Transcription of Interview:-
BRIEF SUMMARY
Legacy Dungeons
- One of the things that they look when bringing back dungeons is thematics, but also a dungeon pool that can highlight different strengths and weaknesses.
- Theater of Pain has a lot of big scary lieutenants and they felt the current dungeon was lacking.
- They want to give players new challenges when deciding what to change, so that it still feels fresh when returning.
- Kul’tharok in Theater of Pain used to put a lot of pressure on the healer due to magic dispels, but that’s now changed and the challenge is now spread out across the dungeon.
- MC’ing Squirrels in Mechagon felt like out of the acceptable “band” of a cool advantage and so they removed it. They also could have made that damage scale with player’s power level instead and that also would’ve resolved the problem. A similar solution was implemented for the Priory of the Scared Flame buff.
Learning from Season 1
You could argue that there are three audiences – lower keys, people looking to get their 10s done and then the pushers. Some of the problems in Season 1 and lessons for season 2 include:
- The keystone squish, since the way the rewards were set up, it almost acted as a double squish as players only felt rewarded from a 7-10 keystone.
- New challenges from Challenger’s Peril and Fortified/Tyrannical which were big steps at each level. They specifically wanted to focus on this specifically as for pugs, they want to make sure the progression feels a lot better.
- Mythic Zero loot is back to a weekly lockout and dropping Champion gear again, so it’s more of a on-ramp.
- Reduce the penalty from deaths back from 15 second to 5 with the removal of the Challenger’s Peril affix as this can feel overly punishing for pugs, but interesting to play around in a group in higher ratings. They added Keystone Legend achievement to incentivize people who are looking for the extra challenge.
- Resilient Keystones being added so your keystones won’t deplete past a certain level once you’ve timed that level.
Mythic Secret Phases
- They love Mythic phases, since part of Mythic is the spectacle with the Race to World First going on.
- When they want to do a Mythic phase, they have to ask if it makes sense to do something like this and does it fit the boss.
- They have to make sure that a Secret Mythic phase doesn’t feel like the true version of the fight. If an awesome story moment only happens in Mythic, then that goes against the goals of story mode.