Sunday, December 30, 2012

WoW Short: A Word on Valor Rewards

As of the release of Mists of Pandaria, Valor rewards got revamped a bit. Initially, the rewards were too low and were hotfixed quickly to have many of the activities that rewarded Valor Points increased to double. The rewards are as follows:
  • Finishing a Looking For Raid group awards 90 Valor Points if it's the first time in the week doing that specific section and half that amount for subsequent runs of that section.
  • Finishing a Random Heroic Dungeon awards 80 Valor Points if it's the first time in a given day and half that amount for subsequent runs in the same day.
  • Finishing a Random Scenario awards 40 Valor Points if it's the first time in a given day and half that amount for subsequent runs in the same day.
  • A majority of the Pandaria dailies award 5 Valor Points. This may seem like a very small amount but it adds up quick.
These rewards aren't too bad and the general values of the Valor rewards aren't actually what bothers me. What bothers me is the fact that prior to Mists of Pandaria, there was a slightly modified Valor Point reward system for Random Heroic Dungeons, which "improved" on an even more ancient system that had been around for an age, but was brought back for Mists of Pandaria.

This "previous" system awarded Valor Points (or equivalent currency) for completing Random Heroics on the first run of the day, while awarding lesser rewards for subsequent runs. However, the system that was around prior to Mists of Pandaria instead gave the same bonus reward for the first seven runs in a given week.

Thus, I'm curious why in Mists of Pandaria Blizzard decided to essentially "revert" back to the old system of granting the most Valor for daily runs. I know that the current design is something of a compromise between the two systems, but it seems rather punishing and time-consuming to reach the 1000 Valor Point weekly cap if you happen to miss a day or are unable to play every single day.

The suggestion for changing this is simple: go back to the first seven runs per week system that was around prior to Mists of Pandaria (for both Random Heroics and Scenarios) in terms of awarding larger amounts of Valor Points. I feel there is nothing compelling, interesting, or difficult about punishing players with diminishing Valor Point rewards for missing a day, thus causing them to use more of their time to reach Valor Point cap. (If anyone thinks different, feel free to say why.)

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