Its tough to have an opinion on this since the details on how you can modify gear, what modifies the gear, how to obtain such mods etc, has not been released.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - John Galt
I think this idea sounds fantastic. Anything that will lessen the loot drama and prevent players from trying to ninja items that shouldn't go to them is a plus in my book.
And for the record, the type of players who throw around the "welfare epics" comments are usually the hardcore raiding snobs who think that anyone who can't spend all day raiding shouldn't have anything decent. As pathetic as those people are, I take comfort in knowing that the developers don't agree with them or there wouldn't be any "welfare epics" at all. You can't alienate 3/4 of your player base so that the 1/4 with unlimited time get to feel like you have to do what they are doing or fail. It isn't a good business model, since many of us would just leave once we realize we can't advance without spending that much time stuck in a dungeon somewhere.
Currently playing: Rift Played: SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot World of Warcraft, AoC
I think this is a wise choice on bioware for the loot issue. Take the drama out of it and as long as if gear dropped in my container is something that I can't use is tradeable to others then I would deem this issue done .
I'm tempted to be sarcastic... Given some of the 733t kiddie attitudes... But I'll restrain myself... ^^ The idea that every one in a raid/operation should get something is LONG over due. I'm LONG past sick and tired of showing up time after time after time, on the faint chance of getting some upgrade. In many guilds, unless you are part of the "in circle" you can forget about getting any chance of up grades. This looks like a much better approach.
I think you are ´surprised´ that fan base is positive about this system the same way people are surprised at how successful WOW is. These forums are the vast minority of players. The unpopularity of WOW (and all things wow-like) here is just because people here are much more hardcore than most players. Most players don´t even read their game forums, let alone go to a third party site to post.
WOW and SWTOR learned that players need to advance their characters and only random, and sometimes crazy RNG systems just do not work. Players also don´t want to feel like they have to compete with the guildmaster´s girlfriends 3rd alt for loot.
The only people who use the term welfare gear are ones playing games with less than 100,000 players.
Originally posted by tinuelle I support any initiativ that is a counterweight to the "repetetive gear grind" endgame feature.
I agree, but I don't think this is going to make that much difference. It's not like you get to pick which loot is in your container. Token systems are just as bad as running the same dungeon hoping that an upgrade drops and you win the roll, in my opinion. The ideal solution would be to make the instances engaging enough to want to repeat them, without the lure of the right loot in your container. Perhaps there is a way to decrease the focus on loot somehow.
'Welfare' Epic? 'Douchebag' terminology.
Not when you have players AFKing or not pulling thier weight. There are a good chunk of players that expect something for nothing. I think this term fits them quite well.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I don't understand why its called 'welfare'. Its not a system to grant epics to people who don't run the raids right? It just keeps people from having to run the same raid over and over to wait for their chance/turn to receive the loot, which is the main thing that kept me from raiding in other games. I like to do group instances but not the same instance over and over hoping each time It'll be the last.
I really like this concept. I think it is a great idea in theory and hope that it works well inm practice. It would be nice to have everyone feel they have a chance to obtain some items even those that donot have the opportunity to play as much due to their real life responsibilities or commitments. Win/win for everyone long as they avoid a few pitfalls:
1. Major bugs or flaws with bags causing the loot tables to not give equal opportunities for players of all classes
2. Bags and items in bags are instantly put into inventory and are bound to characters. No sense in doing this if raids can still try and "lock out" access to good bags because they can have a master loot option or try and force you to give your "better bag" to another player.
3. No extremely easy access bags. There needs to be something in place whether it is lockouts or other measures taken to ensure wiseasses won't try to push players to rush to first boss kill, get their bag, and then disband to get into another party to either repeat it in the same raid or go to other raid dungeons and do the same thing.
Long as they keep adding contant on a regualr basis I don't see a problem with this idea. Really depends on how often they plan on doing content updates, conduct proper QA & customer feedback, and whteher the raids are actually entertaining to attempt as to whehter this will be ultimately successful or not.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I agree, but I don't think this is going to make that much difference. It's not like you get to pick which loot is in your container. Token systems are just as bad as running the same dungeon hoping that an upgrade drops and you win the roll, in my opinion. The ideal solution would be to make the instances engaging enough to want to repeat them, without the lure of the right loot in your container. Perhaps there is a way to decrease the focus on loot somehow.
I feel the same, and i think that The Secret World has a better approach on things, the focus being to unveil the story and to develop your character (something like 500 skillpoints, you can learn all of them and can specialize in any, with a skill system like Guild Wars, you have to chose a limited number of skills from a large list). There are of course gear differences but from what i've read, they are not game breaking. Chosing the right skills for the task and playing well come before gear.
Good job Bioware. To the elitist! You power your way thru the game, complaining about every one and everything. Get to 'endgame' and play around for a while, complaining about everyone and everything. Then quit and go on to the next game, complaining about the last game, its dumb down incompetant players, bad devs, rip off company, stupid WOW clone mechanics, graphics ad infinitum. Meanwhile millions of us say thanks for the money you did spend on our game and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Don't think for a minute that the extreme majority of we 'lazy, dumb and incompetant' players are not happy about this announcement. I quit bothering to raid directly because of loot drama queens and guild 'officer' elitists. After several raids and the chat drama about loot I grew disgusted with trying to follow the guild rules that so many ignored. I continued to raid a while more and just clicked 'pass' in disgust. But the contention didn't end. I am sure that there are guilds out here that have minimized such problems but how do you know in advance? Go from guild to guild? There are hundreds of guilds for every major game, you just have to guess.
This will simplify the problem and few complaints will be forthcoming, except, of course, from the elitist who will still complain, not because they didn't get the 'epic', but because someone else not as 'good' got it. They will leave pretty soon anyway so now with SWTOR I may enjoy raiding again. So GOOD JOB Bioware!
I don't understand why its called 'welfare'. Its not a system to grant epics to people who don't run the raids right? It just keeps people from having to run the same raid over and over to wait for their chance/turn to receive the loot, which is the main thing that kept me from raiding in other games. I like to do group instances but not the same instance over and over hoping each time It'll be the last.
I think because the commendation rewards are the guaranteed, base rewards. Probably rare dropped gear can be better. Not sure on this though. But I hope so.
I don't understand why its called 'welfare'. Its not a system to grant epics to people who don't run the raids right? It just keeps people from having to run the same raid over and over to wait for their chance/turn to receive the loot, which is the main thing that kept me from raiding in other games. I like to do group instances but not the same instance over and over hoping each time It'll be the last.
I think it comes, partly, from players who do nothing and still get rewards, just for showing up. The best example I can come up with is WoW's battlegrounds. Players can sit AFK for the entire match, and still get honor points to buy epic weapons and armor.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well-written Mike. Certainly Raiding has always been an activity for the hardcore, more-so generally for those that have uninterrupted hours to sit dormant in a chair; certainly an unrealistic game-play entertainment expectation.
And if Bioware picks-up on Warhammers mechanic, though in a simple and uncomplicated way, then though there is nothing new here, its’ implementation is one-step closer to out-of-touch developers getting more in-touch with reality.
So, I have no hard feelings about individual loot bags, as it makes sense and as mentioned, Warhammer mechanics did the same thing, but with quality based on contribution in open-world PQ’s.
Perhaps the Warhammer mechanic is a bit of a different animal since that was based on open-world PQ’s in-which many players could run-up on at various stages. But applying the concept to a 4-main raid doesn’t appear to be a bad one, though at the same time, I don’t think that Bioware can justify rewards scaling with contribution, since every player on that 4-player instanced team has to contribute cooperatively to accomplish the goal. So in the SW:TOR case, I’d think that just random, yet personal, class-specific chest-drops can work, particularly if Biware doesn’t try to muddy the water based on some weird form of contribution calculation.
So in this case, I will concede that I wouldn’t consider it welfare or charity, but better game-play mechanics to reward the participants fairly that accomplished something challenging as a team, as long as its’ not an exorbitant reward for just having the “time” to run a 1-hour Raid.
Now mix-in rare and random drops, player-crafted gear, contributing to the massively-multiplayer quotent of a community-centric player-base, and all of which that can be as competitive in form and function from something that is attained from an npc, and now we're talking.
I don't understand why its called 'welfare'. Its not a system to grant epics to people who don't run the raids right? It just keeps people from having to run the same raid over and over to wait for their chance/turn to receive the loot, which is the main thing that kept me from raiding in other games. I like to do group instances but not the same instance over and over hoping each time It'll be the last.
same feeling here had to sneer in disgust at the title to this article, how is everyone getting a token and maybe one or two people recieving their own epic loot piece any more welfare than having it handed to you by the thirty five year old unemployed guiild leader who does nothing but play the game all day?
I even wonder why it's so hard for other players to realize that the folks near the bottom in a guild could raid ten times (in the past) and not get anything but a promise that if he continues to be a good soldier his turn will come, while with a system like this all those bottom players could turn in the ten tokens they have now earned to go and pick up a piece of the loot set they desire.
No whining to the leaders about how unfair this or that is etc.
The term welfare epics where coined during the early years of WoW. The term came from hardcore raiders that would raid and gear up, and than in turn go into pvp and steamroll the non raiders into the ground. Being almost untouchable, so what WoW did in response to this was to make gear for non raiders. Basically people that spent most of their time in pvp instead of raiding, when the pvpers geared up in this manner the hardcore raiders found that they couldn't no longer beat those people, and thus inturn started get their asses handed back to them. In response to this the raiders started calling the pvp gear welfare epics, although you still had to work your ass off just to obtain said gear. Under the old system it took months to be able to aquire a whole set of pvp gear and it required large chunks of time on the player's behalf. Although it took staggering amounts of time and work to obtain this gear just like raids. The hardcore raiders still felt it was inferior to their gear grind raids, it really wasn't about time and effort. It was more about the hardcore raiders being epeen hurt, they could no longer go into pvp with their shiny new epics and steamroll the pvpers. This also set up pvp as a viable way of endgame progession. People throw around the term welfare epics without knowing the true meaning or origin of the term.
The term welfare epics where coined during the early years of WoW. The term came from hardcore raiders that would raid and gear up, and than in turn go into pvp and steamroll the non raiders into the ground. Being almost untouchable, so what WoW did in response to this was to make gear for non raiders. Basically people that spent most of their time in pvp instead of raiding, when the pvpers geared up in this manner the hardcore raiders found that they couldn't no longer beat those people, and thus inturn started get their asses handed back to them. In response to this the raiders started calling the pvp gear welfare epics, although you still had to work your ass off just to obtain said gear. Under the old system it took months to be able to aquire a whole set of pvp gear and it required large chunks of time on the player's behalf. Although it took staggering amounts of time and work to obtain this gear just like raids. The hardcore raiders still felt it was inferior to their gear grind raids, it really wasn't about time and effort. It was more about the hardcore raiders being epeen hurt, they could no longer go into pvp with their shiny new epics and steamroll the pvpers. This also set up pvp as a viable way of endgame progession. People throw around the term welfare epics without knowing the true meaning or origin of the term.
That is the source of contention here. Though many players who actually enjoyed PvP did work hard for their gear, players didn't have to work their ass off. They just had to show up at the welfare office and wait in line. I was never a hardcore raider, but it certainly pissed me off when half of my team was AFK just to get the honor points, and couldn't be assed about actually trying to win.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Spending time raiding and not getting any loot makes it all the more sweeter when you do finally get your drop. Long grinds with a rare payoff are more fun than short grinds with constant rewards that everyone can get.
If you hand out bags of loot and tokens for every boss kill, instead of making raiding more rewarding, it makes it even more dissappointing when you open up your bag and only find tokens. It also puts the grind right in your face because raiding then becomes of game of token collecting so you can get that next piece from a vendor. Since you know with certainty that if you keep raiding you will eventually have enough tokens to buy almost any gear you want, you'll enter every raid with no sense of excitiment or anticipation. It will be more like "lets just kill this boss asap because I need 5 more tokens for my helm."
In the long term this is a bad system and will burn people out a lot faster than "old school" raiding.
What I want to know is if raiding is going to be the only venue for end game gear? If it is, I also want to know why a casual game is going the raid or die route for end game, won't that piss off the casual gamers, who will once again be snubbed by developers like they did in that "Other" game?
What I want to know is if raiding is going to be the only venue for end game gear? If it is, I also want to know why a casual game is going the raid or die route for end game, won't that piss off the casual gamers, who will once again be snubbed by developers like they did in that "Other" game?
I read somewhere there would be endagme planets that worked much like a single player raid instance I think it was on this site but was posted by someone who follows the game alot closer than I do.
Spending time raiding and not getting any loot makes it all the more sweeter when you do finally get your drop. Long grinds with a rare payoff are more fun than short grinds with constant rewards that everyone can get.
If you hand out bags of loot and tokens for every boss kill, instead of making raiding more rewarding, it makes it even more dissappointing when you open up your bag and only find tokens. It also puts the grind right in your face because raiding then becomes of game of token collecting so you can get that next piece from a vendor. Since you know with certainty that if you keep raiding you will eventually have enough tokens to buy almost any gear you want, you'll enter every raid with no sense of excitiment or anticipation. It will be more like "lets just kill this boss asap because I need 5 more tokens for my helm."
In the long term this is a bad system and will burn people out a lot faster than "old school" raiding.
Total crap. Spending time raiding and not getttng loot is a complete waste of your time. You most likely have done the raid before, so nothing will be new or interesting about it at all. You basically just press buttons and spend your night watching the same movie if you will. Handing out bags for everyone gives a sense of accomplishment, and it gives you more of a reason to be there. Not only do you have a chance of getting that epic piece you've been wanting but you will also be getting this extra bag of stuff gauranteed if you succeed.
NOT having some kind of reward is what puts the grind right in your face, because if you leave empty handed you've basically accomplished absolutely nothing for yourself.
I love the idea of Loot Containers for each player. And no, i do not think this is free epics for everyone. You still have to play your part in the Operation, don't you? If you have someone afking a lot, autofollowing, autoattacks and pretty much doing nothing during the Operation, but you still keep him/her along the whole time, now that is giving free epics to someone. I think "Welfare Epics" is moreof an actitude from players than a game loot distribution mechanic.
I think we need a bit more info about the actual loot tables of bosses. Like actually how many pieces for each class each boss may drop. And we also need to know how many tokens can we get per boss, and how many tokens will it take to buy each piece. And for what I understand, you will either get an item or tokens, not both, right?
Finally, I also agree in the position that i think this game is about experiencing the story and watch it unfold since level 1 through level 50, and then the new (to me) promise of your story continuing to develop at the End Game portion of the game, not a Treasure hunting game.
What I want to know is if raiding is going to be the only venue for end game gear? If it is, I also want to know why a casual game is going the raid or die route for end game, won't that piss off the casual gamers, who will once again be snubbed by developers like they did in that "Other" game?
I read somewhere there would be endagme planets that worked much like a single player raid instance I think it was on this site but was posted by someone who follows the game alot closer than I do.
There is a world for solo end game, but for end game gear, you can get it a number of different ways. There will be some pieces that you get only from raids, but there will also be gear from PvP, some player created gear, social gear, and so on.
Gear isn't the end all be all in SWTOR as most gear will be statless, you will utilize modifications to boost stats. Its one of the best systems around. This way you can keep low level gear viable for longer and just upgrade the mods on it if you like the look of that gear, or you can go with the higher level gear if it has more slots or the same slots with stats that mean something to you, etc.
You'll have plenty of different ways to get "top tier" style gear that will be viable for what you want to do.
Again, with Item Mods what makes an item in ToR epic?
The number of Mods it allows? What kinds of Mods it allows? The strength of the Mods it Allows?
Need more info.
This system is great for turning those awesome armor sets into vanity items. Which is scary cause they can make some really cool looking sets, sell them in a cash shop, and honestly say they are only vanity items.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - John Galt
Comments
Its tough to have an opinion on this since the details on how you can modify gear, what modifies the gear, how to obtain such mods etc, has not been released.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
- John Galt
The objections stated to this system in the article are really thin:
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I think this idea sounds fantastic. Anything that will lessen the loot drama and prevent players from trying to ninja items that shouldn't go to them is a plus in my book.
And for the record, the type of players who throw around the "welfare epics" comments are usually the hardcore raiding snobs who think that anyone who can't spend all day raiding shouldn't have anything decent. As pathetic as those people are, I take comfort in knowing that the developers don't agree with them or there wouldn't be any "welfare epics" at all. You can't alienate 3/4 of your player base so that the 1/4 with unlimited time get to feel like you have to do what they are doing or fail. It isn't a good business model, since many of us would just leave once we realize we can't advance without spending that much time stuck in a dungeon somewhere.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
I think this is a wise choice on bioware for the loot issue. Take the drama out of it and as long as if gear dropped in my container is something that I can't use is tradeable to others then I would deem this issue done .
I'm tempted to be sarcastic... Given some of the 733t kiddie attitudes... But I'll restrain myself... ^^ The idea that every one in a raid/operation should get something is LONG over due. I'm LONG past sick and tired of showing up time after time after time, on the faint chance of getting some upgrade. In many guilds, unless you are part of the "in circle" you can forget about getting any chance of up grades. This looks like a much better approach.
I think you are ´surprised´ that fan base is positive about this system the same way people are surprised at how successful WOW is. These forums are the vast minority of players. The unpopularity of WOW (and all things wow-like) here is just because people here are much more hardcore than most players. Most players don´t even read their game forums, let alone go to a third party site to post.
WOW and SWTOR learned that players need to advance their characters and only random, and sometimes crazy RNG systems just do not work. Players also don´t want to feel like they have to compete with the guildmaster´s girlfriends 3rd alt for loot.
The only people who use the term welfare gear are ones playing games with less than 100,000 players.
I agree, but I don't think this is going to make that much difference. It's not like you get to pick which loot is in your container. Token systems are just as bad as running the same dungeon hoping that an upgrade drops and you win the roll, in my opinion. The ideal solution would be to make the instances engaging enough to want to repeat them, without the lure of the right loot in your container. Perhaps there is a way to decrease the focus on loot somehow.
Not when you have players AFKing or not pulling thier weight. There are a good chunk of players that expect something for nothing. I think this term fits them quite well.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I don't understand why its called 'welfare'. Its not a system to grant epics to people who don't run the raids right? It just keeps people from having to run the same raid over and over to wait for their chance/turn to receive the loot, which is the main thing that kept me from raiding in other games. I like to do group instances but not the same instance over and over hoping each time It'll be the last.
I really like this concept. I think it is a great idea in theory and hope that it works well inm practice. It would be nice to have everyone feel they have a chance to obtain some items even those that donot have the opportunity to play as much due to their real life responsibilities or commitments. Win/win for everyone long as they avoid a few pitfalls:
1. Major bugs or flaws with bags causing the loot tables to not give equal opportunities for players of all classes
2. Bags and items in bags are instantly put into inventory and are bound to characters. No sense in doing this if raids can still try and "lock out" access to good bags because they can have a master loot option or try and force you to give your "better bag" to another player.
3. No extremely easy access bags. There needs to be something in place whether it is lockouts or other measures taken to ensure wiseasses won't try to push players to rush to first boss kill, get their bag, and then disband to get into another party to either repeat it in the same raid or go to other raid dungeons and do the same thing.
Long as they keep adding contant on a regualr basis I don't see a problem with this idea. Really depends on how often they plan on doing content updates, conduct proper QA & customer feedback, and whteher the raids are actually entertaining to attempt as to whehter this will be ultimately successful or not.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I feel the same, and i think that The Secret World has a better approach on things, the focus being to unveil the story and to develop your character (something like 500 skillpoints, you can learn all of them and can specialize in any, with a skill system like Guild Wars, you have to chose a limited number of skills from a large list). There are of course gear differences but from what i've read, they are not game breaking. Chosing the right skills for the task and playing well come before gear.
Good job Bioware. To the elitist! You power your way thru the game, complaining about every one and everything. Get to 'endgame' and play around for a while, complaining about everyone and everything. Then quit and go on to the next game, complaining about the last game, its dumb down incompetant players, bad devs, rip off company, stupid WOW clone mechanics, graphics ad infinitum. Meanwhile millions of us say thanks for the money you did spend on our game and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Don't think for a minute that the extreme majority of we 'lazy, dumb and incompetant' players are not happy about this announcement. I quit bothering to raid directly because of loot drama queens and guild 'officer' elitists. After several raids and the chat drama about loot I grew disgusted with trying to follow the guild rules that so many ignored. I continued to raid a while more and just clicked 'pass' in disgust. But the contention didn't end. I am sure that there are guilds out here that have minimized such problems but how do you know in advance? Go from guild to guild? There are hundreds of guilds for every major game, you just have to guess.
This will simplify the problem and few complaints will be forthcoming, except, of course, from the elitist who will still complain, not because they didn't get the 'epic', but because someone else not as 'good' got it. They will leave pretty soon anyway so now with SWTOR I may enjoy raiding again. So GOOD JOB Bioware!
I think because the commendation rewards are the guaranteed, base rewards. Probably rare dropped gear can be better. Not sure on this though. But I hope so.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I think it comes, partly, from players who do nothing and still get rewards, just for showing up. The best example I can come up with is WoW's battlegrounds. Players can sit AFK for the entire match, and still get honor points to buy epic weapons and armor.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well-written Mike. Certainly Raiding has always been an activity for the hardcore, more-so generally for those that have uninterrupted hours to sit dormant in a chair; certainly an unrealistic game-play entertainment expectation.
And if Bioware picks-up on Warhammers mechanic, though in a simple and uncomplicated way, then though there is nothing new here, its’ implementation is one-step closer to out-of-touch developers getting more in-touch with reality.
So, I have no hard feelings about individual loot bags, as it makes sense and as mentioned, Warhammer mechanics did the same thing, but with quality based on contribution in open-world PQ’s.
Perhaps the Warhammer mechanic is a bit of a different animal since that was based on open-world PQ’s in-which many players could run-up on at various stages. But applying the concept to a 4-main raid doesn’t appear to be a bad one, though at the same time, I don’t think that Bioware can justify rewards scaling with contribution, since every player on that 4-player instanced team has to contribute cooperatively to accomplish the goal. So in the SW:TOR case, I’d think that just random, yet personal, class-specific chest-drops can work, particularly if Biware doesn’t try to muddy the water based on some weird form of contribution calculation.
So in this case, I will concede that I wouldn’t consider it welfare or charity, but better game-play mechanics to reward the participants fairly that accomplished something challenging as a team, as long as its’ not an exorbitant reward for just having the “time” to run a 1-hour Raid.
Now mix-in rare and random drops, player-crafted gear, contributing to the massively-multiplayer quotent of a community-centric player-base, and all of which that can be as competitive in form and function from something that is attained from an npc, and now we're talking.
same feeling here had to sneer in disgust at the title to this article, how is everyone getting a token and maybe one or two people recieving their own epic loot piece any more welfare than having it handed to you by the thirty five year old unemployed guiild leader who does nothing but play the game all day?
I even wonder why it's so hard for other players to realize that the folks near the bottom in a guild could raid ten times (in the past) and not get anything but a promise that if he continues to be a good soldier his turn will come, while with a system like this all those bottom players could turn in the ten tokens they have now earned to go and pick up a piece of the loot set they desire.
No whining to the leaders about how unfair this or that is etc.
The term welfare epics where coined during the early years of WoW. The term came from hardcore raiders that would raid and gear up, and than in turn go into pvp and steamroll the non raiders into the ground. Being almost untouchable, so what WoW did in response to this was to make gear for non raiders. Basically people that spent most of their time in pvp instead of raiding, when the pvpers geared up in this manner the hardcore raiders found that they couldn't no longer beat those people, and thus inturn started get their asses handed back to them. In response to this the raiders started calling the pvp gear welfare epics, although you still had to work your ass off just to obtain said gear. Under the old system it took months to be able to aquire a whole set of pvp gear and it required large chunks of time on the player's behalf. Although it took staggering amounts of time and work to obtain this gear just like raids. The hardcore raiders still felt it was inferior to their gear grind raids, it really wasn't about time and effort. It was more about the hardcore raiders being epeen hurt, they could no longer go into pvp with their shiny new epics and steamroll the pvpers. This also set up pvp as a viable way of endgame progession. People throw around the term welfare epics without knowing the true meaning or origin of the term.
listen to Gormok, at least someone besides me knows what's up.
The term welfare is used only to denegrate those who don't raid to get their gear, as if work isn't put in, which it always was.
That is the source of contention here. Though many players who actually enjoyed PvP did work hard for their gear, players didn't have to work their ass off. They just had to show up at the welfare office and wait in line. I was never a hardcore raider, but it certainly pissed me off when half of my team was AFK just to get the honor points, and couldn't be assed about actually trying to win.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Spending time raiding and not getting any loot makes it all the more sweeter when you do finally get your drop. Long grinds with a rare payoff are more fun than short grinds with constant rewards that everyone can get.
If you hand out bags of loot and tokens for every boss kill, instead of making raiding more rewarding, it makes it even more dissappointing when you open up your bag and only find tokens. It also puts the grind right in your face because raiding then becomes of game of token collecting so you can get that next piece from a vendor. Since you know with certainty that if you keep raiding you will eventually have enough tokens to buy almost any gear you want, you'll enter every raid with no sense of excitiment or anticipation. It will be more like "lets just kill this boss asap because I need 5 more tokens for my helm."
In the long term this is a bad system and will burn people out a lot faster than "old school" raiding.
What I want to know is if raiding is going to be the only venue for end game gear? If it is, I also want to know why a casual game is going the raid or die route for end game, won't that piss off the casual gamers, who will once again be snubbed by developers like they did in that "Other" game?
I read somewhere there would be endagme planets that worked much like a single player raid instance I think it was on this site but was posted by someone who follows the game alot closer than I do.
Total crap. Spending time raiding and not getttng loot is a complete waste of your time. You most likely have done the raid before, so nothing will be new or interesting about it at all. You basically just press buttons and spend your night watching the same movie if you will. Handing out bags for everyone gives a sense of accomplishment, and it gives you more of a reason to be there. Not only do you have a chance of getting that epic piece you've been wanting but you will also be getting this extra bag of stuff gauranteed if you succeed.
NOT having some kind of reward is what puts the grind right in your face, because if you leave empty handed you've basically accomplished absolutely nothing for yourself.
Oh, and token collecting is optional.
I love the idea of Loot Containers for each player. And no, i do not think this is free epics for everyone. You still have to play your part in the Operation, don't you? If you have someone afking a lot, autofollowing, autoattacks and pretty much doing nothing during the Operation, but you still keep him/her along the whole time, now that is giving free epics to someone. I think "Welfare Epics" is moreof an actitude from players than a game loot distribution mechanic.
I think we need a bit more info about the actual loot tables of bosses. Like actually how many pieces for each class each boss may drop. And we also need to know how many tokens can we get per boss, and how many tokens will it take to buy each piece. And for what I understand, you will either get an item or tokens, not both, right?
Finally, I also agree in the position that i think this game is about experiencing the story and watch it unfold since level 1 through level 50, and then the new (to me) promise of your story continuing to develop at the End Game portion of the game, not a Treasure hunting game.
There is a world for solo end game, but for end game gear, you can get it a number of different ways. There will be some pieces that you get only from raids, but there will also be gear from PvP, some player created gear, social gear, and so on.
Gear isn't the end all be all in SWTOR as most gear will be statless, you will utilize modifications to boost stats. Its one of the best systems around. This way you can keep low level gear viable for longer and just upgrade the mods on it if you like the look of that gear, or you can go with the higher level gear if it has more slots or the same slots with stats that mean something to you, etc.
You'll have plenty of different ways to get "top tier" style gear that will be viable for what you want to do.
Again, with Item Mods what makes an item in ToR epic?
The number of Mods it allows? What kinds of Mods it allows? The strength of the Mods it Allows?
Need more info.
This system is great for turning those awesome armor sets into vanity items. Which is scary cause they can make some really cool looking sets, sell them in a cash shop, and honestly say they are only vanity items.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
- John Galt