Alternative Systems to Improve Player Engagement Without GDKP

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Soulbound Raid Currency System

Replace gold bidding with a soulbound currency earned exclusively through raid participation. This currency would not be tradeable or sellable, ensuring rewards are strictly tied to in-game activity. Players could use the currency to bid on or purchase loot, preserving the excitement and fairness of GDKP while eliminating the risk of RMT and gold buying.

Enhanced Achievement and Progression Rewards

Expand achievement systems, badges, and visible progression markers. These systems allow players to showcase their dedication and accomplishments, fostering long-term engagement and providing alternative goals beyond just loot acquisition.

Tiered Progression and Cosmetic Rewards

Implement tiered progression systems that reward consistent participation and skill improvement. Offer unique titles, cosmetics, or mounts as incentives. These visible and desirable rewards create a sense of advancement and motivate players to remain active.

Competitive and Social Features

Introduce in-game tournaments, ranked ladders, and leaderboards to encourage healthy competition and community recognition. These features should be designed to engage both casual and hardcore players, providing structured opportunities for everyone to participate and be recognized.

Community Events and Rotating Challenges

Regularly host community events and rotating raid challenges with unique, time-limited rewards. This approach keeps content fresh and gives players new reasons to log in and participate outside of standard raid schedules, strengthening community bonds.

Clear Objectives and Onboarding for Newcomers

Provide clear objectives and comprehensive onboarding for new and returning players. Ensuring that everyone has meaningful, understandable goals reduces frustration and increases player retention, especially for those unfamiliar with endgame systems.

Ongoing Feedback and Personalization

Continuously gather player feedback and use data-driven insights to personalize experiences. Adapting content and systems to different playstyles minimizes friction and ensures the game remains engaging and relevant for a diverse player base.

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What you’re describing here is effectively DKP. Are you just looking for that to become a formal game mechanic and transferrable between guilds?

If so, I think you might need to iterate on this a little more. I think the core idea has merit but I have concerns about how easily abused this might be, or at least how inconsistent. For example, the way one guild spends their currency might be different than another, but then a player moving from one guild to another might have an advantage.

If players can find an advantage with systems like these, they will exploit it like crazy… I mean, it’s not a stretch to imagine that raids will even sell clears so players can farm these points :frowning:

I think this is why loot systems are really just best left to the groups themselves. Retail made personal loot as an option, and it absolutely does mitigate any lack of trust one might have in their group, but I’m not sure that’s the right move for Classic. Retail is just a less community focused game so it matters less there.

Love it, ship it!

As long as your progression in this comes from in-game activities only, I’m down. Microtransactions to skip content aren’t what we need, though I would be ok with a seasonal fee to unlock a reward track, so long as the paid rewards aren’t objectively better than gameplay rewards. They should be equally desirable.

I think this is best left to the player community. It’s also something that happens organically when players just enjoy being in the game they play. To that end, I think the onus is on Blizzard to make a world that players want to spend time in. While there, players will come up with community activities all on their own.

So one of the things that can be a draw to this game is how open it is. That starts right from level 1 where you’re dropped in a starter zone, given minimal guidance, and have to go out into that wide world and explore. Contrast that with Retail’s starter zone experience. It does a great job of introducing you to the game’s mechanics and guiding you through your first 10 levels, culminating in a mini dungeon. It’s extremely linear and not representative of the game to come.

Perhaps there’s some middle ground here? I think the retail style quest system is probably helpful, so you can see the quests on your map. Most players just use Questie anyway these days and for those who want to go in blind, there should be an option to toggle it off, only showing completable quests as the current system does. A few tooltips showing you how to play at the start if you wanted would be ok too. At the end of the day though, this version of the game is more sandbox than retail’s theme park and I think we should preserve that.

Ha, if only. That’s not Blizzard’s jam though and if they haven’t done that in the last 20 years, are they really gonna start now? :smiley:

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What makes GDKPs popular is you can go on a main as carry and feed that gold to gear alts, or to buy consumes on AH, or just to save and use for hard-to-get rare items.

Soulbound currency doesn’t really add to the pug scene since mains will have no reason to go and most experienced players don’t want to take their alts to slow raids (rather just have no alt)

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You can buy gold then buy gear. There fixed it for you. Don’t be ashamed many did it in 2019. All of my 100k gold I got from gdkp on my era character 100% isn’t legit. Og classic has a bigger gold buying problem than current anniversary.

6 Likes
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I would be ok with a LFR and personal loot in classic.
No rmt
No guild drama
No ninja looting
You log in, wait for an invite/queue and go for it.
Raids going bad? here take the dmg and health buff be happy at some point yall one shotting the boss.

oh but the guiiildssss.
idc

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Well yes get fed gear by guild then go into gdkps.
You can take your main out of your guild to dip into riches, but what about your guild? You can’t raid on your main now.

Oh right GDKPs are healthy for the community though.

Your comment says otherwise.

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Don’t worry those guilds that have an issue with raiders going to old raids as GDKPs will simply collapse on their own

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You have your main tank going to GDKPs now to scrape the main tank bonuses ofc the guild is going to fall apart.

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Yep keep forcing your MT to show up when they don’t need gear and the guild leadership failed to prepare with alternative players that can tank.

Zero chance they happen to be busy on raid night more and more often until they gquit

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The story really doesn’t add up, if they been removed it is still damage done to the guild, things like that take time to rebuild and sometimes that is time people don’t have as they’ve already invested into someone else.

The story of decking your main out then going to GDKPs is not healthy for the community, the only other option to get gear in GDKPs would be either if you’ve farmed gold for a long period of time or simply bought gold, harping on how little Timmy joined raids and got cuts to eventual buy full tier is a joke - yeah he got full tier by the end of the raid schedule because he was the last buyer since all these main carries per say already had the loot.

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Only time MTs dont show up to main raids is to join GDKPS :joy:

We all saw it happen

Blizzard saw it happen

Gdkpers :person_with_white_cane:

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It happened to your guild because it was bad, it would have happened with or without gdkp :joy:

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Yes it is healthy. It keeps raids going that otherwise would not occur.

It is a well known fact that outside top tier parsers in speed running guilds - most players stop raiding content when they do not need gear from it anymore.

Cry and twist it all you want, your guild is gonna collapse if you force people to attend raids they don’t need items for.

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Oh sure, it’s the guild not the player. Mind you this same player got thunderfury very early and also magically had to go on a two week vacation as he got his thunderfury within days of getting the quest items.

Whilst several other players also had to go on 2 week vacations.

I would’ve thought if you were going somewhere without general access to your hobbies you would plan this well in advance and not the next morning when you wake up.

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Literally a sponsored guild

The core group saw there was more money to be made off gdkp suckers :joy:

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bro hasnt been in a proper guild for a long time and it shows :joy:

Era losers are not the people we want having inputs on the game

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“sponsored guild”
They are sponsering grey parsers now :joy:
Sponsored by Air Phillipines :joy:

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So strange that you think I am saying this as a negative.

I’m not daft enough to try and force players to waste 2 hours of their day + consumes to attend a raid they don’t need anything from.

Speed clear guild players do need something - a faster time.

A random guild that geared out a tank expecting them to keep coming to MC after getting thunderfury is just delusional. Peak low tier guild.

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I am not crying or twisting, I am stating the obviouis.

To get TF is a guild group effort, stop being greedy vile vermin

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and i repeat

You are running with players that have the gdkp mindset, it is not healthy for wow

SoD and anni have literally disproved this. Keep enjoying your dead server though :joy: