Why the conquest/valor cap should be GONE

#1 - March 6, 2012, 4:56 p.m.

This isn't going to be some nostalgia ridden message of missing vanilla WoW. I actually think that most of the changes in the expansion save for a few mistakes here and there were very beneficial and made the game even more fun.

Anyways to not get off topic...

The conquest point and valor point weekly LIMIT is doing nothing but punishing dedicated players. You cannot go any further. You cannot even put in time to progress anymore in the game. There is no point in running arena after you have become conquest point capped except for achievements and achievement points (which can't be spent on anything any ways).

I REALLY hope that they find something to change this. Players should get their TIMES WORTH of game play. As is with EVERY GAME. It shouldn't be "let's equal everyone out no matter how they do" that's just socialist in the video game world. You should get the gear you put in time to get. Just like in real life if you are a doctor you should get paid more than a !@#$ing bus driver.

I enjoy getting new gear, I enjoy the challenges that I have to go through to get them. I enjoy PvP and battling it out. Even PvE is really fun to me, I love to learn about the lore and storyline. I LOVE WORLD OF WARCRAFT (been playing since 5th grade). I think we all play it to escape from reality a little bit and be engulfed in a fantasy world. Which is why I REALLY hate to see the players that spend a lot of time on this game become CAPPED to a point where they can go no further. Of course you can get some of the gear from dungeons and raids. But those become LOCKED as well. I think if we got rid of the cap this would reward the players that deserve it, the ones that spend more time on the game. As it SHOULD be. I think they should still have dungeons lock after you've already completed them but they should really, honestly, eliminate this cap that they have put on players. It is unfair to the players that spend TIME on the game. It shouldn't be all TIME but a mixture of SKILL with it. And both of those combined provide the sense of accomplishment after completing something.

I am just really starting to get bored because all I do is spend an hour on the game. Get my conquest points to as many as I can get and get off the game. They should find a new system in which to make it fair.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#8 - March 6, 2012, 8:43 p.m.

There is often a razor’s edge between optional and mandatory. While earning a little more Conquest or Valor might feel like an option for a player who has some free time at the end of a week, it feels mandatory for a Gladiator-type PvPer or realm-first raider who wants to stay competitive with other players at that level. And of course, whenever we bring about the possibility of earning gear faster, we have to assume that players will take advantage of it. To use an extreme case, if you could complete all of your Conquest or Valor gear in one week (even if it took you nearly all of your waking time to do so), then PvP and PvE would have to be balanced with that level of gear in mind, in addition to the fact that players who quickly consumed the content by finishing their gear progression so quickly would then be looking around for something else to do.

We do try to balance time investment with skill in the game. If there was no reward just for playing (time investment), then only the most skilled players would win Arenas or BGs or kill raid bosses and there would be no catch-up mechanism for the rest of us. This would demoralize and discourage players from participating, and the highly-skilled players would have no one to oppose in the BG or join in raiding.

Of course, if we overly reward time investment, then the value of skill gets diminished, which is very unsatisfying. The design we typically follow is to give the most skilled players the opportunity to accomplish things first, but let other players get there by eventually acquiring the gear and familiarity to accomplish the same (boss kill / acquisition of desirable piece of armor / achievement).

But we don’t like it when players run out of things to do. That's something that is always on our list of things to do to improve WoW. We’re not sure that removing caps is the right solution. We have discussed ideas like having diminish returns on Valor and Conquest, such that you always could earn more, but at some point the effort per reward becomes less and less desirable. Maybe under that model very dedicated players could continue to earn additional points, without creating a new standard for everyone. It’s tricky though, because we have to go with an option that doesn't quickly slide into something that feels mandatory.