Whenever you lock certain items to be unique and conflict with other items from that quest/drop/turn-in it creates an issue with players that wish to be flexible for their raids. Change them to be Unique equip, or make it so we can put it in the bank and we can only have one in bag or something please.
I created a post, super early in the morning, but hopefully we can get feedback now that everyone is awake. BFD pearl for example is an issue with class spec lock-in. Imagine a feral druid wanted to offspec healing, they miss out on spell power trinket when trinkets dont offer much as of now during phase 2. Most healers are opting to take spell power dmg over healing because if they wanna swap to dmg they want a functional pearl. Or say shaman tank wants to go healing or elemental (even though those don’t exist atm). Ret paladin going holy, so on so forth.
Don’t create systems that punishes players that want to be more open to roles, there will always be a healer/tank shortage, don’t add layers to make it more difficult for people to fill those roles please.
Some may argue it’s a big deal, but even if this system prevents 1 person, that’s 1 less healer. I guarantee you it’s more because we talk about it actively on discord servers and randomly in chat. Please open up the availability, don’t create parasitic arbitrary lock-in systems.
With them implementing the ability to get a different Void Pearl by destroying your existing one and buying a new one for 75g(whether or not an individual finds this to be a lot of money or not is irrelevant; it’s a gold sink of some format to exchange an item), it’s pretty clear they don’t want people swapping easily. There are a couple arguments I can see devs making to justify this decision, with very easy rebuttals:
“We don’t want people taking multiple items off the last boss(void pearl, necklace, etc.) and make it more difficult for other people in the raid group to obtain the item if they don’t have a static raid group.”
-This could be circumvented by making the item drop for everyone, rather than even a static group of 10 having to run 10 times for everyone to get it. (Does anybody really give a damn about time-gating like this in this game anymore besides Blizzard themselves?) It would lead to far less world buffs, but if they were adamant about keeping those in, have that be a repeatable quest.
“We want the choices you make to mean something, and have real class/role/spec identity.”
-This is completely contrarian to how runes work in SoD; depending on your class, role, and/or spec, you can not only significantly change your power, but the flavor and fantasy of your character by swapping nothing but runes, more so than swapping gear or even talents for some classes. If this isn’t a violation of that class/role/spec identity/fantasy, I find it very hard to suggest a trinket or necklace is.
“It’s a quest reward, and SoD is based on Classic. We’re being more lenient than we would on Era, as you can delete the item and (after the phase is over) drop gold to swap it to a different quest reward.”
-This is a typical whataboutism non-argument. Blizzard arbitrates the entirety of the game, and is freely able to choose how the item drop, items themselves, quests, quest rewards, etc. function. For instance, there’s zero reason I can think of they couldn’t make the Void Pearl, for example, an item like Thunderstrike/Shadowstrike or Benedction/Anathema, where you can transform the item and have it function differently. Hell, you could even turn it into a gold sink(albeit I’d want a far more minor one than 75g if they were to do this; if you cut talent respec cap from 50g to 1g, having this be a large gold sink is just awkward) and make the Void Pearl similar to the Hypnotic Blade became in SoD. A mage can randomly decipher a scroll that can turn the Hypnotic Blade - a healing dagger - into the Narpas Sword - a caster sword. You could have some way, be it a vendor or something else, to buy one of three items to transform the Void Pearl into a different Void Pearl, or one of four items to turn the Gnomer neck into a different Gnomer neck, etc.
“It’s our game, you’re paying to play it, if you don’t like it don’t play it.” (Not saying they’d directly make this argument, but it is an argument that could be made.)
-Okay? If this is one instance, it probably wouldn’t be a significant issue, but if this happened more and more and more, you’ll eventually get people who haven’t terribly addicted to the game for almost two decades go, “Y’know, this is really BS, I’ll just stop paying and not play.” (Again, this is a rebuttal to an unlikely stance directly given to players, but covering bases.)
“(Radio silence.)”
-…Yeah, I can’t really rebut an justification that isn’t made, other than they don’t have a justification they’re willing or able to provide without irritating a significant portion of the player base.
“We hear you and are listening/thank you for your feedback.”
-Same as above, but they’re willing to irritate another - potentially larger - portion of the player base in comparison to the above, in exchange for getting another portion of the player base - generally a smaller portion, especially when you have a game filled with so many skeptics and cynics that have been burnt one or twenty times - to take it as even a slightly favorable statement and have the players hurl poo at each other for a while instead of at the company.
There are probably more justifications, with some harder to rebut, but I’m having trouble thinking of any that are completely inarguable with just a small amount of thinking. Hence why interviews - not just with Blizzard, and not just within video games, but interviews in general - often have most, if not all, of the questions greenlit beforehand, and going off-script and asking “the tough questions” pretty much guarantees you’ll never get another interview with that person/company. It’s why we can whine and moan on this board, Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Youtube, Twitch, GameFAQs, Neoseeker if that still exists, IRC chats, Ventrilo, Usenet groups, even BBSes; they never have to be on the spot for us, or even acknowledge our existence. We either pay and play the game, or we don’t, and I while I agree with you on this matter, unless it makes a MASSIVE ruckus or it hurts them significantly from a financial standpoint, it’s not going to make change.
Personally, I like the idea of a Thunderstrike/Shadowstrike-type item here.
Absolutely, nail on the head every step of the way. There is no real good reason of having these be so obnoxious. Remember how happy everyone was when blizzard first implemented dual spec? See how many people are begging for it? People want diversity, give people more reason to play, more gear to grind out, more things to do. Just by having 2 items completely locked by either forking 150g in phase 3, or having to run the raid over and over to get a second, literally stops people from running multiple specs on one toon. People are actually more likely to run multiple characters which btw people are already feeling discouraged from doing due to runes, none of this crap is adding up and should’ve been addressed earlier.
“Well, we want the difficulties of classic!” Yeah, how is classic era servers doing?
“We want it to be a chore!” Says who? How’s retail going?
Reason people really liked vanilla is barrier of entry was so low, you didn’t have to be a good gamer, didn’t need top end gear, everything was tuned to be easy tbh, and THAT WAS OKAY. Blizzard needs to stop adding parasitic systems that just takes time and effort from players and make it feel like an adventure again. Hey guys, you like doing Dark Rider on 3 toons? How’s those mage books handling on your alt? Ah, seems you need to rep grind on every toon, phase 3 supplies needs to be exalted. Hey, isn’t hitting exalted on WSG for 5 toons fun? Who the hell has this kind of time? Didn’t wow change rep systems because it felt outdated?
The point is, systems like BFD pearl, rep grinds, and more chores are just outdated, make it so people want to have an adventure, not dungeon grind and only log on to raid.
That’s the problem, this kind of system isn’t needed at all imo, I don’t mind farming out 2 the of the bfd pearls, but hell let me bank one of them and run a new pearl, and if I want to swap back, I can go to the bank, there is no real good reason they couldn’t added something like this. They already have a unique bound system that allows you to only equip 1 of an item set, why not have 2 trinkets but only allowed to equip one?
This a more blunt way of expressing the justification I mentioned here:
Though even then, it doesn’t have to be annoying, or have a heavy tax on switching. They’ve already forsook this notion not just through runes, but through the base game mechanics by capping talent swapping at 1g; if it had been capped at 1g at 25 because gold was expected by Blizzard to be far lesser, that would be one thing, but they still haven’t raised the cap at 40. It suggests that a quest reward, that is a relatively minuscule amount of your character’s power, is worth more than completely changing your talents.
Addressed this as well:
It’s not actually an explanation, nor an argument, at all. It’s saying “things are like this in this game, so it has to be like this for this, too.” The issue, however, is that Blizzard are repeatedly violating this, over and over, throughout SoD so far. It’s not even limited to SoD within Classic - Chronoboon even existing is proof of that - but you can even drop the “Classic” moniker and go back to “vanilla” and this still isn’t dogmatic.
Thunderstrike/Shadowstrike was in the game, as far as I can tell, right off the rip. And if the response is “That’s a drop, not a quest reward,” then I’d like to present Benediction/Anathema, added April 2005, as the reward for a quest chain. Additionally, they’ve even tweaked an existing item - Hypnotic Blade - to be changeable by mages into Narpas Sword. We already have the concept of a transforming item as far back as 1.1, if I’m not mistaken about Shadowstrike/Thunderstrike, so why are we immediately dismissing the idea of a trinket, necklace, etc. that can change form to suit the intended use of the bearer?
(EDIT - Add.: And I’ve just now seen that with the Waylaid Supplies rep, they’ve added… heirloom gear. Yeah, at this point, I’m finding it really difficult to argue for something in favor of the “spirit of Classic” when there’s more added that, prior to SoD, a good deal of people saying they wanted “JUST Classic+, Classic Era with new content to do” would have their torches and pitchforks ready if they heard about. By which I mean I saw more than a handful of people preemptively rage about the idea of heirlooms in SoD before it dropped. That’s anecdotal, so take that FWIW.)
You can look through my post history on this board, and see that I was initially staunchly against quite a few suggestions in favor of ideals I held for the game. You can also see that these ideals that were promoted, and that I agreed with at the time, were repeatedly binned by the people in charge, and me being less and less stubborn about it. If the only people that can make changes to the game forsake the integrity of it - i.e. “make it less annoying” - then what in the blue hell is the point of me trying to bear the standard that they don’t give two rattails about?
