Posts with tag brian-holinka

This week our friends at Wowhead sat down with Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka to talk about the state of PvP. You can watch the entire interview above or head to Wowhead for a transcript if you'd rather read than watch. So who's getting buffed and who's getting nerfed? Beyond this week's hotfixes, Holinka isn't saying, but Blizzard is definitely keeping an eye on everyone to try to keep PvP in balance.

Brian Holinka

Representation in ratings are important to players but we consider that one facet. We pay attention to what people are saying, and our own play experiences. We use all those to balance PvP classes. Rets and Discs are a good example - were very slightly nerfed (set bonus and silence). Those classes were doing too well and were reined in. Under performing specs include DPS shaman. Any changes we make have effect on the whole game. So many things to take into account. Decisions are made deliberately.

source

Click through to the whole interview for more.

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• Diminishing Returns categories have been cut from thirteen to five.
• Fear's PvP duration has been reduced from eight seconds to five.
• CC needs reduction, but without it the game would be boring.
• In WoD every PvP item will have two item levels, e.g. 550 for PvE and 590 for PvP. This will be effective in the world too.
• We saw an early map and description of Ashran -- looks like a League of Legends style ARAM-esque back-and-forth with other activities around the main central run.
• There was some more information on Skirmishes, they may drop Conquest gear, and will drop bags containing Honor, Honor gear, or gold.
• Tanking will not go back to being about Threat
• Button Bloat has focused on redundant or duplicative abilities
• Sometimes cutting or simplifying buttons has made class flavor/fantasy better.
• They do want to give players new things where appropriate, but they need to free up some space to do so.
• The devs do their best to avoid different spell behaviors in PvP.
• The devs endeavor to make classes fun to play without affecting their numbers.
• The devs are listening to feedback and nothing is final.

You can view the video above or on Battle.net.

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• Blizzard is not yet ready to talk timelines with Warlords beta, or release, but are happy with how things are progressing. It's on schedule.
• The changes to PvP in Mists and Warlords have all been focused on improving PvP participation
• One of the main reasons why Holinka is so active on Twitter is to be a point of contact for PvPers.
• There will be a tutorial zone, as discussed at BlizzCon that is to provide a starter experience for all players going into Draenor. The option to use this as more of a tutorial will exist.
• Garrisons will offer a lot of playability, and are continuing in development beyond 6.0 with potential new features. Garrison PvP is a potential example.

This past week the hosts of EU-based podcast Ready Check were lucky enough to go visit Blizzard's offices in Versailles, where they met up with Brian Holinka and Ion Hazzikostas for a lively round of Q&A. The podcast--with attendant full transcript, don't you worry, folks who can't play the podcast--covers a very broad range of topics, and PvPers should be particularly interested in the broad discussion about arenas. Gothiques and Athene bring up some wonderful points about arena queuing, and matching, and the little ways in which the system often results in unexpectedly wasted time, as well as the ways in which not-entirely-honest players can manipulate that system in their favor. Both Holinka and Hazzikostas have insights to offer on these problems, and there's some good back-and-forth about potential solutions and improvements to the existing arena systems.

In addition to the excellent PvP discussions, the interview features some talk of Warlords of Draenor and the future--some of which we've already heard about, but I am so excited for garrisons and a toys tab that I could listen to this stuff all day long. Do you know how many bag spaces I'm going to get back once that toys tab goes live? In the words of the Diablo Templar companion, it will be glorious! There's also some really fun discussion on the philosophy and practice of encounter and mechanics design, and how the WoW team goes about building raids and bosses. This was perhaps my favorite part of the interview, because I am a hopeless PvPer and am much more at home among WoW's raid bosses. In any case, no matter what part of the game you enjoy, there's something in this interview for you. You can check out the full transcript and podcast episode at Ready Check's own website, so make sure to click on over to the whole thing!

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@Linklmm We dislike how large base resil and battle fatigue numbers have gotten too. Out goal is to reduce or eliminate both in Warlords.

- Holinka (@holinka) January 9, 2014

I think this is an admirable goal, base resilience and battle fatigue are confusing to some, and annoying to others, but I'd be really interested to see how they do it. Resilience, although not Battle Fatigue, has been part of the game almost since PvP first got instanced, and it's a valuable option for the devs to tune incoming PvP damage so that it can cope with the ever-inflating stat levels in PvE. Yes, there'll be a squish, but then PvE will still almost certainly scale up.

So I'm pleased they aren't planning on taking the rather bold step of completely removing it, to leave themselves without the option to reintroduce it easily would seem a little foolhardy, and not something they'd be likely to do. I'd imagine that if it were to go, there'd have to be some method to increase player health, or at least effective health, in instanced PvP, and there'd have to be some formula changes to healing, too. I'm looking forward to beta!

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Next week Thursday from 5:30-6:30 p.m. PDT, the World of Warcraft community team will be hosting a live Q&A session with Blizzard developers/designers Dave Kosak, Ion Hazzikostas, Brian Holinka, Cory Stockton, and Greg Street. The last time we saw one of these with a developer collective was back in October 2011. More recently, in December 2012, Blizzard Customer Support hosted a Q&A of their own.

The full details and job description of each of the developers involved can be found below.

• All characters now have a base Resilience of 65%.
• Resilience has been removed from most PvP gear.
• Season 13 Tyrannical gear had their item levels increased to ilevel 496, up from ilevel 493.
• Season 13 Tyrannical Elite gear had their item levels decreased to ilevel 496, down from ilevel 512.
• Battlegrounds, Rated Battlegrounds, and Arenas now have an ilevel cap. All gear will be scaled down to ilevel 496.

What does this all mean? I've been relentlessly bothering Brian on Twitter for your benefit, so let's run down how he's addressing players' concerns. Do note that Blizzard will release an official blog on this some time next week.

PvPers rejoice! Our unrated arenas will be making a return. They were removed in Cataclysm, for those who don't recall, and replaced with the current wargame system, which is great for players who want to face off against specific teams or comps, typically higher end players who have a good network of other PvPers, but far harder to use for players who only PvP casually, or don't really have many PvP contacts. A major downfall of the wargame system was that it required not just one, but two teams, so a minimum of four people, and those people had to be willing to split into two groups of two, and face off against each other. Certainly no great demand, but a good deal harder for the casual PvPer to pull off than simply hopping in a queue.

The skirmish system, although, or perhaps because, it awarded no points and no rating, was a great way to try out new classes, new comps, or new specs, and generally just have some fun in the arena without the pressure of dropping rating for your team. It was PvP for the sake of PvP, just because it's fun, and WoW Insider is thrilled to hear of their return, even if it's not in patch 5.3. We're holding out hope for patch 5.4, how about you?

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