Community Council-Reward design around gear, cosmetics should be a important topic with Devs

Community General Discussion
1

So far I´ve not seen a Reward design Dev on the Community Council, Hopefully there´s a bigger discussion around this kind of topics, there’s a lot of forums post that could be part of a reward discussion:

  • RNG and Bad luck mechanics for gear and cosmetics, there’s a playerbase asking for deterministic ways to earn that BIS status around gear and to finish with cosmetic farms that take years and thousand of attempts.

  • Reward design around Cosmetics that can only be used during a holiday season or a specific zone or condition.

I would like to ask this member of the council and fellow forum players, How Elusive is OK when it takes multiple years for something that doesn’t have a good challenge like the Love is in the air and Hallow’s end Mounts, MoP world bosses and also how can you defend drops below 1% that incentivize an alt army meta, multiple accounts…etc to have a better chance because its not 100% sure that you’ll get those rewards when even the Devs have contradictory points of view example:

9.1.5 Notes:

The following changes have been made to Mecha-Done:

  • Developers’ note: We’re smoothing out the rough edges in this epic meta-achievement to help players who are stuck on one of the more rare elements finally get that wheel mount!

What triggered that change but not the same for other mounts and meta achievements?

Also, some mounts can be elusive but also depends on the lock out, respawn timers and other variables, there’s a big forum post and multiple over the last couple of years around Soundless which is required for the Meta Achievement around Aszhara and it’s not a 100% drop rate compared to TLPD or Aeonaxx.

Also, there’s a contradictory idea between rewards provided by Devs, on which Shadowlands included bad luck mechanics, there’s 4 mounts from each covenant that comes from a rare related to the anima conductor feature: Wild Glimmerfur Prowler, Umbral Scythehorn, Horrid Dredwing, Phalynx of Humility mount drops for some reason instead of keeping these 4 as time sinks, the devs actually added a bad luck mechanic because you can buy these for Offerings and Anima.

Why do we’ve this kind of bad luck mechanic for this rares but not for others or Paragon mounts? Maybe paragon cache can drop a currency and if you don’t get the mount in 10 times, you can buy it directly.

Next month a lot of players will spam love is in the air event for a chance on the mount, however since patch 7.3.5 the carrot in the stick has been moved from a minimum level 98-110 to 110+ and now 50 (previous 120), that means that probably for next 10.0 the minimum will be 60. Also taking on consideration that every player has the same chance per character but some mount collectors have to spam this with a lot of alts facing issues like instances lockouts every 10 runs, which just show a unbalance scenario between players with few characters compared to players with multiple alts (20-50) or even multiple accounts.

Why Blizzard keeps moving the worst drop mount? There’s players that mention this as a retention mechanic but i think if the game is good, players will prefer to spent time doing M+ and pvp from casual to high ranking that farming and level up characters for these drops.

I hope for more mount collectors on the Community Council that mention all the issues around those time sinks, how many players spents 2k,8k,10k attempts on the MoP World Bosses on which each kill takes 15-20 mins waiting on a spot for a 2-3 seconds kill after 1 hit, minutes on which that player could spent on other parts of the game.

I don’t think players will quit if the rewards are more deterministic, Blizzard only needs to add rewards with a better rythm, right now there’s a whole 500 Honor Level untouched since BFA pre patch, they could add more rewards to that system on some of the many levels without reward and expand to more that 500 levels, practically this was like a Battle pass with really huge gaps between each reward and then forgoten, they could even reset this after a season and add previous rewards to a vendor for a special currency just like the casual arena mounts (Vicious mount and Saddle after 100% from currenct season) that you can farm the current one and then buy previous mounts, this way FOMO is avoided and players could have casual goals to persuit at any patch.

Another issue, the last Mount achievement was added on BFA pre patch June 2018, we don’t have a 500 mount achievement yet, there’s player that mention the following excuse from Blizzard “500 is too much and few players could reach that goal”, Mount collectors want achievements to complete, usually this achievements are added 3-4 years later and we just got it once the patch is implemented, while each patch add 40-80 new mounts with multiple recolors. So far, 9.2 doesn’t bring a new mount achievement which mean that maybe we won’t see any new one until pre patch or 9.2.5.

Also, the best elusive rewards right now are Gladiators, MT Book mount and Current Mythic mount for a brief period before communities selling boost. Those mounts are rewards from a challenge content, not just a Sloot machine boss.

There’s also ideas like the legendary system from Legion that every character has a chance to loot a legenday and this was increasing overtime due to some conditions, the same could be implemented to some low drops like gear and cosmetics (mount, toys,pets).

I think there’s still a lot of topics to bring to the community council and i like to see contradictory perspectives like Halite, Artemisha responding for players that spent a lot of time after rewards that are “sadistic” and Worldpvp that like the idea of elusive, rare.

On which i’ll tell him, the best elusive is the one that’s 100% sure after a challenge at least from my POV and thanks for mentioning that anything below 1% is sadistic, however that also depends on the amount of attempts that you could have, that’s why Blizzard changed last anniversary mount from 1-2% to 100%, because there’s a possibilty that a player with 1-2 characters to spent years looking for that mount, i think the change was unnecesary because they could keep the low drop from the world boss and add the mount for an amount of timewarped badges currency, creating an incentive for players to farm that during TW events and the anniversary world bosses, just as bad luck mechanic.

2 Likes
2

As a once very passionate mount collector, just let it go, they’re never going to add achievements in a timely manner where they’re actually relevant to people that care about collecting. For some reason they’re happy to add achievements, mounts and titles for some aspects of the game that only involve the top 1% of the top 1% but collecting just isn’t one of those things, they only add achievements when the average punter can get to the number without much hassle.

3

Mount achievement

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you :sweat_smile: :notes: :musical_note:

3 Likes
4

makes me feel bad for not having the first midnight mount after years and years of trying and getting the new midnight mount first try. thats when I knew I would never get it

5

I dislike you :blush:

6

if it makes you feel better I didnt want it and still want the original more

7

I have both but the new one took me several years of going there weekly on a couple of characters, probably one of my roughest instanced mount farms.

8

That’s not a bad luck mechanic if you can just buy it. A bad luck mechanic would be that a mount with a 1:100 drop rate would always come on attempt 101 if you hadn’t randomly had it drop earlier.

I have both. The original I got sometime after deciding that I would stop by Karazhan and run that fight anytime I was in southern Eastern Kingdoms. I was probably very lucky, but I wasn’t tracking attempts over the years.

The new Midnight I got during BfA by running 50+ 110+ characters through every week for 3 weeks. Looking at the drop rate, that was probably typical.

9

The one that you mentioned is like legion legendaries, i think a vendor with a currency that also its provided by the rare that you’re farming its a kind of bad luck mechanic, those rares provide like 2-3 offerings which means that after 33-50 attempts plus anima (However, offerings is also provided by other things, the main point is that you have a RNG and deterministic path to same reward) , you could buy it directly. At this point any adjustment is better that the current state of so many cosmetics, just like Devs did for mecha done achievement in the middle of shadowlands

1 Like
10

I have both <3

11

Same here but i did second mount like with 25 alts per week.

A lot of players are on the same position and there’s a lot that are not vocal here on forums, looking for one specific mount for years, while other games will provide a better environment for cosmetics drops, at least with shadowlands and that mecha done change, i see some changes to rng but i think it still need improvements and they could change old time sinks.

1 Like
12

I hate that idea of currency. All things like that do is make the game extremely boring.

I figured I might end up having to quit this game if they actually listen to those people on that CC so generally I don’t even read that but every time I do, it makes me want to pull the plug right now.

they just gave it to people - that isn’t an achievement it is a joke.

13

The top MMO currently, FFXIV, has a better way of obtaining things like mounts that come from raids. You do the content and have your normal chance to get it as usual, but you also get a special currency that after X number, you turn in for the mount. This is the better approach because it still lets lucky people get it before dedicated folks but gives a definitive end point where the dedicated person is guaranteed to have it too.

WoW currently can’t work that way because their leadership has built their hill I hope they metaphorically die on (not literally die on because I’m not a sadist) on keeping us doing the content for the slim chance of finally getting what we want

2 Likes
14

or maybe they just think that is more fun - I do. I hate the currency idea.

15

That’s why we need both sides but i think there’s more people that would like a better chance, there’s mounts that aren’t fun like farmin Sha of anger with 50 characters per week on which the boss just receive 1 hit every 15-20min and next alt, it’s a sloot machine, same scenario for almost all low rng drops, i don’t get why that’s fun for anyone. I did it and i would prefer spent that time doing BGs with multiple classes or anything else. I think now there’s a contradictory view between some implementation from old devs vs new ones.

that’s a big concern, there’s other games that reward better a player, if you feel frustrated due to some drops and then you try another game on which things are better for your collecting goals, some players will start collecting there and won’t come back.

2 Likes
16

Fair. You like throwing money away on slot machines. I like predictable with the possibility to be pleasantly surprised.

The problem is we’re all forced to endure the slot machine option whether we like it or not. People like you have the option to ignore the currency and keep cranking away until you get lucky and thus we could both be happy.

3 Likes
17

And they can add a currency that if you get the item first, then that currency is used in other rares or items like a XP potion Draught of ten lands for 10% extra exp or caches with materials or instead of a currency, use the same system that was used with Legion legendaries.

1 Like
18

It’s what makes rng so much fun. You could be a regular player getting whatever mount on first try or a “collector” and sit there and farming it for hundreds of times. That’s why I stopped with such silly things long ago. Either I get something or I don’t and that’s that.

Come think of it when I last really “enjoyed” playing wow the game didn’t even have achievements. Go figure.

19

I don’t think the current one is fun, but that’s a valid opinion, i think there’s more players waiting for a mount for years and thousands of attempts due to a bad %.

RNG could be fun under a moderate ratio, that’s why some countries prohibit loot boxes and gacha games that doesn’t provide a drop rate to the user, because it turns into a form of gambling.

A lot of farms like Love Rocket and headless mount weren’t through queue finder during those times and you could spam the dungeon with a single character by just reseting instance, now we’ve to level up to a minimum level each character for a single attempt per character.

I like RNG that i can spam and work at my own pace not something behind a weekly lockout like MoP world bosses or those holiday’s mounts, something more like a Shiny pokemon on which i can target it and run in circles until it appears.

There’s different grades of RNG and counter meassures to bring rewards to players and Blizzard already show their awareness on some cases like Mecha Done achievement.

20

A vendor or an increasing drop rate is by far the best bad luck mechanic you can get. No one should have to farm 1000 times on anything in this game to get it, especially when some things people are after is not even current and not even something people notice, like a transmog, a pet or toy.

1 Like