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  Bad trinkets - intentional? |
01/26/10 08:33:54 AM
Patch 3.3.0a
Sariisa |
Anyone have any idea why Blizzard
seems to not want any significant part of the player base to have
any good trinkets?
While I'll admit I don't have experience with EVERY class/role, I
have a LOT of experience with my mage, and a lesser amount on my
prot pally. Based on those, the trinkets that are the most useful
(and thus obviously most desirable) are ONLY rare drops. The badge
trinkets are rarely even close to as useful.
If we look at badge trinkets for mages, we have the trinket that
came out in 3.0, which is STILL arguably the most useful badge
trinket for anyone except arcane mages. There's the badge trinket
that came out in 3.2, which is only useful for arcane mages. Then
there's the badge trinket in 3.3, which was so much hit on it that
nobody who is actively raiding would ever need.
For the prot pally... stam is arguably the most useful single stat
once you're defense capped (it's not quite that cut and dry, but
for the purposes of this it's close enough). Again, the only stam
trinkets are based on RNG and getting lucky with drops.
I'm trying to not just QQ... I just don't understand why good
trinkets, of which everyone needs two of, are so hard to get. Is
that good design? I raid one or two times a week, but am
continually frustrated by the lack of trinkets available, to say
nothing of the low drop rate.
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01/29/10 10:36:32 AM
Patch 3.3.0a
Bornakk |
Our raid item philosophy has evolved
a lot since vanilla. The tier sets were once considered a badge of
honor. Someone stalking around (or mailbox afking) with their full
set bonus might as well have been sporting a legendary item. These
days, we virtually guarantee that any player with an interest in
raiding is going to be able to complete at least the lowest level
version of their set with just a minimal level of persistence. This
ultimately serves as a powerful reward mechanism and is in line
with our philosophy of letting more players actually see the
content.
This design though also has its risks. One of the big ones is that
item progression becomes very predictable and deterministic.
Imagine (just as an example) a model where all bosses drop emblems
and every item you want is for sale. That may sound cool for a few
weeks, until you hit the point that without any kind of random
element to progression that you can calculate to the day/week at
which you will finish gearing up your character. The excitement of
what the boss drops would be gone and we feel this would end up
making the purpose of clearing new content very
underwhelming.
Trinkets are really the one item (weapons are to a lesser extent)
that we use to try and capture that old slot machine feel from the
classic Molten Core days. Yes, completely random loot with huge
loot tables can be frustrating but we are pretty far from being
completely random these days. Trinkets however are still somewhat
random, they can be hard to acquire, and there is often a lot of
competition for them.
Trinkets are also tricky to design because we don't want them to be
just a pile of stats like other items. We generally want them to be
unique by having a random proc or an on-use ability or something
similar. These types of things are always trickier to balance, but
this is also what makes them interesting. We also don't necessarily
want every trinket to be a guaranteed upgrade just because the item
level is higher. Knowing what works or doesn't work for your
particular character and play style is one of the ways players have
to demonstrate their mastery of the game.
There are some aspects of trinkets for which we think we can do
better. For example, it's annoying when a superior item is on a
lower tier of content to where you feel like you have to argue with
your guild to go back and farm easy bosses or run a 10 player
version when everyone else wants to do 25. Many of the trinkets
probably represent too big a dps (or equivalent) jump given how
difficult it can be to acquire them. It's also easy for us to fall
into a rut of offering basically the same one every time (often
because we know players like it) rather than experimenting with
different things. We like to try new things to keep gear
interesting for players as we know some have been evaluating
trinkets for over five years now.
We also probably just need to drop more of them. That doesn't mean
they should be trivial to acquire, but when say a caster only has 2
good options in Ulduar and 1 requires a hard mode, then there is
going to be ton of competition when they do drop. We know it's
rough when the trinket you have been wanting finally drops and you
have to roll against 10 other people for it. Having more trinkets
would mean more variety, which means players may want different
ones and ultimately will be a little more different from their
friends/guildmates.
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