Ellesmere Interview with Blizzard's Lead Encounter Designers

Posted 1 hr 53 min ago by Archimtiros

EllesmereUnexpected Development

Many of the encounter strategies used by players are often unintentional. There are far more players than designers, so often times, the thing that becomes the go-to strategy for an encounter is something that Blizzard never even tried internally. Seeing all the different strategies used across different difficulties is one of the most fun parts of their job.

Something players may not realize is how often developers try to hide easter eggs within the content, such as Sludgefist appearing in multiple areas throughout Castle Nathria. Often small touches, they can help add a little bit of immersion or whimsy, and build a more cohesive world world.

Similarly in Mythic+ dungeon routing, the designers did not explicitly design immortal necromancer skeletons to be brought into Garfrost for extra funnel in Pit of Saron, but they aren't unhappy about it.

Internal playtests are very important though. Early on, it's about the top-level archetype and theme of the encounter, ensuring abilities feel like they make sense, which then progresses into more mechanical balance and tuning.

Hotfixes are also handled a bit differently, as they can be applied instantly on their own internal servers, allowing them to quickly swap back and froth between two different versions of an ability to see how each play out, before deciding what changes should be pushed to live servers.

There are a lot more players than designers, so the community gets more pulls into a boss than the designers ever did within hours of the content going live, giving them an enormous amount of new data to look at. Group-size scaling is one of the more important parts, to make sure everything is working properly for all the different versions of content the game supports.

Instant Wipe vs Recovery in Raid

Deciding whether mechanics should be an instant wipe or allow players to recover depends on how central it is on the encounter, mostly seen on late in the tier Heroic and Mythic bosses. For example, they wouldn't want Halondrus bombs to be recoverable, or the strategy might just become allotting all cooldowns to ignoring and surviving the mechanic.

That said, there are better ways to do it. A heavy DoT might still be unrecoverable for most players, but gives them more time to process that something has gone wrong.

There's also a distinction between mechanics that will wipe a group instantly, and ones which will undoubtedly lead to a wipe down the line. The team isn't sadistic enough to want to prolong player deaths over several minutes, but instant wipes don't always give players a lot of useful feedback either, so prolonging player deaths just a little bit may allow them time to process more information and understand what happened. Essentially allowing players to see the encounter fall apart over a few seconds, rather than just instantly killing the entire raid.

The developers also tend to create these pass-or-fail mechanics or "rules" take place over a longer period of time on lower difficulties, while Mythic is more harsh, since they presume Mythic players already have a good understanding of the raid mechanics.

Making Memorable Mythic+ Design

When it comes to creating a strong dungeon boss, designers look for what they call an elegant hook to associate with it; something memorable that instantly comes to mind as "this is the boss that does blank." The last boss of Pit of Saron comes to mind, it's dripping with fantasy elements and involves a bit of strategy in navigating the arena, but it's also very approachable.

Great supporting pieces are another. Sometimes, bosses will feature one "weird" piece which stands out among several much more common ones. That might be literal, or figurative, such as a DoT hit overlapping with group damage.

A great theme or fantasy is also important, even if it's just a Patchwerk boss in a scaling environment. Players like pushing their buttons, so increasing those throughput checks can be fun.

In Season 2, Altar of Fangs' Zul'jin encounter comes to mind as there are several ways to solve its challenges. They made a simple rule: bleed the poison out, while leaving it up to players to decide how. In lower keys, it can be done more haphazardly, but on higher levels, they suspect players will adopt more specific strategies. On the other hand, the Writhing Coil is a more straightforward "fantasy first" encounter: it's a huge snake made of snakes that players pull apart and deal with.

The designers also took a close look at revamping returning dungeon encounters, specifically in King's Rest and the Temple of Sethraliss.

Some encounters, like the last one in Temple of Sethraliss, are designed around one role, but a big focus of for the team is trying to ensure that tanks, DPS, and healers all feel challenged at the same time, not trying to put too much or too little onto just one of those roles.

Standardizing Visual Clarity

Mixing new and old dungeons also takes players across different eras of World of Warcraft history, in which a visual indicators also changed heavily throughout. For Midnight Season 2, they've moved to a more standardized set, which they intend to be the standard for everything going forward.

As for how it impacts encounter design, they always need to think about how much time players need to identify how to respond to different mechanics. Using Merektha in the Temple of Sethraliss as an example, they want players to be able to track enemy facings and movement, without making it as obvious as placing a big bold line across the arena.

Making Healing Engaging

There are exceptions, but healing challenges are often designed as roller coasters, with moments of threat followed by moments of recovery. It's not all about pure damage per second, but more on creating sequences for players to identify and find the right tools to respond with. Higher difficulties ramp this up, as they expect Mythic raiders to better coordinate their cooldowns.

Class diversity is also important, since they want to create areas for different healing cooldowns to feel useful.

This is a little more difficult to do with dungeon trash, though they've tried to focus on cutting down the amount of noise. There are generally less cast bars overall, while the more spikey single hits and channels tend to have longer cast bars.

Proactively Healing without Targeted Spell Information

As encounter designers, they want players looking at the game world, at what players and creatures are doing.

The developers wanted healers to focus on their core kit, rather than considering their interrupt another tool to remove damage and becoming just another healer problem. The intent was to instead focus that job onto tanks and dps, as a way to help the healer and reduce their cognitive load.

They've tried to enable proactive healing with more targeting auras a few seconds before damage events go out, painting the target directly, rather than asking players to check the target of the spell cast.

It is very much intended that healers not have all that information on their frames.

The Coolest Mechanics that Never Were

One of the coolest mechanics that the designers have ever had to cut was during the Anduin intermission. Jaina, Uther, and Sylvanas are on the platform with players throughout the encounter, and in one of the original iterations, the Lich King would come out to taunt one of those NPCs with references to Stratholme or the invasion of Quel'Thalas. It was fun flavor, but required a lot of context and added extra phases to an already lengthy encounter that didn't really need extra time for history lessons.

In Sanctum of Domination, what became Painsmith Raznal's achievement was originally meant to be a part of the core encounter, with an increasing number of caged skeletons casting at players throughout the fight. The fantasy of these tortured souls rising out of the lava below was very on theme, but the designers fortunately decided the encounter did not need a a rotating interrupt check that got more difficult over time!

Comment by ArchaeolI can hear Ellesmere screaming at Jax like it was yesterday. Ah, what a hilarious moment.Comment by twin512bassOften small touches, they can help add a little bit of immersion or whimsy, and build a more cohesive world world.
KEK
"Often small touches, they can help add a little bit of immersion or whimsy and build a more cohesive world."
FIFYComment by MuzakiOur Raid team does 4 hours of raiding each reset over 2 days, with 8 mins potty breaks.

This raid has to many Snake Trash packs all over.

Spending 1/4 of your time in there waiting by clicking a thing that loads so slooooow multiple times, and killing pointless snakes and eggs.

This could have been a scenario for people intrested next to the entrence or something.

Sad times for the little guys.Comment by CorvinheadIt is very much intended that healers not have all that information on their frames.Comment by Mormerolets stay away from targeted mechanic at one player wiping the entire raid, thats really fun to pug (twin dragons). that fight tells you all you need to know about players in this gameComment by TezcatlipocaWhen I read what the developers have said, I’m not surprised that the raids are so bloody awful...Comment by the9tailwhat about green on green in a green room while green sludge is on the floor?Comment by Mortal1tyI play healers BECAUSE of the cognitive load. If i wanted zugzug ide go play a ret pally.Comment by akaRavenIf they want to change up the cognitive load, remove interrupts from tanks also, force it as a DPS mechanic only, dispels to be a healer only mechanic and let tanks do the tank only things like routes and stuff, it's a big reason why we are always short tanks, and why healers were dropping off, because there is too much going on for your average player and too much expectations.

But, as we all know, pugs are *!@# and will simply refuse to interrupt or do it properly even if it's a DPS only mechanic and that's partly why your tank and healer mains want more to do, because your average DPS is hot garbage and needs to be babysat.