So, let’s do the math - it’s 45 days since the patch went live, and fully clearing all (or 95% of) research sources is about an hour of work a day. So, someone that is exalted with Archivist’s Codex has put in roughly 45 hours of effort to get to that point and to farm these conduits. You would probably have around 70,000 research across that time frame (less items spent on quest upgrades), so probably could have bought 20-25 conduit upgrades.
Druids for example have 4 specs and 22 different conduits, so a Druid main that bought conduit upgrades with their research and used them (because there was no notice of this change and it worked this way all of 9.0 in the Maw) would probably have all their conduits at 239 across all 4 specs.
Now, another Druid main that hasn’t been spending as much time working on it and hits Tier 6 today will have around 50k research, and will be able to immediately get enough conduit items to get all of his main spec conduits immediately to 252. The person that has put in 45 hours of work putting effort into this system since launch is now actively behind and has worse conduits than the person barely playing the game.
How, and in what world is that a reasonable solution? Either this should have been in place since the start of the patch, or you should compensate/refund the research and conduit items purchased and used prior to this announcement being made.
The reason sable solution would be to have it like this from launch. They didn’t do that, we all know why they didn’t do it even if they won’t admit it. Either way this change is still better now than never.
It’s not the same logic as nerfing a boss, because at least once the boss is nerfed, every guild is on the same playing field whether they killed the boss pre-nerf, are still progging, etc. By making this change, you are actually giving people that put the effort into this system LESS power, because people reaching tier 6 now are able to get higher primary spec conduits than people who hit it a week, 2 weeks, etc. ago, and those people have no recourse other than weeks and weeks of additional grinding, because the research they spent 5+ weeks earning was already wasted on offspec conduit items.
No - making a change like this is actively worse than leaving the same system in place, because it arbitrarily screws people over that put effort into the system in the first place. It would be like buying a laptop from Best Buy, having it drop 50% in price the next day, and Best Buy refusing price protection or a return. There needs to be a return policy or some type of compensation if this type of change is going to arbitrarily be made mid patch.
No, it wouldn’t, because classes/specs in theory are balanced to be comparable to each other, so you’d still have an X level toon that you could play. Not comparable to not getting your research back here.
Yeah, I mean obviously it SHOULD have been there from the start. It’s actually very strange how this expansion has a strong focus on spec identity and yet you had this roulette-wheel mechanic for conduits that was basically pure punishment if you played the expansion “the intended way” (main spec only). Such a bad design.
But yeah, better late than never realistically.
Okay. You chose to buy it at that price. You deemed the cost/benefit worthwhile at that time. Would it be nice if Best Buy offered to cover the price differential? Yes. Should Best Buy not lower the price just because you bought it at a time where it was more expensive? No.
You said “I consider this to be worthwhile”. It isn’t as if Blizzard hasn’t made systems changes to make things more accessible after-the-fact. Should Blizzard not have added the corruption vendor just because you bought a BOE? That’s silly. Making the game better going forward is almost always the highest priority.
I had the same thing happened last patch with the conduit upgrade items getting changed after I spent my Stygia. I was mad: but just sucked it up and grinded it out again.
Or like saying you should never nerf a class because people FOTM’d that class and it would have been a waste of time for them to switch. The meta can never change because it would be “unfair”.
The supposed change in 9.0 to Ve’nari’s upgrade wouldn’t have mattered (they were already upgrading to 226 when I started buying them and I was one of the first on my server to hit the required rep level); you still had to get a full set of 213s with them before they’d upgrade to 226. Not the same as this announced change.
It’s not similar though, because in this case - you have a solution. You can look up the time stamps of people getting the Exalted Codex reputation achievement, and for any time stamp prior to this announcement, send them X amount of compensation research in the mail with the reset next week.
But it also doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be compensation provided for people randomly screwed over when it was an entirely arbitrary decision that was the fault of failed development and incompetent systems design.
9.0.5 they made it 226. Before that it was 213 only.
They whole slot machine for conduits system was just bad though and they should have overhauled it 8 months ago, but it is what it is. The change is good and was needed… and thankfully I’m only halfway to tier 6.
So what your saying is there is a chance I run the Adamant vaults and actually get something for my time instead of just some anima? Because this needs to be addressed also. Once you have the cloaks from the vendor it seems like there is to high of a chance to get nothing for unlocking the additional floors.