Re-Assessment of My Position
I went through this forum post (Balance of Power Acc Bound) and read all the comments in that thread (250+ at the time), and I really prioritized the comments that are advocating for all 12 sets of Balance of Power appearances to be rewarded after doing it once. Even though I disagree with this view, I wanted to test my own theory of preserving the value of an item through Skill-Based and Time-Based Difficulty. And if I felt it fell short, then say, “You’re right maybe it doesn’t really matter.” and move on to the next topic. Also, what I am calling ‘value’ is more in line with the idea of communal value - the summary of an item’s value from the community’s perspective. It looked like there was some confusion regarding the term value (and clarifying the difference of personal value and communal value), so this is a good starting point.
Just to recap, every item in the game has a personal and communal value. It is impossible to assess the personal value an item has for a player, because that relies on immeasurable elements such as fun, personal prioritization, and accessibility of each individual player. However, we can absolutely assess the communal value – the amount of expected skill (effort) and time it will take the average player to access an item when it is current content. I will not go into detail of how that is broken down here, because those details can be found in my original post. But in summary, the communal value can be broken down into Skill-Based Difficulty (comprised of knowledge of one’s class, potentially other classes, the encounter / content, the direct and indirect mechanics, and the resulting output) and Time-Based Difficulty (broken into to Macro-level and micro-level time).
Answering the ‘Why?’
So, let’s answer the ‘why’ first. Why do we need a communal value, especially if we already have personal value? If you look at the post I linked (Balance of Power Acc Bound), take a look at all of the different opinions, the reasons, the comparisons, the assumptions, and intensities of each post. Many of them are coming from personal experiences and preferences – which is not a bad thing in and of itself. As mentioned in my 2nd post in this thread, personal value is how a player decides what is best for them (and only them). However, personal value is unreliable as it is drastically changes from one person to another, requiring the need for a better, more consistent metric.
For example, let’s look at the mount Invincible. Some people do not like this mount at all, and if they got it, they would never ride it. Their resulting opinion could be that everyone who completes ICC should have the mount. Some people could take it or leave it, and if it dropped, then they might use it if it matched their transmog theme. Their resulting opinion could be they just don’t care one way or the other. Then there are those who are willing to run ICC over 1,500 times to try and get it. Their resulting opinion could be that all content should be on that level of difficulty. This is a wide range of opinions just based off the appearance of the mount.
The doesn’t even take into consideration the enjoyment or dislike of its rarity. As stated in a few posts above this one, some people refuse to run for anything with less than a 1% drop rate. However, there are other people who LOVE this type of challenge and look forward to the moment some content becomes legacy content.
This doesn’t consider the individual enjoyment or dislike of the details of its acquisition. Some people hate running dungeons and raids, and other people like running them. Some people hate unlocking content through a long series of quests and events, and some people love feeling of completing a massive feat over the course of weeks and months.
Finally, it doesn’t consider the individual enjoyment or dislike of its utility (like whether it can fly or swim or neither). Some people are willing to do any and all of the above if the mount can fly, but can’t be bothered if it doesn’t. While others will do any and all of the above if it “looks cool”, but it they don’t like the appearance, then they will not bother with it. And on top of that, there is everyone in between.
There are so many factors that change from person to person, that it is impossible to use personal value as a viable metric of an item’s value for the community. In short, we need something else to measure an item’s value on a community level – a communal value.
The communal value is designed to summarize the overall community’s value of an item (or content). And this value is designed, adjusted, maybe re-designed, and finally set while it is part of current content. If you would like an example of this, please look at the Glacial Tidestorm in the first post. Ultimately, through development’s design and the community’s gameplay feedback the communal value for an item is finally set in stone before becoming legacy content. Keep in mind, outliers exist, but we are speaking in general terms for the vast majority of content.
This should answer the question, “Why do we need to a communal value?”. In short, it is the closest we can get to an unbiased assessment of how much or how little the community values a specific item or content. This is necessary in order to preserve this value for the rest of the life of the game. Naturally, things may come that make it slightly easier (50% rep buff during Time-Walking) or more difficult (finding people for BfA legacy raids on LFR difficulty until becomes quickly soloable), but overall it remains the same.
What does Communal Value not cover?
So, let’s stop here for a second and specifically talk about what this communal value cannot be used for:
- Items / content removed from the game
- Items / content adjusted for engagement purposes
- Bad luck protection
1) Items / content removed from the game. You cannot preserve the value of something that no longer exists in the game. I will cover removed items in a later post.
2) Items / content adjusted for engagement purposes. Let’s use two examples here. The first of which will be the reduction / removal (I forget which) of reputation requirements to gain access to the original Allied Races. Since I am not on the development team, I don’t know the internal metrics, but it could have been possible that they found the initial requirements too much for the playerbase. Potentially, the number of people leveling Allied Races were too low at the time. So, maybe lowering the requirements gave more players a reason to level alts – another reason to play the game. In other words, due to potentially low participation levels, they found the initial requirements prohibitive to leveling gameplay and the subsequent continued gameplay. So, they removed some of them – benefitting the game as a whole (the overall community).
Another example is allowing players to simply have WoD and Legion flying. In a few of the comments in the thread linked (Balance of Power Acc Bound), someone stated that we should not care what other people feel about the time and effort it took to earn something, because Blizzard did not care about them when WoD and Legion flying requirements where removed. However, in full context, the game was being adjusted so that you can freely choose between all expansions equally as possible to level alts. If you were not able to fly in WoD or Legion, then the playerbase would likely always skip that content. So, it would devalue the choice between expansions. So, yes, maybe it did hurt some feelings that this was given away, but it was for the benefit of the game as a whole (the overall community).
The important thing with both of these changes is that while they made certain things easier to acquire, it was done because it improved the quality of the game and the overall community. Conversely, simply getting another 11 Class’s Balance of Power appearances only benefits the individual who found them not worthwhile to earn anyway. If anything, it negatively impacts the game. For example, if someone isn’t working on the Balance of Power appearances, then giving them the rest of the appearances for all classes isn’t going to change that. It is taking a player that is not participating in content and giving them 11 additional reasons not to.
3) Bad luck protection. While it is definitely possible to preserve the communal value of an item through Skill-Based and Time-Based Difficulty, there is and always has been a vulnerability with RNG. This vulnerability is that a person is limited to how lucky they can be, but they are unlimited in how unlucky they can be.
For example, you will never log into the game and have Invincible just fall into your bags. You will always need at least 1 attempt by clearing ICC. So, you can never earn the mount with 0 attempts; there is a hard start at 1. However, some people may need 1,000 or more attempts in order attain Invincible. Do I consider that potentially unfair? Yes, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are discussing the standard bell-curve of odds to 2 or 3 standard deviations. Outliers will be addressed in the future in a separate post. However, this tool, the communal value, cannot be used to address that problem.
Then what does Communal Value cover?
So, then at this point you may be asking, “Well, what is it useful for?”. Allow me to try a different method of explanation than before. Hopefully, this method should provide an example of the consistency that communal value brings as opposed to individual personal value.
1) Consistent Stance in Botting. Why do we not like botting in our community? In short, it devalues whatever we place our personal time and effort into. Why should you be forced to actively play the game for 4 hours (maybe farming materials for a crafted item), when someone else can turn on some software and accomplish the same thing in 10 minutes (the 10 minutes is in reference to the person behind the bot setting it up as opposed to the bot going for 6+ hours)? To elaborate further, some people really don’t care if there are bots in the game, some people might report them if they see them, and other players actively try to hunt them down and report them. However, as a community, we see them as a negative impact to our game, because they devalue of our time and effort – the communal value – of an item or content.
2) Value Preservation in Mounts. So, recently the X-45 Heartbreaker has been the focal point of many. There have several who have said this mount should be a 5% drop rate at the most. Others have said the drop rate should be 1%, and that there should even be no mounts that have a lower drop rate. Even more have stated maybe 0.2% is best. Who do the developers listen to? For any one of these suggestions they listen to, there are another five suggestions that they are ‘not listening to’. It’s a lose-lose for the development to randomly change values. Any changes they make will just increase the number of complaints – and for good reason. Any reduction in difficulty at this point is a forced, unnatural change that doesn’t even address the real problem. Even if the odds are reduced to 1:500, there will be players out there that would need to run the content 10,000+ times.
Going further, let’s say the developers reduce the X-45 Heartbreaker to a 1% drop chance. Then someone may make a post on the forums how they hate waiting 15 minutes for the MoP World Bosses, and that a 1 in 2,000 drop chance is unreasonable. Someone else, may tell them, “Consider working on making some gold and see if you can get one from the BMAH.” However, this person may hate making gold too, because the content is repetitive and boring. So, then what? Do we have the same conversation as we did for the X-45 Heartbreaker, and make them all 1% mounts too?
No, we fall back to the idea that the communal value has been set. For example, the drop rate of the Love Rocket should remain the same, but we could remove / reduce the level requirement for a drop chance. As far as the MoP World Boss mounts, those are probably fine. The odds are low, but you can still get them off the BMAH.
3) Value Preservation in Transmogs. The driver of this conversation seems to be the Balance of Power appearances, so let’s just say the developers fold and concede to those saying we should get all the appearances if we did it once. After all, some have said that the content is boring. The content is also old. And, you know, they are just transmogs, so who cares anyway, right? However, if only some players feel the content is boring, unfun, and ‘just’ for transmogs, then what about the consideration for players who find the content enjoyable and are primarily motivated by transmog collecting? This move would gut their content of a reason to do it.
Where does this line of reason stop? When it comes to legacy raids, should we be able to get our Tier 1 set on all the classes if we get it on 1 class, because running Molten Core is just repetitive and requires no skill? When it comes to legacy dungeons, should we be able to get all the transmogs once we have completed the dungeon and dungeon quests just because it is transmog? If we buy a PvP tier set on 1 class, then should we get it on all the classes, because PvP is boring to some? If we allow any one of these, then why not all of them?
The issue with each one of these answers, is that they are vulnerable to what people want to have and they are even more vulnerable to those who could not care less about that content. This is another lose-lose for the developers and the community. If people are not going to do the content again, then giving them the transmogs doesn’t change anything. It only takes away from those that were going to do it again.
4) Value Preservation Throughout the Game. The reason the communal value is so important, is that it is an unbiased summary from the first day of current content. If the content requires an extremely high skill set and level of effort, then as it ages and progresses into legacy content, the difficulty should be reflected in Time-Based Difficulty. Now, just to clarify once again, this is not saying nothing should ever be nerfed, but if it is to be nerfed (such as skips), then it should be done during the window that the content is current. Once, past this point, leave it as it is.
This also would apply to current content where the Skill-Based Difficulty was lower but had a Moderate level of Time-Based difficulty. As the content ages, you will need almost no skill, but it may require more time. Keep in mind that Time-Based Difficulty is broken into Macro-level and Micro-level subdivision. This can be seen, again, in Glacial Tidestorm example in the original post.
Consideration for the Fun of Others
WoW is a massive MMO with a massive playerbase, and what one person finds fun, there are probably two or three more who do not find that same activity fun. Many people in WoW do not and cannot play the game at a high level of skill. So, many of them look forward to the chance at running legacy raids for the rare mounts, shoulders, and other items. Not only are there players that look forward to this, but they also actively enjoy the gameplay of chasing after an item week after week.
They also may enjoy the accomplishment of taking all 12 classes and getting the Balance of Power, because they can say they put in the effort to get them all. They enjoy taking 4 of each armor type through a questing zone to pick up all the quest rewards. Does it require a high level of skill? No, but it does take a high level of dedication which is rewarded by having all of those rewards. In other words, removing the reason to rerun this type of content is gutting content for a lot of players in the game.
We should be considerate of each other’s preferred method of gameplay and careful to blindly suggest devaluing the reward system, because it may not be our cup of tea. At no point do we say, “I don’t find Mythic raiding fun. Therefore, for everyone, we should be able to pick up the same transmog appearance if we can complete the equivalent content in LFR.” We don’t say this, because it’s blatantly obvious that this gear takes skill / effort. More importantly, we don’t say this, because for some players the struggle of wiping for months to finally clear a raid on Mythic level is the fun. The time and effort to complete content is materialized as a reward. Therefore, the reward should be preserved through the transition of Skill-Based Difficulty and Time-Based difficulty.
Future Implications
As with anything regarding the future, it is impossible to predict. However, I would be very hesitant to change the communal value of items and content randomly, due to the potential negative shift in the playerbase’s mindset. People see their skill and time as investments, even in playing a game. And even though some of them may say, “Lol, imagine thinking of your time in a game as an investment.”, they say this while they look up what the best talents for the class or the fastest way to level up a character.
My concern is that if the value of something is forcibly reduced like reducing the drop rate of the Love Rocket or making Balance of Power account wide, then the playerbase will be more apprehensive to spend any amount of significant time on a more difficult item – reducing the overall participation levels. The Love Rocket is a good example, because as soon as there was an announcement that this wasn’t fun for the developers either and they were going to look further into it, many people stopped running the content. Think about that. Just the potential of something being devalued in the future caused many players stopped participating in that content now.
Counter-Arguments
So, I mentioned at the beginning of the post that I wanted to look at as many arguments against my stance as possible so that 1) I find they may be correct or 2) I need to readjust the whole concept of communal value and its preservation through Skill-Based Difficulty and Time-Based Difficulty.
“The content is still there, go do if you really want to.”
I did see one comment that is as dishonest as it is 1-diminsional, but still gets mentioned more than it should – “The content is still there. If you want to do it, you can still do that 12 times.” It’s not too hard to imagine that the reward is the driver for almost everything in WoW. And to pretend that people are wanting to Balance of Power 12 times without reward is just dishonest. The reward is what makes it worthwhile doing. Imagine if someone said, “If you really enjoy Mythic raiding, then you won’t mind if everyone is given equal gear (the transmog equivalent), because the content is still there.”. Again, the reward (the transmog, not the power in this case) is one of the drivers, and the assumption that no harm is done because the content is still there, is a 1-diminsional approach.
It has no effect on power or progression, so it doesn’t matter, just make it account-wide.
This is exactly why we need to consider communal value as the universal metric. This person clearly values their personal fun over what others may consider fun and/or rewarding. What if the tables were turned, and they said, “Not only should I get the Gladiator PvP appearances from the Brawl Comp Stomp, but I should also get them on all my classes when I get the first one.” because, you know, it has no effect on power or progression, so just make it account wide?
“It should be account bound because it is beyond awful to replay.”
If a person’s personal value doesn’t match the communal value, then they should take their own fun factor into account and not participate in the content. In other words, if it is not fun for you, do something else. Again, a lot of people have these appearances because they do find it worth while to do the content. Those that do not have the appearances, do not find them worth the effort. I see no reason for this to change.
“Balance of Power has no aspect of it that makes more interesting on the second or further completions.”
Except the transmog itself. Each class’s Balance of Power appearance is vastly different from the other classes. This same concept applies when running through legacy raids for transmogs. And it applies again when completing quests in various zones on different armor types. It applies to PvP and earning a class’s transmog for that season. It applies when leveling up another class. Does this make your 16th run through Molten Core more interesting than the last 15? No, but the satisfaction of acquiring that item does.
“It’s old, so who cares.”
Again, just another case of why communal value should be considered and preserved – vulnerability to those who could not care less is a risk to the game as a whole. If you compare Invincible or any of the Artifact appearances to current content, they have aged well. Just because some players find the content older, doesn’t mean it is worth less now.