About the one thing that has worked without question in Shadowlands so far is the way Conquest and the conquest vendor has worked. PVP has a host of other balancing issues that are being dealt with tbf but one big reason it works is the equity the grind has. Your gear gets based on your rating, buying gear is possible by pvping enough rather than having to get rating and pray a chest gives you something. In fact the chest just supplements the gear you get after.
This system is so good in fact that you will find multiple hardcore PVErs and PVE raiding guild and M+ groups doing RBGs or pushing arena just to get this gear because the kicker with the vendor is there is no longer a time gap on acquiring it. It is simply dependent on time invested as well as skill. One can get multiple base 200 pieces within a week rather than having to wait several weeks (for weekly vaults) or praying for raid boss loot rng and can get higher ilvl on them just by winning games and getting rating.
Why not have something similar in PVE? A lot of people just like doing keys even when they get to levels where they are miserable to do. A lot of people like killing raid bosses and both like the challenge of defeating them while underpar as well as like the potential of defeating them offering them a chance at some relevant loot (the drops of which have been abysmal). One of the most disappointing and dejecting thing about killing a raid boss week to week is seeing 35 AP drop. Additionally, the great vault has the same issues any weekly rng chest has. It is driven by RNG but in this instance it is bigger RNG for items that have greater impact. It’s entirely possible to hit the nuts and get an item that is relevant to you but you are still at the mercy of being unable to target that item or any similar item (something that generally killing raid bosses should afford but once again the loot droprate on raid bosses is abysmal so that’s a no go).
Instead, why not implement a similar PVE based badge system or currency. Where you earn currency by doing the content related to that system: dungeons and raid bosses. That way even when you see nothing drop, you are making progression towards something. They have the code in place to implement this. Venaari lets you upgrade your potency conduits in a similar way. Legendaries are upgraded a similar way. PVP gear ofc upgrades a similar way. Covenant gear upgrades in a similar way upto a point. Why not extend it to actual PVE gear that drops from places? Why not give players a chance to be in their bis? Currency droprate could scale according to the content being done as well with more difficult content dropping more currency. It would make playing feel more rewarding again where right now there is no reward to the grind and the only reward is being able to have a fun time with friends.
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OP I agree,
There was nothing wrong with the badge vendors from TBC all the way to MoP.
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I’m all for this. It hurts running 15 or more M+ a week and not get any useable loot. If I’m lucky someone else has the same or similar loot table and gets something I need that they don’t. Most of the time I’m just playing for the vault and hoping the RNG favors me there. Most of the time it has not with poorly itemized upgrades. Can’t count the number of Robot Chicken Handlers I’ve gotten from DOS when I’m already running a max lego set of gloves.
You could still do the item drops and either get items or get currency. If the item isn’t useful to you trade it in for an equal amount of currency. This of course would eliminate players giving away items they don’t need, but that is already not that common.
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For starters, they need to put master looter back. Unless guilds run with 100% members, and everyone is letting people roll on stuff instead of collecting transmogs, there’s no way to direct loot to people who actually need it.
I’d rather see tier tokens than a badge system. They already have the anima droplets for weapons; that just needs to be expanded into more kinds of tokens.
The problem with badges is tiering. Either they make a generic badge and you grind the easiest content until your eyes bleed, or they make tiers of badges and then you end up with a stack of useless soulbound currency. Tier tokens can be passed around a raid so you can gear up new players and alts, and they’re relevant to the raid you’re running.
I don’t see ML working out well with the cross server system. The game relies to heavily on the PUG scene for people to experience content and ML gets abused horribly there. Before cross server that was kept in check by social represcussions as players and guilds would get black listed and garner a bad reputation for that kind of behavior which would negatively impact future runs. Since you rarely see the people you group up with anymore it would be too easy for a ML to direct the loot to wherever they wanted.
I think for raids you do a tier token system for LFG, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic. That makes the most sense. I think a hybrid model would be good for M+ dungeons. Do tiered badges for 0-4,5-9,10 and above. The higher mythic you run the more badges you get but since there are ilvl ranges within those 3 groups I listed make the higher ilvl items more expensive. Yea I could run 10’s all day for the best items, but it would take me longer. I also think you can rectify that by still having loot drop, you just get badges if you don’t get loot. If I get loot and don’t need it give me the option to vendor it for badges.
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I remember doing daily H 5mans for valor during MoP. As I recall you got valor for the first 7 runs ev week. Best part was you could do all 7 runs in one day if you wanted to.
The only problem in MoP was you needed a lot of rep to unlock the valor items. One rep was actually buried behind another rep. So it required running a LOT of daily quests as well.
Such a shame they killed valor. It was a great system for everyone, and everything since has been second rate.
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