Friday, June 25, 2010

Dungeon Finder reward afterthought

I mentioned this week that the Dungeon Finder hands out a bag with a useful reward until level 60, but only contains vendor trash from level 60 to 70, because Blizzard forgot to adjust the item level to the increased Burning Crusade standards. That got me thinking about the Dungeon Finder rewards will evolve when Cataclysm comes out.

I'm pretty certain that there will be new emblems, and the normal and heroic Cataclysm dungeons from level 80 to 85 will give emblem rewards in an identical or very similar system as we have now. Albeit obviously not on a "heroics give better emblem rewards than raid dungeon loot" scale like today.

But what about the Dungeon Finder rewards from level 70 to 80? It is unlikely that anyone will still want to run level 80 heroics instead of going for level 81+ content. But people leveling up will still use the Dungeon Finder to visit the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons on normal. And there is a potential problem, unless Blizzard changes the reward system: For a normal level 70 to 80 dungeon right now, the Dungeon Finder gives two emblems of triumph as reward. That is already not optimal today, because your level 75 character can do strictly nothing with that emblem of triumph, except hoarding them until he reaches level 80. In the current situation, once he reaches level 80, he already has a bunch of emblems, and can get himself a head start into heroics by buying one or more T9 pieces or equivalent non-set pieces.

But given the expected gear mudflation from Cataclysm, this Dungeon Finder reward for normal level 70 to 80 dungeons becomes totally unattractive when Cataclysm comes out. The emblems are still useless from level 70 to 79, and once you reach 80 all the emblems you hoarded over 10 levels only buy you an epic which you will replace 5 minutes later in the first Cataclysm quest? Doesn't look like an attractive reward system to me.

Thus my suggestion would be to change the Dungeon Finder rewards for both the 60 to 70, and the 70 to 80 normal dungeons: Make them like it is from level 15 to 60, hand out a bag with a random blue item for the class of the player, but adjust the iLevel of the item to the iLevel of blue drops in those dungeons.

No comments:

Post a Comment