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  1. #1

    More Frequently Asked Questions about the New Upgrade System in Patch 10.1

    More Frequently Asked Questions about the New Upgrade System in Patch 10.1
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    Q: This seems awfully complicated. Why can’t you just give us more Valor?

    A: One of the philosophical underpinnings of this system is that we want to encourage players to challenge themselves when they want to improve their character’s power. Farming low-level keys is not challenging for most players who routinely time keys in the teens or higher. There are a lot of moving pieces to this system because it’s been engineered to handle all kinds of situations in an effort to more closely align “doing the optimal thing” with “doing the fun thing” while still keeping the base player experience simple. And some of the complication is there specifically to minimize the losses for making mistakes; we don’t want people punished for upgrading the “wrong” thing.

    Kill stuff, get Flightstones. Kill hard stuff, get Crests too. Take Flightstones and Crests to item upgrade vendor. Item upgrade vendor tells you how much it’ll cost and upgrade the gear as long as you can afford it.

    If you didn’t read the big post from last week at all, but you took an item to an upgrade vendor and read the tooltips for Crests and Flightstones, you’d get enough of the gist to use the system just fine.


    Q: The article you wrote talks about how gear from Mythic raid bosses can be upgraded in the intro. Then it goes on to detail how gear can’t be upgraded once you get to Mythic raid level.

    A: Yep. Sure does. That should have said “or a Heroic raid boss”. Oops.


    Q: Does this system and its hardcaps mean that I have to get the same item again from every upgrade track? I need to farm my BiS trinket at Veteran, then again at Champion, then again at Hero?

    A: While that’s certainly an option, it’s not required, no. Getting an item on the Veteran upgrade track means that item can be upgraded to Veteran 8/8, which is the same ilevel as Champion 4/8, which is only 4 item levels lower than Hero 1/5. If you upgrade your gear to Veteran 8/8, you’ll be more than ready to do content that drops Hero-track gear.

    That said, this is a known concern and we’re looking at options. I can’t promise any specific results, because there are a lot of moving parts going on here, but this is under active investigation. We won’t be making any changes to address this concern in the very early weeks of the patch, but if it turns out that the data bear out this concern, we will step in. Thanks to player feedback, we have developed a contingency plan.

    Is this “Chimes says don’t delete your trinkets from +2 keys!”? If you like. We’re being careful here with the rollout of this new system. It might mean that those items will still be useful later and it might not. This is not a promise at all, but if I were still a player on the other side of blue posts like this, reading those words a blue poster just typed, I would keep mine around just in case.


    Q: Okay, but we don’t know where exactly Hero-track gear comes from. For that matter, we don’t know where each level of Shadowflame Crests will come from either. Can you clear that up?

    A: Sure thing. In retrospect, that would have been good to include in the initial blog post. I omitted it because it seemed like the post was already longer than most players would want to read and I wanted to focus on the system itself. But yes, how players will get the items to interact with the system is worth specific inclusion, so here goes. Please keep in mind that these details, like just about everything else on the PTR, is subject to change. As a reminder: 15 fragments combine into a full Crest.

    • Whelpling’s Shadowflame Crests:
      • Outdoor content will have Whelpling’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments all over. World quests, random treasures, non-elite unique creatures, etc. And some sources that haven’t been revealed quite yet. There shouldn’t be any shortage of these Crests for folks who want to go collect them and this is the most likely situation in which players will hit the Crest acquisition cap.
      • Mythic Keystones up to +5 will drop Whelpling’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. There’s a significant bonus for timing the key; you get 5 fragments for completing, but 12 if you complete in time.
      • In Aberrus, Raid Finder will drop Whelpling’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Most bosses will drop 10 fragments, but end bosses will drop 15 (which can be made into a full crest immediately!).
    • Drake’s Shadowflame Crests:
      • Outdoor content will have a limited quantity of Drake’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Elite unique creatures in the outdoor world will be the most common source, but the weekly wrapper and some scheduled content (somewhat analogous to Dragonflight launch’s Community Feast or Siege at Dragonbane Keep) will offer a healthy amount of them. These will be more limited in outdoor content than Whelpling’s Shadowflame Crests, but dedicated players will be able to collect multiple Drake crests per week.
      • Mythic Keystones from +6 up to +10 will drop Drake’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. There’s still that significant bonus for timing the key; you get 5 fragments for completing, but 12 if you complete in time.
      • Normal Aberrus will drop Drake’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Most bosses will drop 10 fragments, but end bosses will drop 15.
    • Wyrm’s Shadowflame Crests:
      • Mythic Keystones from +11 to +15 will drop Wyrm’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Unsurprisingly for those people who read the earlier sections: there’s a significant bonus for timing the key; you get 5 fragments for completing, but 12 if you complete in time.
      • Heroic Aberrus will drop Drake’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Most bosses will drop 10 fragments, but end bosses will drop 15.
    • Aspect’s Shadowflame Crests
      • Mythic Keystones from +16 on up will drop Wyrm’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. And yes, there’s a significant bonus for timing the key; you get 5 fragments for completing, but 12 if you complete in time.
      • Mythic Aberrus will drop Drake’s Shadowflame Crest Fragments. Most bosses will drop 10 fragments, but end bosses will drop 15.

    For clarity on all of the above: these crests do not have a chance of dropping. They will drop every time. Crests acquisition is purely deterministic. (In some outdoor-content situations, there is quantity variance, but even in those circumstances they will always show up as long as you’re not at the acquisition cap.)

    Please note that Shadowflame Crests are intentionally available at some key levels below the gear that would require them for early upgrades. For example, a +11 Mythic Keystone dungeon provides Wyrm’s Shadowflame Crest fragments. This allows players at this level of play to upgrade their Champion-level gear (also earned from +11 Mythic Keystone dungeons) above the 4/8 level, and creates a reason to run this more challenging content above the +9 keys that also drop Champion-track gear.

    • Veteran-track gear
      • Available in limited quantity in outdoor content. Suffusion Camps and the weekly wrapper quest will offer gear on this track.
      • Gear on this track will drop from the end-of-run chest in Mythic Keystone dungeons up to +8.
      • Raid Finder Aberrus will drop gear on this track.
    • Champion-track gear
      • The new World Boss will drop gear on this track. Under limited circumstances, players will be able to get this level of gear from Suffusion Camp activities.
      • Gear on this track will drop from the end-of-run chest in Mythic Keystone dungeons from +9 up to +16.
      • The Great Vault will award gear on this track for Mythic Keystone dungeons up to +7.
      • Normal Aberrus will drop gear on this track. Very rare items from Raid Finder Aberrus end bosses will also be on this track.
    • Hero-track gear
      • Gear on this track will drop from the end-of-run chest in Mythic Keystone dungeons from +17 and up.
      • The Great Vault will award gear on this track for Mythic Keystone dungeons from +8 up to +15.
      • Heroic Aberrus will drop gear on this track. Very rare items from Normal Aberrus end bosses will also be on this track.
    • Mythic gear
      • The Great Vault will award gear above the upgrade system’s range for Mythic Keystone dungeons of +16 and higher.
      • Mythic Aberrus will drop gear above the upgrade system’s range. Very rare items from Heroic Aberrus end bosses will also be above that range.


    Q: Why cap item upgrades at all?

    A: Because this is a (nearly) universal system, it includes things like outdoor gear. We’re going from a world where the Valor system only lets people who play a lot of M+ upgrade their gear to a world where everyone gets to upgrade their gear, even folks who are focused on outdoor play. The challenge here is that we’re still creating specific gear ecosystems for competitive players. We don’t want to create a world in which players need to run off-season M0s to get their BiS gear. We don’t want players feeling like they need to watch world quests to find the trinket that they need for raiding. And we don’t want to create incentives for players optimizing for Mythic raids to spend extra time to do Normal raids in order to get their best items. We want players to get their best rewards when they’re challenging themselves, and we want to minimize the amount of farming easy-to-them content that you need to do.


    Q: These item names–Flightstones, Shadowflame Crests–are really specific to Dragonflight. Why not give them names that would work for a more evergreen system?

    A: Well, for starters, this system isn’t evergreen. This is a system specifically for 10.1 and Season Two. It’s certainly designed with the potential for it to be evergreen, but it’ll be evaluated over the course of the season. We can’t tell you whether it’ll be here in Season Three because we don’t know yet.

    There is a tentative plan for naming these upgrade components going forward, though. If the system continues in Season Three, we’ll swap out “Shadowflame” for an adjective more appropriate to the theming of that season. So in Season Three you’d collect a Season Three version of Flightstones, plus Whelpling’s [NEW ADJECTIVE HERE] Crests, Drake’s [NEW ADJECTIVE HERE] Crests, etc. Each season would change the adjective on the crest. Each expansion would change the name of the levels of crest to something more appropriate to that expansion’s theme. And the name “Flightstone” would probably change to something thematically appropriate as well.

    I want to stress that this is a tentative plan and could easily change. And that’s assuming we keep the system. Right now, speaking only for myself and not the rest of the development team, I think it’s very likely we keep it and make small iterative improvements. But I can also see a world where it’s not quite the improvement to gearing that we’re looking for and we either return to the previous system or try something new for Season Three. The simple truth is that none of us can see the future, but this is what we’re trying for Season Two.


    Q: For Shadowflame Crests, are we limited to how many times we can get them or how many times we can use them?

    A: The cap is on acquisition. Every time you would get a crest fragment, the game tracks how close you are to cap and only gives you enough to reach the cap. So if you’ve already earned 140 whelpling crest fragments in the first week, and you would get another 12 crest fragments for finishing a +2 Mythic Keystone in time. Because you’re 10 fragments away from the cap, you’ll only get those 10 fragments.

    Once you have crest fragments, you can combine them into Crests freely. And once you have the Crests, you can spend them freely at item upgrade vendors. The cap increases by 150 fragments (10 crests) weekly.

    The cap does not apply to rewards from one-time quests (you’ll always be able to get those, and they won’t count against future earnings either) or from downgrading your Crests with Vaskarn in Loamm.


    It’s great to see so much discussion about this system and hearing what people are looking forward to and worried about. I’ve been watching a lot of videos and reading forum threads and commentary on a bunch of different websites. And I encourage y’all to keep discussing it. Thoughtful, critical, and constructive player feedback is catnip for game developers.

    -Chimes
    Last edited by Lumy; 2023-03-16 at 06:11 PM.

  2. #2
    Good. People who are only raiding should be able to upgrade their gear.

    Right now only people who are doing M+ and PvP are able to upgrade their gear with valor/honor.

  3. #3
    Still didn't answer why they can't just call the new system "Valor 2.0" to shut people up about it sounding complicated.

  4. #4
    The Lightbringer MrHappy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cheezits View Post
    Still didn't answer why they can't just call the new system "Valor 2.0" to shut people up about it sounding complicated.
    Which part is confusing or complicated to you? Do stuff - > Upgrade gear based on the stuff you do. The hard the stuff, the better the gear and the higher you can upgrade.

    It gives incentives to try harder keys, re-kill bosses and do more outdoor content. I think if people bothered to actually read the initial post they wouln't complain, as it is fairly straightforward

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by MrHappy View Post
    Which part is confusing or complicated to you? Do stuff - > Upgrade gear based on the stuff you do. The hard the stuff, the better the gear and the higher you can upgrade.

    It gives incentives to try harder keys, re-kill bosses and do more outdoor content. I think if people bothered to actually read the initial post they wouln't complain, as it is fairly straightforward
    If a system has to be explained at all, it has failed for this audience. There shouldn't be any concern or confusion about this system but there very much is, even after people have read it.

  6. #6
    keep convoluting things in the game, good idea
    This game needs a new design team, badly

  7. #7
    Just increase the valor cap and make valor useable on all gear.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by ExtremelyCrusty View Post
    Just increase the valor cap and make valor useable on all gear.
    valor simply doesn't have the restrictions this system has.

    If your only doing 'easy' content you can only upgrade your gear to X ilvl. Regardless of where that gear came from.
    If your doing moderately difficult content your limited to Y ilvl, ect.

    'just let everything give valor and let valor upgrade all gear' doesn't prevent someone only doing WQ's from upgrading to Heroic level gear.
    It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death

  9. #9
    After 4 years of non stop systems jammed down our throat Blizzard finally learned their lesson. That didn’t last for very long..

  10. #10
    Q: Why cap item upgrades at all?

    A: Because MAUs need to be higher in the Q2 Reports.

  11. #11
    "A: While that’s certainly an option, it’s not required, no. Getting an item on the Veteran upgrade track means that item can be upgraded to Veteran 8/8, which is the same ilevel as Champion 4/8, which is only 4 item levels lower than Hero 1/5. If you upgrade your gear to Veteran 8/8, you’ll be more than ready to do content that drops Hero-track gear."

    This alone tells me they have overengineered this problem. It's never a good thing when one currency gets replaced by two. Valor will come back as something else in the future.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Gorsameth View Post
    valor simply doesn't have the restrictions this system has.

    If your only doing 'easy' content you can only upgrade your gear to X ilvl. Regardless of where that gear came from.
    If your doing moderately difficult content your limited to Y ilvl, ect.

    'just let everything give valor and let valor upgrade all gear' doesn't prevent someone only doing WQ's from upgrading to Heroic level gear.
    Ok, someone does WQs and upgrades something to heroic level gear. Who cares?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by MrHappy View Post
    Which part is confusing or complicated to you? Do stuff - > Upgrade gear based on the stuff you do. The hard the stuff, the better the gear and the higher you can upgrade.

    It gives incentives to try harder keys, re-kill bosses and do more outdoor content. I think if people bothered to actually read the initial post they wouln't complain, as it is fairly straightforward
    The issue is not that it is impossible to understand. The issue is that it is absurdly overcomplicated for a problem that could be solved with "Content gives valor, valor upgrades gear".
    "stop puting you idiotic liberal words into my mouth"
    -ynnady

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Gorsameth View Post
    valor simply doesn't have the restrictions this system has.

    If your only doing 'easy' content you can only upgrade your gear to X ilvl. Regardless of where that gear came from.
    If your doing moderately difficult content your limited to Y ilvl, ect.

    'just let everything give valor and let valor upgrade all gear' doesn't prevent someone only doing WQ's from upgrading to Heroic level gear.

    You're right, valor has a harder restriction via rating requirements. This system is dumb.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by NineSpine View Post
    Ok, someone does WQs and upgrades something to heroic level gear. Who cares?
    Blizzard cares. Obviously. This entire system exists to limit your max ilvl to your chosen lane and if you want more to need to 'challenge yourself'.

    its literally the first line of the first answer
    One of the philosophical underpinnings of this system is that we want to encourage players to challenge themselves when they want to improve their character’s power.
    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Vyndion View Post
    You're right, valor has a harder restriction via rating requirements. This system is dumb.
    There is no rating outside of Mythic+ and PvP.

    And they want you to do content on your level to improve. Not buy X rating with boosts and then farm WQ's for valor to upgrade all your gear.
    It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Eazy View Post
    Good. People who are only raiding should be able to upgrade their gear.

    Right now only people who are doing M+ and PvP are able to upgrade their gear with valor/honor.
    I am completely in support of this. I also think they could have just used valor, Blizzard just can't seem to keep thing simple. The 2 page essay on how the system works was indicative of this but yeah it feels convoluted and overly complex.

    They could have just added a max of x upgrades for any gear with valor, and valor can be earned with a variety of activity. Yay done. Instead it read like farm 3 "A" to get 1 "B", 3 B=1c. 1C+1D = upgrade. If the goal is to waste more time, I'm pretty sure they're going to find out that we're sick of it, we're burned out and unwilling to put up with bs. Good will is still for the most part gone Blizzard, the game has to stand on its own.

    I unsubbed, not because I didn't enjoy the game, but I did what I wanted to do, and it felt good, and with that game experience in mind, I am already looking forward to resubbing in 10.1. If they turn 10.1 into a "waste more time by making gearing much more difficult and random", I'm not going to play more, I'm going to play less. Then I'm going to quit and stop thinking about the game until next expansion. (which is what I did in BFA and SL)

    The canned response to us wanting more of, anything, was, "would you be willing to sacrifice a raid tier?"

    I'd be willing to sacrifice all the time they took coming up with this system, 100%.
    Last edited by Aekero; 2023-03-16 at 08:20 PM.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Valhalladin View Post
    After 4 years of non stop systems jammed down our throat Blizzard finally learned their lesson. That didn’t last for very long..
    this is a good system though. it gives upgrade opportunities to all levels of players be it open world or harder content and doesn't create issues where beginning heroic raid gear is crappier because of item level or where you get people upset that m+ gear is higher than raiding gear etc.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Gorsameth View Post
    Blizzard cares. Obviously. This entire system exists to limit your max ilvl to your chosen lane and if you want more to need to 'challenge yourself'.

    its literally the first line of the first answer


    - - - Updated - - -

    There is no rating outside of Mythic+ and PvP.

    And they want you to do content on your level to improve. Not buy X rating with boosts and then farm WQ's for valor to upgrade all your gear.
    This system is just going to make boosts more desirable. If you are concerned about boosting, just get rid of this antiquated notion of stratifying gear.
    "stop puting you idiotic liberal words into my mouth"
    -ynnady

  18. #18
    LOL a game shouldn't need two giant long posts to explain the upgrade system.

    It's convoluted for no reason. Why do we even need upgradeable gear? Just do WQs and Heroic dungeons for the standard gear. And for better gear run M+ and Normal Raids. And if you want the best gear you gotta run Mythic Raids or high keys

    I rarely ever upgrade my gear, I just run a couple higher keys for better iLvl gear drops or the next week's vault. Don't give a hoot about "upgrading my gear"
    Last edited by Zorachus; 2023-03-16 at 08:36 PM.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Gorsameth View Post
    Blizzard cares. Obviously. This entire system exists to limit your max ilvl to your chosen lane and if you want more to need to 'challenge yourself'.

    its literally the first line of the first answer


    - - - Updated - - -

    There is no rating outside of Mythic+ and PvP.

    And they want you to do content on your level to improve. Not buy X rating with boosts and then farm WQ's for valor to upgrade all your gear.
    Shafowflame crests ARE the rating requirement and they are applied to all content, once you realise that it shouldn't be complicated at all

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Aekero View Post
    I am completely in support of this. I also think they could have just used valor, Blizzard just can't seem to keep thing simple. The 2 page essay on how the system works was indicative of this but yeah it feels convoluted and overly complex.

    They could have just added a max of x upgrades for any gear with valor, and valor can be earned with a variety of activity. Yay done. Instead it read like farm 3 "A" to get 1 "B", 3 B=1c. 1C+1D = upgrade. If the goal is to waste more time, I'm pretty sure they're going to find out that we're sick of it, we're burned out and unwilling to put up with bs. Good will is still for the most part gone Blizzard, the game has to stand on its own.

    I unsubbed, not because I didn't enjoy the game, but I did what I wanted to do, and it felt good, and with that game experience in mind, I am already looking forward to resubbing in 10.1. If they turn 10.1 into a "waste more time by making gearing much more difficult and random", I'm not going to play more, I'm going to play less. Then I'm going to quit and stop thinking about the game until next expansion. (which is what I did in BFA and SL)

    The canned response to us wanting more of, anything, was, "would you be willing to sacrifice a raid tier?"

    I'd be willing to sacrifice all the time they took coming up with this system, 100%.
    "Muh essay"
    Dude it's a simple system just actually try to comprehend what they wrote it's not actually hard to understand.

    They renamed Valor to flightstones for thematic reasons and exchanged m+ rating for a more universal shadow flame crest system that works across content types.
    M+ rating isn't at all clear in this game either, but it becomes clear when you go to the upgrade vendor and get told to increase your rating to upgrade further.
    That's all you need to understand the system: go to vendor, upgrade item, get told what next upgrade cost is, go get that item. you don't need to know all the tiers with the new system any more than the current system players will figure out very quickly when they go to the upgrade vendor how it works.

    It would be like explaining the coding behind how crusader strike works then players going "ugh systems muh essay too complicated can't you just make it so you press ability deal damage and get holy power? Don't make it so complex" when that is literally what they wrote except accounting for problems it seems most players can't understand.

    I read the post, the changes look good and for the most part very necessary. It's very easy to understand and will make sense when players get their hands on it

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Valhalladin View Post
    After 4 years of non stop systems jammed down our throat Blizzard finally learned their lesson. That didn’t last for very long..
    How is this "systems"?
    It's nothing like the jank of relics and azerite gear or covenants, it's just Valor with a different name applied to all content

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by NineSpine View Post
    Ok, someone does WQs and upgrades something to heroic level gear. Who cares?

    - - - Updated - - -



    The issue is not that it is impossible to understand. The issue is that it is absurdly overcomplicated for a problem that could be solved with "Content gives valor, valor upgrades gear".
    Everyone cares when it becomes optimal to do low level content to get high level gear. Players feeling "forced" to do "all" content to compete will get burned out pretty fast, or "there is no point pushing hard keys when I can get the best gear from world quests"
    Players will always shift to the path of least resistance to gear up, if you don't think there would be problems then you just don't understand gamer psychology or game design. Do you really want to play a game where the best geared players are the ones that no lifed farming boars?

  20. #20
    Just give me

    Justice for M+
    Valor for Raids
    Honor for Unrated PvP
    Conquest for Rated PvP.

    MoP still had the best system imo

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