No Player Left Behind

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about Valor Points, Justice Points, and how one acquires them.  I’ve made my share of snarky twitter and forum comments, but with the latest changes I felt like I needed a little more space to get my thoughts out of my head.

The Backstory:

When Cata launched, Blizzard moved from the multiple Badge currency system of Wrath (you remember that mess, a different currency for each tier) to a very simple two tier currency system.  Basically there is Justice Points for easier, older content which is designed to buy older, lower quality gear and Valor Points from the current tier of difficulty which allows the player to buy the more powerful rewards (generally equal to drops from the current raid bosses). This system mirror the Honor/Conquest system and seems like it should be pretty simple.

The problems come when Blizzard allows multiple sources of “top tier currency.” Back in Wrath, Blizz offered the players a reward of top tier Badges for completing their daily 5-man random dungeon.  This system was put in place to entice and reward players for using the shiny new Looking for Dungeon tool. Initially, it just allowed players to get a couple more badges for the week. Basically, more effort yielded more rewards.

Back then there were no artificial caps in currency collection.  Going back to BC, a player simply earned Badges for completing content. The more content you cleared, the more Badges you earned.  This wide open style led to some situations that Blizz didn’t want their players to contend with (like the feeling you had to run all versions of current and previous tier content to get the new gear as fast as possible). Blizz made a lot of changes in lockouts based on that situation, but that’s not the focus today.

Blizzard made a very significant change in Cata in that they introduced an arbitrary weekly cap  to the total amount of Valor Points (top tier) that a player may earn in a week.  Reaching that number is usually called “capping” and is Blizzard’s way of controlling how fast players purchase gear and in some ways, how much people play (their mains).

The need to cap:

This bit isn’t all that hard.  Players who want to upgrade their gear as quickly as possible will want to gather as many Valor Points as they can in a week so that they may buy rewards more quickly. Where once vendor gear was a supplement to allow choice or the ability to cover a slot you had a hard time getting from a boss drop, the developers have made buying gear a requirement now.

The raid bosses don’t have the loot tables to support the variety of classes and specs anymore.  While this can be nice in the idea that a player doesn’t have to play the random drop game and potentially never see a drop (damn you Halfus and Chimaeron!!!), the result is that vendor gear is a necessity if you want to best outfit your toon.

Sometimes gear is a necessity. There are times when you simply have to have enough of X to survive an encounter.  We used to call them “gear checks.” Think back to Naj’entus.  If you didn’t have 8,501 health you simply could not survive the encounter.  Other times gear improvements are a buffer for players to help offset skill (own skill and the skill of others), latency, distractions, etc.  And of course, some people just want the newest and most powerful gear.

Whatever drives the desire if you want the new purples quickly, you have to cap your point weekly.

The challenges to reaching the cap:

Currently players aren’t completing enough boss kills in Firelands to reach the cap. In the 10-man style, it isn’t even possibly to reach the point cap with a full clear of the zone on normal difficulty.  So if you want to cap, you need to do things other than raid the Firelands.

When Cata launched the only things that gave VP were Raid Boss kills and completing the LFD random (the first 7 times a week).  Doing a few LFD runs could offset your raids inability to clear content early on. The 5mans didn’t give much VP but it could help if you were just shy of the cap. It’s important to note that you could not reach the cap by only doing 5-mans.  Dungeons were a supplement. You had to raid to reach the cap.

When the Zandalari 5-mans joined the party, things shook up a bit.  The troll dungeons were harder than the original instances.  Appropriately, the rewards were better.  The Zandalari gave us our first epic quality loot from a 5-man this xpac and utilizing the LFD tool gave you a very nice bonus of VP. Going through your 7x troll dungeons gave you 980 VP, a huge step toward the weekly cap.  You still couldn’t cap, though. Dungeons were still a supplement.  You had to raid to reach the cap.

The issue with Trolls:

When Blizzard released the Firelands in patch 4.2, they also reduced the arbitrary Valor Point cap to 980.  I’m tried not to mention specific VP numbers too often, but that point total is VERY important to the discussion. If you’ll remember from the previous paragraph, completing the 7x troll dungeons award a total of 980 VP. All of a sudden, a player can cap Valor Points without having to raid.

There is a defense for Blizzard though.  It’s not the troll 5-mans themselves offering the Valor Points. Flying up and running in the front gate of ZA will not net you any rewards.  The VP comes from a successful completion of the Looking for Dungeon tool.  I think for many people the problem isn’t that you can get a few VP from the trolls, but that you can get ALL your VP from the trolls.  Their value wasn’t adjusted to keep the percentage available the same as the previous tier.  Previous a player could only get about 78% of their points from 5mans.  If that relationship continued this patch the Zandalari LFD should only reward about 760 (okay 764, but that’s a strange number for Blizz).

Tier 11 Raids:

When Blizz first announced the two tier currency system, the explanation was JP for older content and older rewards and VP for new content and new rewards.  If you followed Blizz’s statement you would expect that once the T12 raids went live, the T11 would be relegated to JP status and the old valor gear would move to the JP vendor. That’s exactly what happened, mostly.  T11 normals received a 20% nerf across the board and Blizz stated they wanted the content to be pug friendly. No stress here.

Heroic mode content was untouched and as such the rewards were left at Valor Points, although the amount per boss were reduced.

This made sense.  It was in line with Blizzards plan and all were happy.  Well, everyone but the players who aren’t very good at the game.  This subset of players went to the forums demanding that old content continue to reward the top tier currency.  Blizz caved and reverted the old, nerfed content to VP status…at the same rate as the heroic level.  25-man still offers slightly more than 10-man.  The result is that 25-man normal anything, offers more currency than 10-man heroic anything (including Sinestra).  I’m not sure why that little bit of trivia even bothers me.  The much bigger issue is why is old content offering any VP to begin with?

So what does it matter:

For me, the point of most video games is the challenge and then reward for completing the challenge.  I don’t like playing games on God-Mode, I never owned a Game Genie (yes, I’m that old), and I certainly don’t find it rewarding when you give me something I didn’t earn.

Blizz says there should be more options for earning VP.  Currently new content, heroic 5-mans, troll 5mans, and old nerfed raids give valor points. At this point, there is really nothing in PvE that doesn’t give VP, other than questing and just sitting in Stormwind.

I say there should be less. Bump up the VP from Firelands bosses so that there is no need to do other content for VP and it solves most of the problems.  I do admit there are times where roster decisions play into a person’s currency potential. The old way of a few 5-man runs for VP, but not capable of solo capping this way is ok.

The idea that you can earn top tier rewards without actually succeeding at top tier challenges just seems silly to me.  I get the limited playtime or not being in a guild that can clear content.  I knew the way I played Aion would never reap me any top end rewards…and that was fine.  I wasn’t willing to put in the effort and didn’t expect the benefit.

Shame on Blizz for caving in and shame on the lazy players for asking for it.