WoW: Patch 5.3 - Interview mit Cory Stockton (englisch)
buffed: Patch 5.3 introduces four new scenarios. Two of them - Blood in the Snow and Dark Heart of Pandaria - are linked to the main quest line of the update. Why did you leave out the other two scenarios? Especially The Secrets of Ragefire seems to be really connected to the storyline as well.
Cory Stockton - Lead Content Designer für World of Warcraft
Quelle: Blizzard
Cory Stockton: Well, there are a couple of reasons. In general those two specifically were designed from the ground up to feed that storyline and to help push it forward. For the other two new ones we didn't want to be constrained design wise to something that had to fit within the exact storyline. We obviously wanted them to hook in somehow and make sense, but we didn't feel like they were required elements to set up the story. The other thing is that we don't feel comfortable saying to players "well you have to finish all the scenarios before you can continue with the quest chain". Even just doing one feels questionable for us. But in this case we thought that story wise they made so much sense to help fill in what's happening that it was worth it.
buffed: Do the sailors in Battle on the High Seas even know what's going on in Pandaria?
Cory Stockton: (laughs) Yeah, that's a good question. Probably not. That's a great example. We thought that the gameplay for that one was really cool and felt fresh - like something we hadn't done before. So we wanted to move forward with it, but we also made sure that it didn't necessarily need to be connected to the story. Just like pet battles. We can continue to add content to pet battles but it doesn't necessarily need to be connected to the storyline.
buffed: In the Dark Heart of Pandaria scenario you ended up changing the artefacts minigame during the testing phase. What led to that decision? The original version of that minigame seemed more interesting, especially due to the combo mechanic.
Cory Stockton: Well, during our testing cycle we had feedback that a lot of players didn't pick up on that combo mechanic. It was one of those things that we, internally, thought was interesting. When we played it here we obviously understood it clearly, but we were getting feedback that it was taking too long and that a lot of people didn't understand that the combo mechanic could make it go so much faster. So we ended up pulling it. It wasn't something that we felt comfortable with design wise.
buffed: Are there more plans to spice up scenarios with minigames?
Cory Stockton: No, not in general. In this case we just thought that it felt cool and fresh. Many of our scenarios are very linear, while Dark Heart of Pandaria starts with a pretty open area, so we had to fill that big space. The concept of doing more of a mini game really fit.
buffed: Developers often mention that there's still room for experiments with scenarios and their design. However, a lot of the current scenarios ultimately use the same mechanics. We often fight a couple of mob packs and then get to a bossfight that involves some form of kiting gameplay. Are there any plans for more wacky scenario designs? Maybe for a scenario that places players in vehicles? The serpent races in Jade Forest feel like they could be a fun multiplayer scenario?
Cory Stockton: Those kinds of things are still totally on the table for scenarios. What we're generally trying to balance against is making sure that players are playing their class and that we're not building something that completely takes them out of their class. But when we want to do that we feel that scenarios are a great place for that kind of content. I don't think the door is closed on that kind of thing at all. But in general when we go into designing the scenarios our thoughts are that we want players to play the class that they chose. We learned some hard lessons over the years that we don't necessarily want to put players into a vehicle with buttons and then have them do something in that vehicle for 15 minutes and expect that to be interesting gameplay. But we do feel that scenarios are a place where we can experiment and do more stuff out of the ordinary.
buffed: Can you give us some tidbits on upcoming scenarios?
Cory Stockton: Right now we're talking about some new scenarios and about whether we're going to do any in patch 5.4. We're still not sure what we're going to do with scenarios at least in that specific patch. What I can say is that ideas are always on the table for new things, it just really comes down to the question "does it fit with what we're looking to put into the game". We have to ask ourselves if it works within the timeframe of the patch and if it fits with all the things we're trying to tell. We generally aren't trying to jam things into the game that feel out of place. We want to make sure that everything fits.
buffed: One of the rewards players receive during the new questline are justice points. Are there any plans to make those more interesting again? It seems like there's not much for players to do with them in Mists of Pandaria.
Cory Stockton: That's something we've struggled with for a while. We haven't felt like we've had a lot of great rewards for people to get out of justice points. The upgrade system is obviously back with patch 5.3. And we also have a pretty wide selection of heirlooms that are available for justice points. In general we've really been able rely on valor to fill that role of a currency. Valor gives people items that they're interested in and a lot of selection. There hasn't been a lot there for justice points but that's probably because we think valor fills that role in most cases. Moving forward it will be a question of what we feel is the best way to use something like justice points. Do we feel like we still need two currencies, do we want to create some sort of alternate reward system? I think that's a lot of questions for us to answer. But we certainly learned some lessons by looking at how justice points have been used during the 5.0 cycle.
buffed: And what's coming for valor points? Currently we can spend them on the item upgrades and the existing valor items. What will happen in patch 5.4 with a new raid tier?
Cory Stockton: I don't have anything to share about what's going to happen in patch 5.4 yet, all that is still in progress. Many times it comes just down to watching what the players do in the current patch and getting the vibe for what we feel we need to do moving forward. That's one of the big things about WoW, it's basically a living game and we can watch and get constant feedback. We might have had a plan and we thought we knew what was going to happen with this plan, and then we see that the feedback is totally different and end up not going through with it. Our design process is very dynamic. So even if I had an answer for you it might not be right by the time we get there.
buffed: Earning valor points seems to feel quite mandatory for certain players who are trying to be very efficient. What's your take on that? Would you rather see players doing things just for fun are you designing valor with that efficiency approach in mind?
Cory Stockton: We want players to feel like they can do whatever they find most enjoyable to earn points up to the weekly caps. That's our philosophy and that was the goal with all of 5.0. People want to do dailies? Awesome ... People want to do pet battles? That's great ... If people want to run heroics, they can do that ... The goal there is to let people do whatever they want. What we've seen happen is that people find out the most efficient way to get what they want. We're trying to balance against that by trying to make all those things as equal as possible for the amount of time that players put in. In that case they don't have to make the decision and do something they may not like because it's the most efficient. What we would like to do is have all those options available and have them feel similar in terms of time investment. Of course that's a very, very hard thing to do; to get that exactly right. I think in some cases players feel like we're forcing them to do things, but that is certainly not our goal. Our goal is trying to create systems that allow players to make choices and to do what they think is the most fun - while still be rewarded by getting the currency that they want.
buffed: After our readers found out that you currently don't plan to introduce additional dungeons in Mists of Pandaria there was some disappointment. Some players don't see scenarios as an alternative to five-man dungeons. Some just don't seem to like scenarios, others think that dungeons simply offer better rewards. What's your take on that?
World of Warcraft: Patch 5.3 bringt Änderungen in die Spielwelt
Quelle: Buffed
Cory Stockton: We're super interested to see what the player reaction is to heroic scenarios. Heroic scenarios definitely fill a role that's a level above a normal scenario. Not only do they offer a more substantial base challenge but they also offer the concept of bonus objectives. So you can go that extra mile and earn bonus valor on top of the valor you already earn for the scenario. So we're definitely interested to see the feedback and see how they fit in.
As far as dungeons go, and we have talked about that a little bit before, in general our vibe is that it takes a lot of time and investment to build dungeons and a lot of times players are able to run those in a similar amount of time they can run a scenario in. And currently we're trying to balance where we spend our pennies in terms of content creation. We've seen how popular LFR has become over time. With LFR, normal and heroic we get so much content out of a raid. That's why, with patch 5.2 and with the upcoming patch 5.4, we've been focusing more on these big raids with a massive number of 12, 14 bosses. That's a really large amount of content for players that keeps them engaged for a long period of time. Our hope is that heroic scenarios can help fill in some of those gaps where a 5 man dungeon would have been before. Time will tell. We're just a couple of days in the patch and we need to give people time to get into the heroics and give them a chance.
buffed: At the start of Mists of Pandaria we got the feeling that some players didn't even really know about scenarios because there wasn't really anything in the game that introduced that feature to the players who might not keep up to date by following the official website or fansites. Do you have plans to make features like the scenarios more prominent? The same goes for the Brawler's Guild or the challenge mode for the dungeons.
Cory Stockton: Yeah, apart from the fact that they're in the UI that's a great point. There's not necessarily a place that directs you to them. That's totally a place where we could do things like having a quest similar to the old battleground quests from the original WoW that tried to draw you into a battleground because players might not have known that the Battlemaster was actually there in your city and could queue you up for something like that. That's an interesting opportunity for us to be able to draw people towards that content.
With the challenge mode heroics we feel like they're an advanced level of content. Players who want that will most likely seek them out. But it is interesting to think about the fact that we could try to promote it more so that it is something that more players know about.
buffed: Another new feature that was introduced during Mists of Pandaria is the Brawler's Guild. Are you happy with the reaction to that? Patch 5.3 seems to incentivize participation a bit more with additional rewards.
Cory Stockton: Yeah, we've been really excited about the response to the Brawler's Guild. Brawler's Guild was a kind of unique idea that came up - and we thought it could be pretty cool. It wasn't a very hard thing for us to prototype and get into the game, and the reaction to it was really strong when it first went in. And it has been growing over time, it has gotten more and more popular. That's why you're seeing us continue to create content for it each patch.
It's a similar situation with pet battles. As pet battles have been growing in popularity each patch we've been trying to keep up by creating more and more content for those players. It's a great example of how we can be a dynamic team and try to focus on things. When we find out that the players are excited about these features and they like this type of stuff then we can try to react and create more content for them in the next patch.
buffed: What can you tell us about the new bosses? Do you have a favorite? One of them seems be to inspired by Super Hexagon.
Cory Stockton: Yeah, that boss ... (laughs) There are a lot of bosses and that one specifically is really unique. I think it's a cool example of the type of content that we could only really ever do for something that's solo. For something that we don't feel is required for progression. The bosses are really fun for our encounter designers to build because we could never do anything like that for a normal dungeon. Because you end up having to deal with things like group compositions when you have multiple players. So I think for us it's also a really great outlet to create more unique content that we can't do in other places.
buffed: As you just mentioned pet battles - have you considered implementing team fights where 2 or 3 players could fight together?
Cory Stockton: We have talked about doing something like that. It sounds really great and easy to say but in practice it's a very complicated thing (laughs) to implement because it completely changes the meta of the game. Now certain types of pets can be used together, now you can combine multiple types of the same abilities. The idea could be cool. But is it worth changing the design of the core game that much? It could be something that we might only implement with trainer battles, so that you could fight trainers in a 2v2 or 3v3 format. That's one way to implement it that wouldn't be as complicated. But it's certainly something that has come up. There's always an opportunity to grow that system in the future and we're talking about more ways to do that.
buffed: One suggestion for pet battles from us then: We'd really like to see a Hogger pet.
Cory Stockton: (laughs) That's awesome. Okay, we'll take that into consideration.
buffed: The patches for Mists of Pandaria have been released in quick succession and speedier than we have ever seen. Now we're all kind of expecting patch 5.4 to introduce what kind of feels like the final raid of this expansion. Considering that the next expansion isn't even announced yet some players worry that we'll see patch 5.4 pretty soon and then have another long waiting period. Are there more patches coming for Pandaria? Is there anything you can tell us about the transition to the next expansion?
Cory Stockton: We are not going to have that waiting period be as long as it has been historically. We know that that's not a great situation for players and it's something that we'd like to avoid or at least minimize as much as possible. As far as patches go - 5.4 isn't necessarily the end of the patch cycle. It's just a matter of "that's what we have planned up to this point". There could very well be a chance that we continue to do patches after that. That's something we'll talk about next after we're done with what we're focused on right now.
As far as speed goes I think you can expect a similar cadence that we've had with 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 going into 5.4. We want to get it up on the PTR as soon as possible now that 5.3 is out. And we're super excited about that. I think that's probably one of the biggest things - that we feel like we've been able to really deliver on that promise and do patches in that 2, 3 months timeframe. We've been really able to deliver on that and we're really excited about that.
buffed: There's also still talk about that 5.4 feature that was described as potentially having an impact similar to the dungeon finder in Wrath of the Lich king or the raid finder in Cataclysm. Is this feature still planned for 5.4?
Cory Stockton: Yeah, we still have a pretty exciting feature for 5.4 that we have been working on for a little while. We definitely think it's going to have an impact and that the players will really like it. We're not ready to talk about it yet, it's still something that we're working on. But I don't think it will be very long before we will be able to talk about it publically.
buffed: Players are speculating that it might have something to do with the possibility of scaling older dungeons and raids so that they're once again challenging for higher level characters. That doesn't sound too absurd, right?
Cory Stockton: That's definitely something that could be cool. We have a ton of things on tab for 5.4, it's going to be a large patch in scale and scope - which we think players would expect after what 5.2 was. We can't wait to talk more about it and get to the features. It's going to be awesome, we're really hyped up about it.
buffed: Thank you very much for this interview.
PC0WoW: Sylvanas singt "Wehklagen der Hochgeborenen"
PC7Blizzard leakt aus Versehen Burning Crusade Classic und WoW-Patch 9.1
PC0
Einzigartig jo.... aber der größte Fail den Blizzard sich seit Jahren geleistet hat. Niemand kann den Kampf als Mausklicker schaffen, entweder man spielt eh schon mit der Tastatur, das sind dann auch die Egoisten, die meinen der Kampf sei easygoing, oder man hat soviel Zeit und Geduld, dass man sich kurzerhand komplett umgewöhnt und alle seine Skills auf die Tastatur setzt, damit die Maus komplett frei für den Kampf ist!!
Ich finde Hexos als die größte Diskriminierung seit WoW-Beginn!!
Im Vergleich zu den normalen Szenarien ist es für Otto-Normal-Spieler "heroisch"
Naja extra riesen Patchankündigung und dann noch richtig dicke HEROISCHE dran geschrieben da dachte ich - als nicht PTR gänger - schon das hier das ein oder andere zu tun ist und es im Schnitt auch länger geht wie 15min.
Aber das was kam ist nen Witz! Da hätte man sich das Heroische geschreibsel sparen können und dran schreiben können in den Patchnotes 5 neue Szenarien(PUNKT.).
Wenn dann 480er !
Und ja ich habe es nach dem ersten HC Szenario nur noch mit 3 DDs gemacht nix Heiler und Tank. Und ja bei den anderen Szenarien waren DDs dabei mit Gear zwischen 492 - 495.
Dazu kannte ich keines dieser neuen Szenarien => also weder Guide noch PTR. Dennoch waren alle langweilig. Zusammenziehen bomben nice one, bisschen aus den AOE Flächen raus und schon sind alle 5 HC Inis ca. in 75min durch !
Und nebenbei noch einige Bonus aufgaben erfüllt! Und zack weit über die hälfte der TP auch schon.
Mach sie mal mit der 490er Ausrüstung, die sie als Mindestvoraussetzung haben und ohne Heiler/Tank (der ja bei Szenarien kein Muss ist, nur eine "Erleichterung")
Positiv ist nur das man wieder auf dem eigenen Server Spieler suchen muß und man in knapp unter 2 Stunden via Szenarien sein TP WochenCap hat.
Das wars aber auch schon !
endlich mehr polygone für die charas???
Somit müssten wir auch keine Angst haben vor einer Durststrecke zum nächsten Addon.^^
Und es bereits klar, dass die Allianz "gestärkt" und "vereint" aus diesem Addon, während die Horde "geschwächt" hervorgeht
es gibt genug asia angehauchte spiele die müll sind !
Daher freue ich mich umso mehr, wenn das nächste Addon "Rückkehr der brennenden Legion" wird.
Gibt 3 Favoriten Wotlk, Cata und MoP, Meinungen sind eben verschieden.
Was ich wirklich noch nie gelesen oder gehört habe das BC als das schlechteste Addon herhalten mußte.
Interessant, das höre ich zum ersten mal :O Normalerweise wird immer Cata als das schlechteste Addon gehandelt.
Aber sehe das schon ähnlich wird so langsam Zeit für ein Setting das nicht ganz so fremd wirkt.
Und zwischen einem asiatischen Spiel und einem Spiel bei dem ein gewisser Teil asiatisch ist, ist ein gewaltiger Unterschied. Ich konnte bei WoW bisher keine Kulleräugigen Schulmädchen im Minirock entdecken...
Würde es das gleiche Spiel zweimal geben, einmal mit Asia Setting und einmal mit "normalen". Würdest du das einen dann als Müll bezeichnen und das andere gut finden?
Solche meckerziegen braucht weder Blizz noch die Com.
Und deine 13€ will auch niemand
ZITAT:
Jetzt Lern den Unterschied zwichen GENUG und ALLE und schon haste wieder was gelernt^^