{Discuss] So the random loot system in PVP is really going live?

[Gunwolf]

I am surprised that they have decided to keep this random loot box system. What advantage does it exactly have compared to the old system? Why did the old system need to be changed at all to begin with?

I personally love to plan my gear progression out in advance for PVP. It gives me something to look forward to, and I can prioritize certain upgrades first.... like weapons, or head/chest/legs armor. This new system has removed that whole aspect in favor of a random loot box, which has several drawbacks like no choice in upgrades or the possibility to get nothing useful or the same armor you already have (they said there is a system in place to reduce the chance of repeat armor rewards, but "a chance" doesn't seem guaranteed). Furthermore, this also causes a problem where the losing team gets nothing. In the old system, if you won then you got a high amount of honor but even losses would give you some honor especially if the game was close like 3/2 on WSG. Now in Legion, if you have a close game, you don't get shit. How is that fun? It will cause players to simply quit once it seems like they are starting to lose.... instead of atleast try so they get some honor out of it.

I think the Mark system is alright, and I like that you can just buy whole armor sets now... but this is just a simplified honor system in a way, and again only if you win the match, and then only if you get lucky and get a strongbox.

The PVP talent system and prestige seems pretty cool honestly. I like having PVP talents, and greater rewards the more you play. I think the balance on gear is a great idea too, along with the standardized class stats that can be tweaked as needed to achieve proper balance (as long as they do a good job with it and improve the stats that the spec actually wants/needs). One suggestion I would have for this is that maybe you can pick a certain stat influence so it will enhance a secondary stat which you value more..... like say as a Destro Lock I want to focus more on crit cause my abilities rely on it while stuff like Mastery is too unpredictable, so I can pick to buff Crit at the expense of Mastery and my PVP character sheet will reflect that with +Crit and -Mastery... all while still having the same amount of secondary stats as if Crit, Haste, and Mastery were all similar. This would provide some small amount of customization and tweaking with your spec but still be balanced.... it does not have to be a major difference either, even a few % up or down would be good.


I just don't get why they went for this change. They claim that planning your gear progression is not fun because you know what to expect, and that randomized loot is somehow more fun. This is bullshit to me. If its not broke, don't fix it. They have taken one step forward with the pvp talent system and the class stats sheet balancing, but then two steps back with the lootbox and mark of honor system. Even in PVE, you will replay the same dungeon or farm rep with a specific faction in order to get certain upgrades..... so why would they think that a random lootbox system is better and what players actually would prefer? It seems to me that they are copying FPS games like CoD for the prestige system and Counterstrike for the lootbox... but this is not an FPS game and not everything will transfer over well like the lootbox.


What are other peoples opinions on this?

I want to see the talent and prestige system stay, the class balance sheets to stay (but with those secondary stat tweaks I mentioned), but to return to the honor point system or else give marks of honor more consistently that will give more to players that win but still some to the losing team based on how the end score is. Then you can purchase your current legion gear or past pvp sets with these marks.

[Damaros]

So here's one thing to remember: even if you only get gear when you win, you'll still get way more pieces of gear over time than the average PvEer will. There's no real limit to the amount of arenas, BGs or rated BGs you can do, while you can only loot a raid boss once a week in PvE. This might change with Mythic+ dungeons but I didn't really read into that.

Overall, your item level will increase based on your arena and rated BG performance, and the randomness of gear won't affect your performance in PvP. It's only if you want to transition this into PvE at some point. The sheer amount of gear you'll get overall will probably help compensate the randomness of this system. Is it perfect? I don't think so but it's much better than the system that was in place before. If you don't plan into doing PvE ever, then the randomness in gear should not affect you to begin with.

The PVP talent system and prestige seems pretty cool honestly. I like having PVP talents, and greater rewards the more you play. I think the balance on gear is a great idea too, along with the standardized class stats that can be tweaked as needed to achieve proper balance (as long as they do a good job with it and improve the stats that the spec actually wants/needs). One suggestion I would have for this is that maybe you can pick a certain stat influence so it will enhance a secondary stat which you value more..... like say as a Destro Lock I want to focus more on crit cause my abilities rely on it while stuff like Mastery is too unpredictable, so I can pick to buff Crit at the expense of Mastery and my PVP character sheet will reflect that with +Crit and -Mastery... all while still having the same amount of secondary stats as if Crit, Haste, and Mastery were all similar. This would provide some small amount of customization and tweaking with your spec but still be balanced.... it does not have to be a major difference either, even a few % up or down would be good.

I think that's the whole point of having pre-determined stats. Blizzard can tune and fine tune a class performance in PvP with their stats. If crit is better as a Destro Lock and you could choose to only stack crit, then it might become unbalanced. Then, it becomes hard for Blizzard to try to balance this around without affect PvE. We kind of get back to the old system.

If I were you, I would not worry too much. Crit is essential for Fire Mages to work. Blizzard knows this. So they will have more crit naturally than, let's say, a Shadow Priest who will have more haste.

Also, to everybody that says that PvP will be super unbalanced anyway. Blizzard never had a tool like this to help balancing before. They really have no excuses and I'm pretty sure that they know this themselves. If it ends up being super unbalanced for a whole season (or worse, more than a season), then there's litterally no hope from Blizzard anymore. They don't want this to happen. They have been tuning a lot in PvP in the past few weeks and I expect them to do even more tuning once Legion goes live and people start doing BGs and Arenas. I'd say, let's all wait and see.

[Stormspellz]

So here's one thing to remember: even if you only get gear when you win, you'll still get way more pieces of gear over time than the average PvEer will. There's no real limit to the amount of arenas, BGs or rated BGs you can do, while you can only loot a raid boss once a week in PvE. This might change with Mythic+ dungeons but I didn't really read into that.

rated loot box is only once a week, random bg gear is rather trivial.

[Deleted]

Even in PVE, you will replay the same dungeon or farm rep with a specific faction in order to get certain upgrades..... so why would they think that a random lootbox system is better and what players actually would prefer?

Because they prefer the PVE system of farming dungeons, which certainly don't drop the item you want every time you do them. They've said quite explicitly that they think getting an item for winning is far more enjoyable than farming a currency and buying item x week 1 item y week 2 and having your entire gearing path lain out where, towards the end of it, you're buying rings that you barely care about.


I'd understand why people didn't like this change if pvp was like it was in WOD, no one wants to be fighting against other players with a high level weapon and being left at the mercy of RNG to get your own high ilevel weapon to compete, but when literally all that matters in pvp in terms of gear is your ilevel and even THAT offers pretty miniscule gains, I'm not sure what the problem is.

The only time you're likely to feel any pain from missing an item is if you go and do some pve content, in which case you'll probably be getting gear from that too.
Your artifact will be the only piece of gear that's going to be a major power differential and that's handed to you from the getgo.

Your worry about a loss not offering any reward seems fairly well founded, but even then I'm not sure - I've been doing plenty of pre-patch BG's and very people people give up once it's over, likewise there didn't used to be this "you almost won" consolation prize box like we've had for a while. I'd give the system a go before you make any sweeping judgements about people throwing up their arms and giving up because they won't get a random piece of gear that gives trivial gains - they'll probably still want to be getting kills for honor at least - unlocking more honor talents gives far more rewards than another piece of gear does.

[minteK917]

Your gear doesent even matter. Your honor talents and artifact power is what matter a hell of a lot more. We talking doubling your damage here. Free raid gear from pvp loot boxes is just a side effect of winning.

[Mafic]

Yes it is going live and it is going to be a disaster.

- - - Updated - - -

Your gear doesent even matter. Your honor talents and artifact power is what matter a hell of a lot more. We talking doubling your damage here. Free raid gear from pvp loot boxes is just a side effect of winning.

Gear is going to matter more in Legion PVP because of artifact progression.

- - - Updated - - -

I am surprised that they have decided to keep this random loot box system. What advantage does it exactly have compared to the old system? Why did the old system need to be changed at all to begin with?

I personally love to plan my gear progression out in advance for PVP. It gives me something to look forward to, and I can prioritize certain upgrades first.... like weapons, or head/chest/legs armor. This new system has removed that whole aspect in favor of a random loot box, which has several drawbacks like no choice in upgrades or the possibility to get nothing useful or the same armor you already have (they said there is a system in place to reduce the chance of repeat armor rewards, but "a chance" doesn't seem guaranteed). Furthermore, this also causes a problem where the losing team gets nothing. In the old system, if you won then you got a high amount of honor but even losses would give you some honor especially if the game was close like 3/2 on WSG. Now in Legion, if you have a close game, you don't get shit. How is that fun? It will cause players to simply quit once it seems like they are starting to lose.... instead of atleast try so they get some honor out of it.

I think the Mark system is alright, and I like that you can just buy whole armor sets now... but this is just a simplified honor system in a way, and again only if you win the match, and then only if you get lucky and get a strongbox.

The PVP talent system and prestige seems pretty cool honestly. I like having PVP talents, and greater rewards the more you play. I think the balance on gear is a great idea too, along with the standardized class stats that can be tweaked as needed to achieve proper balance (as long as they do a good job with it and improve the stats that the spec actually wants/needs). One suggestion I would have for this is that maybe you can pick a certain stat influence so it will enhance a secondary stat which you value more..... like say as a Destro Lock I want to focus more on crit cause my abilities rely on it while stuff like Mastery is too unpredictable, so I can pick to buff Crit at the expense of Mastery and my PVP character sheet will reflect that with +Crit and -Mastery... all while still having the same amount of secondary stats as if Crit, Haste, and Mastery were all similar. This would provide some small amount of customization and tweaking with your spec but still be balanced.... it does not have to be a major difference either, even a few % up or down would be good.


I just don't get why they went for this change. They claim that planning your gear progression is not fun because you know what to expect, and that randomized loot is somehow more fun. This is bullshit to me. If its not broke, don't fix it. They have taken one step forward with the pvp talent system and the class stats sheet balancing, but then two steps back with the lootbox and mark of honor system. Even in PVE, you will replay the same dungeon or farm rep with a specific faction in order to get certain upgrades..... so why would they think that a random lootbox system is better and what players actually would prefer? It seems to me that they are copying FPS games like CoD for the prestige system and Counterstrike for the lootbox... but this is not an FPS game and not everything will transfer over well like the lootbox.


What are other peoples opinions on this?

I want to see the talent and prestige system stay, the class balance sheets to stay (but with those secondary stat tweaks I mentioned), but to return to the honor point system or else give marks of honor more consistently that will give more to players that win but still some to the losing team based on how the end score is. Then you can purchase your current legion gear or past pvp sets with these marks.

They want to slow down players.

RNG gear isn't fun for PVP.

[Windirmere]

At least you dont have to RNG up weps : \

[Charge me Doctor]

Old system was too linear. You didn't really "plan" how you gear up, because it's too fucking obvious. You either gear up by route X or you gimp yourself. Slightly.

New system also gets rid of "oh i have to play 20 more arenas to get that piece of shit ring", bringing "wow that piece of shit ring dropped for 50th time what a fucking fuck fuck. *Queue for next game" aka - gambling. Especially with a chance to get an upgraded version of an item (you do get those from pvp boxes, right?)