I don’t understand why everything needs to have “flavor” in the game. There are systems in place, especially stuff like Crests, where the name of the Crest absolutely makes NO sense for the type of gear it’s supposed to upgrade.
We have:
- Weathered Harbinger Crest
- Carved Harbinger Crest
- Runed Harbinger Crest
- Gilded Harbinger Crest
Nothing in that list says anything about what these crests and for and how they apply to gear. There’s also no logic in the wording that gives you any sense of scale.
Meanwhile, we have gear that’s split into 6 categories
- Explorer
- Adventurer
- Veteran
- Champion
- Hero
- Myth
Again, why? Only the last 2 make any kind of sense with the type of content required to get. Everything else is just a bunch or random words that don’t have any sense of scale. Maybe this is fine because the ilvl makes it clear.
The entire gearing system is based on having to look at the tooltips to figure out what you need to upgrade. Even THEN, the tooltips are completely useless because they say things like:
Weathered Harbinger Crest
Earned from many outdoor activities, Raid Finder Nerub-ar Palace, and Heroic dungeons during The War Within Season 1.
What does that even mean? The game doesn’t even tell the player what gear level these crests are for. You’re forced to go to an item upgrade vendor to figure it out.
So how about we fix these things? At least the wording and semantics, so it makes more sense.
I won’t change the logic or the amount, but how about we do something like this:
Crests:
- Adventurer’s Veteran Harbinger Crest
- Veteran’s Champion Harbinger Crest
- Champion’s Heroic Harbinger Crest
- Hero’s Mythic Harbinger Crest
Crests overlap 2 types of gear, but at least this naming pattern gives you the information you need to know what gear they’re used for (Adventurer’s Veteran Harbinger Crests are used for Adventurer and Veteran level gear).
We could also just make the entire system easier and drop all the confusing verbiage. Here’s an example:
Gear:
- Explorer → Normal
- Adventurer → Heroic Dungeon
- Veteran → Mythic Dungeon
- Champion → Normal Raid
- Hero → Heroic Raid
- Myth → Mythic Raid
Crests:
- Dungeon Harbinger Crest
- Normal Raiding Harbinger Crest
- Heroic Raiding Harbinger Crest
- Mythic Raiding Harbinger Crest
Aside from going into full numericals and make it super stale, this could be something more interesting.
I’m just really annoyed that this whole gearing system is based off of random words, especially for Crests.
Also, should we even talk about how crafting uses some of the most convoluted and confusing vocabulary?
“Finesse” for granting more mats when gathering? What? Deftness? Nobody ever uses that word.
Here’s a quick fix:
-
Inspiration → % Quality Chance
-
Resourcefulness → % Materials Used (negative stat)
-
Multicraft → Makes sense, leave as-is
-
Crafting Speed → Makers sense, leave as-is
-
Finesse (lol???) → % Extra gathering
-
Deftness → Gathering Speed (we have Crafting Speed, why was this made so confusing???)
-
Perception → % Find Rare Materials
Honestly, especially in crating, some of these words are just plain weird. We have obvious stat names on some of the stuff and then we’re thrown into cryptic words like ‘Deftness’ that nobody ever uses on a daily basis.
If we’re going to have complex gearing and crafting systems, can we at least make it easier on the players to understand the stats and the things they need, and what they do, without automatically having to either a) read useless tooltips (looking at you, crests) and b) opening a dictionary or wowhead?
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.