An Alternative to Weekly Chests

[NocturniaUzuki]

Even though I still don't like the idea, I'll throw in a couple comments anyway. I do however appreciate the fact you've taken on board some feedback and made changes, despite how I personally feel.

Minimum item level runs still suck outside of statics, and it makes getting the best current gear irrelevant in terms of easing prior fights. It also massively increases the burden of knowledge on newer raiders who may want to join statics but would be expected to know previous tiers at minimum item level, which is no mean feat.

Nowhere in your post do you mention the capped tome upgrade items such as twines/coats/dips, nor the coffer and mount from the final fight of a tier. How would these be aquired in your new system?

Finally, and this is more of a personal gripe. Why insist on pushing players back into older and irrelevant content? Not everything needs to have an active playerbase. If the rewards are worth it people will continue to do it, if not, then leave it to die. The proof lies in things like the pony farms for 2.x primals which still happen. Wondrous Tails still has active participants. Relic weapons. Roulettes.

If content is to die, then let it, it has served it's purpose at the end of the day, and it's only natural to happen in a game such as this where vertical progression is the end all be all.

Let it go.

And I appreciate that you're giving it fair, well-structured criticism.

In response to your points...

I think what you worry about with a burden on newer raiders is justified, but I don't think it would be quite as big an issue as you might be thinking. As you mentioned, knowing and being able to clear old fights on MinIL is no mean feat. This is why I said in the main post that capping Provenance without getting the 430 tomes from the latest raid tier + trial is unrealistic. While I think that some hardcore statics might start demanding knowledge of all those Min IL raids, even at the hardcore level, it's a lot to demand. I feel that any reasonable person would recruit players based solely on their playing skill, as proven by which of the latest tier's raids they have cleared, If someone can clear O12S, they are likely of a high enough caliber to also clear the MinIL content. Statics bringing on board such players would have to demonstrate a level of patience while their new recruits learn any fights which the static does weekly that the recruit doesn't already know. Given that old MinIL content is, on average, harder than the current raid tier (due to having 10-40 iLevels over the minimum), it stands to reason that in most cases, players who can't clear the full current raid tier aren't going to be doing much of the older stuff. The priority remains on progging the current tier until they can clear all of it. A few statics that can only clear part of the tier may start doing some of the old extremes or lower turns of old raid tiers. Ultimately, I think that the reality will win out; players can only be as restrictive as is realistic. Once it gets to the point that nobody joins their statics out of lack of knowledge, they will have to change their standards to allow players who aren't already masters of their particular preferences, just like hiring employees is in the real world.

As for the upgrade items, this depends somewhat. There are two ways this could be implemented. One way would be to have the upgrades in the shop. They would simply cost tomes equal to the pages they originally cost. So 4-page upgrades would cost 375 Provenance, etc. Alternatively, the upgrade system could be ditched entirely, and the shop would simply offer all of the BiS gear for each class. But I suspect this would be largely unpopular. The mounts and such are considered "miscellaneous rewards" and, as mentioned under "The Changes", there would be no change here. When I say get rid of the chest system, I mean specifically for gear. There would still be a chest at the end, which would have any miscellaneous rewards. In fact, for the sake of the joy of opening a chest, having us obtain the tomes by opening the chest might be a nice little touch as well (though obviously, it's not rolled on and we would just get it immediately).

There's nothing much I can say about your personal gripe, of course. That's just your preference, and I'm not likely to change your mind. I will at least say this, though. MMO playerbases are, by-in-large, focused on material rewards. This is why the only way to resurrect old content properly is to gate highly-desirable end-game rewards behind said content. The mount farms and WT runs do not revive old content. The content is simply facerolled for the rewards because material-focused players will always take the easiest road to their rewards. That's just logical for them. However, there are other players who are not focused on material rewards, who simply want to do the content for its own sake. Of course, you can claim, maybe even rightly, that that portion of the playerbase is too small to care about. However, it's not just those players. There are many material-focused players who do enjoy old content as well. It's just that when forced to choose between their material goals and their interest in old content, they naturally choose their material goals. Putting some of those material goals back into old content will make more than just the "niche" oldies playerbase happy. It will make all of those players who want a reason (i.e. material reward) to go back to old content happy as well. My goal is to achieve that without alienating the portion of the playerbase that only has interest in the latest content; hence the balancing act. It can't be too frustrating for those players. But if it isn't restrictive enough, it won't achieve anything.