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Ion Hazzikostas on Classes - Class Balance, The Meta and "The Best", Class Utility
Live
Опубликовано
19.11.2020 в 14:00
Squishei
Classes are a hot topic in World of Warcraft and in the Group Interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, he talked about class balance throughout Beta and the answer to what is "the best", and how they're approaching balancing after
Shadowlands
goes live.
Wowhead's Exclusive interview with Ion Hazzikostas - Class Balance, Covenants, Season 1
Wowhead's Shadowlands Interview with Ion Hazzikostas
Group interview (Different than Wowhead's Interview)
Classes and the MetaOnly 3 Torghast Layers Available at LaunchNo Flight Master WhistleNo Legendary Transmog at Launch
Storytelling and LoreShadowlands Delays and Working From HomeEngagement Metrics
Art
Concept Art for Covenants and Zones
Interview Summaries and Discussions
3 Pieces of Loot From Mythic Raid BossesGreat Vault Loot Doesn't Include Final Bosses Until Defeated Once
Summary
Throughout the Group Interview with Ion Hazzikostas, he discussed the Meta and the answer to what is "the best".
It's a problem of modern internet fueled multiplayer gaming, which no developer has managed to solve, but they're trying to remove clear-cut all-around superiority for any one answer.
They've tried to answer "what's best?" with "it depends on the situation" to give more options a chance to shine.
They've tried to make Covenants a collection of choices with pros and cons so that different options will prevail in various situations.
Ion thinks that when players are forming groups, they're using adherence to the meta as a way to judge someone and infer many things about you.
Regarding Beta Class Balancing
There's a "fog of war" around what the numbers are in beta as players are using different gear templates and playing in different ways than on live.
Data from the Pre-Patch on the last few weeks has been very helpful to determine a baseline without Covenants, Soulbinds and Conduits
When people ask for buffs to their class or nerfs to others, they want to feel like they're playing a good, useful class.
They'll never be done, but one of the things that they've learned is that its important for them to be active in tuning and not let things linger for too long.
Future Covenant, Legendary, & Class Balancing
Conservative balancing, without impacting player investment. They'll tune egregious outliers, but remain mindful of not upsetting the performance rankings.
They don't want players to regret their choice because of a tuning change after the fact.
Class tuning is tricky because certain interactions may be more powerful during early hardcore progression, but balanced out in the long run - example: Legion Guardian Druids.
For 99%+ of players, you can truly play any class/spec and succeed, only if you're trying to win the MDI or get a world top 10 raid kill does every little bit matter. Their focus includes high end competitive players, but remains on the total player base.
On Removing Consumable Class Utility
Consumable utility such as scrolls were removed to make the class buffs feel more impactful, but not so large that it feels insurmountable without them.
All else being equal, a mix of classes in a pug should be better than stacking the same ones.
Group Interview Questions
Can players act in social ways vs purely optimized ways?
Honestly, that is the dilemma of the meta in modern internet-fueled multiplayer gaming. That's a problem that nobody has really cracked.
At the end of the day, even if it's players who are making these decisions for each other...if you're someone whose playing WoW and you're settling in after a day of work and you want to go run some Mythic dungeons, and you spend an hour getting declined over and over again, because of your spec or some choice that you made...yeah there's other players doing that but you're entirely correct and justified in blaming us, in blaming Blizzard and the developers for failing to provide a better experience for you.
I think what we've tried to chase is having the answer to "what's best" be as much as possible "it depends--situationally, this is better here, that's better there." At a high level, (this isn't an apples to apples comparison), if you're coming to WoW or figuring out what character to main, and you ask a group of competitive players "should I play hunter or mage"...honestly there isn't a right answer to that question. No matter how min-maxy the people are that you're asking, both are genuinely strong and well rounded and can compete in a wide variety of content. It comes down to which do you enjoy more? Which are you better at? Which makes you happier?
We know that looking at a specific talent row or two abilities, there will always be one right answer. So part of what we've tried to do with covenants as a whole is to make them a larger bucket, a collection of choices, with different pros and cons. So yes, even if in one situation, this one covenant or class isn't optimal, they have their time to shine elsewhere...so overall that makes them an accepted part of the meta.
Maybe reading too much into player philosophy, but I think that when people are forming their groups, they're often using adherence to the meta as shorthand for "are you a good player? do you sim your character? do you min max?" and if you play an unpopular spec, they infer from that a whole bunch of things about you--
you're more likely to stand in the fire, you're don't know the routes, you don't know what abilities to interrupt, because if you did, you wouldn't be playing the thing you're playing.
That's an unfair judgement. I have a feral druid I've raided with for a long time who does fantastic damage, and struggles to get dungeon groups all the time. When he gets them, he does a great job and runs high keys and destroys meters, but people aren't giving him that chance because of those preconceptions.
With covenants, when there's different pros and cons now they all become accepted options and none are disqualifying. While someone is forming a literal MDI group to compete in the MDI, they'll hyper min-max, but they've done that with racials as well and we've seen nobody really blacklists people from the raid or dungeon based on what race they are.
Long rambling answer, there's no silver bullet to this. We're trying to muddy the waters, trying to remove clear-cut all-around superiority for any one answer. That expands the space of what can fit in the meta, what is deemed as viable.
What is class balancing like on the beta?
There's definitely a bit of a fog of war as the combat team calls it, around what the real numbers are in beta because players are using a variety of gear templates, playing in very different ways than they would on live. We can't even look at data from raid encounters when we're testing those because a lot of players, often the best players, are just going in there trying to learn timings, refine things, create their WeakAuras and prepare. They're not trying to kill the boss, they're focused on mechanics in a way they wouldn't be on the live servers.
It's a mix of data from beta and data from live, which has actually been super-helpful these last few weeks trying to establish a baseline for our classes without things like conduits and soulbinds and covenants in the mix. We just released a set of hotfixes that are dialing in that relative balance. We have a lot of knobs, but the community also has tons of powerful tools these days, and we do look to them as well. Balance seems objective but it's actually subjective--there's no special prize if we magically make all the bars in a Warcraft Logs equal on a particular fight. It's about the emotional feeling that everyone hopefully can have about their class or their spec, which is that they are effective and strong. At the end of the day, that's what it boils down to.
When people ask for someone else to be nerfed, or for them to be buffed, they want to feel like they're playing a good, useful class. That's what we're always moving towards in all pieces of the game, from arenas to high-end raiding. It's a lot of knobs and a giant complex system. I don't think we'll ever be done, but one of the things we've learned is that it's important for us to take an active hand, not to let wild disparities linger for too longer, because that's what really makes people feel that for a large chunk of time or content, they can't play the game the way they want to play it due to limitations of their class.
Wowhead's Interview Questions on Classes
These questions and answers were taken from our
Exclusive Shadowlands Interview with Ion Hazzikostas
.
How do you plan to handle the balancing of Covenants and Legendaries after launch when players have already invested resources in those decisions.
The answer there is conservatively. We understand that when players have a permanent or heavy investment in something, we don't want to change that out from under them. That said, if it turns out that there are outliers that are really harmful to overall game balance -- that the community figures out some combination or synergy that we've overlooked -- things like the Blaster Master, Mechagon Bracers, Lucid Dreams Fire Mage synergy come to mind where it's like yup this is just way out there, then yes we would make tuning changes but we would do that with a eye towards not upsetting the ranking of things. If something is the best for certain situations by a whole lot, we would bring it down but maybe not quite as much as pure balance would dictate or as we might have done if we had faced the same issue in Beta, so that players aren't regretting their choices or feeling like they should have done something else.
Have you considered a more Revolving Door type of Class Balancing, as certain specs tend to dominate more often?
Not deliberately. I don't think we're considered saying this is your turn to be dominant and then next time around. Part of the challenge is that, and this is something that we still talk about and we don't have a perfect answer to, people have different strengths and weaknesses and there are certain pieces of toolkits that tend to lend themselves particularly to the things that high end Mythic progression groups value, particularly the World First groups where they're doing things undergeared. There's a reason why a lot of time you've seen Brewmaster Tanks very heavily used or back in Legion when Guardian Druids had gigantic health pools, they were very heavily used because they were the hardest tanks to spike when you're tanking stuff undergeared and you're underhealing fights. Longer term we saw much better representation with complete diversity about who was tanking but in those situations that was priceless. Disc Priests and their absorbs again, when you're doing this at the end of your gear thresholds, both the extra cushion they provide and the damage output when you're trying to hit some 0.1% DPS check, as opposed to just trying to succeeding on the mechanics which is what later, even Cutting Edge guilds, have to deal with, present. Those things are uniquely valuable there. And so, part of the challenge on our end has been not wanting to gut the toolkits of those classes and specs that are part of what makes them interesting, but we also recognize that yeah it's not ideal if you're a player of a different class that you prefer and you want to participate in that Cutting edge activity, I agree that we have more work to do. I think for 99%+ of players, you truly can play any class and spec and succeed in doing so. If you're trying to literally win the MDI, if you're trying to get a world first or world top 10 kill of Mythic raid boss, then every tiny little bit matters and there are differences there, but I think that's part of the ethos of those players and our primary focus is on the vast majority of the rest of the player base including those who are doing high end competitive content and we think we've been much more successful there.
A lot of consumable class utility was removed. What's the design decision behind that?
A lot of it it's underscoring class utility and class diversity within groups. Many of those consumables were used to cover up for stacking many of a certain class. Ideally, whether you're in a dungeon group, whatever context you're in, you should want as many different classes represented as possible and players should be happy that oh cool we have a priest with us today, that means that we're all gonna have a bit of extra health, some of these things that are otherwise borderline one shots in this high key, we have a bit of an extra cushion against. Same for each of the other buffs that are available. That's something that has been part of WoW for a long long time and that we'd like to return to. It's class identity. At the end of the day skill is essential, play with your friends, we don't want these differences to be large enough to feel like you can't do that. But all else being equal, if you're a pug leader trying to fill out a group, a mix of classes should be better than bringing multiples of the same one.
Wowhead's Exclusive interview with Ion Hazzikostas - Class Balance, Covenants, Season 1
Wowhead's Shadowlands Interview with Ion Hazzikostas
Group interview (Different than Wowhead's Interview)
Classes and the MetaOnly 3 Torghast Layers Available at LaunchNo Flight Master WhistleNo Legendary Transmog at Launch
Storytelling and LoreShadowlands Delays and Working From HomeEngagement Metrics
Art
Concept Art for Covenants and Zones
Interview Summaries and Discussions
3 Pieces of Loot From Mythic Raid BossesGreat Vault Loot Doesn't Include Final Bosses Until Defeated Once
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