The Weekly Marmot - What's Going On With Valor?

[Default]

If they would just make Justice Points BoA then I would be happier. I have alts with Blue gear that needs upgraded and 1500 JP is an insane amount to upgrade one piece. While my main sits capped for the past few months.

>_>

(Note: I have 11 80+ toons, I don't PvP, and my charc has full epics) Otherwise its pointless, as noted by this episode.

[LordOdin]

I think the valor upgrade system is just another spin to the "it's not an upgrade until I gem, enchant and reforge it" merry-go-round that now includes upgrading.

I might agree with that if valor points were limitless, but with the cap that's not entirely the case.

Valor upgrading is not for "I just got this item and it's better, so I need to upgrade it to make it better.... er", it's more along the lines of "I'm not replacing this item in the foreseeable future so I'm going to make it even more non-replaceable".

You may gem, enchant and/or reforge a "temporary" item until your preferred item drops, but since it's going to be highly unlikely you'll earn enough valor to upgrade every slot that has an item, and more than once each slotted item, upgrading, as an example, an LFR item when you're in a guild running normal and/or heroic content is essentially a waste of valor that you can't recoup. Besides, even if you were to upgrade the LFR item, the ilvl upgrade from an LFR item that is upgraded compared to a normal mode drop (and this difference is even greater for heroic items) is enough to replace the item before upgrading unless the secondary stats are inferior, in which case it probably wouldn't be an item you'd wish to spend valor on upgrading it anyhow.


What puzzles me most about what's been announced is why the "old" valor items are not being moved down to justice points purchases. With as valuable as valor is, it's hard to believe that spending 625 valor on a 489 ring is a wise purchase instead of spending 1250 on a 508 ring (and that's just an estimate of 19 ilvl upgrade as was the case of tier 9 to tier 10 as well as tier 11 to 12 and from there to 13). And with honor gear being available at 476 item level, does PvP become the preferred method to level a new 90 post 5.2? Or perhaps with the justice point increase from bosses it moves to farming bosses in heroics to convert to honor to buy gear, but that was kind of how it worked at release when justice gear was 450 and honor gear was 464, and they ended up buffing justice gear slightly and dropping item level on honor gear a little bit so that people didn't feel they "had" to PvP to gear efficiently for PvE. However, doesn't it seem that it may go that route again?

[Bigbad]

I like the way blizz is handling valor atm even though it's a bit artificial with removing the npc. New raidpatch you spend valor on items and save up some for when the valor upgrade npc comes back again, this way there aren't any difficult choices between items and upgrading.

Cheap 489 valor items might be nice to quickly bump up ilvl and don't the new valor items require raid reputation?

[Bovinity]

They also help avoid the "we killed everything so now we log in once a week" syndrome that every other tier has had in the past.

1) Why is that a "problem" that needs to be solved? There were things to do for people in previous expansions too, but raiders chose not to do them after raid night because they wanted to punch dragons, not farm kobolds.

2) If this were a problem, does this actually solve it? Raiders already on the progression treadmill won't need to go out and farm all the mundane reps and valor points, and Ultra-casuals weren't clearing raids anyway most likely and already did outdoor stuff like dailies and such.

So again, this doesn't seem to solve anything, it's just a middle finger to those people "in the middle" so to speak. The ones that aren't already raiding, but want to.

[hp2]

They also help avoid the "we killed everything so now we log in once a week" syndrome that every other tier has had in the past.

I'm curious why that's a problem that needs to be solved...

Speaking from my own experience, raiders tend to disappear after they complete their BiS sets. It feels terrible to be the last guy who needs an item off a boss, but raids are getting canceled because everyone else is tired of farming a raid. With the valor upgrade system in place, raiders are incentivized to keep raiding because it is a reasonably efficient way to cap valor in order to upgrade their BiS gear into doubly upgraded BiS gear. By the time raiders have double upgraded their BiS gear and start flaking on raid attendance, the 'unlucky' raiders will be more likely to have their BiS gear as well (just not fully upgraded because they acquired them later). If the raids go on hiatus, those raiders can then earn valor via other methods and double upgrade their BiS as well.

-HP

[Ion]

In my experience, once the content was done, people were pretty uninterested in farming...then again, that might have just been my guild. We had no problem filling progression raids, but farm nights were always tough.

I can't really imagine farming content just to get gear as your sole motivator though...sounds really boring (just like doing LFR/LFG/dailies).

[Nagassh]

1) Why is that a "problem" that needs to be solved? There were things to do for people in previous expansions too, but raiders chose not to do them after raid night because they wanted to punch dragons, not farm kobolds.

Because the root of that problem was "there's nothing to do", when you're paying a subscription for a week but getting a day out of it, it's questionable to say the least.

Back in Dragonsoul I was in that situation, it wasn't because I didn't want to do something in WoW - it's because there wasn't anything I wanted to do.

Pet battles have thankfully brought a nice new sideshow though, far more interesting than spamming 5mans to VP cap because raids give a criminally low amount.

[Thels]

Upgrading your item with valor is but yet another step after acquiring a new item. I finally managed to get my Tier gloves last week, so then I had to:

- Enchant it
- Socket it (I'm a blacksmith)
- Gem it
- Upgrade it (I usually float somewhere between 0 and 3000 valor, so I can upgrade an interesting item right away)
- Reforge it (and a few other pieces)
- Transmogify it (Well, this one's optional of course)

If I were an Engineer, I'd also have to put the engineering thingy on top.

So it doesn't really matter if you have to do 4 or 6 things. We're already at the position where you rarely can equip an item the moment it drops for you and you have to pass by a bunch of vendors anyhow.



What baffles me is the JP upgrade NPC disappearing as well. Sure, the people that played from the start of MoP likely didn't spend much JP (I only used it to upgrade my Hozen's Slicer and then a few blues in my OS gear), but what about people arriving newly into the game.

It seems to me that someone who hits 90 a few weeks pre-5.2 will have an easy time to get mostly 471 geared, allowing him to enter the 483 itemized LFR instances, whereas someone who hit 90 just post 5.2 patch is stuck with 463 gear, and then can only run MSV LFR, and will have to progress through that and reputation locked valor items before he can even hit HoF/ToES.

[Fetzie]

Perhaps they could increase the amount of rep per quest that is given by an old faction when new content comes out?

[Bovinity]

Because the root of that problem was "there's nothing to do", when you're paying a subscription for a week but getting a day out of it, it's questionable to say the least.

Back in Dragonsoul I was in that situation, it wasn't because I didn't want to do something in WoW - it's because there wasn't anything I wanted to do.

Pet battles have thankfully brought a nice new sideshow though, far more interesting than spamming 5mans to VP cap because raids give a criminally low amount.

There were things to do, raiders just generally chose not to do them because they were there to raid.

In any case...pet battles giving you something to do is completely independent of what's going on with the progression path. This isn't "something to do" for people that cleared all the raids for the week, because it doesn't even apply to those people. If you're killing Sha right now, you're not hanging around after raid time saying, "Ooo yeah, I need to go farm me some rep dailies!"

[Theotherone]

I'm curious why that's a problem that needs to be solved...

I'd venture it's the empty world syndrome that Blizz is wanting to correct. GC has said it more than once on Twitter, that they don't want an empty world, that it's not a single player game and a populated world is more appealing. So we have CRZ and "reasons" to log on everyday.

In fact, I think everything they're doing has the poplulated world as the goal, because their data is probably showing them that new players who do the free to lvl 20 aren't subscribing if the world is empty. Altaholics, may keep the lights on the doors open, but it's new subs that generate the bonus money.

So look at what they're doing, slower catch-up, you want to gear an alt or 10 you'll be on line a lot and you'll be there to help new players in lfr; gearing up the main, you'll need valor so you'll be on grinding dailies to supplement your raid drops. If you want it all and you want it now, you'll be logging on often.

It's all about making the world a living breathing place. I think right now they're feeling their way, how much is too much where it pushes existing players to say, "screw it, this just takes too long and is too much of a time sink" and too little that leads to new player saying "if I wanted single player I'll play Sykrim." It's going to be a bumpy ride for a while.

[Fetzie]

GC has said it more than once on Twitter, that they don't want an empty world, that it's not a single player game and a populated world is more appealing. So we have CRZ and "reasons" to log on everyday.

How about giving people reasons to group up in the now filled zones? You know, like group quests did.

[mavfin]

How about giving people reasons to group up in the now filled zones? You know, like group quests did.

Because what really happened after Vanilla was that people who needed those quests just brought their <high-level> guildie or friend and zerged the quest, and anyone asking for help with it at level was simply ignored 9 times out of 10.

[Toypop]

I am not convinced that the "empty world" is causing new players to quit at 20.

I suspect that other players in heirlooms running around tagging every mob in sight and stealing farming nodes from under their noses might have something to do with it! Very appealing - NOT! I suspect that the new players might consider that laughable game experience in a wider context and say "screw paying a sub for this, I will log off and play Far Cry 3 instead".

By the way over the weekend I thought that for a laugh I would try gearing up one of my alts without participating in "optional" activities such as daily quests or gold farming to buy epics.

I did however cheat and buy some blue PVP gear to get my ilevel up to 445.

At first I ran half a dozen scenarios. I didn't receive a single item upgrade but wasted as much time as I would have spent in 5 man HC's so I soon abandoned that plan. I did earn a bit of VP but that is of course useless as I have no rep. So the time I spent was completely wasted.

I then ran around a dozen 5 man HC's. I only saw 2 items drop that were of use to me (even though I didn't have a single 463 item equipped) and both were "stolen" by other players. By "stolen" I don't even mean "needing for offspec", they were literally useless to their class (worse than a levelling green) and taken purely for the purpose of cheating the ilevel in RF. In fact I was surprised that they could need on them at all.

I earned some more useless VP in the process and a tiny amount of a JP which is also useless - partly because of the small quantity and partly because JP gear is too low an ilevel.

So for all that time spent I achieved absolutely nothing! Biggest waste of in game time in all the years I have been playing. Some of the looting issues in particular completely demotivated me and destroyed the fun - you can look at that when asking why new players quit the game as I am sure the perceived injustices are not at all popular.

To be honest I really don't think the old progression path of using 5 mans to gear up is viable any more. I'd be doing that for six months and likely still not get into RF. Unless you have ridiculously good luck it will never happen for you. Dailies, PVP or gold grinding are mandatory and not optional.

The reason I bring this up is to back up my claim for the sake of new players, alts and offspecs that the current VP gear should be moved to JP vendors (and the rep requirement removed) and the amount of JP awarded given a serious buff (which I believe is going to happen?). Until that happens I see the majority of players following my lead and choosing to sacrifice the entire alt-game rather than run the "mandatory optional" activities.

[Mwawka]

I agree with....Toypop? (No, no, the master will be angry, the master will be angry!!)

Seems like all they're going to accomplish is making fresh 90's look at the progression path and say, "Eh, screw it." and not even bother. It doesn't even affect any other players, people already in guilds or on the raiding path will continue on as normal. So I guess it's just a big middle finger to anyone that wasn't in a raid group at the start of the expansion.

I'm really at a loss as to what problem this new system solves.

I know this isn't really the topic of the Marmot, but I'm very worried about the lack of a means to catch up to current tier. I am on an extremely low population server with only two horde guilds past 4/6 MSV. Both of our guilds are 3/6H MSV atm, but the limiting issue is recruitment. We've been pared from 13 raiders at the start of MoP to 10 right now and are desperately seeking bodies, but there are none to be had. We have a couple of players coming back and basically progression is likely to be put on hold to get them geared up so we can tackle 5.2 with a geared group. This is necessary because once 5.2 drops there will be no quick way to get a raider geared and in the rotation anymore, other than going back to old content. They come ready or you're screwed as a group and everytime you lose someone you face the same path of going backwards to try to go forwards again. It's attunements all over again, with the caveat being that the gearing up is the attunement process. If we have similar attrition of players during 5.2 we are likely done organized raiding, which would be the end of my time in WoW. IMO, the legendary questline in and of itself should be enough to keep people going back to t14 content (at least enough to keep those LFR's active), but Blizzard seems to have developed this mentality that they want to force people to see everything, even if it's not what the people want. It's a we made it, you're damn well gonna use it philosophy and it'll bite them in the ass.

There are a couple of semi-solutions to this issue. The easiest one is to not change the model of VP gear converting to JP gear. A second one that may be more palatable to Blizzard considering how they seem to be directing the game is to bump the iLvl of LFR gear from the previous tier, but that would create a storm in the community. I just believe this direction of forced progression path is going to be a bad thing on the whole leading to low pop raiding issues not to mention the return of 'feeder' guilds who never get to progress because they basically become gear stops for people who want to run current content. We shall see.

[Theotherone]

The reason I bring this up is to back up my claim for the sake of new players, alts and offspecs that the current VP gear should be moved to JP vendors....

I can actually agree with this.

[Toypop]

but Blizzard seems to have developed this mentality that they want to force people to see everything, even if it's not what the people want. It's a we made it, you're damn well gonna use it philosophy and it'll bite them in the ass.

It is funny but there have been many blue posts lately banging on about choice. "Making you do X is ok because there are now multiple ways to achieve X" etc. Yet on this issue that goes out of the window.

Of course the problem is if they gave us the choice in terms of multiple catch up paths we would likely make the "wrong" choice in their eyes.

I'd give anything to see the number of hours players spend in game now versus figures from Wrath.

MOP: Far more hours spent playing on each toon but far fewer toons being played.

Wrath: Far less hours spent playing each toon but a far larger number of toons being played.

All I know is that providing content to keep a Main busy for an entire tier is expensive....where as providing enough content to keep multiple alts busy has no additional cost associated with it...

[Thels]

I know this isn't really the topic of the Marmot, but I'm very worried about the lack of a means to catch up to current tier. I am on an extremely low population server with only two horde guilds past 4/6 MSV. Both of our guilds are 3/6H MSV atm, but the limiting issue is recruitment. We've been pared from 13 raiders at the start of MoP to 10 right now and are desperately seeking bodies, but there are none to be had. We have a couple of players coming back and basically progression is likely to be put on hold to get them geared up so we can tackle 5.2 with a geared group. This is necessary because once 5.2 drops there will be no quick way to get a raider geared and in the rotation anymore, other than going back to old content. They come ready or you're screwed as a group and everytime you lose someone you face the same path of going backwards to try to go forwards again. It's attunements all over again, with the caveat being that the gearing up is the attunement process. If we have similar attrition of players during 5.2 we are likely done organized raiding, which would be the end of my time in WoW.

I feel your pain. On our server, one raiding guild after another is migrating away because there aren't any people to recruit from, and we currently have only 3 decent raiding guilds remaining on alliance side (horde side is worse). I am very worried about 5.2 and wondering if we can still raid then.

Sure, forcing lower level raiding guilds is nice and all, IF there are the people available for that. Blizzard needs to fix the low-pop servers before they can implement something like this.

MOP: Far more hours spent playing on each toon but far fewer toons being played.

Wrath: Far less hours spent playing each toon but a far larger number of toons being played.

But alts are not for everyone. Some people enjoy doing the same content over and over again on vastly different characters. Others prefer to only play around on a single character.