First of all, i like the guaranteed drop, it strikes a good balance between casual and hardcore gamers.
But i don’t like the fact that bosses can drop every pieces of gear, which lead to the fact that most people just farm the two first bosses in each wing of the mine.
Honestly, i already got most of the new set, and i don’t really see why i would bother killing more difficult bosses if the loot is the same.
In my opinion, a better and more traditional approach, would be to have each boss only dropping a specific piece of equipment (kind of like what you did with the world boss rings)
At this point i think it would be very unfair to change the loot rewards, but it would be nice to consider it, for the next tier of equipment!
We actually talked a lot about this very thing as we were testing these two dungeons.
Basically, these current end-game dungeons aren’t meant to be the ones that you grind over and over again forever to get the best loot in the game. So we’re okay with people “cheesing” them to some degree right now by just doing the easiest bosses. It’s supposed to be pretty quick and easy (like, a few days of grinding) to get a full Epic set.
When the Shard Dungeons come out (along with the next Tier of gear), they are going to have a couple of changes:
You get a shard for a random dungeon every time you complete a previous dungeon. So you have to be willing/capable of doing all the dungeons in order to keep advancing up the ladder to get better gear.
The rewards will be given out rather than per-boss, as a single Chest at the end of the dungeon run after you kill both bosses and a certain percentage of the trash mobs. It will still have two guaranteed rolls just like the current system, but you can’t just do a single boss and call it good and get a reward.
So basically if you’re a more hardcore player at this point you may already have your Epic set. You can of course keep grinding if you want to get a more “ideal” set (with your preferred affixes, higher secondary stat rolls, etc). But I would also encourage you to practice those other boss fights if for no other reason than a) to get the World Boss tokens, and b) to become proficient at them which you’ll have to be if you want to get the next tier of gear.
Regarding the idea of having specific drops in general, that’s how the game originally worked (e.g. in Alpha I think), but then we changed it to this system, which is that basically getting a single random piece of loot is pretty easy, but getting the “perfect” piece for your slot is a lot harder and requires more commitment. I think that leads to a more smoothed-out graph of “people who can participate in the highest content at all” and “people who have the very best-in-slot” gear.
I’m not totally sure on the Aberrations. On the one hand I want to keep them relevant. On the other hand if we increase the difficulty required to beat them and increase the gear they drop, we risk making it such that fresh Level 20’s can’t do them anymore, which is kind of what they’re for. So I guess in the very short-term, no we won’t be making any changes there. But once the next Tier of gear comes out and the Aberrations are dropping two-tiers-behind, it might make sense to re-evaluate that and make them only drop one-tier-behind or something.
Haha, I mean I don’t have it done yet so I have no idea. I will try and remember to let you know when it is done though. My guess would be the luck roll would happen after the “completion” trigger of the dungeon is met (e.g. both bosses killed, certain percent of trash done, etc.).
im confused about the guaranteed drops in relation to shard dungeons, as it was talked about earlier, shards get harder and harder as you go, and after beating that shard you go to the next teir up, and if u fail u go down a certain number of tiers, but if it works with one person getting a guaranteed drop, how are u supposed to be able to go back to the previous shard to get the other peoples guaranteed?
also will the shard dungeons be all dungeons as previously said, or just the tradua ones?
thanks and sorry if im asking questions that are to early in development to be answered
Yeah that’s a fair question and I’m honestly not totally sure yet.
Since the shard is rotating dungeons constantly it wouldn’t make much sense to do it based on “wing”, since then the chances of you ending up in the same wing repeatedly are very slim, which means it would basically be like the old system where it’s just random who gets what (which isn’t great).
In addition to that, I assume most people would want to “save” their guaranteed drop roll for the highest level they thought they could achieve.
If I recall correctly I think WoW had a mechanic where basically once per week (or day?) there was a chest just for you at your home base that gave you a guaranteed roll based on the highest level you had achieved. Maybe the solution is something like that, where once a day you get a guaranteed roll based on the highest level of shard dungeon you completed in the last 24 hours…
That or maybe we do something where you get “two roll tokens” to spend per day and basically when you open the chest at the end of the dungeon you can choose to “spend” one of those tokens to get a drop for that level. And then you’re sort of having to either gamble that you are going to be able to do the next level and save your token for that, or you are spending it to lock in a reward based on what you’ve already achieved.
I dunno, at any rate it’s clear it won’t be the exact same mechanic in terms of basing it on a per-wing thing most likely. But I would like to figure out something that keeps the spirit of the new system, which is essentially that there is a “floor” to how many drops you will get for doing the content, and your group has to sort of work together to make sure everyone gets their drops…
The plan right now is to have hard-mode versions of all the dungeons, including the leveling ones. So there would be 7 total “wings”.
This is great information, thank you for sharing your thoughts on how this all may play out!
One additional question, (and I understand if you can’t say or haven’t figure it out yet), but will the 3rd world boss require a single individual to have all 4 fragments from each Tradu wing, or can multiple players work together to do it?
Random Boss spawns: I have played a few games where there are random boss spawns (every few hours) that drop unique items (one could drop a legendary weapon and hat, another could drop a legendary chest and wrist, etc) and they are AWESOME. This has people fighting to get those spawns in the wild and will keep people out there running around looking for a spawn. Additionally, it gives people who are out there farming abbs for lower tier epic gear to get the chance at finding a boss spawn that could drop much, much better gear.
NMs or S rank hunts come to mind from Final Fantasy. Having high level mobs that spawn under random conditions that the community has to figure out on a long spawn timer. Maybe gives you tokens you trade in for cosmetic gear and weapons. I’d love that system.
I really like the new ideas for the dungeon, and I would like to offer my thoughts how about making different gear from different sources (Aberration, tradu mines, etc) have different primary or secondary stats. Like if for example we could get a chestpiece with strenght instead of somedef or vitality. This would allow us to better customise our characters and keep different areas relevant, although I am unsure how much of a problem and extra work that would be…
You are correct, currently in WoW there is a chest in one’s base which resets once per week. It gives you a random piece of gear who’s ilvl is directly related to the highest level of mythic dungeon you managed to complete on the week prior.
It seems unrelated, but this discussion reminds me of a direction they took that I wasn’t into regarding distribution of loot. I won’t derail this great thread with those concerns as it can be posted later. After those last posts Riley I totally get the loot distribution. It seems like this is the Upper Blackrock Spire of vanilla WoW - get that tier 0 rare gear so you can catapult into the raid stuff! Never enjoyed doing stuff like farming BWL for 6 months just to get the Claw of Chromaggus, feeling apathetic about the downing of every other boss, which you guys avoided with this loot style. As an aside, the run I finally did manage to get the claw, a guy bitter over losing fair and square on an item earlier in the day ninja’d both Ashkandi and a healing offhand at the end. Really thankful new approaches have arisen since!
how about making different gear from different sources (Aberration, tradu mines, etc) have different primary or secondary stats. Like if for example we could get a chestpiece with strenght instead of somedef or vitality. This would allow us to better customise our characters and keep different areas relevant, although I am unsure how much of a problem and extra work that would be…