What I'm truly afraid of is DST-style fuckups where an item in the 10-man version is superior to anything you can get in the 25-man. They're going to need someone policing the itemization team hard.
What I'm truly afraid of is DST-style fuckups where an item in the 10-man version is superior to anything you can get in the 25-man. They're going to need someone policing the itemization team hard.
I can't imagine this NOT happening unless every 10 man piece of loot is just 10% (or 25 % the actual % isn't the point) less stam/ap/spelldmg/haste/hit/crit including the procs from trinkets and such.
Although I think this is the best way, I kinda doubt it will be how it actually ends up working out. (Would be pretty boring)
Last edited by orcsgotbooty : 06/08/08 at 9:34 AM.
If an item is superior in the 10-man version, is that a bad thing? So you have to step "back" a tier, get 9 friends, and experience the content from a different angle (as they've stated that the 10 and 25-man versions will be different). It's much easier to get 10 people together, and with 10 people (and hopefully less crap in the loot tables), if your item drops you're a lot more likely to get it. And if you don't, you can keep running the instance week after week until you do, as 10 man raids are easier to arrange from a logistical standpoint.
Well, if you're in a 25-person raid guild you're going to be running the 25-person version every week anyways (until you're guild moves on). If the 10-person version has an irreplaceable item that just means you have to run the 10-person version as well.
Every 25-person raider is going to do the 10-person version at least once ("experience it from another angle"). Items like the DST don't make you go experience the content, they make you (if you want to maximize your character) farm it. Until the RNG spins your way.
If it was just a case of "Take nine friends and do something a bit different" I don't think anyone would be worried.
Didn't they say that 10s and 25s would be on the same timer? Making it rather difficult to farm for that one item.
If the 25 one is 7 day lockout, then the 10 man one will be too.
On badges. Badges were meant to keep people in the game. The whole idea of badges was to create content for a huge group of semi casuals that had all the loot from Kara and heroics, and as such had nothing left to do ingame. Instead of adding more and harder 5&10 mans (which they should have done) they decided to give these people a shot at new items via badges. The entire badge system can be teired without a problem, as long as they remember to give this group of people ample content to tackle.
On the subject of loot homogenisation, You have to remember that rare items will be rare. That's the whole idea. Identical loot for all classes and all specs won't mean that your special item will drop more. The whole idea of these items is to be special, so that only dedicated players will get them.
What people in this thread are proposing is somethimes idiotic. There's no reason at all to give every spec similar items. If you take the badge vendor, the sunmote system and craftables (more craftables, you know you want to) then you have quite a lot of possibilities to implement rare items.
The key however is to get bosses to drop their loot in smarter defined groups. 1 group of x amount of tokens (droprate based on the % of players that can use it in the raid), 1 slot for the few great items, and then 2 slots for situational items (like [Essence of the Pure Flame] and others). Sure you need to fix enhancement shaman and hunter mechanics so they use the same items and stop rolling on rogue gear, and you need to take a long good look at all those goddamned 2h and daggers dropping (NO MORE DAGGERS!), but a complete change of how all the classes work so everyone can roll on the same items would just make the game boring. More different items is what we need, not less.
If an item is superior in the 10-man version, is that a bad thing? So you have to step "back" a tier, get 9 friends, and experience the content from a different angle (as they've stated that the 10 and 25-man versions will be different). It's much easier to get 10 people together, and with 10 people (and hopefully less crap in the loot tables), if your item drops you're a lot more likely to get it. And if you don't, you can keep running the instance week after week until you do, as 10 man raids are easier to arrange from a logistical standpoint.
Farming Gruul for 14 months to get one fucking trinket isn't "experiencing content", its bad design. One of the few things I would call absolutely terrible in TBC was trinket itemization. I'm going to be running around in ilevel 154's soon, why are the two best trinkets in the game ilevel 115 and 125? I hope they get this fixed next expansion by either making good trinkets in every tier or sticking them on badge/rep vendors so you can be guaranteed to get one eventually..
If an essential drop had been on Karathess (which is also more likely due to ilevel), it would be much worse.
But im hoping that Blizz has learnt about their current classes, rather than pile everything into DK's. Look at other items, druid idol from shadow labs, or some set bonuses both on pve and pvp gear. These are clear indications that Blizz does not understand how their game is being played on a detailed level.
Farming Gruul for 14 months to get one fucking trinket isn't "experiencing content", its bad design. One of the few things I would call absolutely terrible in TBC was trinket itemization. I'm going to be running around in ilevel 154's soon, why are the two best trinkets in the game ilevel 115 and 125? I hope they get this fixed next expansion by either making good trinkets in every tier or sticking them on badge/rep vendors so you can be guaranteed to get one eventually..
The thing is with BT class trinkets they had a phenomenal opportunity to fix this, to be honest I know some of the trinkets are actually halfway decent (rogue/hunter), but at least personally the warrior one is a complete and utter joke. I'm not sure someone would have used it if it was a drop at level 60 let alone now.
I really think there should be some sort of method to how they separate rep/badge rewards from instance drops, like that normal off-set slot drops are instance drops and strange things like trinkets and whatnot are from the instance. Unfortunately, this necessarily makes instance drops pretty boring (if they weren't they might be those good ones you need to farm for), which seems to me to defeat the point of random loot in the first place.
Seems that it would make sense given the current model to allow certain items purchasable at the get-go with tiered raid badges, but then readjust as time passes. SSC has been clear for over a year, and BT/Hyjal is approaching the one-year mark. What if Blizzard had released their first round of badge gear (a la 2.3) when SSC opened, but required SSC badges to buy, and then added a second vendor with the same loot a few months later, for regular heroic badges?
It seems like one of the biggest issues with people "catching up" to current raiding content is that Blizzard wants them to do it and not feel forced to grind through each and every instance before it for months to get geared up. I understand that the views on this are controversial at best, but personally I feel it's a good thing that people can move forward - it allows the higher end guilds to recruit people without having to gear them quite so much.
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
If I had to speculate further on that, I might think that Naxx10 bosses would drop one Badge of Naxxramas per player and Naxx25 bosses would drop two.
Farming Gruul for 14 months to get one fucking trinket isn't "experiencing content", its bad design. One of the few things I would call absolutely terrible in TBC was trinket itemization. I'm going to be running around in ilevel 154's soon, why are the two best trinkets in the game ilevel 115 and 125? I hope they get this fixed next expansion by either making good trinkets in every tier or sticking them on badge/rep vendors so you can be guaranteed to get one eventually..
The same exact thing is going to haunt us in WotLK for one very good reason: It is the easiest way to allow more people in the raid game by letting them get the gear that drops in the process of the pug gruul that the min-maxers organized. If you listened to the latest blizzcast Tigole said that High King was to complicated, they intend for these 'Onyxia style' encounters to be long lasting content.
I don't doubt that there will be a mega powerful item in each of the different settings that won't get replaced for a year. It's the same reason that there are PvP drops in PvE instances, the very best gear should come from varied sources to encourage people to do it all, but hopefully not so good as to force people to do it all.
I have always liked the reputation Ring system, and hope it remains there in Wrath aswell as ideally being somewhat more advanced, if I could adapt it myself I would do something like...
Lets use Naxx and a Ring (ala Hyjal) as the example, where the faction is the 'Frozen Dawn'.
Both raid sizes grant FD reputation for this instance, although at different levels (25man gets double).
The 10man is unable to grant any FD reputation above Honored.
The 25man is able to grant FD reputation up to Exalted.
You get the first ring at Friendly and a new one at each tier.
The Revered version of the ring gains a proc effect which (when averaged out) brings the ring to a quality of an extra tier above the base ring.
The Exalted version is just a more heavy increase in stats, the proc remains the same.
This sort of method would keep the general items and reputations the same, without overburdening the system with double the normal amount.
You could use the Honored +/- barrier as a way of distributing items from [Naxxramas Token]'s aswell where 10man bosses drop one token, 25man bosses drop 3 tokens - shove all the items you wish on the same Rep vendor and then only people who participate in the 25man have access to the higher quality of gear.
This also provides some extra reasoning for 25man raiders to help their progress by also doing the 10man which normally they would skip im assuming.
You also have the added benefit of 10man raiders who feel they would like to raid 25mans get the bonus of not having their time wasted, and helping them gear up slightly easier for 25man raiding as they dont have to start from Neutral again.
Ah well, we will see how they pan it out, there is lots of potential for how they could merge the systems with grace - only time will tell if they manage it.
I really, really hope that blizzard doesn't go through with any sort of extreme loot homogenization (I'm fine with consolidating some similar classes like DPS wars/ret paladins, rogues/cats, mages/warlocks/spriests, etc.). They already have six systems in place to reduce loot rot to acceptable levels (Badges, Tokens, Rep, Crafting, Quest turn-ins and Sunmotes), all they need to do is fine-tune the implementation so that there is just enough loot rot to keep a guild's supply of <level 80 purple> crystals at an acceptable level. For instance, here's something that I just wrote down off the top of my head:
-Shoulders, chestpiece, helm: tokenized in a manner similar to AQ40 (i.e. everyone's token is guaranteed to drop)
-Gloves, Legs: Crafted by the appropriate profession utilizing <Boss drop> + <trash drops> (think naxx, but with the guild blacksmith instead of a quest turn-in)
-Boots, bracers, belts: Random drop, with a sunmote exchange system to avoid another rage winterchill.
-Weapons, shields, wands: Boss-dropped quest turn-in (think qiraji regalia/armaments)
-Trinkets, relics: Bought from the rep vendor (trinkets would be more generic trinkets a la DST or memento of tyrande, not the ashtongue pieces of crap)
-Amulets: Crafted by jewlcrafters from <boss drop> + <trash drop gems>
-Ring 1: Awarded based on rep a la Hyjal and AQ40
-Cloaks, Ring 2, misc. gear 1 tier behind: Badge vendor
This is obviously not perfect, but could be fine-tuned to give a system where there will be minimal loot rot, while still being engaging and entertaining, and giving enough "useless" purples to DE for enchants.
It seems like one of the biggest issues with people "catching up" to current raiding content is that Blizzard wants them to do it and not feel forced to grind through each and every instance before it for months to get geared up. I understand that the views on this are controversial at best, but personally I feel it's a good thing that people can move forward - it allows the higher end guilds to recruit people without having to gear them quite so much.
This is why I am a little skeptical of tiered badges. I prefer to play multiple characters rather than have one main in a progression guild. I was hoping for a little modified sso model for wotlk. Let raiders have access to the badge vendor inside their instance and then let a copy be unlocked some way a few months later.
I think the main problem is they don't want to force people to raid low end instances for badges again, but I thought it could be handled by having a large jump in badge cost and badge drop each tier up you go.
This is why I am a little skeptical of tiered badges. I prefer to play multiple characters rather than have one main in a progression guild. I was hoping for a little modified sso model for wotlk. Let raiders have access to the badge vendor inside their instance and then let a copy be unlocked some way a few months later.
I think the main problem is they don't want to force people to raid low end instances for badges again, but I thought it could be handled by having a large jump in badge cost and badge drop each tier up you go.
I think the main problem with badges in TBC was that they were tacked on to raid bosses as an afterthought (first Kara, then tacked on again to 25 mans). With proper fore-planning, the Kara badge farm won't happen again (higher level bosses dropping significantly more badges). If they just made every Kara boss drop just 1 badge (instead of the current 2 on average), it would be pretty marginal to do it for just badges. And if Kara/Raids had dropped badges from the start, it wouldn't have mattered nearly as much.
However, I really hope they don't go to a tiered badge system, as I think that high level players should be able to get something out of doing old instances so they have some reward from getting other people geared up. Instead I would rather see a system more like PvP honor rewards: Everything drops honor (badges), but in order to get certain pieces of gear you need to do specific battlegrounds (rep factions/high-end boss drops/vendors in instances/whatever).
Kara dropping the amount of badges it does is fantastic. It keeps the instance alive. So many mains/people who wouldnt need it - go back to Kara for them. Many runs form that would otherwise fail to form due to lack of dps/healer/tanks. I dont see how it would be beneficial to change this too much.
If you listened to the latest blizzcast Tigole said that High King was to complicated
What he actually said was it was too complex for its length ... that it took longer to explain it than to do it. I don't think he has any problem with epic fights demanding epic explanations.
@Tyrian: what's bad about Kara dropping so many badges is that most people want to move on and see something new instead of killing Shade every Sunday afternoon. The high cost of the new badge loot and gems for badges all but forces raiders of a certain level to go back and grind the instance long after they are sick to the teeth of it.
After spending months accumulating badges for my ring and mace I could heal Kara in my sleep ... which is just as well, as towards the end that's just what I was doing. I do not want to become equally tired of Naxx10.
What he actually said was it was too complex for its length ... that it took longer to explain it than to do it. I don't think he has any problem with epic fights demanding epic explanations.
@Tyrian: what's bad about Kara dropping so many badges is that most people want to move on and see something new instead of killing Shade every Sunday afternoon. The high cost of the new badge loot and gems for badges all but forces raiders of a certain level to go back and grind the instance long after they are sick to the teeth of it.
After spending months accumulating badges for my ring and mace I could heal Kara in my sleep ... which is just as well, as towards the end that's just what I was doing. I do not want to become equally tired of Naxx10.
So it would seem that the simplest, most direct option is "shift the most optimal badge:time location to the 'new' content". Increase badge drops and badge costs so that the only sane method of getting tier X loot is running a tier X instance. Tier X-1 will still drop badges, but you'd need to run it for 6, 8, 10 months for your tier X weapon. Tier Y comes out, badge drops adjust again, as do costs. Yes, this means possibly adjusting X-1 badge numbers to 1/boss, 2 from the end, and so forth.
Everyone has a carrot (hey, if Joe Hunter wants to spend 9 months farming badges for one item while getting no other gear, I respect his determination, and I bet it made his year when he bought it and ran to the bank to show off.), and it removes the "need" to do Naxx10 until your eyes bleed just for badges, but if you DO run it, whether for apps, alts, buddies, or drunken giggles, there's something in it for you no matter what tier you're normally running.
Edit: So actually, "what the poster 3 above me said, but in slightly more detail".
What he actually said was it was too complex for its length ... that it took longer to explain it than to do it. I don't think he has any problem with epic fights demanding epic explanations.
@Tyrian: what's bad about Kara dropping so many badges is that most people want to move on and see something new instead of killing Shade every Sunday afternoon. The high cost of the new badge loot and gems for badges all but forces raiders of a certain level to go back and grind the instance long after they are sick to the teeth of it.
After spending months accumulating badges for my ring and mace I could heal Kara in my sleep ... which is just as well, as towards the end that's just what I was doing. I do not want to become equally tired of Naxx10.
Actually what he was saying was that the introductory bosses in 25 person content, meaning maulgar, were too complicated.
The first fight for 25s should have been more of a tank and spank, not a 5 person pull fight.
I think what they're shooting for in introductory content would be similar to the current Magtheridon. It's fun, it does have some requirements outside of tank and spank, and it gives relatively low-level raiders a chance to get into the lore. I can see Anub'Arak or Malygos being very similar.
I think what they're shooting for in introductory content would be similar to the current Magtheridon. It's fun, it does have some requirements outside of tank and spank, and it gives relatively low-level raiders a chance to get into the lore. I can see Anub'Arak or Malygos being very similar.
I really hope Malygos isn't a creme boss. He's an aspect, if we're given a simple "tank and spank dragon" a la ony I will be very disappointed.
06/08/08, 1:32 AM
Similar Threads
