Tobold's Blog: Dungeon Finder reward afterthought

Friday, June 25, 2010

Dungeon Finder reward afterthought

I mentioned this week that the Dungeon Finder hands out a bag with a useful reward until level 60, but only contains vendor trash from level 60 to 70, because Blizzard forgot to adjust the item level to the increased Burning Crusade standards. That got me thinking about the Dungeon Finder rewards will evolve when Cataclysm comes out.

I'm pretty certain that there will be new emblems, and the normal and heroic Cataclysm dungeons from level 80 to 85 will give emblem rewards in an identical or very similar system as we have now. Albeit obviously not on a "heroics give better emblem rewards than raid dungeon loot" scale like today.

But what about the Dungeon Finder rewards from level 70 to 80? It is unlikely that anyone will still want to run level 80 heroics instead of going for level 81+ content. But people leveling up will still use the Dungeon Finder to visit the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons on normal. And there is a potential problem, unless Blizzard changes the reward system: For a normal level 70 to 80 dungeon right now, the Dungeon Finder gives two emblems of triumph as reward. That is already not optimal today, because your level 75 character can do strictly nothing with that emblem of triumph, except hoarding them until he reaches level 80. In the current situation, once he reaches level 80, he already has a bunch of emblems, and can get himself a head start into heroics by buying one or more T9 pieces or equivalent non-set pieces.

But given the expected gear mudflation from Cataclysm, this Dungeon Finder reward for normal level 70 to 80 dungeons becomes totally unattractive when Cataclysm comes out. The emblems are still useless from level 70 to 79, and once you reach 80 all the emblems you hoarded over 10 levels only buy you an epic which you will replace 5 minutes later in the first Cataclysm quest? Doesn't look like an attractive reward system to me.

Thus my suggestion would be to change the Dungeon Finder rewards for both the 60 to 70, and the 70 to 80 normal dungeons: Make them like it is from level 15 to 60, hand out a bag with a random blue item for the class of the player, but adjust the iLevel of the item to the iLevel of blue drops in those dungeons.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:16 PM Permanent Link

Comments:

*endorse*

I've been rather spoiled by the Satchel goods as I've recently leveled a Tauren Druid. It's not a terrible thing for the 60-80 game to be similar to what it was pre-Satchel, but neither is it fair or consistent. The shakeup of Cataclysm is a good excuse to fix something like that.

# posted by

Anonymous : 25/6/10 16:41

My question is whether or not Heirloom items will continue to "increase" in power after level 80.

Perhaps those emblems might be well spent on an Heirloom item for your main instead of an alt?

# posted by

sid67 : 25/6/10 17:01

I don't think that you will replace the one epic you bought with your emblems in 5 minutes: buy the ilvl 245 trinket.

# posted by

Anonymous : 25/6/10 17:04

Emblems are gone in Cataclysm. There are two tiers of points, Hero points and Conquest points. Don't shoot me if I misremembered the names.
Level 85 heroics award hero points and the two tier 11 raids award conquest points. Hero points are also awarded in non rated battlegrounds. Conquest points are also awarded in rated battlegrounds and arena. When tier 12 raids are released they will award Conquest points and the old raid will go to hero points. This season / tier gear costs conquest points. Last season / tier costs hero points.

# posted by

Honors Code : 25/6/10 17:20

Emblems are being removed as a reward and a dual layer pvp style points system is to be introduced. Think arena points will be like frost badges and honor points like triumph.
Heirloom items will not scale past 80 at least the current ones will not.
I suspect thgear changes required for the change in stats will go along way to fixing any satchel issues and the satchel will be introduced for 70-80 instances.

# posted by

Unknown : 25/6/10 17:26

http://www.wow.com/2010/04/26/cataclysm-badge-and-pvp-point-changes/

Emblems are going away in Cataclysm. There will be Hero points and Valor points. Hero points will be like Emblems of Triumph today. Valor points will be like Emblems of Frost today. So from 70-80, you could probably earn Hero Points, since they don't care about limiting how easy it is to get last tier's gear.

At the beginning of each new tier, all your valor points will be downgraded into hero points, but you'll be able to buy the old tier's gear with hero points now.

So blizzard seems to have anticipated the problem and has a solution for it already.

# posted by

Bruski : 25/6/10 17:26

I'd claim that whether you call the "emblems" or "points" makes no difference at all. Actually people might still call them emblems, because points is too non-descript.

# posted by

Tobold : 25/6/10 18:34

The problem is even worse than you are thinking. With TBC, you could head to outland at 58, not 60. So you completely leapfrog ALL the level 58+ gear from vanilla WoW. If something similar happens with Cataclysm, then you will be heading to the new areas at something like 78, not 80, meaning that by the time you are 80 you might be out-gearing the triumph level gear.

Hopefully they will address the mudflation here. They certainly did a better job with the TBC to Wrath shift.

# posted by

Unknown : 25/6/10 19:40

This comment has been removed by the author.

# posted by

Unknown : 25/6/10 19:40

People don't call them emblems now. They call them badges. This is also entirely beside the point of the post.

I would think that if they did change the system, they would start handing out the low tier badge points at 75 or so, and continue handing them out until 85, and they'd stop handing out the satchels at 80. that's just what makes sense to me though.

# posted by

Glyph, the Architect : 25/6/10 19:45

Where does this random blue item with the uncreative name come from in the first place?

I just don't get what's so good about these blue items. You get spellpower items as warrior, you start to throw them away after the first few dungeons anyway, .. and they aren't even necessary to complete the content.

Is anybody happy to replace Arugals shoulder pads with this random blue crap that you get for nothing ?

# posted by

Nils : 25/6/10 19:45

The reason to call them "points" is to make them more in line with the way pvp gear is awarded. So expect gear costs for heroism points to be in the thousands, say, and then the sources of those points can be more fine-grained: blizzard doesn't have to decide between 1 badge and 2 badges, but can award, e.g., 150 points.

# posted by

Unknown : 26/6/10 02:35

I have an even better idea affecting the whole dungeon finder: in the bag you find one of the items dropped in the instance you just completed (of course matched to your class/spec).

Or, to decrease the "I got the 5th shoulder item and I have BoA" effect, it could contain only gold with 2/3 chance and a "begins a quest" item with 1/3. The quest NPC appears after the endboss is killed and offers one loot from the dungeon's bosses loot table, chosen by you.

# posted by

Gevlon : 26/6/10 09:30

If the cata shift is like the wrath shift in gear, then triumph gear won't be replaced in your first wrath quest. I had mostly ilvl 100-141 epics on my mage (equivalent of triumph gear now) when wrath hit and I didn't replace any of it before lvl 76, most of it not until 80.

similarly, the well itemized epic 60 raid gear doesn't immediately get replaced in outlands (unless you are a tank, because of the stam recosting in TBC). I ran BWL on my new shammy with a mishmash of 60+ toons who wanted the achievement and picked up a few pieces that are better than any of the slotless blue dungeon drops I'm seeing in the low 60s.

Why do we think the Cata reset is going to be harder and bigger?

# posted by

The Gnome of Zurich : 28/6/10 21:06