Group Interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Augustine - Design Philosophy and Dragonriding
Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Quest Designer Josh Augustine conducted a Dragonflight Patch 10.1: Embers of Neltharion group interview with MMORPG, MMO-Champion, Dot Esports, Dexerto, and Wowhead, discussing design philosophy, computational addons, and taking dragonriding into the future!
Design Philosophy Dot Esports — Regarding development philosophy in Dragonflight, it feels like the elements of transparency and responsiveness to player feedback have been elevated immensely. From the developer point of view, what sparked that change in mentality, and what is the driving factor behind that alteration in mindset? Glad that comes across.It has been a shift, sparked by realizing their old approach wasn't working anymore. They were failing to connect with their player base, and people were unhappy with elements of the game that the developers saw as just continuing with 20 years of tradition — the way they've always done it.
Not undermining character investment is just one of those things they've always done, but it led to not making things too broadly accessible, and it took a couple wake up calls to realize that none of that investment matters if they're not connecting with the playerbase. The answer was a conversation — working through possible changes, running them by the community, and establishing a new norm.
Once that becomes the expectation, perhaps there's more room to give each other the benefit of the doubt. The development team is not perfect, they're going to get things wrong and make mistakes, they're going to aim for a goal that turns out not to be something players want, or aim for something players do want but miss the mark.
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