Naguura Interview with Lead Encounter Designer Matt Villers - Mythic+ Design, Thundering Affix

Live Geposted 16.01.2023 um 09:29 von Squishei

interviewed Lead Encounter Designer Matt VillersMythic+ Design Philosophy

One of the things that they're designing for now is planning ahead for longer bosses. An example of this is having the containers on Hochadjudikatorin Aleez respawn.

They're also designing for player choice. What are ways that players can make decisions about route and express mastery.

They'vee heard a lot of feedback on RP. Things like Ring of Booty in Freehold they left in as there's some strategic decisions that can be made, but removed some from the start of Tazavesh. The Halls of Valor ones are classic and they couldn't bear to do it.

Randomness in Mythic+. They aim to make things not completely random, like Fenryr always being on one side in Halls of Valor.

Thundering Seasonal Affix

Overall happy with Donnernd overall.

The goal was an affix Isn't completely taking over the dungeon and isn't the primary focus. Lighter, but still flavorful.

For the future, they're still thinking about Seasonal affixes and there's lots of ways they can go. They might try something completely new, they might not do a seasonal affix at all, they're still discussing.

They're watching the feedback on Tanks with Thundering. The hope is that with the amount of time you have, you can find downtime in between frontals or other mechanics to make the clear happen, and they're open to potential adjustments, but they've also noticed that players are getting better at Thundering, so they don't want to react just yet.

Affixes

They have discussions on affixes a lot. How do they keep dungeons feeling fresh, and one of the ways is by changing affix layout. There's concerns that with fewer affixes or if only one bucket was changing it wouldn't feel as fresh, but they're open to experimentation.

They have done some updates to affixes with some changes in Shadowlands with a focus on finding places where classes can shine such as making Bursting dispellable. Affixes that are working well could even take a vacation and they could try a brand new experiment.

Bosses tend to be the most intense challenges that they provide and adding more affixes on them can be super dangerous. It's nice to vary up boss gameplay though, and they tried that in Fated Raids. They want to keep exploring that space and Thundering is the first affix that you have to deal with alongside the boss and watching that play out and how players deal with it has given them info on how they deal with it for future affixes that may interact with bosses.

Class Balance

In general, they want players to be able to play what they want to play. There's a gear and skill component, but all specs should have the potential to do a Mythic+ 20, to clear Mythic Raid and they're watching to make sure that is the case. But they also want to make sure that there's ways that classes can shine outside of just DPS/HPS, such as Mass Grip on the Intermission of Balakar Khan.

A big problem that they face is perception. Every class right now is able to do a Mythic+ 20. There are leaderboards, high-end players, streamers who are very good at the game and will seek any advantage they can get to be competitive. People watch that and see it as a path to success and that perception can trickle down.

One of the ways they can try to overcome perception is through non-throughput solutions, like wanting an Enrage dispel for Raging weeks.

Unique buffs like Bloodlust have been a part of class identity for pretty much the entire history of the game and they might be a reason to bring someone that might not otherwise be brought, but if the Meta class already has it, that can be a challenge. They're trying to be mindful of that, and make sure that group compositions don't feel overly restrictive and that's part of while Evokers have Bloodlust and Paladins have battle rez.

Dungeon Balance

They try really hard to avoid making dungeons more difficult during a season. If they have to, they'll try to do it early in the season and make very targeted changes.

They have a baseline for dungeon difficulty and then they try to make the dungeons as close to that as possible. If a dungeon is below that, they feel okay with that, but something like Junkyard where you get +3/4 key levels is a little too extreme. If a dungeon is above that difficulty, they'll look to make adjustments.

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