Just a terrible addition to the game. I get that the situation in M+ was getting kinda weird with every few levels giving a random piece that is anywhere between lfr, normal or heroic level, but still I much prefer that then this grindy nonesense, especially in regards to raiding. It’s ridiculous we’re getting lower difficulty rewards and are forced to clear the entire raid(remember last 2 bosses) just to get gear we used to get upfront before this. Doing this for every single slot is an unwarranted and unnecessary time-sink.
The only purpose they serve at this very moment is wasting our time, which might be awesome for blizz but for all of us its a massive L…
the point is to time gate your progression while givin you a carrot on a stick
there is no enjoyment from crests and grinding just for the sake of it. it is just for milking your game time and keep you subbed.
instead of making it fun, the want to use different methods to keep people playing.
psychology is strong
The purpose is to give tangible, real reward per raid boss and per M+.
Alright, let’s remove it. Now you either get that drop, or you don’t. Have fun gearing your character’s (especially the alts) 60% slower.
The largest role crests have is to allow players to upgrade items beyond the typical ilvl bounds for the content they drop from.
Champion goes up to 619 despite being normal which is 606.
Hero to 626 despite heroic stopping at 619.
You aren’t grinding for the same ilvl you’d have otherwise, you’re getting more ilvl.
while that is true, i remember in legion, different key levels just dropped different ilvls
so upgrading is better for lower keys but to end keys.
e.g. in legion a +15 (dont remember) dropped max ilvl and no need to upgrade.
now a +9 drops the highest ilvl but you still have to upgrade it to the end.
not sure in thr end ehat is better but the crest amount is just too much, the system itself is kinda fine except that dungeons drop 13 crests and you need 15 to upgrade. guess they partly addressed it with the new crest system
In Legion, +10 (which was the highest item level) was dropping gear that could warforge) titanforge, but you could not improve it beyond that. Vault was still giving significantly higher. You also couldn’t upgrade that and if I remember correctly, both were below Mythic raiding slightly.
i dont really remember honestly. i just remember that titanforged was an issue in bfa, didnt remember it was in legion already
Crests serve multiple functions:
Firstly they make progression more gradual, not just “Yay! BiS dropped! That’s me done!”, but you have to upgrade the item too
Secondly, they make a nice consolation prize, in the sense of “Darn, my loot didn’t drop, but at least i got crests out of it…”
Thirdly, they’re a way to nudge people towards more difficult content, like Delve players into M+ (To the chagrin of both Delve players and M+ ones), to fully upgrade their hero-track gear they need gilded crests, after all.
And for the cynical-minded: They keep people playing to farm crests.
So yeah, from the developers’ perspective, there’s a lot of point to the crests.
No. Its not a waste of time, and crests have a purpose.
Gear used to be pure RNG. And this gives it a deterministic way to get upgrades. And you get some form of upgrade from every run.
Imagine we had the system we used to have: Where each key level gives 1 ilvl of loot drop. So you need to farm the same trinket 10 times. By farming I mean doing the dungeons 100 times and not getting anything but 50g for 90 of those times.
So yeah. They have a purpose. And honestly, I hope they stay. The community complained for years for Blizzard to fix the frustrating RNG of loot acquisition in M+. They took almost a decade to do it.
So IMO it stays.
Would agree the upgrade system in general and all the tiers etc is needlessly complicated. Having skipped DF a bit it took me ages to figure out what on earth was going on. Can’t imagine how that is for any new players
I wish I could agree with this because it is a lot at once, but unfortunately having multiple crest types does immensely help players not feel the need to hoard them waiting for better items to upgrade.
Maybe the naming / colouring could be more clear instead?