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Patch 9.2 GamesBeat Interview With Ion Hazzikostas and Sara Wons
Live
Publié
23/02/2022 à 01:11
par
perculia
A new GamesBeat
interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Senior Level Designer Sara Wons
reveal insights regarding Patch 9.2 and the upcoming Sepulcher of the First Ones raid, while discussing lessons learned from previous expansions, borrowed power, and the min-max mentality.
Patch 9.2 Design Goals
While much of the content in Patch 9.2 was designed in response to player feedback, one of the design goals was to address pain points that players would traditionally run into a few months in as they begin experiment with alts and switch mains. With class tier sets representing large power gains that players would normally need to farm several weeks to obtain, the Creation Catalyst system was implemented to help new characters catch up, while also allowing benefitting existing characters ability to better micromanage their sets of gear.
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 also briefly discussed the three final bosses of the Sepulcher of the First Ones, highlighting how they purposefully went untested on the PTR and hinting at unique elements within the Jailer encounter.
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 Progression
Alts and account-wide progression is another recurring pain point that the Game Director is looking to address, as having to repeat long quest chains in order to re-earn rewards on another character isn't satisfying. Like Korthia in Patch 9.1, an
account wide skip was added to Zereth Mortis
to allow alts to avoid replaying the introductory elements of the new zone.
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
Zereth Mortis represents another result of player feedback, as the Cypher of the First Ones Research system offers open world gameplay for those who want it, without requiring players to engage with the system in order to be competitive in terms of player power.
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
One of the reasons for those non-power related gameplay options is the continual struggle many players go through between playing for fun or playing for performance, with many feeling like they are required to spend time hunting down every last scrap of player power - however inconsequential it may be.
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
The term “borrowed power” is often disparaged by the community, highlighting the temporary nature of power progression systems in recent expansions. Although added in good faith in order to experiment with powerful and exciting additions that would quickly grow out of hand if they were all carried forward from expansion to expansion, the team recognizes the pitfalls of their temporary nature, and it's something that's generated significant discussion as they look forward to the next World of Warcraft expansion.
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 Possibility
Although
cross-faction grouping
has already been announced, many players have asked about the possibility of cross-faction guilds to help better coordinate players. As is, a player who decides to switch to another faction from their regular group of friends would be cut off - linked only through their Battle.net friends list and unable to access things like guild chat, guild repairs, bank, or even important achievements like
Panthéon : le Geôlier (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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