What if all loot were badge loot?

Macblade · 05/12/08, 7:58 PM

I haven't seen a thread discussing this topic, please feel free to abuse me and direct me accordingly if I'm mistaken.

I was just thinking the other day about the comparisons that people make between pvp and pve gear and the fact that pvp gear is always a consistent upgrade and pve gear is far from it. WOW already has badge of justice and the huge love/hate relationship that goes along with that. However, what I was thinking about would be quite a large departure from the current system.

Here's the system that I was thinking of, and I am just curious what people's reaction are to it. Basically all loot would be badge loot. New vendor's would open along with new content. Bosses would drop only badges or perhaps a vastly reduced rng loot table with a corresponding increase in badges. Bosses would drop a number of badges appropriate to their difficulty. E.g. Kara bosses would all drop 1 badge, prince would drop 2. Gruul and Mag would drop 2. T5 bosses would drop 3 each with Keal and Vash droping 4, so on and so forth. In addition, there could be special tokens required for certian items that would only drop off a certian (final raid insance) bosses (think pvp gear-require honor points but also token from certian BGs).

Skipping gear levels could either be controlled in a number of ways. First, by timing the release of vendors (e.g. at the start of TBC only the "kara" badge vedor is open, then a month later the T5 vendor is released in a patch). Second, requiring a token off of a certian boss, e.g. each peice of T5 badge loot requires at least one token from either Keal or Vash. Or third, simply having the vendor spawn after a boss is killed.

On the whole I think that the detail are interesting, but what I'm really interested in are the potential upsides and downsides of such a system. What would it mean if you knew that every time you were in on a boss kill you were exactly 1/10th, or any other fraction, from getting your next peice of gear? What if you didn't have to continue running Gruul for a DST while farming Illidan at the same time?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that DKP systems would be totally out. Everyone that's in for a boss kill gets a token, all the people that are sitting outside get nothing. Though I'd imagine there could be ways around this problem (a sack of badges that can be traded once before being bound, allowing the raid leader to pass out some badges to people on standby).

Second, On the whole I think that people would be a lot less frustrated. Perhaps it is just me, but my experience and what I've gathered from other's in my guild, is that one of THE most frustrating things is having a gear slot that is 3 zones behind and then, on top of that, having absolutely no idea what week you will get lucky and finally get that drop.

gnoop · 05/12/08, 8:17 PM

What you really need are boss tokens. Every boss drops X tokens, good for anything except tier gear on the loot list. Turn it at your given loot vendor. For tier gear, there's only 1 token, good for everyone, good for the gear slot. In the end, you'll just upset a different group of people; those that wanted random loot for the thrill of what might drop.

Badges for everything is interesting, but probably unlikely. You'd probably still want a loot table or else there's basically no new gear coming out of an instance until you've farmed it for X weeks. It also creates a potential lowered interest in hitting the raids until you can be assured of it being worth your time. Some may well just stick to heroics to gear up from all the badge gear.

We may see a continuation of the Sunwell system. A random loot table which can be used to turn things in for other items as well. If the push towards a more token-based system, I'm sure some will weep at the loss of random loot.

◊ Vontre · 05/12/08, 8:20 PM

What if all loot were badge loot? That would be fantastically awesome. Thread over.

Touf · 05/12/08, 8:22 PM

There's a reason slot machines are popular. It is that uncertainty that drives people who want loot. The frustration keeps them in the game.

Jom · 05/12/08, 8:25 PM

It sounds like a good idea but I think that the RNG loot actually makes for a better guild situation, at least raid attendance-wise. I can speak from first hand experience because my guild is going through a lot of apathy due to nearly everyone having the loot from Black Temple/Hyjal (we're running Sunwell Plateau) but there's still a need to gear up new recruits to a Sunwell standard. Attendance isn't so bad that we've had to cancel raids but it has been necessary to patch up a few holes with reservists.

Now, my point is that people would lose interest a lot faster if their drops were guaranteed as long as they spent x amount of time in y instance collecting badges. With the random number generator, people are actually rather keen to run these instances because they need the 1 piece of loot that'll be the crowning glory in their set or to see if a warglaive drops.

Copernicus · 05/12/08, 8:33 PM

Largest problem with pure badge loot is the same problem that arena points have. People will end up with their gear "capped" for the current tier level. And the more hardcore will get there faster and then burn out quicker.

I like the idea of a more tiered loot system with token turn-ins and the ability to fill out holes. I just think it should be able to backfill gear with less than perfect slots. So BT should drop badges of SSC, SWP drop badges of BT, etc.

Incoherence · 05/12/08, 8:38 PM

The concern is that it reduces people's desire to do new content, since it doesn't give better loot: at best, it gives equal caliber loot more quickly, and that's once you have the place on farm; wipe nights give much less loot at much more cost. Witness how many people continue to run Karazhan every week for badges; even if BT gave 3 times the badges it did now, it wouldn't be much better in terms of badges/hour than Karazhan, and that's if you discount the repair gold/consumables/wipe nights you needed to get through the instance. (Yes, of course you can run both, but if you're capable of running both you're probably running BT most weeks anyway.)

If each instance had a different "badge" type, or if you had a "boss token" type system, you'd have more of an incentive to go to the new instances, while removing RNG effects (a discussion I'll stay out of).

Macblade · 05/12/08, 8:45 PM

If every boss dropped the same tokens then you wouldn't necessarily have the problem that you are talking about Jom. If, once the T6 badge vendor opens, it can be purchased with a number of badges that equals either 10 Kara runs or one BT run (or whatever ever numbers you choose) plus one token specifically from a BT boss, then you wouldn't have to necessarily run BT just for the new recruits that you have. You could expect them to collect the badges running kara on there own time or ZA then you'd only have to clear BT every other week so those recruits could get the special tokens. At the same time, with that ratio, it would also be in the guilds best interest to try to move up in raid progression, because higher level bosses would drop more badges, making to worth the time spent learning the new fight.

As far as having a rng loot table, I agree that that can provide its own incentive. I think what would work well would be to seperate gear that people use to progress with gear that is for show. That is, TK done this way, could be that all the gear/weapons/armor that drops actually come from badges. However, every time you kill Keal you still have a 10% of the epic flying mount dropping. I think that this system could work pretty well. It would still have the thrill of gambling with out the frustration. Basically it's just a peice of eye candy/status symbol, but that sure doesn't keep people from running timed ZAs.

Sure, people like to gamble and play the slots. But the finer distinction is that the people that feel like they can loose the money are the ones that are actually enjoying it, the people that might be gambling because they need the money certianly not. Now obviously, not getting that weapon to drop is not the same and putting food on the table in a heirarchy of needs, but I think the analogy does hold to some extent in that gear is needed to be able to progress, while a rare epic flying mount, or a bear land mount certainly isn't.

Originally Posted by Incoherence

The concern is that it reduces people's desire to do new content, since it doesn't give better loot: at best, it gives equal caliber loot more quickly, and that's once you have the place on farm; wipe nights give much less loot at much more cost. Witness how many people continue to run Karazhan every week for badges; even if BT gave 3 times the badges it did now, it wouldn't be much better in terms of badges/hour than Karazhan, and that's if you discount the repair gold/consumables/wipe nights you needed to get through the instance. (Yes, of course you can run both, but if you're capable of running both you're probably running BT most weeks anyway.)

This is exactly what I didn't want to get into. All you are arguing about is the fine details of what the numbers are. Okay, so if BT drops 3 badges per boss it wouldn't be worth it, fine, have each boss drop 5 or 10. I'm not saying I have the numbers right, those would take a lot of though and testing.

So basically, if you can change the numbers in the system and that answers your question then you are missing the point here. Raise a concern about the rules that the system is based on, otherwise the converstation is going to head down hill really fast. As far as a boss token system, yes, I think that might be a good idea, which is why I mentioned it in the OP.

Chul · 05/12/08, 8:47 PM

I just think they need to expand on the reputation rewards for tiered instances.

All tiered instances should have reputation associated with them. You get ring rep rewards each reputation level, and once at exalted, some nice drops open up that can be purchased using "tokens" from the end boss. You could even offer tabards at exalted too (or even titles i.e. Chul, Hero of Mount Hyjal).

This allows Blizzard to place items they know will be in huge demand (like DST) as a reputation reward, and gives people incentive to keep coming back to an instance.

Macblade · 05/12/08, 8:56 PM

Originally Posted by Chul

I just think they need to expand on the reputation rewards for tiered instances.

All tiered instances should have reputation associated with them. You get ring rep rewards each reputation level, and once at exalted, some nice drops open up that can be purchased using "tokens" from the end boss. You could even offer tabards at exalted too (or even titles i.e. Chul, Hero of Mount Hyjal).

This allows Blizzard to place items they know will be in huge demand (like DST) as a reputation reward, and gives people incentive to keep coming back to an instance.

Well, essentially you are arguing for the same system, at least in that both Rep and Badges are a result of spending time in an instance and offer a guaranteed reward after a certain amount of time.

gnoop · 05/12/08, 9:02 PM

To add to what Jom's saying about the problems of a fully badge system, you'll find a lot more badge farming going on. Without random loot or at least something that drops off only a given boss (or even a given group of bosses), I can easily see raids looking for the new Kara of LK even more. What could happen is that you only run a new raid to clear it. Even in the proposed tiered badge gear, once you unlock the new badge gear, you grab it, clear the new instance a few times to say you did it, then go back to farming badge gear again until the next unlock. You'd have to tie the unlocks to the number of clears of a prior instance (with a hard time set for the low pop servers). That would be the only way to assure raids would keep going back to the tougher stuff rather than raid the new Kara every week.

Chul brings up an interesting suggestion; tying more things to rep. A boss token system with a reputation system means you'll have plenty of drops going around on the first few runs where you're downing bosses. Meanwhile, you'll have a strong incentive to keep raiding until you're exalted.

RNG items should still be there. But these should be similar to the rep items, rather desirable. You wouldn't want a legendary on the boss token table

This would also help keep people running an instance. There will probably always be the Moroe's Pocketwatch and DST of WotLK (though we had Gruul drop DST two weeks in a row, random luck).

• Playered · 05/12/08, 9:10 PM

It would be boring as hell, I hate tokens and I hate badges - I loathe seeing items stuck on vendors because aside from Naxx none of it has made 'sence'.
That said I hate the RNG with loot tables on bosses, people get lucky and others dont - and it's annoying as hell.

I much preferred the old method (MC/BWL) of dealing with loot and bosses in all fairness, sure it sucked alot of the time but it is how things were done - and I could endure the agony for things which fit the lore and were logical.
Why do all these bosses have uncrafted chests, gloves, legs etc and all these factions who are ment to be helping you in a joint struggle against these oppressors hold back all this amazing gear from you which they should be giving you to help vanquish them.

I was actually excited about Rage Winterchill when I first heard of his loot table, it was a "wow its like Razogor again" feeling but well..

Token/Badge systems just show how lazy Blizzard went about implementing this stuff.

Badges of Justice? they could of atleast been named differently to something like Illidari Signet (Yes I know the SL/CoT etc instances wouldn't work on that), throw on some lore about them being given to Illidans servents and what-have you - and that the Sha'tar will reward you for proof of killing his henchmen in the struggle against Illidan (heh Mark of Illidari familiar? they still botched that up to save time in Sunwell though).

Tokens? as stated above, they dont fit with anything and feel like placeholders for a system they decided to rush and not implement.

They could just minimize the loot tables (lets face it, even now in a min/maxed WoW theres still alot of clutter hanging about) from lets say any T2 dropping boss to having 2 pools of 4 chests, instead of 2 pools of 8 chests - you would still get unlucky but its alot less so than previously and it also grants a better spread of items.

Alot of the PvE loot could be 'made better' by just having smaller loot tables on bosses (I would say 3 per loot-pool at max) instead of the 5-6 quite a few have now - adding more bosses if needed to allow the same loot to exist but spread around abit more.

I know I've not really followed what your opening post wanted, but regarding those things I think it could of been made alot easier to swallow if they spent some time on the implmentation and design around how the systems worked, not cutting corners (BoJ from Heroics, Kara, ZA, T4/T5/T6 and Sunwell? stretching it somewhat too far I think).

Raiding loot has been plagued ever since players started to Theorycraft about them when the item team had obviously not gone near that level of complexity regarding items themselves (due to needing a heavy understanding of class mechanics to really judge these things well).

PvP gear in a system where skill is a limiting factor also helps alleviate the PvP vs PvE loot problem, but when the PvP system is flaunted about so carelessly like it has been then its bound to bring up heavy complaints from the other side, especially when even with the 3 token drop system they have decided against having 1 of each token drop which would of removed a heavy chunk of the annoying randomness there atleast.

• Xabu · 05/12/08, 9:39 PM

I personally would prefer a tiered Badge system. As it stands, heroics, 10-mans, 25-mans, and occasionally those SSO bags all give the same Badges. If Badges are to be interpreted as an experimental form of "group content currency," I think it would be better in the future if each level of content offered different types of badges; would take up more bag space, but it would allow for more flexibility in what the vendors can offer and the badges themselves could be sprinkled more liberally as people collect them for their own respective tier of Badge gear.

gnoop · 05/12/08, 9:43 PM

Originally Posted by Xabu

I personally would prefer a tiered Badge system. As it stands, heroics, 10-mans, 25-mans, and occasionally those SSO bags all give the same Badges. If Badges are to be interpreted as an experimental form of "group content currency," I think it would be better in the future if each level of content offered different types of badges; would take up more bag space, but it would allow for more flexibility in what the vendors can offer and the badges themselves could be sprinkled more liberally as people collect them for their own respective tier of Badge gear.

So we're almost back to the boss tokens at that point. On the down side, you have to down bosses for longer until you get enough for the shiny piece of badge loot. On the plus side, you don't need to defeat a given boss to get the gear.

Kumar · 05/12/08, 9:52 PM

We would need more badges from the bosses?

Liebestod · 05/12/08, 10:03 PM

I think moving away from RNG gradually is the way to go.. first with the tier tokens, and then possibly for tokens on non-set loot. Moving to every raid item being on a single currency gained from Heroics to high-end raids is obviously a radical change, however, and it's hard to see why anyone would seriously want it other than that they believe that enough effort at any level should lead to any kind of loot being given out. I disagree, however, because if all loot were badge loot then people would simply identify "high-yield" instances and simply not bother with any others. ie. All people would do is Karazhan and Mechanar, maybe some more if not for the lockout timers.

I'm not a fan of loot streakiness, but I could see it being changed to something like having each boss drop 2 set tokens (out of 3 possible) and 2 non-set tokens (out of.. a few possible, probably 2-3) and having that be that. It'd basically be about breaking the loot table into groups. M'uru, for example, would drop a Chest token, a Glove/Trinket token, a Ring/Muramasa token, and a PvP Ring token. Something like that... he's not very easy to break down, actually. It's possible that they could make it so that you need 3 extra Sunmotes, for example, if you're trying to get Muramasa.

I think the ultimate question comes down to a few things:

1) Do you think it's okay for bosses that people eventually stop farming to still have some really good, albeit rare, drops? ie. DST.

2) If so, is it okay that some raids will have to keep farming for a very long time to get all of these items that they need?

I'm inclined to say "no" myself, but others might disagree. If you say "yes", however, then it'd probably be wise to move further away from RNG.

panny · 05/12/08, 10:13 PM

On a slight tangent, I HATE going to a vendor to buy loot. I'm no lore-fiend, but the idea of my dream Breastplate of Ownage being infinitely available in a display window makes it lose a bit of its allure. Make a turn-in quest instead please.

foolish_fool · 05/12/08, 10:22 PM

Personally I think a completely badge-based system would be boring. Everyone would end up with exactly the same sets of gear at roughly the same time, and raid guilds standing in org would have the same effect as the pvp-ers standing near the battlemasters - every singly person looks exactly the same.

I am rather in favour of a semi-nonrandom system. I did not actually do aq40/naxx, but the way some of the loot tables from there seem to have worked appears to me to be pretty solid. Basically, I think bosses should drop generic pieces (like a weapon token), which whoever in your raid wins gets to take it to a vendor and hand it in for their weapon of choice. Potentially, you could combine this with the naxx type of "combine with some trash drop other mats". ie. Rage Winterchill drops a bracer token. Trash drop a "mail item shard". Take bracer token + mail token to a vendor in Shattrath and get your Howling Wind Bracers.

This way, rather than having a 10% chance each of dropping 6 sets of bracers, rage could have a 60% chance of dropping a bracer token in which case, vastly reducing the chance you will never see that one drop you need to complete your set - if you are due to get the item, it will come - but you still have an element of randomness, and you still have decisions to make about loot distribution.

I would have:

1 token for each slot + a trash armour type token.
1 token for all 2-handed weapons (staffs included) (and maybe some other token to differentiate caster from melee)
1 token for 1-handers (as above)
Shields / offhands / cloaks on random drop from bosses still (or trash).
rings/necks from boss "head" pieces / reputation / trash.
Trinkets from a dedicated boss (think Priestess Derlissa Heroic - the boss drops a trinket guaranteed every week, just depends which one).
edit: and legendaries on Atiesh-style quest lines.

• Intermission · 05/12/08, 10:26 PM

To sum up what a few people have already said in this thread, but in far fewer lines of text:

So long as there was an instance defining currency*, it sounds great!

*EG:
Kara/ZG badges for ilvl 110-125(?) items.
SSC/TK badges for ilvl 125-135 items.
MH/BT badges for ilvl 135-150 items.
Sunwell badges for ilvl 150+ items.

OR

Only 1 type of badge but each item purchase needs: a) a number of badges, and b) a particular boss/instance specific token, of which only a limited amount drop per boss kill.

foolish_fool · 05/12/08, 10:33 PM

On consideration, certain items should stay on random boss specific drops. The example I am thinking of in particular are Al'ar's claws - these are prestige items more than anything else, and really don't belong as accessable by any other method. Give comparable items on a token system, but the unique items should stay this way (Al'ar's claws, Jin'rhok.... nothing else comes to mind, but I am sure there are other examples).

PSGarak · 05/12/08, 11:14 PM

Another possibility is to combine the Badge and Reputation systems, so that a new Badge vendor becomes unlocked after you have put in your time at a particular instance. I would still recomend that the badge prices ramp up by a factor of 3-10x each tier. There are advantages to having one Badge type across tiers, like avoiding wasted token by allowing people to make use of spillover. The fact that you give a slight gear advantage to people willing to back-farm another two tiers of content is, in my mind, a good thing: another four to six hours for one-fifth or one-tenth the amount of rewards is the sort of advantage hardcore dedication should be able to get you. Such a system would also allow people at one tier of contant to very quickly fill out their whole character with gear from the previous tier. This makes it easier to recruit re-rolls, and allows hybrid classes to respec to different roles more easily.

Reputation can be made rather fine-grained, as well. For example, Attumen & Moroes give rep through friendly, Maiden & Opera through honored, and so forth (plus associated trash). In practice, this isn't much different than hiding the weapon turn-in guys way in the back of AQ40 behind twin emps, except they don't need to be physically located in the ass end of nowhere.

As an aside, I liked the turn-in quests for Naxx more than those for any other instance, because they required outside materials (and it was a sane amount of them).

• Beliandra · 05/12/08, 11:34 PM

If you wanted to tier the rewards to the instances, you could make it even more like PvP honour gear - have each boss (hey, even trash kills as well) earn you a certain amount of, say, "renown", and additionally, the bosses drop tokens. Then your [Breastplate of Low Level Epicness] could cost something like 10,000 renown and 10 Karazhan Marks, whilst the [Sword of Uber Epicness] might be 50,000 renown (higher level raids would earn you more) and 20 Black Temple Marks.

Lithose · 05/13/08, 12:00 AM

Every boss drops 2 keys...

When the boss dies a chest spawns..

Keys allow you to open the chest and take one item from the bosses loot table, the key is destroyed upon taking the item...