in something they can take at their own pace, it’s something we’re trying to do to offer a range of options without pressuring people to play the game in a way they’d rather not.The Min-Max Mentality

For a long time it seems like there was a battle between this sort of min-max mentality. You wanted players to understand that they don’t have to max out their characters, but it always felt like, no, people want to max, and if they don’t, they feel like they’re missing out. Is that the conclusion you also came to?

Hazzikostas: That’s one of the big lessons learned over the course of Shadowlands. It’s a trend that’s present across gaming in general. The metagaming, figuring out what the meta game is. A new game comes out and people want to know about the tier list for classes or characters. Heaven forbid you pick the wrong one. In Shadowlands we set out initially having some options, some rewards that we imagined would be just for hardcore min-maxers, completionists. If you want to chase adding a socket to your gear for a fraction of a percent of damage, or upgrading this conduit for a fraction of a percent of damage, we wanted to give that to people who wanted to go deep on their characters, rather than going broad and playing lots of alts, something to work for, some reason to do it.

We often hear feedback that people are upset when they run out of goals and lack the motivation to do anything. But what we found, to our initial dismay and horror to some extent, is that a much broader range of players than we expected saw this .4% power increase that was behind something they didn’t necessarily enjoy doing as absolutely mandatory. And that’s not the outcome we wanted. The game needs to be fun. You need to log in and look forward to the adventures you’re going to have, the things you’ll do with your friends, the stuff you’re going to explore, the goals you’re going to chase, and not feel like you have a set of chores you have to accomplish before you can play the game the way you want to. As much as possible, we’re pivoting away from that and trying to offer true options without power dictating gameplay.

Borrowed Power and Lessons Learned

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

From the artifact system onward, the fact that things were temporary enabled the team to pull out all the stops with them and make them more immediately impactful, deeper, transformative of your gameplay than they ever would have been if they needed to last forever, if they were all going to be these additive things for your character. Imagine having all your talents, plus your full artifact weapon, plus Azurite powers, plus covenants. At some point it would just be complete nonsense.

At the same time, we recognize that part of an RPG, part of progression is the feeling of growth, of moving forward, of gaining power, and the knowledge that you’re going to leave most or all of what you’re earning behind, it does diminish the sense of accomplishment and growth. These expansions often start with a feeling of loss, which isn’t ideal. Rather than getting something new and exciting, you’re working to replace the old exciting thing you just lost. That’s all stuff we’re heatedly discussing.

We approached Shadowlands systems in a much more structured way that didn’t have open-ended grinds to them, but still allowed for meaningful additional choice and gameplay depth. Looking back and continuing to look at covenant abilities and the way they’ve transformed gameplay, those have been tremendously successful. We’re already hearing players saying, hey, I hope I can keep invoking spirits forever, because I can’t imagine playing a druid without this ability. That’s a sign of success.Cross-faction Guilds are Still a Possibilitycross-faction groupingHall of Fame: The Jailer (Horde)

Ion Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat

There’s certainly a possibility. We know better than to close the door definitively on almost anything. But we want to be guided by feedback.

If we loosen restrictions and allow the formation of social bonds, there’s no way we can ever roll that back. We can’t tell a group that’s been playing together for some number of months, sorry, we decided this was a mistake, you can’t do that anymore.

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Comment by mysticalosSome good points made, but there are some I think are also a little off.

Not testing last 3 bosses isn't going to return any novelty because the fights are still THOROUGHLY documented in journal. Even if they took that away, the abilities are thoroughly datamined. They'd have to encrypt the client beyond dataminability AND kill journal to reach what he's talking about. Even then, That novelty would last all of 5 minutes after the first twitch stream sees fight. Truth of matter is, there is no way to get the novelty of being ignorant 2006 gamers back anymore. All this sentiment is gonna do is result in fights that will no doubt be more buggy or mistuned because internal testing is a poor reproduction of player testing.

Also, another point not touched on at all is something I think they've been guilty of too much lately is still over emphasizing the single player hero experience. today alone, I tried to play with a wow friend doing opening quests. Literally every other quest was "sorry this is personal credit or even personal phase". I'd be standing next to my friend and yet we'd be in different phases on same quest. This is NOT MMO design. I get that they like epic story telling, but it should never ever be at expense of an MMO feeling like an MMO. He literally talks about social bonds in this article when it comes to guilds...
Blizzard, I'm asking you, pleaing with you. This should apply to questing too. Stop making quests that put you in some scenario for 30 minutes separate from the friend you logged in to play with, stop doing outdoor phasing that magically turns your mmo experience into a solo one. This is a design philosophy that's gotten worse in recent years and it needs to be undone. Tell your epic story, but find a way to make it work with your friends, period.Comment by MrXtrmWhat feedback are they waiting for before going through with cross-faction guilds? Like why are we stifling the ability to play with people to hold onto some antiquated faction restrictions? If you don't want to play with the opposite faction, then don't that's a choice, but this rigid locking of who can play with who is a relic of old and needs to go.Comment by VinceVegaWhat feedback are they waiting for before going through with cross-faction guilds? Like why are we stifling the ability to play with people to hold onto some antiquated faction restrictions? If you don't want to play with the opposite faction, then don't that's a choice, but this rigid locking of who can play with who is a relic of old and needs to go.Comment by MakorusWhat feedback are they waiting for before going through with cross-faction guilds? Like why are we stifling the ability to play with people to hold onto some antiquated faction restrictions? If you don't want to play with the opposite faction, then don't that's a choice, but this rigid locking of who can play with who is a relic of old and needs to go.Comment by rxdanSome good points made, but there are some I think are also a little off.

Not testing last 3 bosses isn't going to return any novelty because the fights are still THOROUGHLY documented in journal. Even if they took that away, the abilities are thoroughly datamined. They'd have to encrypt the client beyond dataminability AND kill journal to reach what he's talking about. Even then, That novelty would last all of 5 minutes after the first twitch stream sees fight. Truth of matter is, there is no way to get the novelty of being ignorant 2006 gamers back anymore. All this sentiment is gonna do is result in fights that will no doubt be more buggy or mistuned because internal testing is a poor reproduction of player testing.

Comment by anfz19I don't mind with not testing final bosses. But I do mind that the we still cannot have worldwide raid release.Comment by RavithorWhen it comes down to the min max mentality the problem is how the balance turns out when compounding choices will sway you in one direction or another.

It doesn't matter if all 3 talent choices are within .3% of one another in a bubble. The fact is there are multiple talent choices, multiple conduit choices, multiple legendary choices, and multiple covenant choices. Adding and expanding choices means you will see farther imbalance as power discrepancies begin to grow due to synergies immerging. Frankly the team bit of more then they could chew with the list of legendries that were not designed with talents and covenant spell design in mind. What farther accentuated this problem was conduit choices which feed off talents while other rely on spell that remain unmodified in any scenario. For example Frost DK has a conduit that makes Remorseless winter apply a stacking debuff. This feed off Gathering Storm which makes Remorseless winder do more damage and last longer for each rune spent. Meanwhile you have another choice that gives you a stacking strength buff after frost strike that doesn't feed of any talent choice.

This is why having a singular expansive system is far preferable to having multiple layered system which often seem to create snowball effects causing one choice to lead you down a path. This is what people refer to when they say a system offers the "Illusion of choice". There are event times when the effect is small but dose not require a gameplay pivot. Why choose the choice that offers less power with no change. This is also why passives that act autonomously are the worst as they change nothing about you other then your damage output.

I whole heartedly believe we need sharp systems that keep to the point rather then over bloated choices which create balance issues.Comment by Notrying2449Pretty much confirming that WoW will never improve because they choose to pander to raidloggers and their minmax obsessions, meaning casuals and solo players will never get to enjoy good rewards and power progression because raidloggers cry.

Well they can always buy boost that is, farming gold is factually far more efficient than wasting time with that worthless zeroth Morris gear

Something tells me that isn’t sustainable because they are losing more casuals by the month to better casual friendly mmosComment by nantesfranwhat this game needs is fresh wind. ion has been torturing us with his bad systems-on-top-of-systems for 6 years now.Comment by NymrohdWhat feedback are they waiting for before going through with cross-faction guilds? Like why are we stifling the ability to play with people to hold onto some antiquated faction restrictions? If you don't want to play with the opposite faction, then don't that's a choice, but this rigid locking of who can play with who is a relic of old and needs to go.Comment by WepstarBetter to add cross faction random BG.
Also I remember at siege of Orgrimmar event in BFA there was a possibility for Sylvanas loyal Horde players to kill Horde players that are on Alliance side.

Imagine such possibility in Open World!
For example, in some options Alliance player clicks a check box that he is for the peace with the Horde. And turns on Warmode.
In this case all the Horde players, and Alliance players that also have selected such options, becomes a friends.
But all the Horde players, and Alliance players that select a WAR checkbox, are enemies.

We will have finally 3 teams!
1. Alliance loyal.
2. Horde loyal.
3. Union of the Azeroth (or something), Alliance + Horde.

From development, I think its pretty easy to implement!Comment by crazynick9600More Account-wide Progression - Just more of this please. Think about the systems before you make them. Torghast for example I've done it a few times I'm good. It's not really THAT fun. I leveled up a resto shaman to 60 and then realized I had to do torghast and then just quit. I don't feel like grinding torghast, conduits, legendary drops and all of this over and over just so I can jump into a M+ and be halfway decent. Don't design legendaries behind quests. Make them drop again, make them rare.

I would also like to just see some of these currencies just account bound in a shared pool after a certain amount of time say the next .5 patch. All my alts that are leveled I could just login and its all pooled and i could see i have 10000 soul ash and 2000 soul cinder and boom just spend it right then in there instead of logging on one alt, sending 1 cache over, logging over to another and sending 2 over etc.

Most of these were fixed in 9.1.5 with all conduits to 200 and I definitely appreciate all this but the only thing you need to fix now is in the next expansion don't put these systems into place. Honestly something like Conduits at the beginning and then just allowing you to get them later is fine. No way of getting legendary resources except for running torghast for the 300th time is not fine (Note: Why is tower knowledge still not account bound? Do you actually expect someone to grind out tower knowledge again? Why can't alts just have it done and making running torghast just a little easier.). Running a wing on LFR of castle nathria just so I can get this Legendary ability to drop for my gear...not fun. I get I don't speak for all people but once I've done most of the systems the first time on one character. I just want to level an alt jump in and start grinding gear. Put some systems in dungeons. For example make a crazy dungeon with M+ based on torghast just for fun.Comment by CTEKKwhat this game needs is fresh wind. ion has been torturing us with his bad systems-on-top-of-systems for 6 years now.Comment by IkusameMore BS talk from Ion as he claims to learn this time, even though some of the things mentioned are things he "learned from" last expansion too but kept on doing it.Comment by lovelywazlessons learned from previous expansionsComment by FyJorRangKorthia was almost non-factor for power level but so many players were stuck in there, chasing rares, digging chests for useless conduit farming.
I was really shocked to find out that so many non-raiding casual guildies were doing it like it was mandatory.Comment by BahskaIon Hazzikostas, via GamesBeat said:
But we understand, and we certainly heard loud and clear from the community, that if we put power that will increase your damage in a dungeon or damage in a raid behind a system, it now becomes mandatory, whether that’s gameplay you enjoy or not. And so having this as something that is, for hardcore power gamers, optional, but still deep in something they can take at their own pace, it’s something we’re trying to do to offer a range of options without pressuring people to play the game in a way they’d rather not.Comment by Rivi
I think there is a reasonable fear of cross faction hostility and abuse.

Also, another point not touched on at all is something I think they've been guilty of too much lately is still over emphasizing the single player hero experience. today alone, I tried to play with a wow friend doing opening quests. Comment by DhrallIf you think reading the dungeon journal is anything remotely close to testing a boss, I feel safe in my assumption that you do not have any idea what you are talking about. Datamining og dungeon journal will give you a vage idea of how the fight will be. But you won’t necessarily know where things happen, how transitions happen, what overlaps might occur or the tuning of anything. And the list goes on forever. Go read the dungeon journal of Sylvanas and then go kill her on mythic. If you really feel like you understand everything that is happening on your first pull of a complicated fight, and are able to make working strategies without playing it out, I honestly think you should apply for a position at Echo, GG, Method or Limit. They are in need of a talent like your. Truly one of a kind!Comment by DhrallVery promising interview! It actually seems like they’ve learned a lot. Let’s hope it doesn’t all go in the trashcan and next expansions starts from scratch like the previous two. Without bringing any of the knowledge from SL into the development.

Also, do devs know how broken RMP is? Or are the huge buffs to holy priest and no changes to rogue/mage happening without them knowing how broken these specs are in arena?

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