Feel Bad Inc
This morning I am feeling like absolute crap. Last night was one of those nights where I just could not get into playing anything. I cycled through a bunch of different games, none of them holding my attention enough to keep up with it for long. I am not sure if I am actually “sick” or just that my lungs are not in the best shape. On the lung front it seems to be several things adding up at once. Firstly it is breathing all of this cold dry air coming with the recent cold snap. Secondly everyone seems to be smoking in the parking garage… which if I smoked I likely would as well… but this creates a hanging cloud of death that I have to walk through every morning. Smoke is a nuisance to most people but to a severe asthmatic it keeps me from breathing. Each time I get a whiff of it, I can literally feel my lungs tightening.
Lastly the other night we were trying to clean up a mess and I had to help my wife empty the vacuum bin. The dust managed to get clogged up and she had to work really hard with it to free the jam. As a result this plume of dust came up from the container and while I tried my best not to breathe… I ended up breathing some in anyways. As a result this triple whammy has lead to my lungs trying to close shop on me. Severe Asthma sucks, it really does. While it is better than it has been in years, there is always a chain of events that brings me to my knees and simply unable to function. What sucks about it the most is that Friday I have a huge presentation to give, so I have to somehow manage to get better enough to be clear and understandable without gasping for air.
Bad Luck Tokens
One of the things that happens for everyone at least one time during raiding is that the loot gods frown upon you… for an extended period of time. For me lately this has been in the form of zero weapon drops for my various alts. Yesterday at one point I was talking to a good friend of mine and he said he had been waiting on a trinket to drop for three months. Similarly I can remember running Karazhan for almost a year and never once seeing the necklace of Maiden of Virtue. During the middle of our discussion a “wouldn’t it be cool” thing happened. I do not believe that it is the intent of any game designer for RNG to wreck gear progression. No one in their right mind would ever intend players to simply not ever get the items they need.
The idea arose… that what would happen if you got bad luck tokens. This of course is just a name we came up for them, but you could call them any spiffy thing you want. The idea is that if you entered a dungeon and got no loot drops that you would end up with a special token, potentially mailed to you after the dungeon run. If you save up enough of these… and it would be a large quantity like 50 or so you could turn in your tokens to a special vendor for any one piece of gear “within reason”. Of course this would be standard drops, and nothing akin to a legendary or anything of the sort… though my old world raid would have disagreed with you considering we ran Molten Core for damned near three years never seeing a single binding.
The basic idea is to create a route to the item even if your luck is absolutely horrible. That through sheer diligence and determination you could still get it. Granted the details are a bit fuzzy, but back in the day we used to have a thing called the “bitterness pool”, I am not really remembering the full details to be honest because this was something we did back in vanilla. Essentially each player hunting for something rare would chip in some gold every week. At the end of the raid week anyone who did not get their declared item to drop would get a share of the pot. If you did get your drop your money went to soothe the pains of those who didn’t. It was funny and some people made quite a bit of money from the pool… especially those seeking the Drake Fang Talisman. But at the end of the day the pool got them no closer to getting what they actually wanted… that elusive item.
Late to the Party
When it comes to killing things… I seem to be able to do that for hours upon end without ever really getting bored of it. However when it comes to daily quests or similar reputation farming activities… I usually can’t seem to make myself do it. During Burning Crusade I successfully farmed up a bunch of factions, but one of the ones that had always eluded me was the Netherwing. There was just so much competition for the eggs, and at the time I simply could not be bothered to give up large blocks of my time working on it. Last night however… I really didn’t feel like doing much of anything, so as a result this seemed like a useful thing I could be working towards. The problem with Belghast, the character I was originally working on this with is that he was not a harvester, and being able to harvest the herbs and mine the ore was a quick and easy way to get a faction boost.
Last night I managed to go from neutral to friendly and put a decent dent in that. I need to do some more research to see if there is an easy faction guide to pushing through this. I mostly just want the netherdrake mounts for the total count, since there are a lot of them that you can get. I have never really been a fan of the look of them, and as a result that is partially what kept me from farming up the faction. Oddly enough I did Skyguard, which has the even weirder manta ray thing mount… but I proudly rode that all through BC. Additionally I need to see if there is an addon of mapnotes for the various egg spawn locations. That seems like it will be the fastest route to the faction, to keep doing the egg turn ins. Hopefully I will have the patience to keep doing this even when I am not feeling like crap.
THe other thing that makes the current tokens not “bad luck tokens” is that you get them regardless of whether you got loot in the dungeon or not.
We already have Bad Luck Tokens, and we call them Valor Points and Justice Points
Like I said before… that isn’t exactly the same since you cannot purchase that one piece you absolutely need and cannot get. As a whole I have found valor way less useful this expansion than in previous ones, at least for the acquisition of gear. It is awesome for being able to upgrade pieces, but the selection of items you can purchase for valor has been pretty crappy.
Hey Belghast, hope your lungs clear up in time for Friday.
In terms of the the bad luck tokens, while I see the benefits of the system, unfortunately gamers will find someway to game and break the system.
Depending on how you open up the available list of gear for a character (Will end boss gear be available if you’re still 4/14 N?) It would always be smartest to save your coins for an items that is either in large demand, but rare to drop (like healing rings or trinkets) or an item that is BiS.
As much as we hate to admit it…RNG is why most raiders continue to come back to raids and content. Taking RNG out of the game in some ways means that content needs to roll out quicker as Raiders gain gear they want, they have less need to return and apathy starts to kick in.
As an alternative, what about spending the tokens on a item like the drops the Timeless Isle (similar ilvl to raid level, but random stats, no gems). This essentially would allow you to upgrade items that are significantly subpar whilst waiting for a suitable replacement.
Let me know what you think!
@Ocho to some extent Valor does act as a way to gain gear over time. The problem is that they drastically overhauled the way gear works in Pandaria. No longer can you get a tier set with valor points if you just save up enough of them. Firstly there is a 1000 point weekly cap on earning Valor, secondly there is a 4000 point maximum valor ceiling. The items you can get with valor are significantly worse than the current LFR dungeon. So Valor is really only useful for upgrading your gear 250 valor at a pop, and less useful for giving you items you can use as a replacement for that raid drop that isn’t happening.
As far as Bad Luck tokens go, the idea we were thinking was you would get a token for whatever tier you failed to get a drop from, that could then be turned in when you collected enough of them for an item for your spec from that dungeon. Granted on the drive in I thought of hundreds of ways to exploit the system, but you can get the basic intention of the system. I am certain someone could think of a much better way of implementing this, either that or make Valor a useful commodity again.
The problem is… I have never played a game where being handed a bag of gold feels so full of failure 🙂
Aren’t bad luck token already a thing with badges (or whatever WoW uses as the term these days)? Even if you don’t get a drop, you’re still getting an exchange item. Now, if these “bad luck tokens” increased your chances of getting better rolls on drops, and you could use them to increase your chances of winning an item, that’d be cool. But strict adherence to the RNG gods is one of the reasons I stopped playing WoW. An hour run just for 1 slot machine pull is not what I consider fun or a good use of time.
Man, I hope your lungs begin to cooperate with you! I know what you mean about the bad luck tokens. I’ve had extensive discussions with folks over the pros and cons (mostly cons) of RNG for BiS gear. The occasional random drop you aren’t expecting makes RNG seem like a cool thing. But not when you’re repeatedly running content you’ve probably outgrown, just to get that elusive item.