wow Legion Developer Q/A Recap: January 12

[Stan 5,018]

Senior Game Designer Paul Kubit sat down with Josh "Lore" Allen and we learned some interesting information. Timewalking raids are in the works and Patch 7.2 is hitting test realms soon.

Auction House

• Blizzard keeps monitoring items that are too expensive and adjusts the cost.
• Specifically, Tome of the Tranquil Mind was mentioned as being too expensive.

Brawler's Guild

• No plans to add any new bosses to the Brawler's Guild this expansion.
• The difficulty curve is good as early bosses are accessible by most players and later encounters prove to be more challenging.
• No Boss Health adjustments have been made for specific specializations.

Professions

• The team is happy with primary profession quests involving dungeons.
• Materials aren't cheap in Legion, because they need to be gathered as there is no Garrison. Another contributing factor that affects prices is banning botters.

Recipes (Rank 3)

• Rank 3 recipes could be made less rare at the end of Legion.
• Having a rank 3 recipe helps players make a little more profit.
• There's no problem with RNG and rank 3 recipes, you can still craft that item even if you don't have it.

Crafted Gear

• Obliterum upgrades help to keep crafted gear relevant.
• With increasing item level on gear, crafted items need to stay relevant throughout the expansion.
• Patch 7.1.5 added Engineering Goggles.
• Patch 7.2 will add many new recipes for both primary and secondary professions.
• There will be no items that will help you reroll secondary stats on crafted gear. If you need different stats you have to craft another item.

Primary Professions

Gathering Professions

• A third slot for a gathering profession is something considered, but players that want an additional slot just don't want to get rid of their existing professions.

Engineering

• The goggles introduced in 7.1.5 have the highest item level of craftable items so far in Legion (880) and take time to craft.
• They have random stats.
• You can either farm or buy Hardened Felglass.

Skinning

• The team wants to make skinnable NPCs multi tap.

Secondary Professions

• Archaeology
  • The profession isn't supposed to be an endless grind and Patch 7.2 will make Archaeology better (new mounts and pets?).
• Cooking
  • As there were many quests for primary professions, the team didn't want the same to happen with secondary professions and overload players with too many quests.
  • Nomi is perhaps too random, but in 7.1.5, the chance to get new recipes has been significantly increased.

Obliterum

• The bracers gating behind the Obliterum Forge will be reduced in a future patch.

Micro-Holidays

• Call of the Scarab is the first micro-holiday on live realms starting January 21.
• There are no permanent rewards from micro-holidays, because of their short duration.
• It's a cool idea to use them for leveling.

Patch 7.2

• Is hitting Public Test Realms soon.

Timewalking

• Is here to make content from two or more expansions relevant again.
• The devs are discussing an item level increase on Timewalked gear.
• No Scholomance during MoP Timewalking, it revolves around MoP dungeons situated in Pandaria.
• The team hasn't considered to bring Vanilla Timewalking as the content isn't challenging and tuned for max level players.
  • It doesn't mean it couldn't be added in the future, but it's not a priority right now.
• Timewalking Raids are coming in the future.

Weekly Bonus Events

• Keeping Timewalking rare helps making it great.
• The team is observing the weekly events and will remove those unpopular.

VoD

 

[hDszzT 103]

Well, Timewalking dungeons = at-level Heroic, except you don't outgear it as much as you may have back then.

Does this mean Timewalking raids = Heroic difficulty at-level? ;p That could potentially be a really big mess if this was done through LFR haha. They may just make a Raid Finder difficulty for those old raids that is tuned lower than the original difficulty so that LFR can do it, but it would be really cool if you could choose to enter Normal or Heroic difficulty with a premade group (with increased ilv rewards as usual.)

Although now that I think about it, the weekly nature of Timewalking means that these wouldn't really be viable as guild content; you can't really progress on a raid that only lasts a week and doesn't come back until months later.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Ammako

[ChaosDecides 30]

Professions are abysmal. If they are happy with the state of professions they are clueless. Instead of comparing them to the last expansion, why don't they compare them to earlier expansions as well?

I'd much rather have professions be part of the RPG experience and not merely something you do to make gold. I don't feel like any of them are truly unique to a specific class, as far as armor, weapons, etc., are concerned. If I'm a plate armor wearing class, I'd like mining and blacksmithing to have a little more significance. Not as merely a means to get a rare mount or create a unique pet.

Timewalking does not really make previous content relevant because it has nothing to do with what's going on in the current expansion. It's also way too easy.

Edited January 13, 2017 by ChaosDecides

[Valks 2,373]

6 hours ago, ChaosDecides said:

Professions are abysmal. If they are happy with the state of professions they are clueless. Instead of comparing them to the last expansion, why don't they compare them to earlier expansions as well?

I'd much rather have professions be part of the RPG experience and not merely something you do to make gold.

Did you think the questing process and such was good for professions or not?

[DeathsDesign 92]

13 hours ago, Stan said:

Professions

• The team is happy with primary profession quests involving dungeons.

I am perfectly happy with professions involving dungeons.  As well as the fact that there actually are profession quests.  It brings a different aspect into the game that gives you something to do other than mindlessly grind quests, dungeons, and pvp like we have had to in the past just to pass the time. 

13 hours ago, Stan said:

Crafted Gear

• Obliterum upgrades help to keep crafted gear relevant.
• With increasing item level on gear, crafted items need to stay relevant throughout the expansion.

I personally appreciate what Blizzard is trying to do but I completely disagree.  I don't think that crafted items need to stay relevant throughout the expansion because crafted items have always been a stepping stone with the exception of key resistance items in Vanilla and the crafted gear in WoD.  I think that crafted gear should plateau around Heroic/Mythic difficulty and further gear upgrades should come from raids, mythic+, and pvp content.

13 hours ago, Stan said:

Skinning

• The team wants to make skinnable NPCs multi tap.

I think this is a phenomenal idea, especially with the changes to lootable NPCs being multi tap.

14 hours ago, Stan said:

Timewalking

• Is here to make content from two or more expansions relevant again.
• The devs are discussing an item level increase on Timewalked gear.
• No Scholomance during MoP Timewalking, it revolves around MoP dungeons situated in Pandaria.
• The team hasn't considered to bring Vanilla Timewalking as the content isn't challenging and tuned for max level players.
  • It doesn't mean it couldn't be added in the future, but it's not a priority right now.
• Timewalking Raids are coming in the future.

Timewalking isn't really relevant, as it has no bearing on current content and is only around as a weekly event to try to keep players interested in the game.  Timewalked gear, in my opinion, should be about the level of heroic dungeons.  Vanilla timewalking dungeons would be super fun if they were in the old style and not this "run through pull the whole dungeon kill it all at once" philosophy.  Not considering to bring Vanilla timewalking in to the picture because the content isn't challenging and tuned for max level players is horsecrap because neither are any prior expansions to the current one.  All expansions from Vanilla to WoD are no longer challenging and tuned to for max level, the dungeons even during timewalking phases aren't challenging and tuned for max level.  Timewalking raids.... there's so much wrong there.  Interesting concept but unless executed perfectly will spell disaster for the entire timewalking platform.

 

TL;DR  Professions are fine, crafted gear should be a stepping stone, yay for skinning multi tap, timewalking is a novel idea but not a challenge.

[hDszzT 103]

Not tuned for max level because for the most part, dungeons were levelling content (there were only a few like LBRS that were relevant at max level, to get dungeon tier gear which was a stepping stone to the regular raids.)

BC dungeons had Heroic difficulty which very much was tuned for Lv. 70 players. Same for WotLK, same for Cata, same for MoP. To make Vanilla timewalking dungeons they would have to go back and design Lv. 60 versions of every dungeon, properly tuned for 60. Hence they haven't considered it, but it can be done in the future.

"Timewalking raids.... there's so much wrong there.  Interesting concept but unless executed perfectly will spell disaster for the entire timewalking platform" , elaborate, you can say "there's so much wrong here" but if you don't really have compelling reasons for saying so then it doesn't really mean anything.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Ammako

[DeathsDesign 92]

3 minutes ago, Ammako said:

"Timewalking raids.... there's so much wrong there.  Interesting concept but unless executed perfectly will spell disaster for the entire timewalking platform" , elaborate, you can say "there's so much wrong here" but if you don't really have compelling reasons for saying so then it doesn't really mean anything.

It doesn't have to "really mean anything" to you.  It was a statement plain and simple.

Since you brought it up though, let's explore.

Timewalking dungeons are currently old world dungeon content that has been tuned so that players at least one expansion beyond the content are tuned down to that level.  This in itself is fine as it puts players in content that should be the same level as them.  The problem with this is that you can't accurately tune stats down to duplicate the experience when the dungeons were current content due to current stat scaling.  This means that PCs that meet the level requirements of the timewalking content are over powered compared to someone that would actually be running that content as current.

This is where timewalking being a novel concept yet not being anything more than a nostalgia run comes in to play.  If we take these same principles and apply them to Timewalking raids then you are looking at people running old world raid content without the difficulty of what a raid is supposed to be.  Raids are by design progressive content.  Example: 10 players get together to run a 9 boss raid dungeon for the first time.  They engage the first boss, and shortly after wipe.  6 tries later they manage to down the boss.  They then progress to and engage the second boss which takes 10 tries due to increase in difficulty.  This pattern continues until eventually they have managed to get all 9 bosses down.  In the process most of them have received an item upgrade that would significantly increase their damage and ability to perform the next week.  This process continues throughout normal, heroic, and mythic difficulties until these 10 players are able to basically walk through every fight with zero issues and one-shot kills every time.

Since, currently timewalking dungeons are not a challenge due to tuning and stat scaling, how would they actually make timewalking raids a challenge? and as you said...

15 hours ago, Ammako said:

Although now that I think about it, the weekly nature of Timewalking means that these wouldn't really be viable as guild content; you can't really progress on a raid that only lasts a week and doesn't come back until months later.

You can't really progress in something that's only available for a short time every so often.

In order to not have a complete disaster on their hands my suggestion would be have timewalking raids open for a month, able to join via group finder, and overtune the raids to compensate for the undertuning of dungeons.

And personally I'm not sure why you felt compelled to question my statement when I agreed with your statements in fewer words.

[PatrickHenry 293]

5 hours ago, DeathsDesign said:

Not considering to bring Vanilla timewalking in to the picture because the content isn't challenging and tuned for max level players is horsecrap because neither are any prior expansions to the current one.  All expansions from Vanilla to WoD are no longer challenging and tuned to for max level, the dungeons even during timewalking phases aren't challenging and tuned for max level.

My thoughts exactly. 

I would say that the entire timwalker process is awfully easy, although I recognize its probably just for levelling and max level boredom busters via old content, pets and mounts and xmog. 

But the reasoning they dont do it at all, is that it's "too easy" is mind boggling.

[hDszzT 103]

4 hours ago, DeathsDesign said:

And personally I'm not sure why you felt compelled to question my statement when I agreed with your statements in fewer words.

So because part of your post agreed with me, means that your entire post does? ;) That's not really how it works.

I'm saying that they can't work as progression content if they are weekly. Just because they can't be proper guild progression content doesn't mean it can't work fine as LFR.

You're saying that "it would be a complete disaster for the entire timewalking platform" which is a completely different point of view altogether.

1 hour ago, PatrickHenry said:

But the reasoning they dont do it at all, is that it's "too easy" is mind boggling.

That is a gross oversimplification of their reasoning.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Ammako

[DeathsDesign 92]

Well considering when I read your post I didn't have any reason to disagree with it at all would be an indicator that I agreed with you, therefore my statement agreed with you.  Either way I'm not going to get into a who's what is better.  I stand by what I said whether you agree, understand, like, dislike, disapprove of, or whatever, It is what it is.

And it's not a different point all together because of the fact that overall the current timewalking platform is just kind of hanging on.  If you fail to implement timewalking raids properly it impacts the "overall" (not the individuals but the mass's) view of the timewalking platform.  Fail one aspect most people in today's society will see the entire project as a failure and lose faith in it.  Succeed in every aspect and it's a working model.

Personally I'm not a fan of timewalking period.  I do it to get the weekly quest done and I'm over it.  However that doesn't mean I can't see the benefit of it and it's purpose.  Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it's wrong or a trash idea.  It just means that I'll find other means to occupy my time instead.

[ChaosDecides 30]

On 1/13/2017 at 6:36 AM, Blainie said:

Did you think the questing process and such was good for professions or not?

The questing process was fine. I would have rather had to unlock 800 through a quest chain than to be forced to create expensive items with a low probability of increasing the prof level. When all recipes are either greyed out or green, and the mats needed to craft the items are incredibly expensive, trying to get the final 10 or so levels is just masochistic.

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/15/2017 at 3:17 PM, ChaosDecides said:

The questing process was fine. I would have rather had to unlock 800 through a quest chain than to be forced to create expensive items with a low probability of increasing the prof level. When all recipes are either greyed out or green, and the mats needed to craft the items are incredibly expensive, trying to get the final 10 or so levels is just masochistic.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree on that. Having to funnel guild funds at one person (we spent nearly a million on 1 person's professions at the start of the xpac) simply due to ridiculous bad luck on skill ups just kinda sucks.

[PatrickHenry 293]

On 1/12/2017 at 7:06 PM, Stan said:

The team hasn't considered to bring Vanilla Timewalking as the content isn't challenging and tuned for max level players.

 

On 1/13/2017 at 4:41 PM, Ammako said:

That is a gross oversimplification of their reasoning.

Hey, I can only go by what was stated originally. 

...and that sure sounds like "too easy." 

[ChaosDecides 30]

On 1/16/2017 at 7:40 AM, Blainie said:

Yeah, I'd definitely agree on that. Having to funnel guild funds at one person (we spent nearly a million on 1 person's professions at the start of the xpac) simply due to ridiculous bad luck on skill ups just kinda sucks.

Dude, that's insane.