The time wasn’t important at high cloak levels but it did affect early runs and how quick you could max your rewards per run.
I think visions were fun. Although I hated the whole system, having to farm keys and then corruption resistance and corruption gear messed the whole season for me and my altoholic situation. I like that currently I can just step in random delves and get a vault slot for completing them without anything else attached. I also like the variety, being able to do different delves between my alts instead of running the same vision several times.
That said, the extra bar added a thrill to the run that simply isn’t there in delves. But I don’t consider 5 mask visions as harder content than t11 delves or ?? Zekvir. Just slightly different. So I cannot understand how in current terms for example a 5 mask vision could give myth track gear but not ?? Zekvir.
I think it’s fair to say I hope when they reintroduce visions their unlock / rewards function the same as delves do. As in you can run them whenever / however many times you want and you only need the key to “lock in” a run for loot.
Imho if we do have to farm another cloak, i hope at least we can use the old one, and not redo the thing
This is absolutely true, but I don’t see how it’s possible for them to balance rewards when the different game modes drop gear in different ways. E.g. M+ gearing is only limited by how many hours there are in the day, so they can’t have it drop Myth track or it would be by far the best.
To be honest I think raiding has the best gearing model and they should align the other modes with that and balance accordingly. That is, while the tier you’re at (e.g. Normal) is still challenging, you get around 1-2 pieces per week, and those pieces are actually relevent to the next tier up (e.g. Heroic). Plus generous amounts of upgrade currency and a vault slot that is at the level of the content, not way above it like M+ and Delves.
M+ gearing is completely degenerate; if you’re a raider you farm it early in the season for a quick boost and later in the season for crests. If you’re an M+er then after the first couple of weeks weeks your progress is hard locked behind the vault and you have to Mythic raid to get ahead faster. Basically this forces any high-end players to do both things religiously, and is an overbearing incentive for more casual players. What a perfect way to guarantee that raiders and M+ers will be annoyed and burnt out all season.
Delves has kind of an interesting take on the whole thing with the keys and the maps but I think they should just simplify it.
How about something like:
Raid: one chance at gear per week per tier per boss
M+: one chance at gear per week per dungeon per key bracket (e.g. +4 to +7 share a lockout, higher key starts you higher on the same upgrade track)
Delves: one chance at gear per week per delve.
To ensure there is some reward for doing more than one thing per week on a single character, all three modes should drop a decent amount of crests, valorstones and gold on reclear (e.g. 50% of the crests of first clear, 200% of the valorstones, and like 1000g or something vaguely noticeable in exchange for 30 minutes of your game time). That way people with a million hours to play per week can still get some dopamine, and there is still an incentive for people to play more than one mode because well… It’s more chances at relevant gear.
Until they do something like this I can’t see how gearing can ever be balanced enough for it to be fun for players who like to stick to only one game mode (or indeed only have time for one game mode!).
M+ and raids are balanced TO A DEGREE, and let me explain:
- If you only want to raid, you kind of are screwed because you only get 1-2 items per week.
- If you only want to m+, you are also kind of screwed because you gear up really fast at the start and then are just playing for the weekly vault.
- If you are MAINLY raiding, you are incentivized to spam m+ at the start of the season for the initial gearing, and then you only need them for the weekly vault.
- If you are doing MAINLY m+, then you are incentivized to pug the raid (this season the first 4 bosses on mythic), to also supplement your gearing with myth track items.
Keep in mind that even if you do m+, the number of crests needed to upgrade all items is high enough that you cannot actually upgrade your myth track items (at the moment still have 1-2 myth track items that I need crests for).
My point with that, is that it is ok to have some gearing paths have advantages/disadvantages, as long as you can “cover” those disadvantages by dabbling in the other game mode (meaning that you can get the benefit without investing TOO much time).
As for delves, I think that they need a lot more work to become one of the end game pillars. When they get it right, then they can work out how the rewards are gonna work.