lairpie

Whatever the system, token drops shouldn't be limited to a list of classes, but rather to a specific role. This is both easier to understand from a silly lore perspective, and provides for fewer wasted drops because I would wager that more guilds closely align in the number of healers:tanks:physical dps:magic dps they bring than they do in the number of specific classes. Like our guild has 4 rogues, 4-5 druids on pretty much every night, and only the fact that we get maybe 1 mage a night on has saved us from having a huge vanquisher imbalance (well, we still had it, but only because it simply never dropped in our early kills). This would also prevent stacking loot on the tanks which while people's initial reaction is that omg we won't be able to progress as fast, it would apply to everyone, and seems like a much better idea. Obviously drop rates would be weighted based on an average raid composition. Could even make it so a given instance spawn with say 10 total tokens was guaranteed to have 2 tanking tokens, 3 healer tokens, 3 phys dps tokens, 2 caster tokens if you killed all the bosses.

Personally I'd be for just removing off set gear in set slots entirely. I don't think it adds anything. If people really want to keep it, I think it should be equivalent to the set gear from the instance before, and there specifically to be used to fill holes where x person never got their t5 chest, so we throw them these off set robes.

I think badge loot, or whatever mechanism there is for essentially catch up gear, should be providing gear of a tier lower than the just released content (ie BT/Hyjal type gear as sunwell comes out, which is about what happened) but specifically not in every slot. I also think the slots that it does encompass should change a bit, so that for instance when sunwell came out a person would be able to have most of a gear set from faction rep stuff, crafted stuff, some t5 level badge stuff, some t6 level badge stuff. I think more mind to what is available through other non drop ways such as crafting and faction rep in creating badge loot would be helpful. Like really, a badge shield and a Shat'ar exalted shield?

I think a goblin shady loot dealer, that could, for a decent chunk of gold and badges and maybe a few unwanted items of a tier higher, acquire some loot you never could get to drop (cough DST). God I would rather give soul cleaver, 1-2 stupid daggers each week and every hunter and rogue off set item other than CVoS to people in exchange for not having to do gruul's lair a year and a half later trying to still get DSTs.

Legendaries, the ultimate status symbols, shouldn't be random drops. Like, we actually got 2 warglaives in our first 6 kills i think, but god is that stupid that other guilds haven't. Almost any system someone can name would be better. Killing the boss in a certain amount of time, prior to the first mega nerf would be fine. Another quest line along the lines of the AQ40 gate opening (not the insane rep and turn-ins part, the stuff I was doing to get [Fang of Korialstrasz] when they put in a GM healing weapon while I was ranking up for the rank 13 feral gear and went, screw this quest. Something along the lines of Atiesh would work. Or clear every Heroic and Raid instance between resets, be exalted with every meaningful faction, and get a title that says you beat the game and a legendary weapon. Anything that a guild that's at the top level of progression can achieve with a bit of work would be fine.

Brewmaster of WBC (5,9,1/6)

 

kalbear

It shouldn't be absolutely hideous, but I think there is a need to have loot which is not optimized amazingly for the most common spec, promotes secondary skills or otherwise is not perfectly set up to boost a normal role. Part of that is that people want to figure out how to use it. Part of it is that you want to have gear of all stripes just in case things change. And part of it is that people want options.

There shouldn't exist truly horrible loot, but having niche loot or loot where a secondary trait is emphasized (example: haste on the feral druid badge gear) is not bad.

Just make sure that there are options in that slot for other gear to drop. An example of how not to do it is with pillar of ferocity - a horribly itemized piece of garbage that is only better than other options in some situations, but there's simply nothing better that drops from anywhere.

 

Dejablue

For the most part I think the Tier loot system with tokens is fine.

Having said that, Our MT, myself OT and the main Druid Healer have yet to see T5 shoulders drop, im sure some Priests in raid would like them but we have 3 right up front needing them so not only are they hopeless for them, at this point so are we. Yet, every Loot Reaver kill we see 3 tokens drop and none are War/Dru/Priest. I would like to see one of each token drop, always.

I would like to see Tier gear be more of a guaranteed thing. Great steps have been made since MC, BWL etc with the token system. I think it should simply be part of the progression. It is the Main reason for the Raid to go, to get tier pieces for someone. The other random gear is reason to go after you get your tier gear and the fun surprise we all seek.

If not implemented as one of each set drops then perhaps have a dual system where tokens drop but you can also eventually buy them with badges and reputation. But just the tier gear.

I think there should be a comparable item to DST, for instance, at this point in the game and there should be a way to have acquired DST by other means or its comparable cousin.

As far as systems, there are any number of way to go about it.

* Raid points like honor with different tokens from different instances: 50000 Raid points and 3 of each Gruul, Mag and Kara tokens for DST.

* Trade ins. Soem dude has all items of an instance and you can trade in crap items for good items at a 10 to 1 ratio or w/e is deemed well.

* Meaningful reputation. Make rep harder to get and the gear better or the actual loot table within the instance purchased with instance specific badges.

The list goes on.

I would like to see more Naxx type, for immersion. Here are 3 blank chest pieces of uberness, now go complete the quest and turn it into your Feral druid chest of Rawr with various materials gathered from the instance.

 

Nantuko

The problem with RNG is that guilds move on, and that's it. I've seen too many rogues move on to BT/MH without [Warp-Spring Coil] or DST and are still using things like [Bloodlust Brooch] when killing illidan. Badge gear was a step in the right direction in that your guild can progress to the next tier of instances, and even though your enhancement shaman never got any good weapons, he can buy the token fist weapons and manage to progress with the guild independently of drops.

The key idea that was posted not too long ago is a great idea, although I'm sure blizzard would never go for it. The same scenario would play out every time you run the instance.

3 rings drop: MT gets all 3 and he gets best gear he can out of the instance.
next week: OT gets 3 keys....
next week: Mhealer 3 keys
next week: other healers split keys for several weeks
some time later: DPS gets loot.

Why the hell would DPS show up if they're not going to get gear for 6-7 weeks? That would seriously blow, and it would be a worse system than what we have now. Now, that is an exaggerated system, but it would happen much the same with healers/tanks getting gear first, then DPS. But, I do somehow like it. Seems like a game show...

The system of getting tokens that drop for certain iLevel gear would be a better example, whereas Gruul/Mag/Kz would drop a "t4 prize" that is redeemable for all T4 gear, these prizes are awarded to everyone in the raid. But what happens if your guild moves on to T5 stuff and you're left with some weird combination of prizes that paralyzes you in terms of buying power? Also, this would mean that everyone raiding in the guild would get new gear at roughly the same time, and up until that point it would be slow going.

Roll elimination definitely sounds right on to me. A guild leader can eliminate 1-2 items from the table and viola, no more [Pauldrons of the Argent Sentinel] or other trash that should drop twice then probably no more.

 

lairpie

Simply making what ever tokens or keys or whatever that drop be setup so as to force you to select a balance of dps, tanking, and healing loot is pretty easy, and solves one of the major problems people have had. I outline how it would work with tier tokens, but the same thing would work where say each boss could drop a tanking box, a healing box or a dps box, with weighting appropriate, as obviously you don't need as many tank items to gear a raid as dps items.

Brewmaster of WBC (5,9,1/6)

 

Redux

I'd think badges were useful, but then I think about what the environment would be like if all the loot was held by some vendor in the city and not on the big bad monsters.


I don't think I'd be able to help but to continuously think, "Why can't I just kill the vendor for my loot?"



Killing a dragon and then looting it's corpse will always win over getting his "badge" and bringing it back to show them you are worthy of the armor you should have been given to go try and kill the monster. I know it sounds RP'ish, but it IS an MMO, and immersion is to an extent why the game has done this well so far.

 

Lamaros

I like getting loot directly from the encounter I've finished, just like I like buying CDs and not downloading them. Certain things have a certain 'tactile' relationship between the actions we undertake and the rewards we get for those actions, and I like that.

I do recognise that there are problems with the loot system, and I'm not against some parts of the badge system. But for every few rewards that are presented as "here you go, good job, you've proved you killed him" I want to have some that tell me they come directly from the body of the creature I have just destroyed.

A way you could present this in game, and still have a badge-like system, might be like this:

Killing boss X yields a key. This key can then be used to open a chest the boss was guarding. The contents of that chest are determined by the person who opens it. So that we can distribute the rewards equitably and predictably, but at the same time we have retain the direct relationship between the boss and the loot.

I think we can do better than a badge system and yet still have loot that is distributed in a less frustrating way. The badge system is fine in parts, but adopted wholesale it would be a cop-out.

 

sovelis41

Class specific things such as ranged slot items for druids/paladins/shamans should always be on the badge vendor and never on bosses, not only are they class specific, but they are also spec-specific within the class. Maybe they'll decide in WotLK to buff them so that they either cross multiple specs or are just stronger in general; then they would be more appropriate as a boss drop.

Also, I thought the BWL trinket was a decent step in the right direction. It would be better if the trinkets for all of the classes were "good" but maybe two steps below (and a little more gimmicky than) the "best" you can get for X_Class/Role that drops somewhere in the dungeon. Raiders love to earn things from doing an instance multiple times. Rep rewards and such have always given incentive to keep high attendance (when the rewards are good, that is).

What are your goals in game? What is your past gaming experience (MMOs and otherwise)?
"WoW is my first MMO and my goals are to be leet as hell."

 

Fitzlestick

I believe the main problem is not the RNG system, it is that each boss has just too many different items in its loot list making it very unlikely "your" item drops. When a boss has 12-15 items on its loot list and then drops 2 or 3, you're royally screwed. What blizzard did in Sunwell is a good step in the right direction.

I suggest that each boss has no more then 5 items in its loot list when dropping 2-3 items. Most items would not be tokens but similar to Sunwell you would be able to trade it for something else.
Have gruul drop "a trinket" and you would be able to trade it for a dps, tank or heal trinket at your choice, and with only 5 items on his loot list for 2-3 drops, you would have a very high chance of it dropping.
Same with all the daggers in BT/Sunwell, make them tradeable for a similar sword/axe/fist weapon.

Pure badge rewards for everything is a bad thing, since most guilds have many players sitting out who would then receive nothing. All loot should be tokenized in some way to lower the randomness of it.

In WOTLK we have yet another class join our ranks. Unless Blizzard fixes the loot system more and more players will be discoraged and just quit.

 

ZeroWashu

I don't see it as a cop out. I see it as a more sensible system. Think about it from this angle, your being paid by the local powers that be to root out the "little" problem they have, mainly being that big evil temple and its baddies. This is very much like CRPGs from days gone by. Badges provide this payment system. I think where badges fail is the sheer numbers needed for certain items. So I would go for, trash mobs drop an item which in stacks can net you "badges". This allows guilds to bring up someone to fill a gap without running instance X over and over as much as they would have had to before. Badge payout per boss mob is based on order within. This allows for increase in gearing by badge buying to aid in progression to bosses further in whose reward is higher. Now the first time you do any of the kills your badge reward is 50% higher - the reward for getting it right. Clear the whole place - down to every single mob and get a bonus.

As for the direct relationship between boss and items. If they didn't drop class specific items I would not mind so much if they were that very same class. Yet there needs to be a reward and for the most part I would suggest trade skill items (patterns, formula, etc), non-class specific items like gems. Yet how would this allow for special items to link to specific bosses? Well one way is to have a badge specific to a boss, to buy the item requires the token plus the badges. First item is one token, second is two, then four, etc. The token system maintains the separation of items from people who simply farm lower end stuff for badges compared to those who actually do the hard work and get something working.

 

Uglesh

I think that what everyone thinks about when they look at this issue are the small handful of items that are "best in slot" that appear at lower tiers (eg: DST). The problem isn't with the loot system.... it's the fact that the gear progression doesn't move through tiers evenly.

I've said it before, but if there was more options for every slot then people wouldn't get so caught up about missing a trinket from 3 tiers below their guilds progression.

Tokenization of loot is a giant cop-out. At that point they may as well give everyone the same gear and just have it "upgrade" after you kill bosses. If you completely eliminate any random chance, min/max will dictate EXACTLY the gear path that each class should follow.

 

Zurgat

Over 12 Months of running Karazhan.
No enchant for surefooted, no enchant for mongoose.
I agree that random loot lists are fine... But over 12 months of clearing a boss, without luck is pretty poor.

Then again, we did get the ashes of al'ar on our second kill.

Bosses dropping 3x tier tokens per kill as they are currently is great, however they should drop 3 different ones "always". Instead of 3 random ones. This would sort the balance and random factor by a lot.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

Emily

From the recent Blizzcast (bolded emphasis mine)


Bornakk: Can we expect to see the return of a system similar to the Badges of Justice for the heroic 5 person and raid dungeons and if so, are there any changes or improvements really planned for this system?

Jeff Kaplan: Definitely. Heroic Badges of Justice were a new concept that we introduced with Burning Crusade and it was a concept I’m really happy with and I think it played out pretty well for the most part in Burning Crusade but we can definitely make some improvements. And we’d like to apply that same idea not just to the heroic dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King but apply it to raiding as well. I think we can do some things a little bit different or better, for example we want to come up with some way to indicate what tier you are doing content on so there is not just badge loot that serves a massive pool of content. Maybe it would require a token from different levels of content in addition to the badges or maybe there is separate currencies per tier but we’d like to come up with a way to sort of stratify the items so that way players doing higher level content have access to a different pool than players doing lower level content. And then I think we’re also going to find ways to move some of those badge type items on to reputation vendors, sort of spread them around much more, right now they are just kind of lumped on one dude in Shattrath and one dude out on the Isle of Quel’Danas but we’d like to sort of spread those guys out and have it be a more robust system where you actually go to vendors in town and you’ll see them there and reputation guys all over the world and sort of blow out the system much more than we’ve done.

 

Aéquitas

And from a blue post made after the blizzcast

 

Crimsonstorm

Imo: (almost) All loot being badges would be awesome when also combined with having Different Badges for different tiers of content.

Imo, each boss should drop:
* A badge per player for its tier of content (multiple badges for the difficult/end bosses)
* Token(s) which are exchangable for a variety of items representing that boss's loot table. This could be like tier tokens (works for certain classes), or better yet, one token that works for everyone.

 

Douglas

Well, there are people who really like some aspect of look you can equip the moment it drops. So IMO, a Sunmote system instead of a Token system would be fine. It's pretty much as good as tokens for those of us who like tokens, and it's astoundingly better for the folks who like stuff you can equip immediately.

 

dssurge

I personally think Badge loot, and loot in general has simply gone too far. I like it in concept, but Blizzard did badge loot in a way that rewarded under-achievers. Switching to a tiered badge system in WotLK with resolve a lot of this, but I think a refinement of the general WoW loot structure would be a better approach.

When the concept of Badge loot was introduced I saw it as a way to fill in the blanks in regards to itemization. By putting items such as librams, trinkets, and other off-tier items on a vendor would allow people to get upgrades that the rest of the raid didn't want to see. If the badge vendor was nothing but rare-spec gear that was taken off of boss loot tables I would be thrilled.

My rendition of a perfect loot system would be one that has a 1/4 chance of dropping an item you can use, and then a sunmote-esq system by which to convert the items to bridge armor types. The only difference between Rogue and Hunter itemization is one needs hit rating and the other (to a degree) intellect. There is no need for 2 seperate drops in this respect, the item should simply be a shell that is imbued with another item to denote it's armor type and give minor stat adjustments. Maybe even bring professions into play in regards to conversions or implement a money sink to handle it as Naxx T3 drops did.

The problem with loot in WoW is that it does very little to respec the overall archtype structuring of MMOs in regards to loot. This makes some bosses desirable for some classes, while creating a "who cares?" mentality for others, specially in regards to optional bosses. There is an abysmal lack of logic checks in WoW to prevent loot streakyness and it creates the majority of loot issues when combined with the seemingly random loot distribution method WoW uses.

There is a lot of ways that Blizzard could re-vamp loot distribute that would make a badge vendor pointless, but finding a happy medium, or using one system to complement the other, would be the ideal approach.

 

Gralin

Regarding itemisation and the customisation thereof, I agree that the gemming system is an excellent start but would really like to see
a) socket bonuses beefed up and expanded to include things like proc effects, and
b) an expansion of the enchanting system so that there were less clear best-in-slot enchants and more "do I need +hit, +dam, +haste or +bizarre_proc or +bonus_utility_spell?"

 

2ndNin

Personally I would implement another profession "Imbuing"

Armour then comes in Flavours as a generic set something like:

<Armour Class> <Name>
<Armour*Class*ILvl+Bonus>
<Gem Slots> <bonus>
---- <Red>
---- <Blue>
---- <Yellow>
---- <Prismatic>
<Minor Enchant Slot>
<Enchantment Slot>
<Imbued Slots> <Bonus>
--- <Holy Slot>
--- <Shadow Slot>
--- <Nature Slot>
--- <Frost Slot>
--- <Fire Slot>
--- <Arcane Slot>
--- <Physical Slot>
--- <Mixed>

So an item Might be:

Uther's Really Ace Warboots of Holy Imbaness
Plate 2000 Armour
<Red><Red>: Gives +6 dodge rating
<Holy><Physical>: Gives +6 spell power and 3 defense rating

So the idea is that a generic piece drops for a set of classes (Paladins in this case ideally), however it could be picked up and used by any plate wearer with the right customisations. A holy slot may give +30spell power in its epic form and the physical slot +str, def, dodge, parry or whatever. The idea being that gear is never wasted because its "power" lies in what it is imbued into, you could have a few typical variants on armour:

Green
Green Imbued (random drops, quests)
Blue
Blue Imbued
Epic
Epic Imbued
Epic Boss Imbued (must have its slot matched)
Legendary

 

Fauxpaz

I have seen a lot of complaints from guilds that are considered the best of the best - Nihilum and such, that their frustration with BT and other instances is everything is luck based. Some guilds have gotten multiple complete sets of Warglaives while they have, until recently, received none after a year of farming BT.

RNG vs "farmable" loot is a double edge sword. In WolK, we will see many more bosses (5 man, 10 man, 25 man, and heroic versions of each dungeon) then we did in TBC. More bosses, plus Blizz wants to move towards fewer off-gear options (ret pallys, DK's, and warriors all use the same gear for example) would result in a huge pain for everyone if RNG loot remained the same. If instead of, lets say, 50 bosses that have loot you need for an upgrade on your way to 80, you had 75 or a 100. People would be farming instances more then ever.

But, lets say these 75 or 100 bosses on your way to 80 all dropped a token that could be used as currency to "buy" your upgrades, you could run many different instances with less risk of burn out. Instead of running boss X 8 times till he drops item A, and boss Y 3 times till she drops item B....you run any of them whenever you want.

In addition, bosses should still have a random loot table. But since a lot of your gear will be purchased through a vendor, each boss has a smaller loot table and higher drop %. This results in fewer runs/tries to get that next upgrade from a boss.

I think this would result in a "best of both worlds" scenario. If designed correctly. I am sure you can add certain criteria to be able to turn in the farmable badges. For example, after killing a certain boss, a player will get access to a new vendor in which they can buy better and more expensive badge gear. Certain quests or acheivements must be meet before allowing the next upgradable badge gear; say for example a quest that says..Obtain 5 pieces of "badge gear name" to unlock the next vendor level. And harder bosses, heroic, 10 man, and raid versions drop a different badge token (or something similar to SWP).

This would be a bit more complicated then obtaining loot now, "kill boss Y until he drops the item you want." But the result will be that people can over time earn gear through farming. Acutally, I just started to think about all the advantages this change would have and their are 4 off the top of my head in regards to your group comp and group skill level.

The biggest reason I got out of PvE was because my life is too busy right now to block multiple hours a day to run instances and/or raids. PvP is great because if I play for 30 minutes a couple times a day I can still earn the gear and not relie so much on finding a group, a good group, run the right instance/raid, etc.

Ending with a question, but would "farmable" gear mean that the players will less skill, but tons of time, will become the best geared players in the game, at least early on in the expansion?

 

Devouress

Suppose there is some item that a dude in a guild wants that randomly drops from such a boss. Now, he is alone and whole guild says - we are not going there as only you need item from there and we wont bother, screw you.

 

Fauxpaz

They can say that now. A guilds main tank can stop playing once they feel they have good enough gear. It goes both ways, but the chance of this happening is much lower. Since more pieces are bought people won't mind one or two "grind" runs.

Something that could be added for raid content, that I feel would add more content depth, would be for bosses to have a captive you free. Once a boss is dead he drops 3 unique badges, then you go over to the freed captive and talk with them. They then will give you anything from the monsters loot table if you give him/her the unique badge.

We will have to see what Blizz desides to do. I cannot find the article, but I know I read some place that Blizz learned a lot about RNG loot and badge loot and earning PvP loot which they hope to expand upon. The article eluded that in WolK badge gear will be used more, but random drops will still be part of boss kills.