Archaeology Items' Cooldowns

Sometimes it can be difficult to find a good "sweet spot" when choosing cooldowns for groups of similar items such as those obtained through Archaeology. We don't want all the cooldowns to be exactly the same, but we also don't want it to feel like the numbers were chosen totally at random. We may not always get the values right initially, so knowing what feels good to you and what doesn't -- and why-- is really helpful.

So, basically: thanks for postin'. We really appreciate this kind of feedback. If you've any additional criticisms or thoughts about Archaeology item cooldowns, please feel free to share them (constructively, of course). :)

02/28/2011 5:32 PMPosted by Tantojutsu

I can't decide whether fabricating your own reality is suiting for a Blizzard employee or not...it's what you guys do for a living by creating video games, afterall.

Hm. There wasn't any fabrication. As noted, we didn't want every single Archaeology item to have the same cooldown. Some of the items are pretty unique and provide interesting on-use abilities, so it made sense to us to vary things up a little. This is perhaps a bit different than our approach to other cosmetic or novelty item cooldowns, but Archaeology itself is new and has its own reward structure.

If you don't agree with the intent behind that design or its implementation, that's okay. Just say so, you know? We're not lying to you or trying to dupe you into agreeing with us. In fact, we enjoy it when players are able to post constructively on topics they feel passionately about it. We want the game to be as fun as possible, and if you're not having fun, we like knowing why.

(Now, with that said, I can see how you may have interpreted what I posted to refer to our design philosophy towards all vanity items, rather than specifically to items granted through Archaeology. If that's the case, then I apologize for the confusion. That certainly wasn't the intent behind the message. Instead, the message was simply "We're listening, and we want to hear more from you about this particular topic.")

02/28/2011 5:16 PMPosted by Yeria

Are you certain the Pendant cooldown is intended, Lylirra? It's 100 minutes as opposed to the other items' 10 minutes - are you sure someone didn't fat-finger an extra 0 on there?

The current cooldown was chosen deliberately, but I can see why you might think otherwise (100 minutes is kind of strange for a cooldown time).

Anyway, summoning a harem of scarabs can be pretty taxing on some systems, so there were some initial concerns about putting the pendant on a short cooldown. Based on the feedback we've received, though, we're looking into reducing it. We agree that the effect is pretty cool and would be nice to use it more frequently.

03/01/2011 8:32 AMPosted by Setanta

Dozens of pages of constructive feedback, deeply disturbed that this bit of archaeology about cooldowns is what gets Blizzard's attention.

So, the reason I posted in this thread is actually pretty straightforward. Comparatively, the topic of Archaeology item cooldowns is pretty uncommon. It's a valid discussion, but it's not really talked about a lot, so we're interested in hearing more about what players have to say. By posting, I just wanted to thank those who had broached the topic, as well as encourage more players to weigh in with their thoughts and ideas.

Now, there may be other threads or discussions related to Archaeology out there that we haven't jump into, but that doesn't mean we're intentionally ignoring them. There are very legitimate reasons why we tend to stay out of certain discussions -- for example, we may not have any new information to communicate at the time, or the discussion itself may be really constructive and the last thing we want to do is make a post and risk changing the tone or direction of the conversation (which tends to happen a lot whenever we do post).

02/28/2011 8:50 PMPosted by Comfortabull

We just want some acknowledgment that, "Hey, we see that you guys are not having fun with the way it was implemented, so we are looking into it."

To sort of continue with Setanta's post, we know you have more overarching concerns about Archaeology. We like the current model for Archaeology, so we may not agree with all the posts we see, but we definitely feel that improvements can be made. We don't have any plans for change that we can share right now, but iterating on the profession is something we want to do.

I wish I could give you more than that after such a good post, but I hope you can at least take some comfort in knowing that we're very open to your feedback (and reading it), and that we're not opposed to meaningful changes to Archaeology in the future.