Wednesday, August 7, 2013

What if: Gear Dropped From Anywhere

Right now we know where we get our gear.  From vendor or from bosses and the occasional crafted or BoE/BoP drop.  It is a simple format that we all have grown accustom to and accept at least on some level.  You might not like that your best in slot trinket drops from the last boss, but you accept that is how it is.  You might not like that no weapons can be purchased with valor but you deal with it because what choice do you have.

But what if any mob of the appropriate level any where in the game could drop any piece of gear, using the smart loot system.  So while out and about grinding mobs if you get lucky to get that 1% drop it will be something that is for your loot specialization.  Might as well add that part being it was added to the game right?

I could effectively go out and grind mobs by the hundreds or thousands  hoping for my bow being none of the bow bosses like me all that much.  It still leaves it up to my most hated thing in the game, something I would pay to see removed, the random number generator, but it does increase my chances as every mob could drop it.

And lets even pump it up some.  There is a 1% chance to drop something for your loot specialization and a 10% change that thing you do find when you find it could be heroic.

Lets not leave the PvP players out of this either.  They too will have a chance to get gear for their specialization as well.  Whenever an enemy player dies that you helped contribute to killing, either by healing someone that did damage to them or doing damage to them yourself you have a 5% chance it will be a piece of gear honor level awarded to you and a 10% change on top of that that it will be a piece at conquest level.

How about using this gear grind for PvP to inspire more world PvP by saying the chances are increased to 7% and 14% when not in instanced content.  I can see that being abused however so maybe that would not work as well in action as it does on paper.

All the talk about getting people out in the world however and the game seems to be failing at finding anything that actually motivates people to get out there.  While I might not be the type that is completely driven by gear you can see that gear is a huge motivator in the game for the vast majority of the player base.

People love to judge people by their gear, think they are better than others because of gear, so much so that the game itself uses gear to judge if people are capable of doing content when anyone with a brain knows that gear is only the tool.  It is the person using the tools that make the tools effective.

People raid for gear, they rage when they lose a roll, they complain when they need stuff for their raid and a holy paladin piece drops and has to be disenchanted because they have no holy paladin, they grind valor for gear, valor for upgrades to their gear.  They gem their gear, they enchant their gear, they reforge their gear and if they are so inclined to do so they even transmog their gear.  I am sure there are some parents in the game that pay more attention to their gear than they do their own children.  Yes sad, but I am sure it is true.

Gear is huge.  The idea that even a casual player that never raids can get heroic level gear just from killing mobs, even if the chances are minimal, is the ultimate motivator to get them to playing more and get them out in the world.  What can be more casual friendly, or any type of player friendly at that, than killing things you know you can kill at a pace you can kill them whenever you want to kill them and getting the chance to get a piece of gear that you would never in a million years get otherwise.

From the player vs player standpoint this works wonders too.  Even someone like myself that is not into PvP can really get into world PvP from time to time.  I actually love it and would love to see more of it.  If there were an active world PvP player base I could honestly see myself quitting raiding and just fighting all the time.  I really do like it that much.  Perhaps that is why I would like to see something done to bring it back, to bring things back into the world and out of the instance.

But having gear drop from world PvP would not only be a motivator for people to world PvP but it would also allow people like myself to gear up slowly with a small chance to get gear from doing it.  You never know, with a little luck with drops and maybe even getting some conquest level stuff and I might actually want to join in on organized content as well.  It would also, in time, increase my level of skill by doing it often.

Having gear drop from every player and mob in this what if world would be a way to get people back out in the world.  It would give them a reason to be doing things instead of standing around waiting to do things.  You could grind gear while waiting to get into your LFR in hopes of getting gear there as well.

What other advantages or disadvantages could this bring?

What if gear dropped from anywhere?

16 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I hate when leveling a character and you kill a rare that you could actually use something from and they drop the wrong thing. For BoE stuff that is not so bad buy for soulbound stuff some smart loot system would be nice.

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  2. My first reaction was “That sounds fucking awful”. My second though was “No, that sounds soul crushing”. My third thought was “No, No that would be unbearable.” So I guess my thinking is that sounds like a fucking awful, soul crushing, and unbearable idea. I mean I would rather watch Jack and Jill the Adam Sandler movie while an Apple fan and Microsoft fan have a debate about which product is better than do that kind of farming.

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    1. I did not say they did not drop from raid bosses also. lol

      No need to tortue yourself, you can take jack and jill out of the DvD player now. It is okay.

      I means if gear dropped "in addition" to the ways we already know from everywhere.

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    2. wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Now you want me to RAID and have to grind gear!!!?? You are a monster! Thats is soooooo not a selling point! Time to board the loot grinding train next stop burnoutville! choooo chooo! :P

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    3. Yes, I am an evil elf.

      I am sure people like myself would suffer from serious burnout because I would grind every waking hour where I have some free time trying to get loot. But I doubt there are many people that would be that insane in the grand scheme of things. But you never know. People are strange.

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  3. What happens when you collect all the gear you can get (Full BiS)?

    It'd work for a short time, people would grind the hell out of mobs in the open world and there would be excitement and progress for many. It'd be especially exciting for the less able players that can't do heroic bosses for whatever reason.. since now they have an easier route.

    However, raiding would be utterly destroyed for many guilds because people prefer to grind somewhere by themselves instead of playing with others in a group at a set time. Even if grinding mobs is objectively way less fun then raiding it is absolutely way easier, so it'd be the more popular method by a mile.

    Unless the grinding method was -severely- limited by say.. only allowing 1 or 2 pieces of gear to be found in the open world a week.. the entire game would be utterly destroyed within a month. Everyone would "finish" the game and a lot of people would leave. The people that don't care about the gear would then leave because a huge chunk of the population leaves.. snow balls.. dead game.

    It'd be bad.

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    THAT SAID. In Vanilla WoW (and still in MoP, technically) there would be the occasional BoE epic that could be found out in the world off random creatures (.00001% drop). It was always quite exciting to see one drop (cha-ching!). I remember finding a Warden's Staff once and being quite impressed by it.

    Back then epics weren't so easy to find so getting one out in the world by yourself was pretty cool. Even though they were still "bad" epics compared to official raiding ones a lot of people didn't care because they were still pretty good and useful to a decent percentage of the population. Back then when epics were epic, basically.

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    1. I would hate to think how long someone would need to grind to get full BiS from that. Even 24/7 I don't think that would happen over 6 months unless someone is insanely lucky. But that aside, everything in the game has a limited "happy" time. This would be no different.

      If they made it like the treasure chests, one a week, it would become that dreaded "mandatory" word. Once you can only get a limited amount of anything it starts to feel mandatory for many to get that one a week. As long as you can get as many as you want whenever you want it will hold off that mandatory term a little bit in my opinion.

      I think that is the problem with the valor cap for most. If people can earn as much as they wanted they would do it when they needed something just to get it and then stop. But being it is limited it becomes I have to get it now in case I need it later. Like I am capped at 3K and have not needed valor in a while but if I upgraded a new piece I would go grab that 500 to get capped again ASAP because you never know when I will need it. Limits make things mandatory. So I don't think limited would fit this what if scenario.

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    2. 100% right on the hard coded limiting factor being a bad idea. Would be the same problem that exists with Valor today and feel instantly mandatory.

      With that in mind the only way to make this not destroy the game within a month would be to just make those drops rare as hell. Even then its still kind of icky. Especially if heroic equivalent weapons or tier armor can drop.

      Random is random. Some lucky guy would get the end-boss heroic weapon on his first few mob kills. Other people will only see a pair of normal mode bracers after 100000 kills.

      Balancing would be tough. Overall it would just be promoting grinding mindless grinding for the slim chance of finding a BiS. That doesn't really qualify as "getting people out in the world" since in this case it would result in "getting people out to one of the few really really good farming spots where they stay there and kill stuff in a circle for hours on end while watching tv".

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    3. I have never been a fan of random loot to begin with, even have a post I will put up soon about it. So I agree.

      On a PvP server this would be insane with people packing those best grinding areas which then in turn would make the the best girding areas for PvP and PvE gear.

      So for world PvP that would be a good thing right?

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  4. They'd have horrible drop rates if they ever did it, so I don't think it'd actually help.

    Alternative idea:
    All PvE epics can be purchased with valor or crafted (just like PvP).

    Raid bosses could drop gear/upgrade tokens of the appropriate levels or you can pay for gear/upgrades with valor. Optionally, upgrades to Heroic could be tied to Heroic tokens only, if they wanted to keep some exclusivity.

    Add an additional method for getting honor and valor:
    1 max lvl mob (e.g., 90+) = 1 vp
    1 lvl appropriate mob (e.g., 87-89) = 1 hp

    Dailies, dungeons, raids, elites, etc still give honor and valor as they do now.

    Valor capping is already in the "mandatory" category so this wouldn't change that. It would just give an alternative way to gain valor and increase the importance of valor capping.

    This would make doing dailies more valuable and would give more options for casual players.

    Raid bosses need to be worth more than they currently are though so that raiders can easily valor cap without having to do much other than raiding.

    The gear costs and token drops should be appropriate so that gearing is basically the same speed it is now just with less RNG. People could have a plan and work towards that instead of constantly hoping for that drop that never seems to come.

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    1. I would love to see alternative gearing methods and valor or crafted is a great way to defeat the random monster.

      I most definitely believe that at the very least LFR level gear should be attainable outside of LFR for all slots. At the very least.

      This ransom system sucks in my opinion, it requires too much luck of the draw.

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  5. Diablo. That's your game, not this one.
    Diablo is gear-based. Gear drops from anything. You grind gear to be able to kill stronger mobs to get more gear to be able to kill stronger mobs to get better gear to... And you know what else - you can do everything solo, even bosses, just like you'd like things.

    WoW has dungeons and big raids that drop fixed loot and that's reward for group content. In fact, the more powerful rewards are only supposed to be from group content. Why? Because that's what the game is all about. The only thing that's off that idea is the BAH.

    Gear itself was not meant to be solo grinded. Yeah, they made it available through different currencies to ensure the random nature of things doesn't completely leave someone gearless. But not as a means to completely gear up, even though people tend to forget that.

    You know the Alani mount? That's your type of grind. How many people grinded that thing? None that I know. How many people have that thing? Lots. Why? Because people use bots. Yes, people in my guild leave their bots to grind mobs to get Alani shards. That's what you'd achieve with grind-based heroic gear. Any heroic raider out there would be shot down for not leaving their bot to grind 24/7 so they're fully heroic geared asap. Which would in turn nullify the whole idea of gear or make raids really exclusive for those willing to take a chance.

    No, this is just not the type of game I play.

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    1. That is actually one of the things I liked about diablo. It gave you more control over your gearing up process even if were still completely luck based.

      The whole luck based loot system is horrible design that needs to be adjusted and this would not be the solution for that as it would still be luck based, so that is for a different post all together.

      11 characters on one server, all exalted with the lotus, countless hours spent just killing things in the area, still only 5 shards. I will never get that mount. But yes, I like grinds like that to fill the time. The problem with this expansion is that there is not enough "free time" for me to grind it the way I would really like to. Not to mention there are not good spots to grind there. I spend more time running around looking for things to kill than I do actually killing things. WTB good shard farming spot.

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    3. It took me a fair bit to get used to myself. I ended up being okay with it. I stopped because after doing the story line it made no sense to do it again and again and again but increasingly harder. Not really something I am into when it comes to solo game play.

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