Blizzard on Weapons Loot Table in Sepulcher of the First Ones

[Dzonathan]

And there are just as many guilds whose Jaethys' are going to healer's fourth alt's offspec. RNG be RNG, I don't think deterministic rewards are the solution to WoW's loot problems.

Why deterministic rewards are not the solution to WoW's loot problems?

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I think perhaps a compromise between the two would be best. The boss drops a token, but there's a mechanic in the raid which allows you to quickly and easily convert that token into an RPG-specific item from the raid. Think like... you kill the boss and after the boss there's a NPC that all players can interact with that allows them to convert the token into a spec-appropriate item.

Sounds like token vendor made pretentiously different for the sake of being different.

[Caprias]

Just make stuff drop more often? Again, tokens were super boring and one of the reasons I didn't even bother with Castle Nathria. The current way is the way to go.

I didn't mean only tokens by that, let the gear drop as usual and tell the story/immersion/excitement yada yada yada.

But this game seriously needs a bad luck/pity system, nobody cares if you for example can buy everything of the loot table of a boss if this is already the 10th time you're slamming that guy into the dust, for the "average mythic guild" this would be anyways the 4th+ month of the raid on most bosses in the later half and would not take away anything.

[Relapses]

Why deterministic rewards are not the solution to WoW's loot problems?

Because every time Blizzard does add a deterministic reward to the game, players get the item then flame Blizzard for "not creating repeatable content." We can't have it both ways.

Sounds like token vendor made pretentiously different for the sake of being different.

It's exactly what I described: A compromise between tokens and the RPG-elements which Blizzard said they find important to deliver to players. The biggest downside to tokens was having to leave the instance, turn the token in then come back; my suggestion was merely to eliminate that step and make it more intuitive for the design of the raid so that little bit of immersion-breaking is less impactful. It'd also allow them to continue with items themed by the boss itself since the reasonable expectation is there for the player to immediately exchange the token for an item.

[Caprias]

Why deterministic rewards are not the solution to WoW's loot problems?

Only deterministic rewards would be super bland, you'd have a BiS list day 1 and just buy the stuff in order, this doesn't feel that great in a game where the loot carrot is this big.

[Relapses]

I didn't mean only tokens by that, let the gear drop as usual and tell the story/immersion/excitement yada yada yada.

But this game seriously needs a bad luck/pity system, nobody cares if you for example can buy everything of the loot table of a boss if this is already the 10th time you're slamming that guy into the dust, for the "average mythic guild" this would be anyways the 4th+ month of the raid on most bosses in the later half and would not take away anything.

I agree. The game should have something like a large loot box that resets weekly -- a vault if you will -- that contains anywhere from 1 to 3 possible items depending on which bosses you defeated that week.

...wait a minute.

[Dzonathan]

I didn't mean only tokens by that, let the gear drop as usual and tell the story/immersion/excitement yada yada yada.

But this game seriously needs a bad luck/pity system, nobody cares if you for example can buy everything of the loot table of a boss if this is already the 10th time you're slamming that guy into the dust, for the "average mythic guild" this would be anyways the 4th+ month of the raid on most bosses in the later half and would not take away anything.

We had the solution over a decade ago.
It was called badge gear.
Only one step was needed to perfect the system: Loot vendors at the raid entrance and have them sell boss loot for raid specific currency.
Adjust the numbers accordingly to stretch out subscriptions to as many months as necessary.
BAM! ultimate bad luck protection achieved.

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Because every time Blizzard does add a deterministic reward to the game, players get the item then flame Blizzard for "not creating repeatable content." We can't have it both ways.

You ignore whiners and tell them to not use what they don't like.
Options are always better than lack of options.
If someone doesn't like their options then they have the option to not use them.

[Relapses]

We had the solution over a decade ago.
It was called badge gear.
Only one step was needed to perfect the system: Loot vendors at the raid entrance and have them sell boss loot for raid specific currency.
Adjust the numbers accordingly to stretch out subscriptions to as many months as necessary.
BAM! ultimate bad luck protection achieved.

WotLK's badge system was terrible. It was unintuitive, there were four different types of badges, each used to buy different items, Tier felt almost meaningless to obtain since you could buy it off a vendor and the only interesting loot that dropped from ICC were the trinkets. I don't really want the game to go back to that.

[Caprias]

I agree. The game should have something like a large loot box that resets weekly -- a vault if you will -- that contains anywhere from 1 to 3 possible items depending on which bosses you defeated that week.

...wait a minute.

If they would adjust the weekly vault a bit/make it "intelligent" I'd never complain, the way it currently is you can still not see some stuff for literal months, that's just silly.
Another problem is the way "casual/average" mythic guilds often have to prolong lockouts to be able to progress and not "waste" time to reclear.

The Vault was a great step in the right direction, it could still be made better though without taking anything away.

[Dzonathan]

WotLK's badge system was terrible. It was unintuitive, there were types of badges, Tier felt almost meaningless to obtain since you could buy it off a vendor and the only interesting loot that dropped from ICC were the trinkets. I don't really want the game to go back to that.

No it wasn't, you just didn't liked it.

There was nothing unintuitive about it: a specific vendors sells specific items for specific currency that you can acquire from a specific source.
If this unintuitive for you then how are you handling current currencies in Shadowlands?

Your feelings are yours to sort out. Blizz is a game developer, not a therapist.
If you feel so strongly about it then simply don't use badge gear and leave yourself at the mercy of RNG in order to maintain your immersion.

[Grof]

well I was need 5months with 21 nm kills and 6months with 25hc kills to loot 1nm and 1hc sylvanas dagger...my opinion is, that is very very bad design (weapons droping in raids)... at least bring back bonus roll with bl protection or change how gv working atm...

[Relapses]

No it wasn't, you just didn't liked it.

There was nothing unintuitive about it: a specific vendors sells specific items for specific currency that you can acquire from a specific source.
If this unintuitive for you then how are you handling current currencies in Shadowlands?

Your feelings are yours to sort out. Blizz is a game developer, not a therapist.
If you feel so strongly about it then simply don't use badge gear and leave yourself at the mercy of RNG in order to maintain your immersion.

Badge systems are not without their downsides. They have a tendency to make gear feel a lot less meaningful which strips the game of an important RPG aspect (one which was echoed in Scariizard's response here). That's why Blizzard phased them out. Shadowlands does have a lot of currencies but at least each currency is intuitive in how it works; unlike WotLK where you could do a weekly to get one badge but a daily to get another; but then one raid drops one type of badge but another raid drops a different type of badge and each badge can only be used to buy certain types of gear. It was a mess and Blizzard devs have spoken openly about the problems with that system in the past. (I'm at work otherwise I'd find the BlizzCon panel where this was discussed.) I think there's room for added layers of BLP in the current game but I strongly believe deterministic rewards shouldn't come at the cost of the few RPG elements the game still has in it.

[Onikaroshi]

I agree. The game should have something like a large loot box that resets weekly -- a vault if you will -- that contains anywhere from 1 to 3 possible items depending on which bosses you defeated that week.

...wait a minute.

The vault is is just a worse version of the reroll token.

Giving back rerolls over the vault would be a step forward imo.

[Niwes]

The vault is is just a worse version of the reroll token.

Giving back rerolls over the vault would be a step forward imo.

no comment to the system at all, if i like it or not (tbh i really dont know, be not sure), but a slight improvement idea on top of it:

what about taking the good parts of GV (doing specific content that you like and work towards it) and combine it with bonus rolls. aka best of both worlds. here is how:

instead giving an item in GV, giving a bonus roll item. with that item you can roll (so there is still a bit of RNG) on whatever drop you want.

advantages:

- ppl work towards more specific stuff and can use the roll on dedicated drops instead of getting the 5th same useless item in GV.
- still a bit RNG there (the bonus roll)
- crossover ability: since bonus rolls are not content targeted, you can earn them in one form of content and use them in another form of content. example: if you are already PvE max equipped, you can still do what you like (i.e. m+) and get bonus rolls from GV out of it. these bonus rolls can now be used for PvP gear, because PvE is already BiS. so you can dip a bit in PvP or other areas too, by doing your content. way better than using GV for Stygia…

not thought that much about (1min or so), but would be imo a good start… better than solely bonus rolls, or the per se good idea of GV, but with a bad execution (no targetable items, 5th useless item, etc…).

better than what we had already imo.

[LTN]

yet its odd because this is literally how its worked since vanilla, and the only time it was changed was in the first raid of shadowlands, but seems everyone suddenly thinks that was the best thing ever?

Icc to if you want to really stretch it. LK dropped only weapons but when blizzard manages to get something right watching them instantly backtrack while not being able to provide any reason beyond something nonsensical like weapon naming lore its... annoying.

It reinforces the idea that they are either unwilling to learn or simply to incompetent to do so.

[Onikaroshi]

no comment to the system at all, if i like it or not (tbh i really dont know, be not sure), but a slight improvement idea on top of it:

what about taking the good parts of GV (doing specific content that you like and work towards it) and combine it with bonus rolls. aka best of both worlds. here is how:

instead giving an item in GV, giving a bonus roll item. with that item you can roll (so there is still a bit of RNG) on whatever drop you want.

advantages:

- ppl work towards more specific stuff and can use the roll on dedicated drops instead of getting the 5th same useless item in GV.
- still a bit RNG there (the bonus roll)
- crossover ability: since bonus rolls are not content targeted, you can earn them in one form of content and use them in another form of content. example: if you are already PvE max equipped, you can still do what you like (i.e. m+) and get bonus rolls from GV out of it. these bonus rolls can now be used for PvP gear, because PvE is already BiS. so you can dip a bit in PvP or other areas too, by doing your content. way better than using GV for Stygia…

not thought that much about (1min or so), but would be imo a good start… better than solely bonus rolls, or the per se good idea of GV, but with a bad execution (no targetable items, 5th useless item, etc…).

better than what we had already imo.

Not a horrible idea honestly.

The GV suffers from a problem of being decent at the start to being nearly useless even just a few weeks later, and this would help solve that.

[LTN]

Because every time Blizzard does add a deterministic reward to the game, players get the item then flame Blizzard for "not creating repeatable content." We can't have it both ways.



It's exactly what I described: A compromise between tokens and the RPG-elements which Blizzard said they find important to deliver to players. The biggest downside to tokens was having to leave the instance, turn the token in then come back; my suggestion was merely to eliminate that step and make it more intuitive for the design of the raid so that little bit of immersion-breaking is less impactful. It'd also allow them to continue with items themed by the boss itself since the reasonable expectation is there for the player to immediately exchange the token for an item.

Can you name these players? I assume you know the three mythic raiders who made this complaint or are you rolling them in with the guy who does lfr 40 times and wants mythic loot for it?

[Argorwal]

We had the solution over a decade ago.
It was called badge gear.
Only one step was needed to perfect the system: Loot vendors at the raid entrance and have them sell boss loot for raid specific currency.
Adjust the numbers accordingly to stretch out subscriptions to as many months as necessary.
BAM! ultimate bad luck protection achieved.

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You ignore whiners and tell them to not use what they don't like.
Options are always better than lack of options.
If someone doesn't like their options then they have the option to not use them.

If we are going with more options and people are free to not use them, then I would like to buy the mythic gear for a few gold each off a vendor.

Then those that don’t want to use that option for gearing can decide not to use it.

[Niwes]

Not a horrible idea honestly.

The GV suffers from a problem of being decent at the start to being nearly useless even just a few weeks later, and this would help solve that.

exactly.

i wrote somewhere an article about that. in the sense that GV counters its own destiny. explanation:

the GV is designed/built/invented to give ppl a reason to play more. the more you play, the more you get out of the GV. this means, per definition, the more you invest, the more you get out of it. but timewise its exactly the oposite! the longer you play and use the GV, the more items you already have. means: the longer you play (timewise) the less is the chance that you dont already have the item it drops. means: the longer you play, the worthless the GV is.

and exactly that is crazy. GV counters its own usefulness / existence reason. its there to give you a reason to invest (this week) more into the game. but longterm, the more you invest into the game, the less useful it is. thats crazy.

its like the system is designed to say

1)
build a system that makes not much of a difference for shortterm players (playing 1 month of wow and get 1-3 items from GV)

2)
at the same time build a system that heavily support mid term players (2-3 months)

3)
at the same time build a system that is nearly complete worthless for longterm players after 2-3 months

its crazy design…

BUT (and now lets put on the tin foil hat):

if you design a game to „rotate“ as many ppls as possible through it, for 2-3 months, to sell them some tokens, by a token-supporting game design and hope for 1-2 shop items and after 2-3 months they stop playing anyway, but „everyday a new 16 year old kid is born“ and you rotate the next through the dreadmill…. well, then the grind, token and GV concepts TOTALLY makes sense. IF you focusing on short term burst profit potential, instead of longterm loyal customer investment, and target „rotating players through your money makin machine product“, for 2-4 months… this GV design would make sense. but hey, its just amateur conspiracy terrorism here.

[Dzonathan]

If we are going with more options and people are free to not use them, then I would like to buy the mythic gear for a few gold each off a vendor.

Then those that don’t want to use that option for gearing can decide not to use it.

How did you managed to compare getting BiS for few gold pieces you can farm in 5mins with getting BiS for badges you need to farm hours of dungeons for 1 piece of gear?

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Badge systems are not without their downsides. They have a tendency to make gear feel a lot less meaningful which strips the game of an important RPG aspect (one which was echoed in Scariizard's response here). That's why Blizzard phased them out. Shadowlands does have a lot of currencies but at least each currency is intuitive in how it works; unlike WotLK where you could do a weekly to get one badge but a daily to get another; but then one raid drops one type of badge but another raid drops a different type of badge and each badge can only be used to buy certain types of gear. It was a mess and Blizzard devs have spoken openly about the problems with that system in the past. (I'm at work otherwise I'd find the BlizzCon panel where this was discussed.) I think there's room for added layers of BLP in the current game but I strongly believe deterministic rewards shouldn't come at the cost of the few RPG elements the game still has in it.

The post you replied to is a reply to your reply.

You have no reasons to be confused by getting different currencies from different raids anymore than getting different currencies from different shadowlands zones.

Getting 2 types of badges for current tier gear is no more confusing than valor/justice or conquest/honor points system. Only thing different is the values.

The feeling of specialness is something that is entirely on a player side and is something blizz should not waste time fixing.

[Argorwal]

exactly.

i wrote somewhere an article about that. in the sense that GV counters its own destiny. explanation:

the GV is designed/built/invented to give ppl a reason to play more. the more you play, the more you get out of the GV. this means, per definition, the more you invest, the more you get out of it. but timewise its exactly the oposite! the longer you play and use the GV, the more items you already have. means: the longer you play (timewise) the less is the chance that you dont already have the item it drops. means: the longer you play, the worthless the GV is.

and exactly that is crazy. GV counters its own usefulness / existence reason. its there to give you a reason to invest (this week) more into the game. but longterm, the more you invest into the game, the less useful it is. thats crazy.

its like the system is designed to say

1)
build a system that makes not much of a difference for shortterm players (playing 1 month of wow and get 1-3 items from GV)

2)
at the same time build a system that heavily support mid term players (2-3 months)

3)
at the same time build a system that is nearly complete worthless for longterm players after 2-3 months

its crazy design…

BUT (and now lets put on the tin foil hat):

if you design a game to „rotate“ as many ppls as possible through it, for 2-3 months, to sell them some tokens, by a token-supporting game design and hope for 1-2 shop items and after 2-3 months they stop playing anyway, but „everyday a new 16 year old kid is born“ and you rotate the next through the dreadmill…. well, then the grind, token and GV concepts TOTALLY makes sense. IF you focusing on short term burst profit potential, instead of longterm loyal customer investment, and target „rotating players through your money makin machine product“, for 2-4 months… this GV design would make sense. but hey, its just amateur conspiracy terrorism here.

So what you just said is people who play more tend to get more gear/gear faster and therefore don’t need as much gear later because they already got it for playing.

And you’re painting it as a bad/weird thing about trying to sacrifice long term enjoyment for short term gains which doesn’t make any sense?

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How did you managed to compare getting BiS for few gold pieces you can farm in 5mins with getting BiS for badges you need to farm hours of dungeons for 1 piece of gear?

I was more focusing on the comment of “if players don’t like their option they can just choose not to use it” aspect of the post.

Which is an asinine idea when it comes to player power. Like when players had the “option” to turn off the ICC or DS 30% buffs. Self handicapping doesn’t feel good.