Mr. Crow

First off, I think the idea of newer reputations linking back with older ones is a great idea. The argument we've heard (mostly related to CE and CC) was that Blizzard didn't want to give an advantage to players who already were Exalted with Cen.Circle, vs. newer players who didn't have the chance to farm it. But if being Exalted with Cen.Expedition fed back into returns for recipes that were statistically outdated (as most high-end CC gear is nature-resist gear for AQ), then that wouldn't be gamebreaking. It would be a greater incentive to grind the newer reputation because you're getting level-relevant drops instead of grinding grey content.

The question then becomes how this gets handled in WotLK. We know there's going to be a new Argent Dawn faction, so if there was some linkage between New Argents and Argent Dawn, all it would do is augment the accessibility of content that's 15-20 levels old. Since much of the high-end AD gear was frost-resist equipment for Naxxramas, the material is more than useless because that instance won't even exist in a form where that gear would be useful.

The flipside becomes the precedent it would establish vs. Blizzard's professed intentions. The effort taken in grinding out Exalted with AD @ 60 would be trivialized by allowing players to hit Exalted with AD @ 80 without questing with the AD forces in EPL/WPL. Even if those rewards aren't useful to players at 80, it's giving them access to parts of the game that previously represented the dedication of players who did it when it was the top content. Note the announcement that the Amani Bear boss will no longer be droppable after 3.0 hits: Blizzard wants to reward the players who engage the content when it's a challenge, and when that challenge is surpassed by another challenge, the rewards don't necessarily need to be accessible any longer. The "unavailable" rewards become a mark of honor for those who met the challenge first.

Now there's a difference between "trivializing the efforts of past players" and "making content available to current players." An example would be the changes to Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn, Timbermaw Hold, and Wintersaber Trainers that happened in recent patches. The gains are much better than they were pre-BC, making them more accessible to characters who weren't spending much time in the requisite areas (Silithus, EPL/WPL, Winterspring, etc.) before heading to Outland. While these efforts do still take time, that's only to ensure that the effort involved is in keeping with what Blizzard feels is appropriate to the rewards offered.

So while linking new reputations with old would allow more content to become available to players, and would avoid the previously stated issue of veteran player advantage, it would contradict Blizzard's desire to a) capitalize on new content and new rewards, and b) make the rewards unique to the time at which they were a challenge to earn.

 

Ralnar

I recall a mention in one of the dev chats about adding a "PvE ladder" to the armory site.

I could see pros and cons for a faction rating on the guild level, in a style similar to arena rating.

- Playing pretend with AQ40 -
Every member on kill receives an [Qiraji Lord's Insignia] and out side of the instance there is a vendor with a repeatable quest were players trade that token for the zone specific badge. However, in addition to the zone badge, they would also gain:

+X personal rep with the Brood of Nozdormu
+Y guild rep with the Brood of Nozdormu

Items would have a rating requirement:

Ring Of Bug Slayer
Requires Exalted Brood of Nozdormu Guild Rep
+250 Attack Power vs. Bugs

Having a mix of items that require personal, guild, or guild & personal reputation requirements could ease in new recruits or alts without requiring a player to regrind reputations to catch up to speed.

 

Liebestod

That would lead to all sorts of weirdness... guilds with maxed rep creating new guilds to rep up and then sell off places in, etc. I can't see it happening.

And, of course, the inevitable flood of "my guild disbanded and now I can't use my items" complaints.

 

Pounce

Legacy reputations have been made easier over time though, both through the adjustment of rep earned per quest/mob and also due to the 10 level difference between content and player. Connecting reputations such that newer ones fill up older ones seem trivial.

While accessibility is a concern in certain cases, there's a point at which the argument breaks down. Both CC and AD reputation are available to players who want to solo grind them to exalted, even though nothing in the game makes this even remotely necessary or desirable. Blizzard should work to give people access to as much content as possible, but when the content is there and perfectly available to all, the argument to make it easier isn't about accessibility any more. What are people not being allowed to access in that case? Lowering the reputation requirement for heroics was understandable because it presented real barriers to people coming to the game late. Making Argent Dawn or Cenarion Circle rep easier to acquire, serves no real gameplay value. (An exception to this principle seems to be ZG rep, as the oils are still desirable to some extent, and farming trash to get the required reputation might be annoying to solo for some classes.)

That said, there are cases where small adjustments could be made in the name of accessibility. Currently there is no way to grind Brood of Nozdormu reputation through to exalted outside of an instance, so Blizzard could simply allow the The Hand of the Righteous quest to grant rep indefinitely. If you wanted exalted, you would have to put in the work and if you didn't, you wouldn't suffer for it.

With the addition of Accomplishments, the issue is further complicated. Although we still have yet to see the full system implemented, we can probably count on their being a section for exalted reputation (early screenshots have indicated as much).

 

Vasala

I do hope that if each tier level does receive its own type of badge that we are given something along the lines of a key ring for badges / tokens. This token bag could then expand as we had more tokens for it. It would be a great way to deal with the inventory space taken up by the current token / badge types as well as new ones. I would imagine that something like this would hold both BG tokens and all the different tiers of badges as well as world pvp stuff like spirit shards, etc.

Or to avoid further space crunching have just one new type of badge with the expansion and go with the idea of another poster with a guild or personal reputation with Instance A needed to buy badge gear from that instance. A different idea would be that the ability to buy badge gear from that tier of instance would be unlocked by a quest. This quest could be as simple as kill a specific boss or bosses in the instance or to bring back some item that you had to retrieve from somewhere in the instance.

 

Emily

You would see a lot of guilds selling spots to scrubs to kill the quest boss then, so they could trade their heroic-farmed badges for raid-level badge gear.

 

Pounce

I don't think you'll ever be able to prevent high-end guilds from selling content in this way. And so long as it involves the in-game economy exclusively, I'm not sure Blizzard should go out of their way to prevent it. It's not quite the same as selling Arena Points and it's far harder to stop.

 

Vasala

Not much different than the selling of spots in raids to people for vials before the BT/MH attunements went away. It could aways combine a quest to open plus reputation requirements for some of the gear.

Keeping it so all tiers of instances provide useful badges does help encourage people to keep running old content as well. Or having a conversion available to players in the higher tiers so they would still have a reason to run the heroics and karazhans of WotLK after they were in the later tiers.

It would also be nice if a badge sink similar to the current gems, primal nethers, and nether vortexes would be available in WotLK.

 

Anaram

I propose a badge bag. Purchasable with badges, of course.

 

Ukerric

It's now a classical experiment in economics, and it's been answered. Mathematically, it shouldn't matter, which is what old orthodox economic theory (which believed in the purely rational man) believed to happen. People usually think "I'd rather win big" is a compelling argument.

But the short answer from various economic experiments is that people will rather have the two items for sure, instead of maybe 4 items half the time. They'll take the sure gain over the risky gain (and, inversely, they will take the risky loss over a sure loss).

 

Ton

I don't think the economic experiments have bearing in a virtual world. Play poker with real money and you'll bet a certain way. Play poker with monopoly money, when the only real reward is bragging rights vs. your opponent and you'll bet differently. You'll be much more likely to go all in with that middle pair.

I still believe people, for the most part, want at least some degree of randomness with loot. Even some of the best drops. I know I do, even if it means to this day I don't have a DST, though my guild is 4/6 SWP.

 

Ukerric

Actually, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. Some of the experiments were dressed in a purely hypothetical way: "Assume that, what do you do", while others had real money at stake that the participants would bring back at the end. The majority still picked the sure thing over the chancy stuff.

 

Hatsu

Then think of them as social experiments, rather than economic ones - what they describe is people's behavior.

 

Malleus

I don't think tiered Badges are a great idea, but creating a two or even three-tier combination system doesn't suck as a concept. This is the system I think JK was trying to describe:

Tier 1: You have the basic Heroic Badge as a unit of currency. Wherever you go for your heroic or raid, you get the same badge. Many badge items are available to anybody who has the Heroic Badges.

Tier 2: Some badge items require you to have a certain reputation level with a given faction. These items are better than the standard badge items.

Tier 3: You also have Raid Badge drops, which may come from bosses only but could conceivably drop from trash mobs a la Sunmotes. The best badge items are only available for Heroic Badges plus Raid Badges, so only serious raiders can get them.

It's a system not dissimilar to the current BG loot system. There's a whole bunch of things you can get for honour only, but others need Marks of Honour from specific battlegrounds. In the same way, you'll be able to get a basic kit sufficient for early raids just by cashing in Heroic Badges, but you'll need Raid Badges from Naxx25, Azhol-Yanoob and Frozenfart Keep before you can rock out with H'omo's Hammer of Happiness.

 

flyingtoastr

At the moment the Blues and Blizzcast confirmed that there is going to be tiered Badges.

Here

The thing I am curious is whether 10 and 25 mans will share the same tier of badge. Since we've been told that the 25-man loot will be a tier ahead of the 10 man it would make sense that it is also a tier ahead in badge rewards, no?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

• _Retribute_

That would be so so great.

 

nfw

On the subject of reputation, I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't let us just buy rep with gold, yes you can buy signets, marks or whatnot, but some reputation has nothing like that, for example, lower city.

There's a ton of gold flowing around in the system and this would be a nice money sink.

 

PSGarak

They're confirming tiered badges, which is all sorts of better than what we have now, but they said they haven't quite decided how to tier them. There are a couple of ways to go about doing this, some of which were discussed in the badge loot thread, and some of which were alluded to or mentioned in the blizzcast.
* Reputation: Everything uses/gives the same badges, but some vendors are personally unlockable (this is also extensible to quest unlocking, and having vendors in the back of instances like the AQ40 weapon turnins)
* Different badges: Raid bosses drop altogether different badges than 5-man bosses
* Badges + Tokens: all bosses drop badges, raid bosses drop tokens, gear takes a combination
(* combinations thereof)
Personally I like the reputation system more because it doesn't force you to either run legacy content for new loot, or to have a backlog of useless of lower-tier badges. I like the idea that of the effort you have to put in for some pieces, some but not all of it has to be in a thematically-related instance.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Cranberry

Probably because they want people to do the terrible instances in Auchindoun.

In all seriousness, I just think they want people to "see the content". Personally, I'm okay with rep grinds as long as they're not too obscenely long.

 

Pounce

Lower City has [Arakkoa Feather] but I think the issue is that they don't want gold to be able to replace content. Gold already has a use in-game, and if they are going to increase the power of reputations, they can't afford to make that reputation purchasable.

In a game like this where minmaxing is so prevalent, I don't know that I want to get to the stage where it's actually more efficient for people to buy reputation than gain it the old fashioned way. Scryer and Aldor reputation is a little different in that gold is really the intended method of gaining more reputation, i.e. buying or farming signets/marks. Purchasable rep sort of works with SSO, because you can only buy a very limited amount per day. At higher levels I think it makes sense to "force" people to participate in other aspects of the gaming world so that the game is still about running instances, not economic transactions.

 

Xav

Definitely seems like they could implement that easily. I like this idea, it gets rid of some of the annoyance of "random loot is random" by letting you buy guaranteed upgrades via badges over time, and still prevents everyone from drawing from the same pool of uber loot - ie Slave Pens / Karazhan badges being used to buy ilvl 146 or whatever it is Badge rewards.

Since their tiered progression layout for 10 and 25 man seems pretty well thought out (25 man always a tier ahead), that makes item progression via badges always "fair" and doesn't let anyone skip anything by saving badges and waiting for a new "tier" of items to be unlocked, then spending your hoard of badges, and so forth.

Certainly sounds very nice, let's just hope it's all implemented properly!

 

• Falk

Tongue in cheek:

There was a badge system in place before TBC ever launched. They were called Splinter of Atiesh.

 

PSGarak

Kind of... each splinter was lootable by one person only, not the entire raid. But if they do a mixed-tiered system that requires many generic badges and a few high-level ones, it's kinda similar on an individual level.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

bv728

My guess is that Naxx-10 drops Badges. Naxx-25 Drops Badges+1, as does (Next Raid Instance)-10. That way they only have to itemize one badge vendor per tier.

 

PsyBomb

I could see that. The alternate is that Naxx-10 and naxx-25 drop the same badge, and the badge vendor for it has a bunch of neck, ring, cloak, etc. that are not main-slot drops, perhaps also the Relic slot items. The main-slot drops are on the bosses themselves, and will be a good bit better in the 25. This is about as close to an ideal system as I can think of, though most of it comes from previous posts in this thread

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.