Can we just return to JP/VP? Please?

Community General Discussion
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It was the perfect system. It really was. Just do relevant content and you got rewarded with a currency that was able to purchase a specific piece of gear with (none of this random gear with random stats BS with a random chance to upgrade and a random chance to have a socket)

Harder content provides a higher currency which allows you to buy better gear.

It was PERFECT. Why did we get rid of this?

Also side note, I wish gear was just gear. Why do we need all this extra fluff on it? Sockets should just be a part of the gear, bring back set bonuses (and sets for the matter).

Gearing in recent years is so convoluted. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every expansion.

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On the note of bringing stuff back, please please please bring back rep tabards. Having world/daily quests being the only reliable source is awful

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3

Rep tabards and rep tokens for alts are the two things I really wish Blizzard would bring back.

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Why do that when you can make everything more tedious and make everything artificially longer?

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I don’t care about the grinds. I’m gonna be playing that long anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me. I like what those things stand for in the game. The ideas behind them are super cool.

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Would love this, but it will never happen. We all know filthy casuals like me don’t deserve gear and that would let me work toward some.

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I agree. I think the badge/point system was really perfect. It’s simple too: Every piece of content awards something. Higher difficulty rewards more. So hypothetically if you only did Callings, it might take you a couple of months to get/upgrade a piece of gear BUT you could still get it, so you feel like you are still making some progress even if it’s small. On the flipside if you’re doing high keys, it might only take you a couple weeks at most to get the same item because you are earning more for doing the harder content.

Everyone is happy except for the people who really want to gatekeep so they can feel superior, and those people don’t need to be listened to.

Also in regards to gear the big problem there is the massive iLevel jump between tiers and even within them, which is why we have to have squishes very 2 expansions or so. There doesn’t need to be a huge disparity between the gear. If they really needed to have something higher, that’s where you can have the sockets and things come into play. So the difference between let’s say a Normal and Heroic item isn’t the iLevel and raw stats, it’s the bonus. Same with Heroic and Mythic.

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It’s the cycle:

“we want gear to be gear”

“[non raid content] drops gear faster/easier”

“please make raid gear better in raids than pvp/m+ so I don’t have to do non raid content to raid”

Set bonus/sockets/corruptions/special trinkets/special raid specific traits/etc get added

“we want gear to be gear”

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Surely there’s a middle ground, yeah?

I know this is cliche, but I felt like wrath had it right. Casuals had a chance to get relatively decent gear while doing relatively easy content.

And things like the “X must die” quests made it easier for players to get their foot in the door to get into raids.

Cata was also pretty good with it. The key is a nice, simple, guaranteed way to make progress towards targeted pieces of gear

Obviously it would have to be a little different because of the addition of M+ and two more raid difficulties, but there is a happy medium, I’m sure of it.

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Blizz has really taken a disliking to targetable loot acquisition. Not just with the lack of straightforward vendors, but also in the lack of decent craftables (legendaries don’t really count). Even close analogues for BiS items with alternative sources don’t really exist anymore, so more often than not you’re stuck rolling a dice.

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WoW has definitely transitioned to a more Diablo style of gearing, except in Diablo gear is thrown at you.

Random gearing with low drop rates is miserable

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12

That’s something Square-Enix figured out long ago, they stick with what they know works, rather than trying to come up with some weird new gearing system every expansion patch. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

FF14 uses a system similar to Justice/Valor Points called Allagan Tomestones of (Whatever). There are two types of Allagan Tomestones for endgame gearing, Revelation for the latest tier, and Allegory for the previous tier. With each new raid tier, a new type of Allagan Tomestone is introduced, and the older one is retired.

In addition, there is a third type, called Allagan Tomestones of Poetics, which is used for legacy endgame gearing (That is, for all endgame content prior to the current expansion). When a new expansion comes out, new types of Allagan Tomestones are added, and the previous expansion’s gearing is switched over to Poetics.

The system is functionally similar to Justice Points and Valor Points, and it works really well.

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FF14’s token system is even less convoluted.

Did a boss a few times and didn’t get the drop you wanted? Okay, use the tokens to buy it.

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I haven’t played FFXIV, but this way makes so much sense. It puts a hard cap on how much time any single player will have to chase an item while still allowing for some of the fun of random luck.

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Unfortunately, the blizzard dev team says that kind of gameplay is “boring” and they “don’t want players to know when they’ll get their BiS”

Ions is 100% determined not to have a token system in the game.

Which is probably why FF14 is leeching so many people despite having less raid content.

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I remember the op trinkets and weapons in Dragon Soul and never getting any of them for the entire expac :))))))

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This.
They started adding too many ingredients to the pot.

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Bad loot luck goes as far back as Vanilla. I know people who never got their T0 pants from Baron despite running Strat Dead some ridiculous number of times (IIRC around 70 runs). But at least back then, if one loot source refused to cooperate there were 50 other options you could pursue instead…

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No, it wasn’t perfect. It had all sorts of problems.

First, is destroyed 5 man content. The “gogogo” mentality of dungeon running reached peak with badges and rep in heroics. Everybody was running heroics no matter how overpowered they were. Ye Olde “tank is at the first boss and I’ve barely phased in” issue. In Wrath the gear got better, and better, and better, but the heroics stayed the same. It was awful. Nobody WANTED to be doing that content, they “HAD” to do that content.

In the end, you got the choice of 1 piece of gear. That is, there was no choice. You could only hope that the stats were the stats you wanted, because that’s all you were getting.

Then, consider the random stats. On regular gear (i.e. not jewelry), there is a single “good” stat. iLevel. iLevel represents the primary stat (your most important stat), and the budget for the secondaries.

Are some secondaries better than others? Absolutely. But, save for jewelry (because they typically don’t have the primary stat), better iLevel is better gear. There’s always edge cases. But 10 points of iLevel with a primary stat will always win.

Let’s look at right now. With random stats, you are better off replacing your entire set of gear for higher iLevel gear regardless of secondaries than you are finding the “perfect” singular piece of gear. Given the option to reroll a piece of gear or get an 10 iLevel upgrade on a separate piece, what are you going to take?

I’m 217 overall, and got a 226 drop from a mythic. I don’t care what or where I get 226s, and I don’t care what secondaries they have, they’re ALL upgrades for me.

And that’s what the badge gear did in, for example, Argus. They gave you a base level upgrade. You could get all of your gear up to the same iLevel quickly.

With the earlier system, get your piece and you’re done. Get all of your pieces, and you’re done. There’s no more hope for you. Done. Fini.

With the random system, if you get all of your pieces, are you as powerful as you can be? No. But you know what? You’re not terrible either. You’re equipped to do everything appropriate for the iLevel. Can you get better? Why, in fact, YES! YES you can! Which you CAN’T do with the old system. Do you HAVE to get better? NO! No you don’t! You can STOP!

But if you don’t stop, there’s the potential for something going forward.

See, here’s the dichotomy. People want stuff to do while playing the game. They LIKE playing the game. The other side is that folks feel they HAVE to do stuff. They random part gives you the opportunity to change and grow for those that want to do that. Who want to go for something more than just iLevel.

If that’s not you, then that’s not you.

If you want to be happy in this game, dump the DPS meters and go kill bosses. Quit comparing yourself to others with silly measurements, and go kill bosses. The “score” in this game is measured by dead bosses, not by DPS/HPS or anything else. Kill the boss, you win.

PUG groups in Taz last night, we wiped on the last boss 5 times. All of our meters were good, we were dead anyway. Better DPS wouldn’t have helped in that fight. Doesn’t hurt, but we never got that boss close where 5% more would have made any difference. We simply need more experience with that fight. Something DPS meters can’t measure. Something more crit can’t fix.

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I’m so tired of this.

Who wants to crawl through dungeons that you’ve been doing for an entire patch or expansion? Do you honestly want to spend 45 minutes on a dungeon and stop to CC every pack even when you nothing in the dungeon is even remotely a challenge?

Going fast and getting this boring stuff over with is the goal. Heroics are and have always been a means to end.

Having achievable goals with clear, defined ends is a good thing. Most players were nowhere close to a point where there was no upgrades.

That’s not true though and that’s the problem. There are cases where the lower item level piece is better for you. Sockets make a difference, having better secondary stats, having a trinket with a better effect, etc

And what do you do when the boss won’t die, and you’re to blame because your DPS isn’t up to snuff?

Recount not only helps you see you compare to other people in your role, it helps you increase your play, so that you don’t let the people in your group down.

If 5 players in a 25 man raid can do 2% damage, that’s 10%. That’s a lot. That matters. That’s the difference between wiping at 10% and killing the boss

Sure it would have. If you kill things faster, you can skip mechanics altogether. In fact, that’s how enrage timers work.

If you don’t care about that stuff, that’s fine. You do you. But for a lot of the player base, optimization and getting better gear is the entire game.

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