Tuesday, June 30, 2009

[3.2] Tier rewards, etc.

Two big changes in the last 24 hours to how raiding will work in 3.2. Okay, three, but I'm not talking about the whole raid lockout extension thing.

The first is that there will be no slot-specific tokens for tier gear. This means that instead of dropping the shoulderpads of the hobo vanquisher, or whatever, it'll be 'regalia' - and with regalia you can buy any piece of tier gear at the appropriate level.

The second bit is that only the top level (ilvl 258) gear is purchasable this way; all other gear can be bought via Emblems of Triumph.

I was going to post something about this, but Graylo beat me to it, saying almost precisely what I was going to say and my reaction.

I have a couple of reactions to this. On the positive side the token change is a good idea. It will make the tokens more useful, and few of them will go to off specs or shards soon after the patch.
On the flip side, I have a big problem with the lower to levels of tier sets being purchase able with emblems. First of all whats the incentive to buy the 232 iLevel tier set when the 245 ilevel tier set costs just 50% more? When you get enough Emblems to buy the first level of gear you will have a choice. To I spend all the badges now and wait 3 weeks to upgrade, or do I wait a week and get even better gear?
Obviously we don't complete know how the system will work, but there are a lot of potential problems. If the Tier tokens are to easy to get, the emblem tiers will be almost completely ignored. If the tier tokes are to hard to get then it will take a really long time to build a set. Finally as I said above there is no real incentive to go for the 232 iLevel set.
I think they need to scale it back to a little more like the current system. Have the top level tokes drop off of 25 man raids. Have a lower level token drop off of 10 man raids, and I think it would be a great idea to have the lowest level tier be purchasable with emblems. That way all three levels have some level of desirability.
I really couldn't agree more. I don't understand why having a piece of gear 33% cheaper would make you want it at all if it's 13 levels below what you have. I don't like the pressure that this puts on raiders to make them almost universally have to do 10-man and 25-man content as much as they can early on in order to get more tokens for their tier gear. Will loot drops be like Sarth, where there's a satchel of gemsEmblems instead of a token drop, and people will fight over those?

Mostly, I really don't like the pressure this would put on hardcore raiders to do as much content in one reset (10 and 25) as humanly possible. I don't mind that for basically 3-4 weeks worth of grinding anyone can get tier 9 gear (3 triumph tokens from daily heroics * 7 days), but it really bothers me that the 232 items are essentially pointless and that there's such a huge incentive to run as much content as you possibly can.

I think that 3.2 is something of an experimental playground for Blizzard. There are a lot of changes to the fundamental raiding paradigms (week resets, gear availability, armor design, trash vs. bosses, 10 vs. 25, BoP trading) that I can't help but think Blizzard's throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.

And just so it's clear - there's absolutely no reason to get the lowest tier gear at this price level. None. It is always going to be better to get the higher tier whenever you can, even if it takes you another week of heroics. There are no bonuses for cats or bears that are so essential you must have them now now nao.


8 comments:

Pucc said...

Dont forget you will also get emblems from Heroics now. They are trying to push the use of those instances.

Honors Code said...

You'll get two Emblems of Triumph from the Daily Heroic. They are only releasing 1 Boss a week which means a guy who only does Heroics could have nearly 70 Emblems by the time all the bosses are released.

It actually means you really need to do the daily, every day.

Felkan said...

Blizzard is making changes so fast (at least to me, given only 3% have cleared ulduar/25), I feel almost lost and overwhelmed.

I know all of the "hardcore" folks like to mention "catering to the casuals" as the reason, but I'm not buying it. Sure that might be part of it, but what is the real reason we will have 2 content patches to LK in less than 4-6 months? That's just crazy. "Casuals" maybe the cause for nerfs, but not the speed at which content is being blasted at us. And the volume of new content is crazy. I'm so lost in all the changes, I almost feel like quitting because I can't keep up...

Is there some weird market condition? That whole thing with China? WoW 2.0 gonna be released at Xmas? What?

Anonymous said...

funny, I feel abit overwhelmed too. I dont even have a full set of 8.5, never mind an offspec set, yet I'm already arguing over the set bonuses of t9, in several different flavors, that entirely obsoletes all the hardmode gear my guild is nowhere near attaining at this time. We're a pretty good guild too - normal modes are firmly on farm and we started hard modes recently. I wonder if subscription numbers are dropping, or they forsee a mass exodus for some reason. Mainly I'm just confused. I wish I had some opinions but I have no idea what their larger strategy could be.

First they were introducing tiered badges to prevent the kara farming phenomenon, now they are firmly reintroducing the low level farming phenomenon with a vengeance. And they're making obtaining the highest tier of t9 very easy indeed - same token for all pieces. Gearing up as a raider will be less random than its ever been. I'm all for less sharding of gear, but at a certain point, if the gear is to easy to obtain, and just drops on a fixed repetitive schedule, wheres the fun and the excitement and the anticipation?

Anonymous said...

From what I understand, you're either slightly misreading it, or your line "the second bit etc." is confusingly written.

There are three tiers - 10 regular (9), 10hard/25reg (9.25), and 25 hard (9.5). Tokens for all three levels drop from their respective instances.

Now, the only way to get 9.5 is from tokens, but the other two can be bought with tokens and also badges. Your "second bit" makes it sound as if badges are the only way to buy 9.25 and 9.

But overall, your point stands about not wasting badges on the 9 gear when you can buy the 9.25 gear for a week or 2 worth of heroics, as long as you are raiding. I can see casuals or alts trying to get geared enough to raid cutting corners.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes, like limiting what pieces can be bought and possibly the prices.

baseball said...

The only part I can't understand is the cost difference between low level Tier 9 and mid level on the emblems of triumph. The timesink increase for significantly greater gear is tiny, thus making the low level stuff already obsolete.

I suspect they'll change it such that ONLY the low level stuff will be purchaseable with emblems of triumph, the mid level will drop from 10 man and 25 man raids, the the heroic stuff will drop from 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic.

I really don't buy this whole "pressure on hardcore raiders." Blizzard doesn't put any pressure on hardcore raiders. Hardcore raiders put pressure on themselves.

Topher/Menglor said...

I gotta laugh.

The Jist of the post is, well this whole idea suck, what you should really do is let this system work for everyone who isnt raiding the way I do, in 25 mans. but its ok for the 10 mans?!?

whut? elitism at its finist!

25 man doesnt always mean harder. naxx proved it.

Ulduarr 25 man is harder sure. but you also have more room for error.

opps a tank died, bozo dps switches back to tanking. Yes, its not quite that simple. but when you have x2 of everyone ,loosing 1 of any isnt catastrophic.

10 man isnt easier or harder imo, its about the same, but with more people. But I do believe that 10 man is harder in the sense that when 1 tank dies, chances are, its a wipe.

anyway, I just wanted to point out the ignorance in your comments that, your suffering from NIMBY.

google it if you care.

Kalon said...

The Jist of the post is, well this whole idea suck, what you should really do is let this system work for everyone who isnt raiding the way I do, in 25 mans. but its ok for the 10 mans?!?


I'd like you to be introduced to Reader Bias.

No, the whole jist of the post is that there's no reason to buy the lower level tier gear if the lower and middle tiers are available for the same currency, just a bit more expensive.

It doesn't have anything to do with 10 and 25-man raiding.

It doesn't have anything to do with thinking 10 man is easier than 25 man.

It has to do with offering two products using the same currency except one is simply better in all ways than the other, but costs just slightly more. It means that there is no reason to buy the 232 item level pieces because 245 is simply better and costs exactly the same currency.

If anything, this is supporting the notion of 10-mans having the same rewards. Why? Because I advocated getting rid of the lower tier set completely. There's no point to having the lower tier set. Have 10 and 25s get the same gear via triumph badges, because that's what's happening anyway.

What's even worse with this system is if the bosses do drop lower-level tier tokens as well. If that's the case, what'll happen is the lower-tier tokens will be completely marginal while you save up for the better ones. How fun is that? When you're rooting to simply get more badges instead of an actual tier token, something is wrong.

So Topher/Menglor, do try and read a bit more carefully into what I say, instead of what you think I said.