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Community Council Live Chat with the Trading Post Development Team - Highlights and Summary
Live
Publié
10/02/2023 à 16:57
par
Archimtiros
Members of the WoW Community Council were given the opportunity to speak with World of Warcraft developers Jeremy Feasel, Jennifer Hauer, Crystal Tam, Tyler Neuhaus, Kenny McBride, and Andrew Bernard discussing the motivation and goals of the newly added Trading Post.
Highlights
One of the initial goals with the Trading Post was to finding new ways to offer a wide variety of cosmetics and collectibles to players, without being constrained to matching the current storylines. The Trading Post allowed them to embrace whacky one off ideas, while also offering greater varieties to players.
The team had two different problems to solve. One was embracing all of the playful fun activities to enjoy and explore within the world aside from traditional player goals such as dungeons and raids, while the other was finding an avenue to use all the new assets being generated by the art team, which may not necessarily fit into the current narrative. As an evergreen feature that isn't expansion dependent, the Trading Post developed as a way to blend those two together - rewarding players for playing how they enjoy playing, whether that's instanced content or simply engaging with the open game world.
One interesting challenge of the Trading Post items was not making them all over the top, keeping some common-level offerings which look like common adventurer fare. So often artists would pitch ideas for a simple hood or outfit, but not always have a good avenue to award said items; usually when they make new content, it's associated with an epic ongoing story. The Trading Post has created an opportunity to offer a wider array of rewards, outside of the immediate narrative. Now the artists have a reason to make this cool hood or that simply chainmail outfit and get it into players hands.
Early on there was a debate over whether players would really want flower corsages, and Jennifer Hauer was adamant that at least
she
wanted it, and it was worth trying to see if other players would too. Flower corsages led to black dresses, and now there's an entirely new theme of transmog offerings to build off of.
There are infinite things that could be put into the game through the Trading Post, though in terms of things that
won't
be added to it include Gladiator rewards, AOTC mounts, and similar "earned" rewards which already have their own system. The general working rule is that they don't want to undermine the effort players put in to earn things through skill during a particular period of time - things like Gladiator mounts, Challenge Mode rewards. Otherwise there are already a ton of things planned with a brand new catalogue every month, but they'd love to hear ideas that the community would like to see.
Random ideas include color variations of the
Rênes de brutosaure de caravane puissant
(for players which already have the original), or some way of changing vendors on the
Rênes de yack de la grande expédition
- these aren't necessarily planned ideas or even things they have a way to accomplish right now, but maybe some day.
There was some discussion regarding base character customizations, like new hair colors, but ultimately the team felt like they should be baseline additions instead. These are constant discussions that the team has, to try to ensure whatever is added is appropriate.
As far as bringing back old mounts, the team wants to be careful to respect the skill and effort players put into earning them originally, so it's unlikely that the
Rênes de proto-drake noir
will be added to the trading post, but it is very possible that old Recruit-a-Friend mounts and other rewards which were time limited but not necessarily related to player skill could be included. The Celestial Steed is a good example of this, making it more accessible to a greater number of players. Again, something like
Rênes d'Invincible
is less likely, but they're willing to hear community feedback.
The
Ensemble : fardeau de justice implacable
wasn't meant to be a class or sub-class stylized reward so much as an attempt to create something cool, but class based rewards are something that the team would love to do in the future. Ashbringer probably won't show up in the Trading Post, because it has major lore implications, but sets like the Swashbuckler ensemble are a great way to add new themes into the game.
The Warden set is fully cosmetic, usable by any class/race. Although early looks show Night Elf ears poking through the helm, that's already planned to be fixed.
The team is not yet sure whether they want to reveal the new month's Trading Post offerings early. Without knowing what's coming next, there's a concern that players will stress over whether they should save their currency for a better item later on, but the designers also recognize that showcasing the next month's wares doesn't eliminate that problem entirely - it just pushes the question out another month. It's something they are continually debating.
Ash’adar, messager de l’aube
was originally going to be a super expensive Trading Post item, which would have required saving several months worth of currency to purchase, but the team recognized that didn't feel good - you didn't get to make a choice that month, and unless you knew when the mount was coming to the Post, it would be hard to save up effectively. This led to the idea of simply making it a monthly reward, allowing players to get it while still being able to purchase desired offered in the shop each month.
A major point of development was ensuring the Trading Post didn't feel too stressful for players - offering just enough things that allow players to make good choices, without offering an overwhelming number of items to the point where players would never be able to get all the things they want. Allowing players to "save" an item using the Freeze feature and removing big ticket items like the cool cat mount, which they had a reasonable certainty that everyone would want, helped facilitated that goal.
While there will be a big rotation of new items each month, the team is aware that some players will invariably miss some of them, so returning items from the "back catalogue" is planned. The specifics of when, how, and what items are still being determined, but will probably be driven by player data. They definitely don't want players to feel like they'll never have a shot at that item again.
They're looking at how players are using their currency, how much they're willing to spend or hoarding, and they are very interested in hearing community feedback regarding the amount of currency offered each month versus how many of the items players buy or wish they could have bought.
Cosmetic sets allow for a great deal of extra customization and theme beyond the player's class, but it's also important that armor type continues to have meaning. They don't want to make everything cosmetic, because then they lose a bit of that class identity.
The Black Market Auction House will continue to serve its function as the place to get now unobtainable rare things that used to exist in the game, but they want to be careful about overlapping it with the much more accessible Trading Post, as it would devalue many of those items that players spend millions of gold on.
As the current monthly reward, they don't want players who aren't able to obtain
Ash’adar, messager de l’aube
to miss out on it entirely, so the tentative plan is to bring it back eventually, though they aren't entirely sure when yet. It probably won't be another free reward, meaning it would likely show up as a regular Trading Post offering priced accordingly with other mounts down the line, but they do want to give players another chance to earn it.
The Trading Post is an evergreen system, which they're going to continue adding rewards to every month, so there are still a lot of cool things coming which
haven't
been datamined yet.
There's an interesting idea of adding special quests as Trading Post wares, though they don't want players to miss out on gameplay or lore. Another version of this idea could be having more NPC visitors showing up at the Trading Post, periodically offering quests to go find some cool secret Trading Post items.
The Trading Post is a part of the ongoing roadmap for this year, which includes a bunch of major updates to the game, refreshing systems all over the place. One of the major ideas is just to have more things going on in Azeroth to make it feel like a living world, and they hope that the Trading Post helps breathe a little more life into areas outside of the current patch content in the Dragon Isles.
The team dug through thousands of old unused art assets, creating a massive catalogue of items to slot in every month, alongside many brand new offerings created specifically for the Trading Post. They want a good balance high and low end wares, from
Fureur du seigneur du Feu
to the
Marteau de guerre d’écuyer
, while also offering something for every class. In any given month, one class may not have as much to pick from as another, but they should average out over time. They're also trying to match themes where they can, adding pink cosmetics to match this month's Love is in the Air event.
Regarding the special monthly rewards, the goal was to reduce FOMO by simply giving players the thing they would most likely all want to buy anyway, rather than watching nearly every player spend all their currency on
Ash’adar, messager de l’aube
. It won't always be a mount, but would ideally be the "must buy" item that most players would feel compelled to buy.
They're also trying to have a variety of items for sale each month. It won't necessarily always be one mount and one pet per month, but they also want to avoid 4,000 currency worth of mounts for sale all at once.
The team doesn't want to add more freeze slots right now, as they don't want players to feel like they need to freeze multiple items in the first place. If players feel like everything is so expensive that they need to, then that more likely indicates a pacing issue between the amount of currency earned and the value of items for sale each month.
At one point, there were around 30 items for sale each month, with each piece of an ensemble purchased separately - sometimes over several months, but it felt
awful
. The list was paired down to around 15 in order to meaningfully prioritize purchases, but not overwhelm players with a huge amount of choices. The exact number of items for sale each month might change in future months, depending on what is for sale and how players engage with the system.
The same item can be frozen for multiple months in a row.
Trading post items are a good way to experiment with new types of appearances, such the bandoliers and corsages already available, as well as things like scarves or shawls, and the Warden set's dress. The ultimate goal is player expression.
Although they are the source of many great ideas, they aren't allowed to use Student Art Contest materials, but Blizzard often ends up hiring many of those contestants anyway, at which point their work and ideas become part of the ecosystem. A good example of this was the 2017 Student Art Contest winner, Natacha Nielsen, who was hired on as a Character Artist and adapted their ideas into Dragonflight's
Tuskarr Otter Mount
.
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