We were lucky enough to interview Game Producer, Jerry Li and Senior Quality Analyst, Patrick Horaczek about the Decor Duels feature coming this week in Midnight Patch 12.0.5. From matchmaking and Seeker specs, to flies swarming Silvermoon, here are the interview highlights:
Decor Duels Interview
What makes Decor Duels feel distinctly WoW rather than just another prop hunt?
Jerry: We have different seeker classes, and each of those classes has a variety of ways to hunt out the hiders. Hiders also have their own kits, including a variety of traps to avoid being caught. And of course, we’re playing in Azeroth’s Silvermoon, and the seekers are elves.
How will matchmaking work for queues?
Patrick: Decor Duels uses standard PvP matchmaking with groups of up to 7 players who will be paired against randoms. For quick queues, we’re hoping for a hop-in/hop-out experience; players can jump into it and have fun without a big commitment.
Any plans for community or creator clash-style tournaments?
Jerry: Nothing planned right now. We’re looking for players hosting their own events, and creators streaming when queuing with friends. We’re always happy to see players having fun.
Will maps expand beyond Silvermoon into other cities?
Patrick: There are currently no plans to expand maps. We’re focused on the Silvermoon experience. One thing that’s been exciting about Decor Duels is that we’re being very experimental. It’s something we wanted to try, and we don’t know yet how it’s going to land with players. We’ve taken a bit of everything, put it in there so players can try it out and have a good time with it, and we want player feedback. We’re exploring what WoW can be, and seeing if things a little bit wacky and unusual fit with our game, because it is a very different play-space. Plunderstorm was our first foray into that, and hopefully this continues in that spirit.
How do you keep the mode exciting after players have earned all the rewards?
Patrick: Players will continue to earn housing rewards, they’re not a one-and-done thing. There will be no shortage of those, especially because the rewards are modular. Internal testing showed that every match gets played differently, and we’re hoping to continue seeing really varied gameplay. It’s a fun and goofy mode and we’re hoping to see a lot of community engagement.
Jerry: We just want players to have fun at the end of the day.
Is the event going to be up all the time, or do you plan to make it available only for a limited time like Plunderstorm?
Jerry: As of now, we have no plans. We’re focusing on seeing how popular the game mode is and how players engage with it. We don’t want to take the fun away from the player, so we’ll see.
What’s your approach to stopping a perfect hiding spot from dragging out rounds?
Patrick: During testing, we’d run into issues where someone would pick a tiny prop and hide in a corner for the entire match. That’s not fun gameplay. So for the last 30 seconds of each round, anyone still hiding gets marked as found, and they show up on the minimap with a reticle above them. It’s a sudden death, lightning round sort of feel, and it adds a frantic and crazy element to the game.
Disguised to the Nines (Decor Duels meta-achievement) currently has no reward; is something planned there?
Jerry: This is a mode for players to have fun, and we don’t want to add another thing for players to grind in this case. We rolled rewards into the vendor instead of tying them to a meta-achievement.
How do you balance hiding as small objects versus large ones?
Patrick: This is actually one of the first things that stuck out in QA. A lot of people will try to shove themselves around a corner, and those are the players who get found first. We’ve noticed larger props are actually the ones that keep sticking around. The “hiding in plain sight” approach seems pretty effective.
There’s also a system where bees and flies will gather around you while you’re sitting still, which helps prevent people from camping in one spot. At one point, I logged a character in Silvermoon and went AFK for about an hour and we never set a cap on how many flies could gather on your character over time, and Silvermoon ended up completely swarmed with flies.
Are Decor Duels meant to stay casual, or is there a skill ceiling to push?
Jerry: The goal is for it to stay casual. Though knowing our players, we know they would enjoy trying to min-max it.
Could Decor Duels come to Neighborhoods?
Patrick: This has been mentioned by the community, but currently there are no plans to do this. Though we’ve seen some crazy housing builds and it would be cool to see how Decor Duels works alongside this.
Are there any plans to expand the Seeker specs system?
Patrick: Not much planned yet. We want to focus on this iteration first. Seeker classes are closely tied to classes in mainstream WoW, and it would definitely be cool to see how existing classes would transform into a Seeker class; like what a tank Seeker would look like.
We’ve seen references to different player counts beyond 5 versus 5. Are there any plans for smaller or larger team formats?
Patrick: On the PTR, it launched as 5v5, but on live it’s going to be 7v7 to start with. That can be adjusted as needed, but 7v7 is where we’re at for live right now.
What surprised you most during PTR testing of this new feature?
Patrick: We saw a lot more engagement and participation than we were expecting. We had a limited testing window, and we were concerned about not seeing enough players to fill queues, but we were blown away by how many players were actually logging in.
