Naguura Interview with Michael Bybee and Sean McCann in The War Within - Delves, Mythic Affixes, Raid Buffs

Posted 2024/04/23 at 9:39 AM by Squishei

full videoDelves

There will be 11 tiers of Delves. Tiers 4 through 11 will unlock when the seasons begins.

Highest reward goes up to Mythic +5 (it's unclear if this is new +5s or old +5s)

Two ways of getting rewards: Great Vault and Key system.

Get keys from outdoor world content in order to get more rewards.

For those who like doing Mythic raids or Mythic+, they want to make sure that for Delves are not a "need to do" to stay competitive, while also making sure the rewards are good for solo players.

Rewards cap at Tier 8 of Delves. Tier 9 - 11 are "hard mode". It won't be the same fine tune balancing as Mage Tower but there is a 13th Delve -- exact plans for this are still in progress but it's a 1 room boss fight where they can hit you as hard as humanly possible. They tested it last week but no one beat it.

They're trying to make sure that Delves are balanced across classes and group sizes as well.

Mythic+ Affixes

The team is talking about affixes and Seasonal affixes, but they're not ready or final enough to talk about specifics yet.

They're great because they add variety but they are hard to balance over time, making some seasons harder than others or some seasons not as interesting.

They will be talking about it soon, but not right now.

Defensives and Encounters

The team isn't exactly happy with the state of defensives. This is an ongoing challenge for the game but they aren't part of the class or encounters team so can't say a lot of the specifics but the teams are talking about it a lot.

The issue where you're running high end content and the encounters respond to very talented players are using addons and weakauras to be able to offload some of the cognitive load of the encounter means that the design team knows that you're doing that and then they have to make things more challenging which escalates addon authors, etc. This doesn't make things fun for a lot of players but it's also difficult to adjust.

In Season 3, if you just "don't get hit", there's not a lot of healing to be done and people are mostly healing themselves and using defensives. It's an interesting experience but not the core of what the experience is what to be. The team is talking about it a lot.

For the first set of Raids and Dungeons, probably won't get a major changes but on a longer term it's something they want to address directly.

Gear Upgrades

In Patch 10.2, gear progression was even faster due to a bunch of reasons including Renown with the Dream Wardens.

For folks that are pushing the hardest content, the current gear curve of rapid development at the start which flattens out at the end is less interesting.

On the other side, it opens up accessibility for a larger swathe of players than we've ever had before.

They want to keep that accessibility but also making it feel like investing in Mythic raiding is meaningful, which it doesn't always feel like that right now.

Raid Buffs

They're talking about Raid Buffs. They're not aware of a specific change that they can share regarding that but the class team is talking about it. They don't really like it when you feel like you can't pick a class or you have to take a specific class, maybe that's okay at the very top end, but the vast majority of people should feel it's okay to play a Shaman and not feel like you're going to be ostracized.

Fated / Awakened

They like it, but they're not ready to commit to it every expansion.

It's great to be able to refresh the season and allow people to play through it for more rewards

On the other hand, it's content that you've already played through before.

They'll listen for the feedback for this Awakened season.

Based on how things feel between The War Within and Midnight, they'll make a decision.

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Comment by RavenoflogicThese interviews seem so pointless.
Half the answers are. "Yea, we hear you but have nothing to say right now"Comment by MrjonssonAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by dvisChakHow do you design content for a solo player that is equally as challenging as M+ is for 5 people, or mythic raids are for 20 people?
And if they do design such an encounter, how many solo players would engage it versus just not bothering with it?Comment by BleedmodeAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by saiadarAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by VinceVegaAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by DG2020"It's great to be able to refresh the season and allow people to play through it for more rewards. On the other hand, it's content that you've already played through before."

Blizzard and other players need to understand that not everyone got to experience all the dungeon and raid content while it was relevant. I came back to the game at the beginning of DF Season 3, so I completely missed out on running Vault of the Incarnates and Aberrus.
I hope they will continue with the Fated/Awakened stuff as a final sendoff so those of us who missed it can still experience it before it becomes forever obsolete.Comment by gooeypuuAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by maslolThe article didn’t mention the ui changes question that she asked that will act like weakaura to track your rotation/class buffsComment by MrjonssonAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by NarhwalsAm I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.Comment by MessenjaahLOL they straight up admitted that they design m+ to directly combat usage of addons. That is not the way to go.
I hate that all the difficulty is in stopping casts of monsters. If you stop important casts nothing happens, and like he said you can spend most of the dungeon in cat form if you are resto druid. But when you let the casts through then you simply die or group wipes. This is such bad design. Just design more interactive mob casts like ground effects or dot damage that is not too lethal, apply a debuff to a player that can only be cleared by stepping on that rune on the ground that was spawned by the same casts etc.
Jesus, there are so many possibilities and all they can create is BIG CAST DOES BIG DAMAGE.
Currently name of the game it go get plater addon,, create a profile that will color dangerous mobs, highlight dangerous casts, preferably also with audio queue, this is so unhealthy for the game....

Most answers to questions are:
"We cannot discuss that yet"
"Team is talking about that"
Why do they even bother to give such worthless interviews. It would be better if they received questions prior to the interview so they can prepare better, and replace questions they cannot answer with other questions.Comment by Raxus502Am I the only one that think that it's a shame that they don't give the same rewards for delves as they do for Mythic raids and Mythic+?
I understand that it seems wierd that solo content should give that high of a reward but I would love if they just design it with the same challenge in mind and the same reward structure.
I'm not saying that I would clear the highest tier of content but this still make it so that people who just wanna play delves need to do other content for their gear.
I'm still hyped for the content though.