Skip to halfway down if you want the solution, I’m just outlining the history of the system and WHY we got to where we are today, as well as Blizzard’s own words on why the system has continued to stick around despite player feedback.
When Blizzard first put in Warforging into the game, it was known as Thunderforging, it would apply to select pieces of raid items and would happen more often in 25 Man Throne of Thunder, this was designed to try improve the 25 Man Raiding scene by praying more people would delve into it in order to get better rewards. Ever since then we’ve seen the system grow, change and evolve, to Warlords where it remained relatively unchanged, just a small name change and then in Legion, where they completely overhauled the game’s loot design around it. Not only could your item go from a +6 Random Upgrade, but you could expect to have it go…well, as high as the cap, +40, +50 in some cases.
This ultimately devalued the effort:reward ratio which is so important in a game like WoW. There was now a chance, however low that chance might be, to acquire high level pieces, sometimes above that of Mythic, from LFR, World Quests, Normal and more typically and less rarely: Heroic raids.
The difference in Heroic and Mythic cannot be understated, the two difficulties are 15 Item Levels apart on paper, but due to Titanforging and so on, a lucky Heroic player may end up with better gear than a Mythic raider, which is completely ridiculous. But even if he isn’t so lucky, the chance he could even get one or two items at a Mythic equivalent feels absurd. The amount of effort required to do Mythic compared to Heroic is huge, and that can be seen just by how many people complete the Mythic raid compared to the Heroic version.
Yes, on average, a Mythic raider has a higher item level, but there’s a -chance-, a chance that shouldn’t be there in my opinion, that the Heroic raider will have one almost as high if not as high as the Mythic player.
So, Blizzard has also told us the main reasons for Titanforging to be in the game.
- It creates a chance of excitement when attaining loot.
- It allows guilds to have continious gear progression even after the tier is completed.
- It allows people to get upgrades from trivial/lesser content than what they are geared for.
How does Item Upgrades fix these issues which Blizzard has outlined?
For the first one, well, hopefully loot should be exciting enough on its own, and if it isnt? Well, a few suggestions would be guarenteed sockets, extra things like ‘Voidtouched’ which would make transmogging that item cheaper, indestructible, and the like, but item upgrades also have room for Blizzard’s warforging escapades.
As for the second point, it allows continuous progression as a Valor Cap would enforce that only 2 items could be upgraded fully per week, (4 upgrades), a 1000 Cap for 250 Valor per piece. This would mean that over the course of a tier, the average item level of the group would increase, even after progression is done, as players have the valor upgrades to work towards.
As for the third point, no Item Upgrades do not fix this issue, but I also don’t personally believe it is something that should be fixed. Lesser and Trivial content should have other reasons to go back into them, AP was a big one during Legion which hasn’t been the case in BfA, as AP from dungeons was massively nerfed, but in general, cosmetics, crafting materials and so on should be the focus for lesser content once you have outgeared it.
How would the system work?
Ideally, similar to how it worked in the past but with some modern tweaks and additions to allow Blizzard a compromise and still give them a feeling of ‘excitement’ when you get a Warforge. or Titanforge.
The system would work as follows:
Valor Cap:
- 1000 Valor Cap Per Week
– This cap could be attained fairly quickly, by doing a variety of things, but a hard cap is neccessary as we do not want to repeat the issue during late WoD where players would feel obliged to do EVERY Mythic Dungeon, EVERY LFR, and EVERY Daily Heroic, as there was no cap. The cap should be available by a Mythic raider by doing all of his Mythic raid per week, and maybe one or two extra things like an emissary or a M+. An heroic raider may have to do more things outside of raiding, a dungeoneer would get more valor based on the Keystone he achieved at the end of his run (It would not be random). A casual world quester might not reach the cap, unless they decide to delve into dungeon content (Heroic or Mythic) or LFR/Normal. A cap is essential to this system however, as it paces out the upgrade system to allow Blizzard the progression throughout the tier.
Upgrades:
- 2 Upgrades per item, for a total of +6 Item Levels.
– +3 Item Level per upgrade is important, as this means the gap between a fully improved Heroic piece, and a baseline Mythic piece, would still be 9 item levels. This is important, as for many classes, a 5 item level difference usually isn’t enough for an upgrade if the secondary stats in play are wrong, but 9 or 10? Usually good enough.
— It allows the system to also be expandable, allowing Blizzard to add 2 extra upgrade slots without having any items cross between difficulty borders. This would hopefully only be used in a minor patch at the end of an expansion though, like 7.3.5 or 8.3.5.
RNG.
- Each Item would have a chance to Warforge 1/2, or Titanforge 2/2.
– This would give a random factor, as a compromise with Blizzard, but also allows players to counteract bad luck by putting in more effort and getting their valor cap each week. If you are somewhat lucky, you might be able to skip a 250 valor investment into your gear, if you are very lucky, you can skip a 500 valor investment. A more deterministic loot system would come out of this, with a sprinkling of RNG to allow players to feel like they are sometimes given a bonus, but not something that is completely required, and it would only save them a little bit of time and effort, rather than feeling frustrating and anti-player.
The figures would work out at around 2-3 months to upgrade your full character up to the max, which I believe is a reasonable timeframe and allows the content elongation which Blizzard seems to want. It also gives players a long-ish term goal to work towards every week, and also gives the players a sense of feeling finished with their character, which is more likely to open up alt play too, as less people feel the need to farm M+ on their mains in a desperate plea to acquire a titanforged trinket.
TL;DR-
Allow Item Upgrades back.
Give us a valor cap each week.
Let us upgrade each item 2 times to a max of +6 item level to preserve the difficulty-difficulty borders and effort:reward ratio.
Have this process take 2-3 months to complete to give players a sense of feeling finished each week and then finally at the end of the tier.
I’d love to hear suggestions, thoughts on this system and anything else. Thanks.
