This is a pretty decent idea actually. Continue with the RNG and its but allow some *choice* in the matter without completely moving to a token system.
It's also a good way to make the guy who wants the fourth item really angry.
It's also a good way to make the guy who wants the fourth item really angry.
Yes but his chances of seeing that item again would be much higher because of the extra slots of exposed loot table. It wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now, it would in fact double the rate at which you'd see the item you wanted.
1. Tokens require a higher degree of awareness from the individual player. Oh, look, we killed Kael and he dropped a quest starter, who wants it? Immediately someone will ask what you can turn it in for. For high end guilds, this is less of a problem--more people will have looked ahead and planned out their gear in advance. The less serious you get, the more of an issue it is.
Tokens make guilds more reliant on out of game resources to make gear choices.
2. There's less mystery/anticipation. "What does this boss drop?" "Oh, all the stuff you see that Orc selling near the entrance." When a boss goes down for the first time on a server/battlegroup, it doesn't mean new items can be linked or anything.
3. It's just less exciting to have a boss drop "Token of Weaponinity" than "Weapon of Super Amazing!" These flavor aspects are definitely part of Blizzard's considerations.
Now, I'm not advocating one side or the other, I'm just saying that there are more factors than that in Blizzard's choice.
I would venture to say that it's a small job for Blizzard to build capability to view the token turn-in options straight into the UI.
I agree that the current system with redeeming tokens from a vendor in a capital city is rather unwieldy. They should streamline it.
Yeah, that's actually a fantastic idea, one of the better ones I've heard. Here's hoping someone from Bliz is reading this thread, cause there have been some great loot-based ideas put forth in here, and I'm gettin really tired of the same old system of RNG screwing you for months at a time. Three tier items per boss is just about the most unnecessary thing they could have done for 2.4
*edit* This is in reply to the post about having a boss drop 4 pieces of loot, and being able to choose 3 before the 4th poofs.
Yes but his chances of seeing that item again would be much higher because of the extra slots of exposed loot table. It wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now, it would in fact double the rate at which you'd see the item you wanted.
I think it's decidedly more negative than the alternative option with tokens. The "extra loot" option leaves people feeling like "oh man, they just threw my loot into the garbage!", whereas the token option suggests that the loot was just awarded to somebody else.
I think it's decidedly more negative than the alternative option with tokens. The "extra loot" option leaves people feeling like "oh man, they just threw my loot into the garbage!", whereas the token option suggests that the loot was just awarded to somebody else.
Just speculating, though.
The tokens are just as bad now though when you get X token week after week and have never even had an opportunity to get the Z token you wanted. People don't get (as) upset when loot drops that their raid needs but which goes to someone other than themselves. They get (more) upset when items drop that nobody wants or can use. (ie, the protadin relic that drops off Mother every frigging week) If 4 items are exposed, and Player A and B and C each want 1 of the 4 items but only A and B get the item, yah Player C might be a little upset that his loot was "thrown away." But he can't be *too* angry because it still meant that *someone* in the raid advanced their gear. And if 4 items expose that nobody needs, its still no worse off than it is today.
The tokens are just as bad now though when you get X token week after week and have never even had an opportunity to get the Z token you wanted. People don't get (as) upset when loot drops that their raid needs but which goes to someone other than themselves. They get (more) upset when items drop that nobody wants or can use. (ie, the protadin relic that drops off Mother every frigging week) If 4 items are exposed, and Player A and B and C each want 1 of the 4 items but only A and B get the item, yah Player C might be a little upset that his loot was "thrown away." But he can't be *too* angry because it still meant that *someone* in the raid advanced their gear. And if 4 items expose that nobody needs, its still no worse off than it is today.
I'm just saying, that of several options that serve the same purpose of having less loot thrown away, I think a more sophisticated token system is significantly better. I think the "3 of 4" situation not only leaves a few people dejected (with potential for drama) but it also leaves substantial opportunity to get stuck with one or more unwanted items. It's just mitigating the chance a small bit.
I certainly think it's a better long-term solution for Blizzard to work on a strong token system, because it could potentially work for 5-mans and even quest rewards.
I think it's decidedly more negative than the alternative option with tokens. The "extra loot" option leaves people feeling like "oh man, they just threw my loot into the garbage!", whereas the token option suggests that the loot was just awarded to somebody else.
Just speculating, though.
It must depend on your loot system. For us, using a priority system (EPGP), we'd simply give folks with the most priority first choice and the three folks with highest priority that need something would get their items.
Hard to be angry for not getting the 4th loot when you were lower on priority than the other three players anyway.
We already know that Blizzard isn't concerned with "drama" in a guild/party. If they were, every item in the game would be tagged with "Restricted to Class:X." That's obviously not something that's driving their decisions. Using that as an argument against a system is silly, the drama is caused between players and their expectations, not because of a system put in place in the game.
The largest problem with randomized loot isn't the loot no one wants, but the slots that don't have enough upgrades. For BT/MH, cloaks and necklaces (and trinkets for those with lousy Ashtongue otions) are very rare. Large parts of our raid group are if full BBT/MH gear except for those slots, because of the difficulty in even seeing the items drop. I don't think all loot should be turned in with tokens, but I would like it if every slot had a token associated with it at every tier.
It's also worth noting that while "quest" style token-drops are mechanically really just the same as "vendor" style token drops, they feel different. The down side is that it also adds more work for the devs to try to produce interesting lore text and quest paths to go with various items (and counting all of the set pieces for all of the classes, there are a lot of items out there, although some can re-use a given quest path.) Having items available in a variety of ways also makes things more interesting—some items available vendor-style, some on minor token-based quests, some on swappable-item vendor-style, some on craftable item style, and some on more major upgrade based quests... Having all of these things at once for different classes of items makes each item feel more unique.
Imagine, for example, that in different tiers of content each of the above methods was used in different ways. In lower tiers, there's more that's handle by direct vendor transactions. You get your badges, you hand them in, you get the powerful armor that the Sons of the Brown Flood have collected during the war effort. Perhaps as you move up in tiers you begin to have vendor transactions that require certain "pieces" in addition to just badges—really, just more defined themed badges. So now you hand in your "crystal of the cold sun" and some badges, and you're able to get ice-crystal themed weaponry. Some of the "themed" badges can be crafted from other minor pieces by different professions, and so on. Perhaps there is a quest in the next tier that will let you upgrade themed weapons by piercing the heart of the Great Gobbly Bear as he dies or something. It doesn't have to be "single item" quests, like Onyxia and Quel'serrar, but can apply to entire classes of items. And it can be tailored to be different classes for different boss scenarios.
There's a sense of verisimilitude that grows out of this sort of thing. By having a badge based system for more items, you have a scenario in which people feel that they're making progress towards their desired outcome. By having some quest-based upgrade and creation processes you have a sense of aiming for a goal, and it's far neater to tell people about "going to kill Ironscale to retrieve his heart-gem to be the final piece of my shield" than it is to say "Oh yeah, we killed Ironscale and then I went and bought my warrior tanking shield with the token he dropped." (The difference here being between already having a shield which is incomplete and getting a new thing off a vendor.)
In short: I think Blizzard shouldn't restrict themselves to the token systems they've settled on as being the simplest (badges and set tokens), but rather increase the number of ways in which things are done. This does increase the complexity of making sure things are relatively well balanced, but it also makes things feel more interesting. And it provides mechanisms for making token drops from older instances (badges) continue to have value without simply being required in larger and larger numbers. (Badges + specialized items from the new instance that has opened = quest-crafted gear. Stockpiles of badges are still helpful, but you can't get the new gear until you've also run the new area a little bit.) And this adds a sense of progression to the badge system as well.
I think a lot of loot woes can be solved through the badge system, with slight tweaking.
Basically, have a badge vendor at every tier of loot with a full set of gear for you that can be redeemed with badges from that gear level (not with one universal badge that drops everywhere, as the system currently is). Said gear from the vendor will be generic looking and of lower quality (either through item level or itemization) than the equivalent slot pieces from in the raid zones. Tune the badge drop rate and cost of items so that 2-3 of farming all the bosses of that tier is enough for 1 item. Everyone will still want their better drop from any given boss, but when your guild is done farming tier X and is about to move on to tier X+1, and you have everything-but-that-item, you can at least get your booby prize. This also helps guilds that can only do the first few bosses of an instance: it will take them longer than it would for a guild farming the whole tier, but they'll eventually get enough badges to upgrade from their X-1 loot. And while the raider from the fast progression guild will use the badges to fill in gaps where the RNG screwed him over, the raider from the low end guild will choose pieces whose equivalent drops off of end-bosses -- bosses they know they won't be seeing anytime soon.
Slap some extra incentives on the actual boss-drop loot to make them more exciting so there's still some element of fun seeing what you get: badge turn-in weapon will have X crit, X AP, X damage. Boss drop weapons will also have chance on hit - Explosion of Awesome. Just make sure these are tuned so the min-maxers want the Explosion of Awesome effect more than the straight (boring) stats of the generic weapons.
Edit: From a flavor standpoint, I really like Hypatia's idea (above this post).
I agree with this to some degree. It is obviously very frustrating to get fucked by the RNG week after week. It took us 40 teron gorefiend kills to see our first pair of tanking gloves.
You've really been killing Teron since last May and just not got a pair of tanking gloves? Both of those deserve a wow.
On a related note, having killed Gruul a good 40 times and not having gotten a Dragonspine Trophy there has to be a way that you can get an item from "obsolete content" after a certain amount of time has passed.
So how's this for openers. Blizzard, put the DST on the Sunwell badge vendor for 200 badges and be done with it. We really appreciate "fixing" Magtheridon with the epic gems and the 25g per person, but Gruul is essentially a waste of an hour a week (the vast majority of which involves getting a series of alts massed to do the instance) for an item that too many people still want to improve their characters. I'm happy to spend the badges on it, as I'm sure are scores of other people.
This is kind of a combination of a couple different ideas for mitigating the potential frustration that comes from the strictly RNG based loot selection:
Each boss in a raid instance always drops 1 [Essence of Bossname] which is a non-binding, guild bankable item.
Players can turn in X number of [Essence of Bossname] somewhere and receive a quest to either "Kill Bossname" or loot a quest item off of him.
The available rewards for completing this quest are the items on the bosses standard loot table. (Excluding mounts, enchants, etc.)
You can only complete the quest for a particular boss once per character.
This removes some of the "omg the one thing we need off this boss never drops" while still ensuring that you've put some time in on a particular encounter before you can start acquiring loot this way. It's really more a method for filling in the RNG created gaps rather than a way to gear up. Having the essences be non-binding lets a guild determine who should get the loot when they have accumulated enough essences.
As they nerf instances, they can lower the value of X for those instances to accelerate the gearing rate. (Or raise the number of essences that drop off the boss I suppose. Or both.)
(As a side note, this would also greatly simplify selling loot from farm instances, although I'm not sure if that is something Blizzard would want to encourage...)
Lifetap change reverted, though now that we've seen the idea for it (and Kalgan's WotLC post on the WoW Warlock Forum), a lot of players can see a change of the class's outlook. Still not sure if the change would have been a bad idea, but then again I'm not sure if it was a good one. Seems possible that they'll re-implement it with patch 3.0 or 3.1, but that puts it outside of this thread's discussion.
Flametongue change also reverted, and wording clarified on the Toughness buff. Shamans aren't getting anywhere NEAR as big a buff now...
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.
When a boss dies, a chest materializes. Anyone can look into the chest and see the entire loot table of the boss, however, in order to pull something out of the chest you need a key from the boss.
Key acts as a token, reward is instant, gratifying and believable..It also doesn't require a knowledge of loot tables or token vendors as the loot is visible to everyone, just not obtainable.
"Akama's soul keys"
"Keys of the betrayer"
ect ect, each bosses key would be specific to his chest, and the number of keys would be how many items blizzard wanted him to drop.
When a boss dies, a chest materializes. Anyone can look into the chest and see the entire loot table of the boss, however, in order to pull something out of the chest you need a key from the boss.
Key acts as a token, reward is instant, gratifying and believable..It also doesn't require a knowledge of loot tables or token vendors as the loot is visible to everyone, just not obtainable.
"Akama's soul keys"
"Keys of the betrayer"
ect ect, each bosses key would be specific to his chest, and the number of keys would be how many items blizzard wanted him to drop.
The problem I see with this idea is that everyone will always want a key since they can get any item they want from the chest. At least with the way loot is now, only some players will want the loot which is available which increases your chance of actually receiving a piece of loot. I do like the chest idea since it was always unbelievable that the boss kept the treasure in his pocket. Perhaps if the chest only contained say 6 out of 12 possible pieces of loot then only some players would want a key this particular time. Also, seeing all boss drops every time would eliminate loot discovery which is part of the fun.
Apologies that this update is coming so late but we pulled the Essence of Immortal quest chain about 2 weeks ago. That's why you haven't seen it on the Public Test Realm. The 3 gates will open automatically over time at equal intervals on all servers.
Regarding the taking back of the town on the Isle, however, that will still be dependent on completion of daily quests. Servers can race to see who can open their quest hub the fastest. But access to raid bosses has been made equal.
We really like the concept of cross-server competition. But the concept of the gates being tied to specific boss kills was not playing out as we had hoped. We plan to do future things that involve servers competing with one another through major events.
There you go, nobody has to transfer servers to compete!
Lifetap change reverted, though now that we've seen the idea for it (and Kalgan's WotLC post on the WoW Warlock Forum), a lot of players can see a change of the class's outlook. Still not sure if the change would have been a bad idea, but then again I'm not sure if it was a good one. Seems possible that they'll re-implement it with patch 3.0 or 3.1, but that puts it outside of this thread's discussion.
Flametongue change also reverted, and wording clarified on the Toughness buff. Shamans aren't getting anywhere NEAR as big a buff now...
As I posted in the warlock discussion thread, the altered lifetap made sense in the light of the changes to Emberstorm.
If they want us to go fire, they should allow +fire damage to increase the mana return of lifetap so we can focus on 1 school of magic.
The RNG is, in my view, merely a relic from 40-man raid times when the sheer quantity of players in an instance virtually guaranteed that someone would need every piece of gear that dropped. I can't think of one time in six months of farming MC casually (I am using the lowest pre-TBC raid as an example, barring UBRS) where fourty people shrugged and would rather see it become a nexus crystal.
One merely has to loot at server economies to see that the drops in BC raids are not working as well with the smaller raid sizes; the Void Crystal market is booming with volume compared to the pre-BC Nexus one.
I'd personally be in support of a streamlined and expanded token system for all pieces of gear. I somewhat chuckled at this idea as my late-night ZA group is getting in the habit of acquiring 3 Chests from the ZA event and last night in four bosses we obtained 0 pieces of usable loot for a Tier 5 geared group. I suppose for that instance run were supposed to have taken a Feral Druid to get the ring, a Boomkin to take the caster pants, and a Rogue to have taken the dagger. 3 Chests, six Voids? I was ready to accept that the actual boss loot would be unusable by many in the raid, but all of the chest loot? Jeez.
The largest problem with randomized loot isn't the loot no one wants, but the slots that don't have enough upgrades. For BT/MH, cloaks and necklaces (and trinkets for those with lousy Ashtongue otions) are very rare. Large parts of our raid group are if full BBT/MH gear except for those slots, because of the difficulty in even seeing the items drop. I don't think all loot should be turned in with tokens, but I would like it if every slot had a token associated with it at every tier.
Yeah, pretty much. The whole idea behind tokening at least half of your gear through an 8 slot set is to free up item slots on bosses for stuff there is much less of. More cloaks, more weapons, more rings and trinkets.
Honestly though, tokening is fine. You don't need to make something crazy like a chest with all the bosses loot, or a throw away piece, or some crazy epic badge. Token an 8 piece set, leave the rest of the stuff as random drops with maybe a couple more tokens, 1 relic quest item that can be turned in for 1 of 9 idol/totem/libram, something like that. And you still have to deal with the RNG, waiting to see which 3 tokens are dropping is the same as waiting to see which 3 classes get to roll on helms from Ony. This isn't some insane change, blizzard seems to be headed towards tokening most gear anyway. I'm enjoying my T6 just fine even though it came from tokens.
Heck if Blizzard wanted they could make every single person get loot from a boss automatically, but everyone gets a random piece from the table. So a clothy may get the plate piece and vice versa, but in the end more people in the raid group on average would get loot and you wouldn't need really need dkp at all since those items would be beyond your control.
Super rare stuff like mounts or legendary items excluded of course.
Isn't it past time the discussion of the RNG and tokenizing loot moved into it's own thread? I find myself missing warlocks complaining about the (now reversed) lifetap changes.
03/07/08, 2:58 PM
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