I remember when I first started playing the game and got this really great item while soloing Blackfathom Deeps. That is a story in itself, long story short, I was new and did not realize that it was a dungeon meant for 5 people and thought it was just some really challenging content that was optional. I decided to take up that challenge and started my effort to solo it around level 20 or so and I downed that first boss and got this awesome shield that, of course, my hunter could not use. So what is a hunter to do? Sell it of course.
I soon learned I could not sell it because it was soulbound and was forced to vendor it. The first thing I thought back then, and still think up to this day, is that is stupid. This is a great shield and someone out there could get a hell of a lot of use out of it.
Flash forward many years to when Diablo 3 came out and I saw their loot system for the first time. Nothing was soulbound. I could even sell that legendary fist weapon my demon hunter had no use for. The words that passed my mind were "this is f'n awesome, warcraft should be like this".
So what if it were? What if there were no such thing as soulbound gear?
There are a few downsides that people will immediately bring up. People having gear they do not deserve. Someone in all raid gear that never stepped into a raid, stuff like that. Another downside would be that the gold sellers would all become gear sellers and the game could very well become a game of who can spend the most money. Both of these are reasonable arguments, I'll give them that, but does it really matter in the end?
If people really wanted to spend money for gear there are already enough places they can buy BoE items from online and there are even places they can go to by a carry, places that will drag them through content and let them get all the gear. So the money thing really is not much of an issue. The people that would buy gear straight out might be slightly higher than the number of people that would server transfer for a carry but who cares? I know I don't. The gear won't make the player. Even if they are in all heroic gear if they are a shitty player they are a shitty player.
The fact of people getting gear that don't deserve it is already in game.. Do you know how many hunters I see walking around in better gear than I have yet they are not capable of pulling 50% of the DPS I do? They did not deserve that gear because they don't know what to do with it but they got it. So nothing will change. Or maybe something would. Now they would get it because they deserve it. They purchased it. Being they made, or bought, the gold to buy it, they deserve it because they paid for it and I too can get it just as easily if I am willing to put in the effort of earning enough gold to buy it. Or if I decide to go the easy route and buy the gold online or buy the item online. That might seem like the cheap and easy route but gold or cash, you are still paying for it which means you deserve it and did not just luck into it. Either way, it actually removes the people getting gear they do not deserve thing because now the playing field would be leveled and anyone can get it, if they have the gold. Everyone has a 100% equal chance at gear now.
The one biggest side effect I could see coming from it is the lack of high end enchanting materials if everything could be sold. Who would disenchant that new chest piece that dropped that no one needed if you can sell it for 60K on the auction house. Lets see, 60K for the chest piece or 500 gold for the sha crystal. Hard choice right? Let me think about that one for a bit.
For all the bad things that could come from gear not being soulbound there are a dozen great things that could come up with from it not being soulbound.
Things like my raid needing a third healer for the fight we are on tonight and I am the only person that has a ToT capable healer ready at the moment that is scheduled to be on. I can now go on my healer but announce that I am rolling as if I were on my hunter. It would further what they were trying to accomplish with shared achievements. Making people feel as if they could do things on any character and not be tied to a main. Now I could roll on stuff for my main while not playing my main.
Or how about T11 when we did not have a holy paladin and it seemed every single boss dropped some sort of intellect plate. We could have sold that, traded it for stuff the people in the raid could use, or saved it for the priest healer that was leveling their paladin alt to heal so they would be all caught up the second they had hit 85. Instead we just ended the expansion with everyone in the guild having 100s of crystals.
No soulbound items would also mean all those great transmog type items you got while doing your solo runs or fun runs could be traded to the character that actually needed it. I like to solo on my hunter and so often I see things and think, that would be awesome on my paladin or wouldn't my priest look awesome with that. Now you can just send it over to them.
What about the bad luck many people have with drops and how something you need never drops when you are on the character that needs it but always seems to drop when you are on one that doesn't. How many times did you run the mechanar on your tank trying to get the sun eater only to go there once on another character and it drop? No more if items were not soulbound. Get it on your priest, send it to your warrior. Woot.
Sure, for randoms there would need to be a new, smarter, roll system so people don't just need on everything for their alts or to sell. But that can be accomplished. If it is something that could be used, and is an upgrade for you, the need button will be lit, if not, it won't. So if I were to run gate of the setting sun on my hunter and the 476 epic drops at the end even if my hunter can equip it and it is specifically meant for a hunter I would not be able to need on it as I have something better. I could only greed and hope to win it so I could send it to one of my alt hunters that does not have it. Something along those lines. Just like if a shaman can use intellect leather, they still can not hit need on it. Sure, it might even be an upgrade in a sense, but it is not specifically meant for them, so they can not hit need on it.
I think this sort of smarter roll system should also include spec. If you are an elemental shaman you can not need on enhancement gear. Even if your offspec is enhancement. Even if it would be an upgrade. That is not what you are there for so all you could do is greed it and hope you win it for your offspec.
If they are going to expand the LFR loot system they could also expand it so people can choose not only which spec they get loot for but what class and spec they get it for. So I can run the LFR on my priest, for instant queue of course, and get my DK their DPS gear by checking that is what I wish to receive loot for, if I should be lucky enough to win something that is.
That would be required with things not being soulbound, a new roll system. Lets face it, people will hit need on everything they can just to sell it, so you would need to change the need to mean really really need and the system will double check you actually need it and it is meant for the spec you are currently in before allowing you to hit need.
I think the game would be leaps and bound better for everyone if the diablo loot system were added as such but that would not be just the non-soulbound loot. It would be everything. Like great loot being able to drop off anything, anywhere, at any time. The random nature of secondary stats would just be higher off the drops in higher difficulty situations. Just like it is in diablo.
What if there were no such thing as soulbound?
I'll stand by my original assessment, "this is f'n awesome, warcraft should be like this".
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The show-stopper for infinitely tradeable gear is not that someone gets gear they don't deserve, or that whoever spends most money (real or virtual) wins - it's that infinitely tradeable gear trivializes content.
ReplyDeleteWhatever gear level the content is balanced for, being able to trade it without limitation eventually (typically: very fast) creates a situation where *everyone* has gear way above the expected level. Balancing the content to maximum level of gear possible avoids that, but produces a crappy game, since noone can really beat anything.
It's a no-go, and D3 shows it. It is much better, in my opinion, to make it so that gear plays a lesser role overall (say, 80% of player's power stems from his ability to click the right buttons / predict / plan / etc, and 20% stems from doing that in the right gear; in WoW the numbers are something like 10% and 90%, naked characters are useless).
By way of example, 18 months or so ago most D3 players were getting up to Act 2 of the last difficulty mode and no further. They were then spending months and months farming Act 1 of the last difficulty mode and Acts 4 and 3 of the previous mode, as well as monitoring the auction, in order to get enough gear to make progress.
DeleteA couple of months ago I created a new character and marched on through everything, every act of every mode, without any stops. Why? Because people farmed so much gear that the auction house was full of it, at throwaway prices.
Took me about 30 hours of play time to do what was previously taking 1000+.
That would be a good thing however. It would allow people to move up and enjoy more of the game.
DeleteWith extra gear instead of it taking my guild 4 or 5 months to finish a raid we might be able to do it in 3 or 4 and try some more heroics.
People that can not even do normals might now be able to muscle their way through them which would most definitely increase the number of pugs you see as people can compensate with gear to some small extent. More pugs means tighter communities, better communities, and a return to something that made wow great to being with, the community.
While I do like the game it is not the game that keeps me playing year after year, it is the people I play with. But for the last 2 years it seems I am meeting fewer and fewer people as there are no pugs happening and I have less chance to run with the people on my own server and the few times I do it is usually a horrible experience. As more people in my guild move on, and there are no new people I've met to take their place, sooner or later the feeling of belonging somewhere, of the little community I am in, will be gone and then so will I.
So gear allowing people to power through some content by over gearing it is a good thing, a VERY good thing, and exactly what the game needs, in my opinion of course.
However, if they did what you said, and made gear 20% of the equation, that could work as well. I think part of the reason pugs have been nonexistent on my server and many like them is because gear plays such a huge issue that average players need to be near the gear level, or even over it, to clear and content. If it were skill related and not gear related you could problem get more pugs going as the few skilled players could carry a few lesser skilled players a lot better then a few geared player trying to carry under geared ones.
As long as gear is 90% of the equation, they need to make gear more accessible and being unsoulbound is the best way to accomplish that.
Reply to second post as you posed it as I was writing the other.
DeleteNot so sound rude with this answer but... So?
Really, so?
What is wrong with it taking you 30 hours instead of 1000. If anything, for the wow player base that wants everything and wants it now, that is a good thing. Don't you think?
I love to grind, that is why I liked diablo. I loved going around killing things like mad trying to get good drops. I, however, am a rare and dying breed. Most don't like that 1000 game even if I did.
I know I didn't but it was not ebcause of teh drops - it was the endless killing (no questing) and the cheesy console game controls and look. :Þ
Delete-roo, as the great George Takei says "Oh mmmyyyyy!"
One difference in WoW though is that raid tiers don't last that long. At best, you're talking 6 months or so, which is 24 weeks worth of gear drops. After that there's a new tier and everyone starts chasing it and no one cares about the previous one anymore.
DeleteThe other difference is that farming in D3 can be done solo, but you need to pull 9 other people in to farm a raid. Some guilds might do it just to make some money, but the supply of non current-tier gear would probably dry up fairly quickly once a new patch was released, leaving only people selling old pieces they didn't need anymore
So that might actually make people raid more and be more community oriented. I think that would be a good thing, even if I am the anti-social type that hates pugs. lol
DeleteThe problem with D3 taking 30 hours instead of 1000+ hours to complete is that this is the whole game. You just walk in and go kill everything all the way to the last boss, making occasional stops at the auction, without being challenged, ever, and then you stop playing. And I am not exaggerating about not being challenged, ever - I think I only died *once* and that was just something random, not the result of difficulty.
DeleteI agree that WoW is different from D3 in that WoW constantly adds new raid tiers, so perhaps it won't suffer from the "I did everything there is to do, multiple times, no reason to play anymore" quite as much, but I am not convinced the world would be too rosy either. The lesson that D3 taught just seems too strong to me (no difficulty *whatsoever* all the way through the game). At the very least, all raid tiers before the last one won't matter one bit. It can be argued that they don't matter much now either, but there is still a difference between "level to 90, spend two weeks doing heroics and then easy raids, done, you are prepared for the last tier" and "level to 90, spend 10 minutes and 500 gold on the AH, done, you are prepared".
All in all, maybe infinitely tradeable gear will kind-of work for WoW, with some caveats, but I'd advise extreme caution as the effects can be really extreme. I wouldn't be surprised at some bizarre factor which we don't discuss here completely ruining the game in ways we don't currently imagine. Noone thought that gear would trivialize D3 to the extent it did. The argument was "but people trade items already in D2, things seem fine". That didn't go as expected.
I have not played D3 since it has entered the heavy farmed and everything is on sale phase you mention it is in now but I can see it and understand where you are coming from.
DeleteIt still gives people a choice. Someone that is new and does not have gold will still have to grind to make gold or get gear.
The fact that so many would actually go and buy the things to turn them into superpowered super heroes shows that is what they want. Just because you have the gold does not mean you have to spend it gearing up your character. People do it because they want to.
I do agree however that in a single player game like that, losing all that time playing could be a bad thing for design. But as you mentioned, wow really is a different story.
You are very right. There could be factors that none of us mentioned here that come into play. And that is what I pose these what if posts about. To talk about... what if.
You're wrong about the sha crystals being 500G because in a theoretical wow with no soulbound items, the floor of the Sha crystal cost would be the cheapest epic you can find on the auction house, not 500G. It is only 500G now because sha crystals are common.
ReplyDeleteVery true, they would likely go up being people would try to sell the items instead. Probably would come down to when you needed one you would just buy whatever was the cheapest purple on the market and disenchant it.
DeleteI'm already stacking popcorn in anticipation of all the drama of not allowing one's guild to borrow one's gear when one can't come for a raid but has the best gear or even lending one's gear to people who don't understand the difference between lend and give.
ReplyDeleteActually, I wonder how would it change the guild dynamics; I guess you don't know either since you didn't talk much about it, is it so?
I have no idea. It would have to depend on the individuals.
DeleteI can see many guilds having issues because a lot of players are nothing more than me, me, me, gear whores that cry and whine if they do not get every piece that drops.
Mine however, we are always passing even if we win because someone else might get better use out of it. Hence the reason I am there and not in a more progressed guild, I like the people. But I can only guess that for most guilds it could be an issue.
I actually did not mention it because I did not even think about it. As I said, my guild never has gear drama so gear drama never even crossed my mind.
You know what they say, out of sight out of mind. That is only a problem other people have, but it is a valid concern that I had not noticed, thanks for bringing it up. Would love to see what others think.
Well, if WoW didn't have soulbound gear, your guild would share as would many others - and no matter how positive and love-each-other attitude of a guild is, there might be a recruit or guildie who doesn't quite get reciprocity. (I am sorry if I made you paranoid now; I'm just trying to explain why did I think of that.) ;)
DeleteYou are right. While the core has never had any issues like that we have had a few over the years that acted like that.
DeleteA holy paladin back in firelands cried like a baby over gear, and was shown the door shortly after and a rogue back in ICC made such a big stink he went to the forums to plead his case that we screwed him, but we kicked him from the raid and guild the second he started his crap. BTW, the people on the forums all backed us up with saying, you lost the roll stop crying, you will get it next week, which is what we tried to tell him.
So no guild is immune to it.
Even a guild like our could accidentally come about things like that. Some hunter asks me to borrow my bow for a pug he is doing, I lend it to him, the next day his account expires and I need it for the raid but he will not have money until the weekend. Good intentions from good people turns bad. So I see what you mean, it could still lead to problems.
I would have a no lending rule in the guild however. Your gear is your gear.
plus how would get that funky foot stink out of your favorite boots! Yeah, lending armour, even digital bit armour, wouldn't be too appealing.
DeleteI do understand sitting on gear used on one's mains, I used to do that often too because having to search and be late was worse than having under-equipped alts; I understand the gear you bought with your own money is yours to sell when and to whom you wish to, but I do not think merely being in your bank or on your characters makes the gear yours.
DeletePossession is nine tenths of the law they say. But that is where the problem might come in.
Delete"He gave it to me, I am not giving it back."
Frankly, that would destroy every aspect of end-game (and maybe more) without other balancing changes. I'll mention some balancing changes in a follow-up, I hit the character limit (sorry).
ReplyDeleteWithout some sort of balance, going fully unbound (D3-style), you'd mess up:
Economy:
We're already at the point where starter epics (the L87 required i440 rare mob drops) are selling for, more or less, the value of a crystal. Those drop off RARE mobs and are RARE drops, yet for MONTHS they've had no value as a piece of gear to be worn. If everything is unbound, that would happen at all tiers. Sure, for the first while a new tier of gear would have some value above the baseline but as more gear came into the market, the price would drop and previous tier gear would become a base commodity - again, down to whatever the highest non-use value is for the item (either DE mats or vendor). That would also cause a drop in crystal prices, basically down to at or around the vendor price of the epics. You'd either vendor the gear or shard it depending on what was higher that day.
Content:
Once someone has i460 gear, how often do they run heroics except to cap VP? Once someone has i470 gear, how often do they run MV LFR except to cap VP? Once someone has i480 gear, how often do they run HoF/Ter LFR except to cap VP?
Now, remove VP as a factor entirely since I can now buy VP-level gear on the AH for, basically, vendor prices. 25-50g/ea. Less than an LFR repair bill.
That would have the side effect of effectively filtering everyone into ONLY running the content that they actually WANT to run. There'd be no reason for heroic or normal raiders to run LFR or 5-mans. There'd be no reason for LFR raiders to run 5-mans. Thing is, I think a lot more people run content FOR the gear than most folks would think. I don't consider myself a loot whore by any means but you know what? I get annoyed when I do a full LFR and don't get a drop.
Skill:
I realize this isn't always the case but I do believe that generally, for folks who actually want to improve, running content does make them better players. I'm a LOT better on my monk today than I was even 2 months ago due to all of the content I've run... if I could have just bought out a full set of i496 gear, I'd have run a LOT less content and I'd be a lot less skilled than I am now. Which also ties in with...
Time:
WoW is a subscription-based game, Blizzard designs their game around it taking a certain amount of time to accomplish certain goals, whether it's rep, gear acquisition, staggered raid rollouts, random PvP-related equivalent example (I don't PvP but I'm sure it has some sort of time-based gating involved). You get rid of random, bound gear as a mechanic and if you want to be fully geared, the only thing you'll need to do is log in, scan the AH for anything better than what you're running, buy it and log off. Right NOW I know players who only log in to raid... expand that out to 95% of the player base and the game would be a ghost town.
This is where the difference between D3 and WoW comes into play... D3 is primarily an action game, WoW is primarily a social game. Without a need for people to be in the game actually playing WoW, well, a lot fewer people would.
Honestly, I'd rather see pay to win features come in before unbinding gear. If someone would rather pay $20 a week for 1000 VP rather than farming them, fine... or for even less disruption, pay $20 a month to remove the VP caps on your toons. I suspect a lot of people would have an issue with either of those, though, and having unbound gear would be equivalent to paying nothing for virtually unlimited VP. I can't think of anything that would be more harmful to the game than that.
There are a few ways you could balance unbound gear, though:
Delete* Remove repair vendors - gear breaks over time and has to be replaced. Blizz can balance this so the amount of gear coming into the game is roughly equivalent to the amount of gear leaving the game. Over time the average iLvl in the game would increase but that's already happening so it wouldn't really change anything from today in most respects. One counter-argument - rare items. Nobody would actually want to run them, they'd become tmog-only gear. Also, players get attached to gear (man, I've had trinkets and weapons that I've held on to well past their best before dates). Constantly replacing gear could be healthy for the game but not necessarily for the players.
* Leave bound items in-game as they are but add a mechanic to unbind items at some expense. For example, give enchanters the ability to create an Unbind Scroll for 10 crystals. Make the cost of the unbind high enough that, again, enough gear will be destroyed to balance out gear coming in while making it POSSIBLE to gear someone up quickly (your alt healer scenario), albeit at a steep cost.
* Balance via repair bill cost, although I'm not sure this would be enough to counteract unbinding by itself and it would directly hurt heroic raiders more than anyone and I'm not sure they need the additional pain. Right now, there's little disincentive to run LFR in heroic raid gear... but if each tier increased the repair cost by 200%, you'd find people who will intentionally keep their gear down to appropriate levels for the content they're running. That might actually cause an odd situation where higher iLvl gear is CHEAPER to buy than lower iLvl gear due to lower demand, though, which would mess me up something fierce. Not sure this is a viable solution to anything.
I'm with you on the economy thing. Those 440 leg have been less than the cost of a crystal for as long as I can remember. Except the hunter ones, those still sell nicely.
DeleteAs for the content thing perhaps I am just looking at it from my own perspective only. I don't want to run LFR to cap. I don't want to run 5 mans to cap. I do them because I have to and not because I want to and I would welcome not having to run them. But I do see your point how this could really hurt a multi player game.
Skill will come either way to a person that applies themselves. I can't say I agree with that as an issue as I agreed with you on the first two. I could have a 460 item level or a 535 item level and it would not change me any way what so ever. I would still try to do the best that gear is capable of giving me. Good players will be good players, even if they buy their gear.
Time could be a double edged sword. People need to be grinding the content to get the things to sell. So for every person that is out there that just logs in to raid or buy any gear they need, there would be someone out there doing raids on 11 characters on the server and grinding mobs day and night to get drops to sell. As a matter of fact I know of three people alone that I am friends with that would play more if there were random raid level items that could drop anywhere in the game. So win some and lose some here I think.
But, as you mentioned, there are ways this could be made to work. If they did it.
Aside from your suggestions, and I love the enchanter one (as a matter f fact when I won that shield I asked an enchanter if they could disenchant it for me so it would not be soulbound because that is what I thought disenchant meant) there are a few I could propose to make something like this work.
- Don't make all gear free to trade, but do make some gear, for every slot for every spec and class in the game, but at extremely low drop rates. Some people would farm mobs for days on end trying to get them, adds to their time factor you mentioned. Also, it would be an added incentive to running old content more often. If HoF had a small chance to drop something like a 496 unbound piece once every 10 or so runs, people would run it even if most would not bother already.
- Make unbound gear so it can not be enchanted and can not be reforged and has no gem slots. So buying a 535 piece might give you a leg up, but the one with 2 gem slots and the ability to reforge it and enchant it would be leaps and bounds better.
Actually I like that one suggestion. I really do, and I will leave it at that for now. Unbound gear should not have gem slots and not be capable of being enchanted or gemmed.
That, added the the enchanter idea you mentioned, could make many of the issues you just mentioned a lot less.
"I don't want to run LFR to cap. I don't want to run 5 mans to cap. I do them because I have to and not because I want to and I would welcome not having to run them. But I do see your point how this could really hurt a multi player game."
DeleteThere are probably a lot of quality raiders out there who agree with you on that, too. Problem is, if the quality folks no longer run the random group content, that leaves us with a 30K dpsers in charge... and seriously, nobody deserves that, even the 30K dpsers.
At this point, the game is tuned for a mix of skill levels... remove the top layer and current groups would get smoked even more than is happening right now. They could certainly tune things down but I don't think Blizz wants LFR to be as easy as playing an interactive movie... they want it to feel like a win when a boss dies.
As a bit of a thought experiment, if they removed all rewards from the game entirely, whether gear, cosmetic, gold, etc... and had the content stand on its own as "movie alternative" entertainment... would you still be playing the game?
The big issue is deservedness. WoW has for years separated players into classes based on gear, and this would totally overturn that.
ReplyDeleteThe economy issue isn't really one, because WoW already has a throttle on new gear entering the system, the weekly lockouts on raids.
The other issue is progression. Gear is the current progression system, you have to play to get gear via raiding or valor points or pvp, but if you could buy it that would be bypassed. Blizzard would have to figure out another progression system to keep people playing. I don't even mean this in a cynical way, like "Blizzard wants us all on a treadmill so we'll keep playing and paying", you do need something to play for.
If you can afford it, be it 60K gold or 2500 valor, you earned it by making that 60K gold or 2500 valor. I have never been one of the school that getting lucky to have a boss drop your loot is earning it. That is being lucky. But that is another story all together.
DeleteThe world first guilds would probably "hire" people to farm drops for them and even if they did get a few, what would they finish faster? A day or two?
Second level hard cores, the ones that do it in a month or two might get it done 2 weeks sooner.
Third tier hard cores, as in the rest of the people that heroic clears really really matter might be where people start to benefit from it big time.
After that, from the casual/hardcore down to the casual or social or baddie, if you will excuse the word, it would make things better for.
It would get the majority of the raiders playing more because they feel they can progress more. The hard cores might even play more because instead of downing things in record time then taking a break until next release they would keep running to sell the stuff they get, but those, that super super tiny percentage of players, are the only ones that would leave sooner. And what? By 2 days or 2 weeks, that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion at least.
Why would it still take you 3-4 months to complete a raid? If gear was irrelevant, as it inevitably would with unbound gear, raiding simply comes down to coordination. Coordination that assumes a lesser gear level (else it would be undefeatable by anyone but pro players). It shouldn't take more than a month, tops - especially given there would be no reason to let the raid reset. Just imagine your group in full 535s running Normal Throne of Thunder. Still 3-4 months, really?
ReplyDeleteThe greatest argument against unbound gear is exactly Diablo 3. Quest rewards were meaningless. Crafting was meaningless. 100% of all item drops were meaningless beyond their function as being sold for gold. Whatever challenge the actual content provided was meaningless, as you could simply equip uber-gear that was being sold for vendor+1g due to there being no item decay. Supply of uber-gear always increases.
I was stuck with everyone else in Act 2 Inferno because it required crazy amounts of +resist gear to survive further. Up to that point, the game was terribly boring, with zero challenge. At that bleeding edge, it was next to impossible. A few months after things were nerfed, I came back, geared up with less than 100k gold and breezed through Acts 3 & 4 Inferno. Then I uninstalled. Why would I continue playing again? Killing mobs all day for a 0.0001% drop that was already on the AH for $20? To do what? The game was defeated on the highest possible difficulty setting (at the time).
What is wrong with it taking you 30 hours instead of 1000.
You losing 970 hours of gameplay that, presumably, were fun. At least, fun enough to engage you for that amount of time. It's the difference between completing all new content in a week and a half vs 12 months (at 20 hours/week).
A much better, much simpler change would be to make all gear BoA. That solves all of your dilemmas, including the "didn't earn it!" ones, without destroying the incentives to progress in a gear-focused game. BoEs could still exist in the system; just change "Soulbound" to "Account-bound".
It would still take my guild months because we do not raid often. And if we do not extend lockouts how deep do you think we would get in one two hour lock out?
DeleteWith all the trash and most fights now taking stupidly long even when you do them well we can get down 4 or maybe 5 a night at most and then start at the beginning the next week.
When it comes to coordination only, as you mentioned, I usually say it takes us one week to learn a fight. So 2 hours. When we are progressing it usually takes us one night to beat a new boss the first time we see it, so 2 hours is a fair assessment.
So even if we extended, a 12 boss raid, one new boss each week, is three months of raiding. If we over geared it, even with extending every week, it would still take at least, 2 months, because we would still need to learn the fight even if we over gear it.
That is all also assuming we had all purchased all that gear to be over gearing it ASAP and not need gear which also means needing to restart it.
And my guild is nearly dead middle of the pack, which means we are the average guild. So can I see it still taking 3-4 months, absolutely. If people do not go out and buy all their gear, which most won't because they can not afford it and do not buy gold.
I do not see a guild like mine having all 10 members spending massive amounts of cash to buy gear to power through it. That is not what we do, we raid to have fun and downing one new boss a week is just fine for us, the average guild.
The 30 to 1000 hour example is a bad one for both of us. I might want to do 1000 hours, you might want to do 1000 hours, but the majority of players want their stuff ASAP and would prefer 30 hours.
Just because I would not mind grinding my butt off doesn't mean everyone does. Just take a peek at the forums. People want to hit 90 and have full epics waiting for them in the mailbox. That is the majority of the player base. We, are the exception, not the rule.
You idea for account bound on everything, with the change to looting so you could not take it from someone that actually needed it that I mentioned, would be perfect and would basically do everything I mentioned, with the exception of being a gold maker for some.
How about everything that is soulbound being BoA instead and most gear starting off as BoE? If you "need" something, it's Account bound just like it's soulbound now.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be a less extreme change and would address some of the gear trading/hand-me-down issues.
Oops... just realized Azurial said the same thing. :)
DeleteThat would be pretty sweet.
DeleteConverting BoP to BoA would extend the alts are a good thing that Blizz says they're striving for.
DeleteThen all they'd need to do is make void storage into a Battle Pets type all toons/all factions/all servers box and I'd die a happy man.
And make void storage much bigger. Like let us add more pages to it, 10,000K per page even, so we can keep adding more to it.
DeleteSort of like the shared loot box in diablo 3. There we go with that game again. ;)
you might have 10,000K to spare, but I don't. Don't give them any ideas on cost factor. :Þ
Delete-roo "aye and you know how the great chasm got there? A dwarf dropped a copper down a gopher hole!"
Just throwing a gold sink sort of number out there.
DeleteYou can make money easy this expansion. Just doing your daily junk you can get a grand a day. At least it seems I do.
Hopefully you meant 10K, not 10000K... I'm still slowly working my way up to 10000K, wouldn't even be able to afford one extra page at that price. :)
DeleteMy main beef with the D3 comparisons is that it's a completely different type of game (or should be viewed that way). When I played D3 I played it as a single-player game to be beaten and put aside... I wasn't expecting end-game activities, it isn't an MMO. I played it the exact same way I play Torchlight, or Mass Effect, or any number of single-player games that have an ending. To me, D3 never had the kind of end-game potential that, for instance, Starcraft had/has... the competitive gaming head-to-head aspect. It was a fun diversion for 20-30 hours, then I moved on. I'm surprised so many people had different expectations.
That's the last direction that Blizz would want WoW to go in... a subscription-based game needs to keep you engaged on a daily (or at least regular) basis. It may FAIL, but that's the goal. The rarity of gear you want is one of the knobs that they can tune in that regard. I love that they're implementing some bonus token "magic" to increase your win odds every time you lose that'll reset once you win. I love mechanics like that - I wish when I'm trying to get the last tick of a green profession item that there was something similar.
(fun aside - I once burned through something like 170 lobsters at huge expense trying to get one last point of cooking skill to get up to the next recipe... actually put in a ticket, thinking that, who knows, maybe the profession tick system is broken... GM politely responded back that it was working as intended)
@ anamoose - I dont know your name, but I hope it's the right anamoose - How do you like torchlight? I see there is a torchlight 2 out. That and Kingdoms of Hmalar (I think I have that spelled right - can't read my friend's writing very good) have been recomended to me. Thanks in advance.
Delete@ GE - It takes me just about 2 hours to run 6 toons thru the daily fishing and cooking in SW then it is oft to bed at 8:30pm. How do I have time to do all the dailies in Mists!?!
DeleteWith me little friend in me head, I need at least 9 hours of sleep, if not 10. :(
See and you worry about LFR, LOL.
-roo
A Night Elf decided to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the park. A few days later, a Dwarf walkes by, spotted the Night Elf hanging from the tree. He asks the Night Elf what he is doing and the Night Elf replies, "I'm hanging myself."
"You're supposed to put the noose around your neck, not your waist," said the Dwarf.
"I tried that," replied the Night Elf, "but I couldn't breathe.
@ Roo
DeleteI liked Torchlight quite a bit, it fit my need for a relatively mindless dungeon crawler button masher. Had a really awkward difficulty curve, though, it was quite manageable until I hit a wall relatively late in the game and I just put it down at that point. Still, got a lot of hours out of it for a $20 game (now a lot less, I expect).
I bought TL2 but haven't had a chance to play it yet, wee bit too many things to do in MoP still. I've heard it's a more enjoyable game than D3 but of course, opinions can vary a lot with that type of thing. Still, for the price, I'm sure it'll be more than worthwhile without most of the baggage that D3 came with (AH, RMAH, online requirement (?), etc).
Amalar... might just want to skip that one unless it's in a discount bin somewhere.