Countdown to Classic Phase 2 Season of Discovery Interview with Tim and Josh

Classico Pubblicato 06/02/2024 alle 17:31 da Archimtiros

Countdown to ClassicPvP Discussion

Dishonorable Kills are something the team is sensitive about, there have already been some changes going into Phase 2 to ensure that certain AoE abilities (Living Bomb, Explosive Shot) won't pull civilians into combat. DK's have always been contentious, but were originally added for a reason - even on PvP servers, they don't want to create situations for griefing. They want good PvP, but also a balance to ensure that a faction can't just take over an entire zone and prevent players from questing or doing anything inside of it.

Win Trading is a concern with the Blood Moon event. The ability for players to self-police was by design, such as restricting raid groups, and although some players will always try to find the most efficient way to grind or min-max the fun out of a feature, they're hoping that the free-for-all nature of the event will allow groups to find and disrupt win trading groups, but if it does turn out that players are subverting the event, they'll come up with another solution to fight it. It might be overly hopeful, but the belief is that players trying to treat this as a PvE event are probably going to get rolled by players intending to treat it as a serious PvP one.

QoL and General Design

Quality of Life is an ongoing discussion. Some systems, like weapon imbuements, are unexpectedly complicated under the hood, which prevents them from being an easy change. 41-yard nameplate distance isn't something they'd call a quality of life change though, as it results in a major systemic gameplay change, dramatically impacting the amount of information available to players and making the world feel a lot easier or safer.

That isn't to say they'll never make the change, it's just not the type of change that they'd be able to unmake later. The team talks a lot about the evolution from vanilla to modern WoW, but those changes didn't happen overnight and the goal isn't to repeat every one to bring the game closer to modern - players talk a lot about wanting a "Classic Plus," but Josh isn't certain they want a "Modern Minus."

The team isn't trying to purposefully hold back any classes/specs that don't have their full kit yet, but runes weren't going to change how those classes felt until they had their trademark spells anyway. They want to make discoveries exciting, and they can only do so many per production cycle, so they need to think about which runes they want to deliver. It's kind of inevitable that some classes will feel more or less complete based on the state of their talents.

If anything, it's been easier to tune and design piecemeal by level bracket. It's not so much that a spec might be too strong by getting a specific rune early, so much as wanting a rune to impact something that won't be learned until level 44 means they can hold it for later.

Class Design

Because Season of Discovery exists within the same framework as Era and Hardcore WoW, it would take an enormous amount of work to allow baseline spells to scale with level the way runes do. Eventually perhaps they'll figure out a way to separate them, but absent that, each phase will have some rough edges in terms of whether your latest spell rank fell behind in that bracket. If those rough edges are extreme, they might figure out a temporary solution, but otherwise the team thinks it's ok if the way you play your class changes every couple months and everything should balance out at 60.

Hunters went through a bit of a roller coaster in Season 1, and while the team did want Hunter pets to feel stronger and more fun, they clearly went too far in overshooting the point of balance. It sucks to nerf things, but the capabilities were spiraling out of control, and the team probably should have been more conservative from the get go. As a team that doesn't normally do class changes, they're still learning what their processes are, so they should be more organized in the future.

They have been following a plan, but have also made changes to it based on player feedback, the best example being concerns of faction equality following the BlizzCon preview. Josh isn't sure how many Paladins would actually invest the majority of their talent points to take Blessing of Kings at L25, but they recognized that they at least have it available to them and not to the Horde, which is why the decision was made to move into the L25 bracket when it was originally intended for L40. Players have given similar feedback regarding Blessing of Salvation, though was already planned well before launch.

There's no denying that there was an inequity between Paladin for Alliance and Shaman for Horde in original WoW,
and the team would like to keep their unique flavor, but move some pieces of the kits around so that players don't feel bad about missing a key buff.

Not "Technically" GDKP

Regarding Blizzard's recent stance against GDKP in Season of Discovery, there are a lot of players out there looking to create clever systems to catch the designers on a technicality, but it's not going to turn out well for them. They're taking a common sense approach to enforcement, and so if players are trying to engage in that type of trade "not technically GDKP," they're still going to face action.

Gnomeregan Bosses

The bosses in Gnomeregan will be +2 levels above players. Some changes that players saw from the early previews, like weapon skill items going from +5 to +3 are just because the designers recognized they don't need to be that high and the difference is very minimal when the bosses are only two levels higher. However, at L60 when the bosses become +3 levels higher, then that extra +5 weapon skill is massive and they don't want those items to become overly important down the road.

Gnomeregan bosses will not be immune to bleeds and poisons, but they will take slightly reduced damage from them. They want players to be able to play the specs they want without being overly penalized, so not as punishing as early BFD.

Lightning Round

Looking back, the designers thought the difficulty of BFD landed pretty well, but would have liked if were a little harder. Some other hiccups, like the aforementioned Hunter balancing might have also been handled better.

Instances above Uldaman will be inaccessible during Phase 2.

There might be notable things players didn't find in Phase 1, but Josh and Tim don't know them either!

You may have to go back to some old zones, but for the most part, new runes will be found in L25-40 zones.

They aren't sure if there's another gold sink rune, but there are more gold sinks in Phase 2.

The STV mount will be usable everywhere.

Aggrend was probably responsible for all Paladin nerfs.

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