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This week:
0:34 - Should new 5-mans added after 5.2 drop the same ilevel gear as the current ones?
5:45 - How should gating work for Throne of Thunder?
9:18 - Do class buffs/nerfs make Challenge Mode leaderboards invalid?
13:51 - Will it be easier to gear for later raids through PvP?
17:49 - How important is RNG in class design?
22:36 - Are monks getting too many changes too quickly?
28:46 - Is the new raid coming too soon?
33:53 - Do replacement legendary gems cost too much?
Hmm, I had never checked the replacement's cost, 10k is absurd.
I would be all for scaling/ modding old content to allow for 5 man raids or even high level 1-2 man raids. Longime solo players could take toons into the content after thery have talen the game time to level....... (Some would drool at the Trannymog possibilities......)
The PVP vs PVE gear could be solved by simply having the SAME item level, but the stats on the gear would be 10/15/25% specialized for the activity it is earned for/from? Maybe have a couple of pices that do overlap, but make them fairly "Shortlived" in the belt/bracers/gloves category.
Yeah, there does seem to be a learning curve each new class has for the developers for gaining a sense of balance. Seems like a fairly normal learning factor with uses of a new tool sort of thing to me.
Gems for a gold sink seems to be legit to me. There has to be a reason for people to do something besides raid. "Grinding Gold" a bit to gem equipment doesn't seem to be a big deal. It is also a means of getting people out of the cities.......
0:34/13:51: As I have said before, the TBC progression system via RF will not work due to the problems of smaller pools of queuing players leading to extended queue times. Further crippled by the daily quest/rep system having killed off so many alts.
We don't need to force people to laboriously gear alts by raiding each previous tier for months at a time. It isn't like Wrath where gems such as Ulduar were only experienced by a teeny minority and "went to waste" once the TOC/ICC 5 mans were released. In MOP every man and his dog are already bored sick of T14 RF, you think they will stomach three to four months of it on each alt too?! Blizz have extracted the full value out of T14's development costs unlike Ulduar (and T11) which by their own admission was a commercial failure.
I am 100% comfortable with skipping it on alts. Worth pointing out that in TBC most players didn't even run alts (many were not level capped on mains and barely anyone saw all the raid tiers) and the hardcore raiders that were fully gearing up alts generally tended to do so rapidly via boost runs as opposed to slowly grinding through each tier. Folks forget that.... Remember Sunwell? How long did it take you guys to gear those Shaman alts? Months of grinding or fast-track guild boost runs?
The issue with PVP v PVE gear is for me a problem that I lay firmly at the door of PVE gear. PVP gear has always been preferable due to the lack of RNG and of course for the past few years there have been a glut of crafting recipes that make entire sets of ridiculously low priced items. We got some weapon recipes from Molton Front but generally speaking crafted PVE gear in later tiers has always required ultra expensive mats that drop in raids. There were no budget items to rival the low cost PVP crafts.
The JP system (currently an irrelevance) needs to be addressed so that it allows players to predictably gear alts with "catch up gear" at an acceptable speed and free from all the nonsense with RNG and the main/off spec arguments in DF. Additional crafting recipes for PVE gear to rival the PVP patterns would also be nice along with a new tier of 5 man dungeons. Players hate RNG. They would rather grind gold or JP/HP.
Fix PVE catch up gear and abandon that TBC/RF nonsense is my solution. Don't nerf PVP gear.
33:53: I think we need more gold sinks. Anything that takes money out of the economy is a great idea - apart from this one. It kind of discourages players, especially those at the Normal/RF level, from using them. We have caps on VP to encourage players to use them as opposed to hoarding and yet this price tag encourages hoarding. I could come up with a million and one superior alternatives for sucking gold out of the economy. I do find it amusing though; my gem has been gathering dust in my bag for ages due to not having a weapon where as this guy has two!:rolleyes:
Perhaps instead of gold for purchasing new gems have it so that you turn in five of each of the tokens that drop from bosses...or even ten like in the original quest.
Toypop...you are bang on about the PvE gear, Blizzard really needs to address what you've mentioned.
Don't know that I agree with that. Queues can be long at the moment due to role distribution, not population. There will be several hundred people in the queue at any given point, you're just waiting for the right mix. Shrinking down the population doesn't really change that appreciably except in extreme cases (e.g. queueing at 6am).Quote:
Originally Posted by Toypop
Put another way: right now if you have 190 total tanks and dps in the queue, you need 60 total healers to get everyone in. If you shrink that population by 50% then sure, you'll only have 30 healers to fill groups out, but you also only have 95 tanks and healers waiting for them.
It's certainly something to keep an eye on but I think there's a very fair chance that it won't be an issue.
I also think that as time goes on people will realize that they don't really have to be focusing so hard on maximizing everything on their alts in order to still enjoy playing them.
I'm not sure that assessment of the population of LFR is really accurate. Definitely the systemic lack of healers is the predominant factor but I don't think its the only significant factor. I think already that the additional variance in the accumulation of critical mass for a LFR group imposed by effectively dividing the LFR mass into 5 groups (one for each extant LFR) IS a significant impediment to the creation of an LFR group already. This may not be as true for the Tue-Thurs core raiding days for those who can somehow raid during work days but even for the non-primetime days it is already a factor. Dividing people up even further (say 8 total LFRs in tier15) is only going to exacerbate the problem. Combine this with what it is going to do to the already problematic issue of guild formation (i.e. how do we combine those who are done with e.g. Mogushan with those just recently returning) and I think this whole idea of MoP requiring progression through all of the tier is a horrible idea for what I perceive to be the wide majority of players who move in and out of the raiding scene as RL dictates.
Don't really mind the goldsink of the gem at all. I don't really see how it fits in with their (apparent) current ideology but the idea that having to do something outside of raiding (in this case making gold) can affect your raiding capability doesn't seem outside of any of the established boundaries. If those who don't focus on their AH activities suffer a detriment then I don't see any more of an issue with that than with people who refuse to do dailies or any other facet of the game.
@tawnos
Going all Gordon Gecko on the AH isn't a feature of the game. The gem just doesn't feel like a good thing to have as a goldsink; mounts, yes, toys, yes, but not a piece of gear with no other way to acquire it.
In total agreement with Kagitaar. Goldsinks should ultimately feel rewarding. Having to pay 10k gold for a replacement gem isn't. It takes the excitement of a new weapon upgrade and replaces it with a swift kick to the mean bean machine.
Two relevant recent tweets from Greg Street:
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/286195938295422976
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/285887743878393856
The first one says that they're open to making catchup via LFR fairly quick on average, which would make those LFRs more popular. The second one suggests that Josh is right and there are plenty of people in LFR, and the queue times just reflect the distribution of roles.
I can't say that Lore is wrong.
It is just an unproven theory of mine based on raiding outside of peak of hours and doing some of the less popular levelling dungeons that have a small pool of players - certain level 70/80 dungeons that players skip in favour of dungeons in the next expansion etc. I waited for hours even as a tank/healer for some of those.
I may end up looking like a horses-behind but I think that when pool sizes reduce it is has a greater effect on queue time due to the reduction of "liquidity" in the system. There is far less "liquidity" in RF versus DF due to the weekly lockout and longer session time. I appreciate what Lore is saying about the importance of role representation and had factored that into my thinking. In fact I believe the liquidity issue combines with the problem of there being disproportionate role ratios of people queueing in RF (versus raid spots) to increase queues when the pool size drops.
As for GC's comments. I think it is true that the gearing up rates will have to be increased otherwise RF wouldn't be acting as a "catch up". Given my current looting history in RF I'd avoid it and run dailies for JP/VP and do PVP instead. I'd never catch up if I relied on RF so again we create a system where alts require too large a commitment.
Rather than boosting the drop rate, perhaps they will remove the lock out? Boosting the drop rate could further reduce the pool size queueing at any given time and increase queues if my theory is correct. We need people running it a lot and very often. Forcing them to repeatedly run content for gear with no lockout restrictions is better than having them run it a few times, gathering all the gear and moving on to the next tier.
The new loot system in RF is a bonus as it reduces the requirement to try and maintain acceptable ratios of armour types - boosting "liquidity". Blizz may also want to introduce the new "choose your loot-role" system as well to help keep queues down. Although the latter makes a complete mockery of the already laughable ilevel restrictions for joining RF.
I don't agree with GC's comments about Molton Core. Sure there might be enough interested parties to form a number of MC groups but more important is whether those people are online twiddling their thumbs and ready to go NOW. I know GC has internal knowledge and figures but he has made plenty of bad calls in the past so I would not take his opinion as being the word of god.
Besides I think it will be Ok in 5.2. I'd be more worried about those trying to gear alts once the final tier is released. Both in terms of queue times for T14 and the chance of ever catching up.
One other point. I'd love to know if the role ratios of alts varies versus the role ratios of mains. I've always felt that there is a greater representation of tanks and healers amongst alts than mains.
The 10k gold is just annoying ... I have 2 RF Shin'ka, Execution of Dominion for my DK ... one for MS Frost with the Sha gem and now one for OS Tank but I'm not going to pay 10k for the gem in my tank one. If I am going to tank a lot I can go reforge and put a new rune on it, which makes it easier than most classes ... but it is just plain annoying. At 1k gold I would buy one. The 10k for the rogue quest in 4.3 was more reasonable since you got to do fun quest too!
The introduction of new VP gear with its associated down shift of the previous VP gear to JP along with BOE bracers and boots provided a good catchup path in Cata. It's not clear that that will happen in MoP given upgrade system for items. I assume they will change the upgrade system to allow JP to be used for below current raid tier items which will help on catch up a bit, while VP upgrades will be for current tier.
More importantly there needs to be new 5 man content for those who enjoy it and it would be nice if it offered some gear to make it more popular so people will queue for it.
I still have another week to go, so I have to ask, what about the Eye of the Black Prince (the second questline item)? Will I be able to get another of those? How? At what cost? All of these upgrades are just creating so many questions.
For that matter, what about 5.2 weapons?
Gem 10k goldQuote:
Originally Posted by Kagitaar
Blizzard Dev1: how much is the gem again?
Blizzard Dev2: Idk 20K?
Blizzard Dev1: Sounds good.
But i do hope the drop them down to like 200g
I think they should have allowed the Sigils to continue to drop, and make every new gem cost 5 of each.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anghio
Considering i hve 21 spare; Yes.
Only 21? I had nearly 40 of the damn Strength ones by the time I got my tenth Wisdom >.>Quote:
Originally Posted by Tengenstein
[something derailing about unpredicatable loot drop rates]
As someone for whom an epic MOP weapon, let alone sha-touched, has never dropped, I'm not going to feel any sympathy for the QQ of people suffering the inconvenience of a measly 10K gold for having more than one sha-touched weapon.
10K gold is really not all that - it's one crafted epic armor item, it's 10 crafted augments (patches, buckles, scopes etc). Basically, it's 8-10 spirits of harmony. And you can literally farm those in a week.