Devs,
I wanted to provide some feedback from the standpoint of a forced-casual player (I’ll explain below) and how the current design of the crest and valorstone upgrade system makes me feel. I also would like to acknowledge that I am likely in a more unique situation than most, so my feedback is going to be a bit on the narrow and tailored to my circumstances and may be so cooked, it’s been cremated. While I am sure I would represent a small part of the player base, I still play and pay for this game and would like to say my peace as well.
TLDR: It makes me feel frustrated and discouraged to the point where I’ve debated quitting the game until next season when I can get a more “fresh start” in since it feels like am impossible uphill climb with limited time.
With that said, I like the INTENTION of the system but I think it’s missing some polish and I question why this system exists as it does with the introduction of the warband and account-wide ‘everything’. My suggestion is 2 fold:
- Make crests warband transferrable once you have received the achievement for outgrowing that type of crest at a 1:1 ratio.
- Reduce the amount of upgrades between gear steps (maybe 4 total instead of 8) or reduce the costs (I’d prefer a reduction in cost at this point).
CONTEXT:
I am a competitive player in my own right. While I don’t have near the time to play this game how I’d like to, I do still pride myself on being a solid player at the end of the day and I play to challenge myself as far as I can with my time restrictions. When a season first comes out, I tend to be a top performer in my group; however, as I have a uniquely busy life compared to my guildmates, I quickly get outpaced on my team, often times falling 10+ ilvls behind the group by about week 3-4 of a new season since DF. My player skill still typically keeps me viable for the group but I’ve hit a block twice so far with crests or valorstones in TWW and since this new gear system was introduced inDF, I’m essentially forced to either crawl forward while others are sprinting, relegate myself to feeling like a carry in my group, l or quit from discouragement knowing time is preventing me from actually playing the content I enjoy and find challenging.
On my ‘main’ (Note: I’m actively swapping back to my evoker), I have an abundance of crests but my upgrade path has been blocked by valorstones for awhile. On this character, it’s the exact opposite where I have an abundance of stones but no crests.
What are my options?
- Option 1: I can play my ‘main’ and grind valorstones to spend my crests, but I am not wanting to play that character anymore so that isn’t a great use of my time and would give no benefits towards swapping so it seems like a lost cause.
- Option 2: I could play my ‘alt’ that I’m actively switching to as my main, but I need to grind crests for upgrades.
Option 1 is out, so let’s review Option 2. How can I reliably get the crests I need?
- Raids
- Keys
- PVP (not my thing)
- Delves
RAIDS:
Obviously locked to a weekly cap and I’m stuck at the heroic crests. It’s inefficient to grind out normal raids to trade up crests, and I have a limited weekly amount of crests I can obtain from raid per week so this only takes me so far.
KEYS:
I could grind +4-7 keys for the crests I need, but a successful timed run only drops 12 crests (15 are needed to upgrade). With how many upgrades are needed per slot, why one run doesn’t equal one upgrade is beyond me. Because of my time restrictions, my score is low and it’s no surprise that players invite based on score. I get players want the highest chance of success or efficiency so high ilvl and high score will always place me at a deficit compared to my peers (I have no issue with that through process btw). If I have an hour or two to play, between the time it takes to find a group and complete the run, I may get 1-3 keys in because of the constant denials into groups. Yes, this can be offset a little by running my own key, but people may not sign up given my score since they assume I’d be fishing for a carry. That gives me 1 to 2 upgrades in that time.
DELVES:
This, while a mode I’ve enjoyed playing, it’s not really a viable method to get crests and therefore is largely a waste of time to run given my goals.
UPGRADE COSTS:
As I mentioned before, it’s 15 crests, pre-achievement, to upgrade an item a single track level. Items, while obviously dropping at variable upgrade levels, average probably 4-5 upgrades needed for the typical person to max it out on it’s upgrade path. I’ll use 4.5 as an average.
4.5x15 =67.5 (68) crests to max out an item on average for most players factoring in variable item drops.
67.5 / 12 = 5.625 (6) keys needed to obtain the crests needed to upgrade a single piece.
We have 15 (2H) or 16 (DW or MH/OH) slots to upgrade. Let’s use 15 as the base and subtract 2 items for embellish crafted items down to 13.
13 x 68 = 884 crests needed to upgrade all slots if you average 4.5 upgrades per piece to max it out.
884 / 12 = 73.66r or 74 keys needed.
If each key takes an average of 25 minutes for you to set up, arrive, and complete, that’s 1850 minutes / 60 = 30.8 or 31 hours of playtime just to get past this block using keys only.
This feels like an impossible climb, and reminds me more of the time sink I faced when I was competitively playing in Legion, driving Maw on multiple characters all day for multiple specs/weapons. I imagine, I’m not the only one that feels this way. I know that when you add in raids and other sources, it’s quicker, but I am just keeping it simple for example sake.
Let’s say I can shave 10 hours from that, that’s still 21 hours of playtime. If, outside of the scheduled raid times, I am able to commit another 2 hours in a week, it’s going to take me 10.5 weeks just to finish that climb assuming I’m being efficient with getting into groups and completing runs and not factoring in caps, valorstones, etc.
THOUGHTS:
- Why aren’t crests and valorstone warbound? If they still are beholden to the character cap, I don’t see a downside to this. With a cap in place and being account bound, it just add flexibility on what you can play while still being able to funnel these currencies to your main (with caps applied) so you’re not really getting ahead unless I am missing something nor punished for playing other characters.
- Why do both currencies exist? This seems extremely unnecessary. I don’t see a purpose for valorstones to exist at all. I think removing them and just allowing crests to do the work makes more sense and simplifies things.
CREST UPGRADE SUGGESTIONS:
I do enjoy the overlap between the shared gear progression but maybe make some tweaks. Using current item tracks:
- Explorer gear: Just scales in rewards based on your ilvl up to 580.
- Adventurer = Weathered, Veteran = Carved. Champion = Runed, Hero and Myth = Gilded.
- The 1-4 tracks require 5 crests per upgrade of their respective crest. The 5-8 tracks require 10 crests per upgrade of their respective crest. Myth track being an exception which would require 10 base for 1-3 and 15 for 4-6 respectively.
- Example: Champion 1-4 would require 5 runed crests per upgrade, Champion 5-8 would require 10 runed crests per upgrade. Hero 1-4 (which is the same ilvl tracks at Champion 5-8) would require 5 gilded crests. Hero 5-8 would still require 10 gilded per upgrade.
- Allow crest conversions to be easier. Maybe something like 60 to upgrade for 10 of the next track and 15 to downgrade for 30 of the lower track.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Coming into TWW, warbands were supposed to incentivize freedom and ability to play alts. Account-wide ‘everything’ was introduced which has gone a long way towards making this expansion one of my favorites thus far, but the gear upgrade/crest system doesn’t feel well integrated into this feature. In expansions past, alt-unfriendly systems like random legendaries, extreme character bound rep grinds, artifact power, azerite essence acquisition and upgrades, etc all made the game force you to commit to one character and punished you from freely playing the game. We’ve made huge strides to flip the script but this particular system, seems like it’s desperately holding on to antiquated traditions. I hope this post gets some visibility, opens some discussions, and that people a heck of a lot smarter than I am also weigh in, pick apart the what I can only assume are many flaws in my post, and can provide solid solutions to preserve the concept of what you’re shooting for with this system but making it less punishing for those you unfortunately can’t live in Azeroth.