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Tides of Vengeance Live Developer Q&A Roundup: December 14th

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Game Director Ion Hazzikostas answered your Tides of Vengeance questions today and here are the highlights.

Q&A Highlights

  • Azerite Armor in the Rise of Azshara will have all traits unlocked  They're shifting AP to the Heart of Azeroth, allowing you to unlock permanent powers, and more.
  • The CrossRP addon wasn't broken deliberately. They're planning to hotfix in an elixir that will allow you to understand the opposing faction for a short period of time next week.
  • They're planning to roll out a hotfix for non-boss dungeon enemies that cause too many wipes and are bad with Teeming.

You promised us better communication. Why were so many changes undocumented in 8.1? (Profession requirements on crafted gear, multitude of M+ mob changes)?

It's a continuing process of improvement. Blizzard is reading the undocumented changes thread on MMO-Champion and reddit. The latest patch notes were thorough, but not complete.

The Profession crafted gear bug that went live was an inconsistency. The change was rolled back. The requirement will be back in Season 2.

They missed some things like Stealth detection of mobs in Underrot. They failed to capture the changes. They're going to do better about that in the future.

Could you add rationale for changes to patch notes and/or hotfixes? This would be a huge step in communication.

They're going to add more "dev notes" to changes. They're not really satisfied with how they communicated that Mythic Keystones can no longerbe deleted.

The recent 8.1 patch broke the popular CrossRP addon.

There was no deliberate attempt to break the addon. Addons can't directly parse and do things with chat in Communities. This was done to help malicious stuff being done with the chat in Tides of Vengeance. They want to add an elixir to the game that will make you able to understand the opposing faction, but not speak their language. The hotfix is coming next week.

Wondering why the change to deleting M+ keys. Seemed like a great QoL change made in BfA.

It was a hotfixed change that they didn't fully think through. In the 8.0 pre-patch, you were able to delete your keys and reattain them. The team didn't like players deleting keys and picking seemingly easier dungeons.

Why were ones made to increase challenge and change strategy without addressing pain points of other dungeons?

In the last few days, they've got detailed breakdowns of dungeons mobs, consisting of various data, difference where Teeming is introducing an artificial difficulty spike, wipe counts, and as a result, Blizzard will be rolling out a hotfix to address some of these mobs next week. They need to get better at tracking them down internally.

Are there any steps being taken to improve the M+ pug experience? Most groups are falling apart if they don't use voice chat.

Voice Chat is the norm here, they're more interested to learn about how to improve the integrated Battle.net Voice Chat. Mythic+ is designed for real-time communication and that's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Why do we have to wait for the opening of the Battle for Dazar'Alor. Why do we have to wait for Season 2 so long?

Cutting Uldir short would be too soon. It's a healthy 8 boss tier, many guilds are still pushing for Cutting Edge. 3 months of raid tier would be too short and it's a natural thing of a new Season for a raid to come out.

It'd be nice to have a source of Titan Residuum that isn't finite. I know you don't was us farming it, but can't you make the end-of-dungeon at least have a chance to drop some? Or shard of it. It'd be nice on zero azerite drop raid weeks.

The residuum system is primarily designed to solve the problem of Azerite gear delivery from the weekly chest and give players more control over their loot. For now, it's a dungeon-focused experience and they don't plan to add more residuum sources in the near future.

How do you plan on handling the transition from Season 1 to Season 2 regarding Titan Residuum?

They don't plan to delete or introduce Titan Residuum. In the new Season, two new tiers of Azerite Armor will be added (ilvl 400 & 415). The new gear will have roughly the triple cost of the current Azerite gear. If you hoard Titan Residuum before Season 2, you will be only a week ahead. The amount of residuum from your weekly chest will also be proportionally higher as well as rewards from scrapping/disenchanting.

The purpose of AK  is to reduce the gap between players who play and those who do not. With AK on hold for 6 weeks, there will be a massive gap between players.

They don't want players to grind armor prior to opening of the raid, since that would allow them to unlock all Azerite traits on the new gear straight away. This wasn't a 8.1 change, the system actually was in place with BfA launch. They wanted an eleven-week AK catchup system with an increment and the final week fell for December 11th.

Any plans making the Heart of Azeroth more engaging? Many players didn't hide the artifact skins via transmog in Legion. Why must the HoA feel so bland?

They want to improve the Azerite system. Reflecting on the system they launched, there was one central flaw. On one hand, they want Artifact Power to be relevant and it's cool to have long-term goals to work toward. The system works best when they are rewards to chase, what's bland is when rewards are tied to armor. In Rise of Azshara and beyond, Azerite traits will be fully unlocked and they're shifting Artifact Power to the Heart of Azeroth itself. More details TBA.

Do you plan on increasing gear reward item level of Warfronts and world quests as time goes on? A little disappointed to see 340 from the new Warfront.

Arathi is going to keep the same rewards. The Darkshore Warfront rewards will be increased by 15 item levels when Season 2 launches. World quest rewards will continue to increase based on your personal item level. In Rise of Azshara, they plan to introduce Heroic Warfronts.

Can we get Warfront rotation to speed up a bit? Once a month to participate in aparticular Warfront is kind of lame.

In practice it's three weeks. No we have two Warfronts rotating in parallel. They want to give everyone a chance to participate. In terms of relative availability, they don't want Wafronts to give you ilvl 400 rewards that would render other content (Mythic+, raids) somewhat obsolete.

As a Horde player on a Horde dominant server I will never see the 30% War Mode bonus. This is a problem.

They would be surprised to see a 30% Horde bonus, but it's going to increase and balance itself out in the future. It's there for a healthy balance across shards.

In 8.1 we will be able to acquire some rewards from Island Expeditions with currency, but this doesn't include the items that were available before 8.1. Will the previous items be available from the vendors?

Island rewards are going to evolve throughout BfA, nothing specific to announce right now.

It was previously mentions by Ythisens back in September that new ways to obtain Vicious Saddles were being worked on for 8.1, what are they?

In Season 2, if you fill up your participation progress bar toward the Seasonal mount, the bar will reward a saddle. It can be refilled multiple times per Season.

Are you satisfied with the state of Class design as a whole? The community seems to have a negative opinion on this topic lately.

No, we're never satisfied with Class design. They want to have deep expansion systems that are going to modify how your class plays out (Legion Artifacts, Azerite Armor in BfA) instead of giving Classes more abilities, but this leads to short-term dissatisfation. The pruning in Warlords and Legion was controversial. In BfA, they took a step back from that. Pieces of raid utility were added this expansion. It's hard to keep 36 specs unique.

Can we expect any form of Legendaries throughout BfA? E.g. MoP Cloaks, WoD rings?

Nothing specific is planned right now. Where it fits the story, it's something they're always open to, but nothing specific is planned right now.

What's the status on uncoupling Artifact pairs for transmog? I really want to mog shield and sword separately on my Prot Pally.

Nothing specific to announce right now.

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13 minutes ago, jinsu2301 said:

Care to elaborate?

No need to unlock Azerite traits on Azerite gear in Rise of Azshara moving forward?

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30 minutes ago, Stan said:

No need to unlock Azerite traits on Azerite gear in Rise of Azshara moving forward?

I don't think you really understand how that new system is going to be implemented. The AP that you gain now until RoA is going to be rolled into the the heart of azeroth. We may not know how exactly, but we know that AP is not going away and Ion clearly made remarks that support that.

"Starting in Rise of Azshara, all traits will likely be unlocked, but you'll use AP to unlock powers in the Heart of Azeroth itself. More information will come down the line. " 

 

Edited by Demonpuke
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21 minutes ago, Stan said:

No need to unlock Azerite traits on Azerite gear in Rise of Azshara moving forward?

Isn't that a good thing?

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1 hour ago, jinsu2301 said:

Care to elaborate?

Ugh, i probably should have more sleep as i mixed up what patch is now ?
I clearly meant 8.1 as there are no meaningful changes to azerite talent system, while they hint that it will get an additional parts in 8.2. Also the addition of m+ currency that you are not able to get from m+ just turned me from m+ even further, i hoped i could at last steadily work towards the azerite piece i wanted instead of this casino, but i guess we can't have nice basic things in bfa.

 

 

Edited by MrOger
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26 minutes ago, Demonpuke said:

I don't think you really understand how that new system is going to be implemented. The AP that you gain now until RoA is going to be rolled into the the heart of azeroth. We may not know how exactly, but we know that AP is not going away and Ion clearly made remarks that support that.

"Starting in Rise of Azshara, all traits will likely be unlocked, but you'll use AP to unlock powers in the Heart of Azeroth itself. More information will come down the line. "

Thanks for the clarification. I totally missed this part while writing down all questions. Updated the article.

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seeing last few expansions, anything you gain in a patch would become mostly useless in next one. remember how the AP we got in the beginning of legion became insignificant after a few patches. same goes for items of course. seeing you can get +385 (mythic ilvl of last raid) from normal mode of new raid this effect is getting stronger in BFA.

having said that you play the game for fun not the gear otherwise just login when last patch of expansion hits and you be good to go :)

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