Trial of Style is Underrated and Not Maintained

Community WoW Community Council
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Hi everyone, as of today, we are about a month away from the next mini-holiday, Trial of Style. The reason I write this now is in hopes to give the development team time to make potential adjustments before it is here on March 20th – a month from today! If not, then no big deal, but I just wanted to present the opportunity.

What is Trial of Style?

For those who may be unaware, The Trial of Style is an event where transmogging your gear comes at no cost for a few days. During this time, you can queue up for an instance where you and 5 others rate each other’s transmogs. Once the ratings have concluded, there will be a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and ‘everyone else’ place awarded to the players – each receiving various amounts of Trial of Style Tokens. These tokens are then used to purchase transmogs from the vendor.

The Potential of Trial of Style

This mini-holiday is a nearly perfect positive feedback loop opportunity, given one vulnerable link – a reason to participate each time. So, let’s explain the positive feedback loop first. Players join the mini-holiday in order to earn enough Trial of Style Tokens to purchase the Trial of Style Season 1 set (yes, there are seasons of sets, kinda). Some of these players have quite a bit of transmogs from throughout the various expansions and genres of the game. During this mini-holiday, they get to showcase their items, and this potentially inspires other players to chase after those items themselves. So, now you have an event in the game inspiring other players to pursue more content outside of the event. These players then return the next time Trial of Style is up to showcase their new gear and also earn enough currency for Trial of Style Season 1 and 2 sets. And the cycle continues – almost like free advertisement of all the different weapons and armor within the game itself. Or so it would if there was a reason to come back.

It should not need to be said, but just for the sake of clarity and honesty, this whole thing is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people join, keep their character naked, and generally have no interest in anything except to get whatever is new that season. Sometimes, you will join an event, and not see anything of interest during the whole encounter. I get that, and that type of gameplay can be found in any genre of any game really. So, for the developers, please do not let that type activity discourage you and your efforts! Also, for the sake of these series of suggestions, I am not taking this type of behavior and gameplay into account.

Current State of Trial of Style

So, what do we have right now to inspire players to come back for the next Trial of Style? We have Season 1, 2, and 4. Yep, there is no Season 3. But we have a few shoe transmogs sprinkled in there. Just as a reminder, this is the 11th Trial of Style mini-holiday. I know in the past, there has been mention that mini-holidays aren’t meant to be major events, but I think Trial of Style is quite unique in what it can offer the community as far as something new to pursue and a reminder of something older to pursue. Again, the loop is broken when the content and rewards are not sustained for each season. There have been many features in the game that were never meant to take off to what they are now, but here we are! And I truly believe the Trial of Style has an incredible amount of potential within the community!

The Immediate Fix - Recolored Armor Sets

Again, this will be the 11th Trial of Style coming up in March, and I think it would be nice to see Season 11 return with a recolor of a previous set. For those unfamiliar, recolors of other sets has been the norm for Trial of Style Season sets. For example, Season 2 plate set is a recolor version of the Warrior Tier 1 set. Trial of Style is relatively quick and easy to complete so a recolor should be fine. And it only happens twice a year.

Now, to dive a little bit deeper into the recolored sets. They do not have to come from previous raid tier sets. In fact, having a Ruby or Sapphire recolor of Vanilla’s Jade plate set, would work just fine. Maybe a bright green and gold recolor of the Zandalar quest leather set would be nice by itself or to mix and match with other transmog sets. Even recoloring an older Honor-based or Mark of Honor-based PvP set may not be a bad idea. There may even be transmog sets that were created but never made it into the game. This could be a great way to randomly throw them in!

The Long-Term Fix and Recovery - Older Seasons

Now, the larger fix. Let’s clean this mini-holiday up, and retroactively add Season 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and soon-to-be 11 to the vendor. Right now, if you look at the vendor, this looks like a project that was started with the best intentions, then interest was lost, then a brief resurgence of effort, sprinkled in some dying effort, and finally abandoned. I would strongly encourage the development team to continue the maintenance and development of this mini-holiday, and let it continue to grow into something more as it inspires more and more gameplay activity (both, inside and outside of the event). I genuinely think there is so much potential here.

Quality of Life Improvements

Finally, the encounter improvement. The pace of rating each other’s transmogs gives players just enough time to inspect each other’s transmogs. However, you can’t really deep dive and ask, “Oh, that’s nice! Where did that weapon come from?” or “How do I get that set?” or “What are those shoulders called?”. So, it would be nice to have something that you could click on within the instance that would show each contestant’s transmog for each the rounds of rating – complete with the name of the item and maybe where it is from. Maybe use the transmog closet window and allow players to flip from transmog to transmog like they would with the pages of a book. That’s it! Have a giant book appear at the end of the encounter, so the players can go back and look at all the transmogs used over the course of the encounter. Within the pages of this book, place a screenshot button that will provide a full screen image of the labeled transmog. This will give players a chance to come back later, and look at these transmogs and figure out where to go to get them. Maybe a feature to download a screenshot of all 1st, 2nd, or 3rd contestants would be a nice feature.

Again, this mini-holiday can offer so much in allowing players to showcase the rest of the game to each other – inspiring more activity and perhaps preparation for the next time Trial of Style is up! World of Warcraft is a massive game, so I think a little guidance, motivation, and inspiration to go find something outside of the event would be nice for new and veteran players alike. Trial of Style is a light-hearted encounter where friends, guildies, and pugs can visualize and rate each other’s transmogs. So, recolored sets would be more than fine in this situation. However, the mini-holiday just needs the continued effort and development generating a reason to come back each time it is up!

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I had honestly almost forgotten that Trial of Style even existed, so I’m glad it’s been brought up :>

Transmog and “fashion” is a pretty important part of my (and indeed most roleplayers) routine in WoW, so it was great to see some of it formalised in the mini-holiday. I know a lot of people that love it, and a lot of people who hate it, and a lot of people who are completely ambivalent to it.

I don’t quite agree that it doesn’t have the strongest reason to participate in the first place. I think the extrinsic motivation for participating in it might actually hurt it somewhat, when players are only participating in it for the tokens and not actually engaging with the system as a whole. By adding recolours or unique loot, you’re gonna get more players to participate in the system, but they’re not necessarily going to come there to have fun and actually play the minigame. Is that to say it’s bad to have some sort of extrinsic motivation for it at all? Not at all, but you’re gonna want to be careful in considering what you’re adding to the list. An easy solution might be to add existing transmog options to the reward pools that are obtainable elsewhere; it’s an easy grab during the holidays, but you’re not forced to participate in them to actually get the items if you don’t enjoy the holidays.

I also think other types of rewards would be very interesting to see. I like the idea of being able to return to look at other players’ transmogs sin a book, but what if you could also temporarily use these transmogs, regardless of whether or not you actually have the associated items, and regardless of class/armor restrictions? That’d be a neat little effect you could run around with for the duration of the holidays. Perhaps you could earn a transmog currency that you can use to transmog without having to spend gold outside of the holiday events, too.

Mini-holidays are fun, and that should be the primary motivation for participating in them. But if the demand for it is strong enough… perhaps it should be upgraded from a mini-holiday to an actual holiday, and be expanded upon in that way.

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This is the heart of the issue. Due to the lack of continuing rewards, returning veteran players have largely forgotten about the holiday. The typical question I see, “Is there any new this time? No. Ok…” And they go on about their day or week. After this happens enough, players no longer even ask this question, and we get to where we are now – a mini-holiday with so much potential that is becoming largely forgotten.

This will be true for any form of gameplay within any game. For any community of players and/or participants, there will be the following:

  • Some that would play for no reward except for the thrill of completing it.
  • The majority will be a combination of those who find it fun AND rewarding.
  • Some who find it just something to check off the list.
  • Lastly, those that participate and hate every second of it.

As a community grows, all of these categories will grow as well – some more or less than others, but they will all grow!

So, I would highly encourage designs and suggestions not to be centered around the last two groups - and especially do not prioritize them over the first two groups of players. In other words, add more continuation and incentivization for players who like the content, rather than gut content or allow it to grow stagnant, so that those who hate it and cannot overcome the feeling being ‘forced’ to participate feel like they are not missing much.

Now this is a good idea! So, maybe the more one participates in Trial of Style, the more of this currency they could earn? I really like the potential here, and we could probably just use the Trial of Style Tokens! It would give those who love to switch transmogs frequently a break from the gold tax.

While we are on the topic, why not give each armor slot being transmogged a set price in gold instead of it being reliant on the vendor price of the gear? I know they want the price to scale a bit for those new to the game to explore transmoggrications, but they could change it such that anyone below level 20 can transmog for free. That would make it easier for them to correlate a Trial of Style Token to gold value, so that the process of using Trial of Style Tokens for transmogging would be feasible.

One thing I really like about this idea, is that if someone really enjoys the mini-holiday, there could be a perpetual usage for that currency that could benefit the player while the holiday is not up! This is a great idea!

Agree! I know mini-holidays at one point were a category of events that developers wanted to keep small. However, if interest and gameplay has grown to something more than expected, then make it an exception and keep building onto it. Or classify as something else and keep developing it. Either way, continue making something good even better!

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I really liked the idea behind it but when it just became “get old transmog that is recolored” I think most people gave up doing it. If they added cool things like unique back transmog or like toys it would be awesome and populated

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I can see that as a possibility.

Though, this does open the door to a few other thoughts, such as the assumption that recolors are inferior to new models (not implying you are saying that, but just running with the thought, because I have heard it elsewhere). For example, I would take just about any recolor of Antorus tier sets over the Uldir models. This starts to become very relative to the individual person, because I would imagine there are a few out there who may prefer a recolor of Uldir sets rather than any of the Antorus tier set models. Also, I feel like all of the covenant recolor variants are very well done! Not all are my preference in colors, but well done nonetheless.

Now, if you are saying, “get old transmog that is recolored” in disdain because much of the older transmog is very pixelated and grainy with polygonal curvature and stair-stepping color transition, then yes, I absolutely agree with you. One of my future suggestions will be to update all of the older transmogs to Shadowland-like caliber, but I want to go into that in a more well-thought-out forum post of its own.

So, in short, if they add back pieces or toys and the like the event, I am all for it. However, due to the simplicity and light-hearted nature of Trial of Style, I am fine with recolor variations of existing models (or painted patterns).

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When I first heard of the Trial of Stlye, I loved the idea but the lack of good transmog rewards and the fact it has been left in a fairly dormant state is a shame

I was really hoping that missing set pieces would be added (such as the Rogue Antorus Mythic Shoes)

I would love some unique transmogs added, maybe some more glasses or some cool back transmogs but I think the price of these should be kept somewhat low as to not force people to feel they have to compete over and over to get enough tokens.

Cross faction trial of style would be fun in the future, especially with the theme of “Faction Pride”

I would love to see a few different locations added to the event instead of always being sent to Magisters’ Terrace, obviously using existing locations as to not spend time on developing new areas for such a small holiday

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I really feel like the rewards for Trial of Style are very underwhelming. I wish there was more to get out of it.

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Personally I find the fact it’s only every 6 months flabbergasting.

It’s a simple holiday that most people like. It could easily run every month and have no downside.

Just add some more rewards, even if it isn’t mog sets.

Like for instance, let us be able to purchase those engineering items that summon a mog npc. It fits the theme of the trial of style and gives us a new source for things that use an old ore that just keeps going up in price.

Then there’s things like the battle pet costumes that would fit the theme as well.

Of course, new ensembles would be amazing, but these are just ideas for general use of the event for people who already have all of the ensembles.

Trial of style is also good because it makes mogging free during the event. This is amazing on alts when you want to try out new sets while questing.

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Agreed, but what if we were able to spend a large number of tokens (remove the cap btw) and gain the appearance for any legacy raid / PvP ensemble?

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I like all of these ideas a lot, a big focus on replayability is pretty important. Especially if they’re all consumables. It’d be a few nice rewards that lets you save gold, but are by no means a requirement to farm.

Adding lots of new rewards to it, especially unique or farmable collectibles, kinda goes against the spirit of a micro holiday. It’s meant to be a fun thing, not something you need to work through. A limited collection of uniques is usually fine, as it’s something usually something you can get as a participation award, but it should probably be limited at that.

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This is a clever idea for ‘missing pieces’ to previous sets! There are so many questing transmog sets over the previous expansions that could stand to have a pair of gloves, boots, belts, and other individual pieces added to it!

More themes in a variety of more locations? Absolutely!

Some of them are underwhelming - especially if transmogging is not really your thing. Even more so when you start comparing them against other transmogs such as your tier sets.

However, if we are being honest, the activity necessary to earn any one set takes all of 5 to 10 minutes with no real need for prep time. It makes sense that they would not place a lot of time and effort into the creativity of something so easily attained. Personally, I think recolors are fine as a whole, but some of the suggestions here have been clever.

This is another neat idea – almost like a Jeeves but for transmogging! What I like most about this and several of the other suggestions is the fact that many of these rewards would be very beneficial to someone who cares about the transmogrification in the game.

There was a suggestion earlier to have Trial of Style Tokens used as an alternate currency for transmogging purposes. The nice thing about this idea and yours is that someone who enjoys the content can save a little bit of gold and time down the road, and for players who don’t care as much, they are not missing out on anything that a little extra gold can cover.

A mini-holiday is just a classification of an event or activity the in game, and if there is enough interest for it to grow to something more, then I see no reason to stifle that just because of its current classification!

Due to the simplicity of the event, I agree that a recolor for each armor type for each season is fine. However, if the event continues to grow, then there a lot of valuable suggestions here!

The most important discussion point goes back to the original issue: Because the event is no longer maintained by providing a simple but new reward, the participation levels have dropped off. If the participation levels drop off, then Blizzard misses a massive opportunity to utilize the player base to showcase different parts of the game to each other. I wish there was a way to know how many people saw something for the first time in Trial of Style and immediately set out to get it, whether it was farming Marks of Honor in BGs and brawls, running ICC for a weapon (who knows, maybe they get Invincible while they are out), leveling a character through islands in hopes for a transmog to drop, or running SoO for the Tusks of Mannorth.

However, you need players to participate for this to happen. And for player to participate, you need a reason to do this event. And even a simple recolor of an existing set can provide this reason. Events like these are often how players learn about older items and other genres in the game. And for players who enjoy content like this, why not give them something to perpetually chase and see where it goes?

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Like I said in my first post, perhaps it should be reclassified if that is the case, but if it is to remain a micro-holiday, there really shouldn’t be any pressure to join in on it:

A constantly evolving list of unlockables only attainable within that space is what you would consider pressure in this case. Players might not even care about the way they actually get the rewards, they’re only in it for the rewards, and you don’t want that in a system that makes you play with other players so they can ruin their fun.

My point was, that I don’t think adding a bunch of rewards that require you to farm the Trial of Style for unique rewards is going to make it better. I did already make this point, but I guess I wasn’t very clear, but thankfully someone else was!

If every season gets 4 new ensambles (1 for each armor class) or new uniques, and they each cost 50 tokens, then the new players that find the system for the first time during season 50 is going to be pretty overwhelmed. A big emphasis on new there; if they’re existing armor sets or recolours, then by all means, go ahead! If you don’t get them during the Trial of Style, you can earn those elsewhere.

I actually had a minor eureka moment just now: what if instead of having an ever-growing list of ensambles, you just had one ensamble available during each season, of existing armour sets? They would rotate during every season, so there’s a different one to collect the next time around. That would mean you could collect that particular ensemble super-easily during the Trial of Style, so you don’t have to farm it the regular way the rest of the year.

I just think the incentives to participate in the system should think long-term. It should be evergreen, without snowballing out of control.

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Since we referencing older posts, allow me to post this again.

The point of this was to state that we do not want to design a product, game, system, or mini-holiday around those who feel obligated and forced to do content of which they hate every second. Within any form of gameplay, this will generally be the smallest number of participants. However, even if a player hates that particular content, that doesn’t imply they will behave poorly (or at least not everyone). Therefore, when you say that, “Players might not even care about the way they actually get the rewards, they’re only in it for the rewards” you are talking about a subset of the smallest portion of the participants.

And it is my understanding that you are saying the overwhelming majority of the player base and participants should not have something new to chase every 6 months, because potentially a subset of a small group of players who will do the bare minimum might be bothered to spend 15 minutes every 6 months? If this is the case, then leveling dungeons should have been abandoned years ago. Who knows, maybe raids and PvP as well! However, you will notice all of these genres still exist, because they prioritized on providing content for those who enjoy it first, then they placed mechanics to help players limit themselves or at make the content more rewarding if they space it out (AKA first win or dungeon of the day bonus).

Now maybe, in an effort to curb poor behavior, in the future we may need to suggested increasing the frequency of the event, or they could introduce some sort of first-of-the-day bonus 1) IF that behavior takes place and 2) IF it happens at a concerning level of frequency or intensity.

However, the idea of not maintaining continued development in an area of the game, over the potential and hypothetical poor behavior of a subset of the smallest portion of a community seems extremely limiting.

Thank you for the clarity! We may simply end up just disagreeing on this topic, but I just want to make sure I am equally clear as well!

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While I do largely agree with this point, the point I’ve made isn’t that we need to design the content for these groups of players who would hate the content, it’s to keep them in mind when designing the content for those who want to participate in it. Especially in content like this, where you play with others, because these people give others a negative experience in turn.

That’s not what I’m saying, no. Like I wrote in the post:

I’m okay with there being something new to get out there, and I’ve already suggested and supported multiple ideas for rewards. I just do not think that this particular type of reward is the right one, it doesn’t think very long term.

You can design a system so that you don’t need to band-aid on a solution on it later, why not learn from these other systems and apply those lessons to this particular system in the first place. These solutions generally came about because there was something wrong with the system in the first place. People would leave dungeons or throw games in PvP, ruining the fun for other people, and so penalties for that was added in. But should we add penalties to a system because there are bad actors, or should we rather avoid having bad actors in it in the first place?

The focus of these activities (perhaps except leveling dungeons) is always on the experience first; the rewards you get from participating in these systems (power) feeds into themselves and build on one another to enhance the experience - and sometimes they come with a couple of bonuses on the side; some pets, mounts, transmog. But those latter rewards are not the primary reason to do raids to most people, the primary reason is always the content itself. And that’s how it should be here, as well.

I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, I can be a bit single-minded about things and I’m really not good with communication in general. I think we’re on the same side, we both want Trial of Style to be better, we just happen to disagree on how to do that - at least on this particular point. And who knows, we might both be right, or wrong, or a bit of both. That’s sort of what the forums are for, isn’t it, to pool ideas together into discussion and see what comes out. And in the end, it might not even matter at all, because it’s not up to either of us to see what becomes of it all.

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I absolutely agree with you here! There are probably input factors for why Trial of Style is where it is that we haven’t even taken into account. However, if the WoW development discussions are anything like those of the design or risk assessment discussions I have been in, the conversation here may end up being a catalyst for discussion on philosophical practices and practical solutions, which as you say, is the reason we are here!

Also, no apology necessary! I understand we are strangers on a forum dance floor, so there will be a period of time where we step on each other’s toes as we get familiar with each other’s perspectives and opinions. I appreciate your feedback, push back, conversation, and I look forward to more of it in the future!

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I’m a few days late to posting this, I’ve been really busy IRL, but wanted to share my two cents on the latest trial of style:

Most relevant to the thread itself, I wanted to say that it’s still a really fun game mode and I enjoy it a lot, and I think the rewards it gives already are neat. I missed out on the past couple of trials and only got to collect the boots this time around, and I was quite pleased with only having to do the trial twice to collect them all - and that’s what I’d consider both a very reasonably price and a good way to get people in the doorway.

But this time around I was still suffering from some of the same problems that I’ve personally experienced in the past as well, and it is specifically related to these rewards.

For six consecutive runs, I was put into a scenario with four of the same people, which I presume were in a group, and some of them were either AFKing or simply not even trying to participate in the prompts given, and in the end they were still getting a lot of votes. It is not particularly fun to play this minigame if people are going to abuse its mechanics to farm loot. At the very least everyone gets consolation prizes, so it’s not about not winning, it’s about having fun and looking at cool transmogs.

I’m not sure how to deal with this sort of problem. I’m not going to say that we shouldn’t add new rewards to it if they’re going to be like the boots, I have changed my mind on that. But if the few rewards we can collect now was enough to make someone group up and ruin the experience for other, random people they were matchmade with, something else needs to be done. I don’t know what, unfortunately :<

TL;DR: trial of style good, people misusing it bad

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This is a big problem. I feel like if a group of 2 queue up, they should ONLY be matched up with a group of 2. (and not have a 5th)

If a group of 3-5 queue up, they should be sent to the trial alone, with just them.

Otherwise, it becomes a “vote for your friend” situation and the other people are screwed.

I’d also like to see an option at the NPC to change your race. Most people will not vote for gnomes, goblins, or dwarves just because they don’t think they look good, or because transmog is very hard to see on the small races.

We know this is possible due to things like the Orb of the Sin’dorei. Even if you just make it so the NPC can apply the Orb of the Sin’dorei effect on you would be better than nothing.

*Note, CAN, not does. It’s important to keep the choice of staying as your race there for those who want it.

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