Years ago the wow community were rousing about the token system was ok, but fundamentally flawed. The mini-game we play after the boss dies is another treadmill-merry-go-round where gear drops which is useless. As a design principle wow’s reward for effort is based upon re-trying the kills each week until you get lucky. Today I’m bloody mad about this as its been far too long that we’ve been suffering this. Rant incoming.
In our guild forums I wrote this class tokens:
On the token (issue) I think we’re screwed for two reasons: we need to take what we can in terms of characters who are able to join and raid above their match on the token, and we can’t get people to switch characters just to suit the bloody token system each major content patch. It is a bullshit scenario to be in, but I can’t think of a solution that does not have the regular raiders re-rolling each patch.
The token system was an ok idea to allow a boss to drop loot which would not be fraught with drama, as only a few classes could use it. Less people = less drama right? Wrong.
We have in guild now is one character with a token to himself, and half the raid split on each of the other two. Ah shit, gear drama. And I don’t mean people being bitches about loot, I mean that we see Tokens getting cycled for gold/de as we’ve had too many of one type and miles from enough of others. The drama is that our progression is slowed due to shitty luck. A boss dies but the drop is totally pointless.
Also with 4-5 players on each 2 tokens it takes huge amounts of time to gear those 9 players. It is not just 9 kills job done, because we have alt sets, and subs who join from time to time to help with the roster, which makes the distribution ever worse.
Just bring more people to suit the tokens? The server populations are shrinking and this is a totally non-viable response.
Bring the player not the class? Nope. Bring a balance of classes for the tokens. Oh and the tokens change each major content patch. Arrrg.
Reroll? Good god, have you seen how unfriendly the alts are? Forget that as viable for everyone except those with huge amounts of time to play.
The outcome is our raid group just has to suck it up, and keep grinding.
Honestly I am so sick of the loot rewards or issues around loot getting in the way of actually having fun with my raid team in World of Warcraft.
Fark this, I’m soon going to play something else. If Blizzard need a reason why I’ve moved to month-on month payments now, and will shortly consider reading a book instead of logging in they can start with this. Fark it. Destroy it all.
(p.s. what about suggestions for alternatives? Nope, I’ve done that for years suggesting ways that progressive “coins” or currency could be acquired each kill. Do a search on Gear on the blog… they’ll be a few.)
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 
My biggest issue is that with no drops, there can be no increase in performance, which hinders progression, which translates to snarking from those who HAVE been lucky about the lower performance of those who HAVEN’T.
Those effing charms have a lot to answer for as well – no current loot system in the game is capable of taking that kind of RANDOM LUCK into account in order to make gearing ‘consistent and fair’ across a raid team, and I’m guessing that even if you wanted to take them into account somehow, it would open a massive, nasty can of worms with no end.
Agree with you totally – fuck luck – give me a system based on effort FFS or I’m pretty much done.
The Charms are insulting. It looked like a good idea, but ends up being a random system to help mitigate the problems of a random loot system. More random on top of random is bloody stupid. Then add that the “effort way” to gear up is to farm valor points, but the rate is so low per hand-in and capped – you need to sacrifice so much time, and even then the gear is not itemised well and it takes so long.
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I’m totally opposite on this, I don’t mind the luck factor in drops etc.
I don’t think you should be rewarded everytime you kill a boss and have it dropped loot that you could use or someone in the raid could.
Luck is part of life, luck is part of this game, everything in the game is based on luck/random roll.
With the tokens its lot better than what it use to be where the actually Tier item dropped and was just for 1 class, atleast now it can be used by 3-4 classes.
The charms I like too, (even though I never have any), you get them for the effort you put into doing dailies, if you get gear from them great it helps the the raid team with people getting geared quicker and it means if that item drops from a boss one less person needs it and filters out to the other players quicker.
In the end its pretty impossible to balance it perfectly for everyone. 🙂
I don’t mind an element of luck, but Raid Rng+LFR Rng+Coin Rng+Grind = Blarg. Trying to modify a Random system to be more sympathetic to effort by adding more Random is foolhardy design. I think Blizzard knows this and likes the gear treadmill. I do not. An incremental reward would be better – and that solution is not Valor given the current implementation.
Perhaps every 10 man boss kill should not drop 2 items that can be always used, I mean otherwise we’d play for entertainment and loot, rather than just loot and we’d stop playing sooner.
The tokens were meant to make the loot drops for harder to get items (Tier) slightly better for the raid team, so that progression was not totally stuffed due to poor luck. I remember when tokens were added and it was better than what we had before. But to say that its better than before so therefore it’s ok is illogical. It can be better still, and should be.
Given that everyone in a raid team needs at least one Token for each gear location, is there anything broken about getting everyone that item after killing a boss 10 times? Think about how good it would be to kill a boss for 10 weeks and know that your raid team has their Tier Shoulders. That hard work every week would translate into a direct increase in output. Consider too that it might mean that the Token does not always drop, but if it does your team is rewarded with something that somebody can use in Main or Offspec.
Ugh, I hate Token Drops. So many have gone to waste, especially on hard-fought heroic kills.
That’s the biggest thing, for me, is that you fight so hard to get a kill and then you don’t earn a reward. Frustrating to say the least.
But. I don’t know if making them all generic is the answer either – then it just becomes “Who’s turn is it?” The slight RNG excitment of what Token dropped is nice. But I don’t know if it’s nice enough to keep the broken system running.
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