The Quest to Fix Titanforging

Titanforging has been a hot topic since before Legion even began and a source of much controversy as criticism shifted from broader aspects of content design to specifics like the reward system. While I was late to the party when it came to reviewing that specific feature, my suggestion was very similar to a suggestion I made to improve the preceding Warforging system. The nature of both suggestions was to allow players to enjoy the benefits of lucky gear upgrades while having the option to upgrade their gear with the Valor currency when they're unlucky.

Since I made this suggestion, I've gotten into many discussions on Titanforging and heard many other suggestions that, while often variations of common ideas, led to me brainstorming improvements to my current suggestion. During this brainstorming process, other information such as the state of Mythic Nighthold raiding was considered to further refine the suggestion. This article will touch on these points followed by my revised suggestion to improve the Titanforging system.

Common Titanforging Suggestions

Aside from some variations of my suggestion that basically ask for a Valor upgrade system in some form, there's a couple other common types of suggestions I see that attempt to address Titanforging. They are as follows:

Remove Titanforging

While this wasn't considered too much in the brainstorming process, I've seen this suggestion many times and many threads containing this suggestion can be found with a simple search, so it's worth acknowledging. I can understand where these suggestions come from since Titanforging in its current state feels frustrating. In addition, the idea that a player can receive gear equal to that of a Mythic raider with less effort can seem very discouraging. However, this suggestion seems very similar to the idea of removing LFR in that it seems like an impulsive reaction that's likely to do more harm to the game than good if implemented.

This comment explains my position against the removal of Titanforging very well and I also defended the existence of the system itself, though not that articulately. I will remedy that now with the following explanation:

The best gear-based rewards have and largely continue to be from extremely challenging content such as Mythic raiding and now high level Mythic+ dungeons. There's an ongoing problem to consider here in the fact that not everyone can commit to doing group content that can demand hours and hours of constant play that real life schedules can't account for. At the moment, Titanforging helps to address this disparity by occasionally providing greater rewards from nearly all Legion content that provides more opportunity for players to do other content, meaning that the system has some application as a form of parallel progression. 

Even if the disparity were to be resolved by other means such as by implementing challenging solo content, players who prefer towards a lesser challenge (such as Normal raiding and so on) can occasionally receive a better reward that makes the content they're doing more worthwhile. It also might encourage players to try more difficult content. Even if by some incredible stroke of luck a player becomes very geared without doing much challenging content, equipment can only do so much to account for other metrics such as skill.

Limit How Much Gear Can Upgraded

Suggestions that fall under this category tend to be pretty reasonable and attempt to find a balance between the positive and negative aspects of Titanforging. To accomplish this, the system is allowed to exist but the amount of item levels gear can upgrade by is limited, preventing luck from having too much of an influence on how geared a player can become. One thing I can praise about this idea is it's a very quick fix that Blizzard could probably implement in no time. However, I consider the suggestion insufficient because it only addresses a single problem with Titanforging and to accomplish this, positive aspects of the system may be nerfed into irrelevance.

When I discussed issues with the Titanforging system, I found that two specific aspects of its randomness were the primary cause. These types of randomness were the chance of acquiring upgraded gear and the degree that the gear upgraded to through Titanforging. Limiting how much gear can upgrade directly affects the latter of these two types of randomness since if the degree gear can upgrade to is capped, it becomes less of an issue. However, the former issue still remains a problem and out of the two, has been one for much longer due to the Warforging system that made the feeling of not getting upgraded gear feel terrible. While those proposing this suggestion may not consider the binary aspect of earning or not earning upgraded gear as problematic, I think that it's important to dampen the negative feelings that can come from not earning upgraded gear, especially if a player is on an unlucky streak.

When considering positive aspects of the system that may be rendered irrelevant by limiting how much gear can upgrade, the elimination of parallel progression comes to mind. With good balance, it's still possible to have some parallel progression. However, the item level difference between some gear, like the current 860 maximum for most World Quest gear rewards, is so great compared to the maximum item level (a 95 item level difference in this case) that limitations are almost certainly going to have an effect on one's ability to enhance their character in specific circumstances. Some may think this is fine, but intentionally implementing a scenario of forcing players to choose between enjoyable content and good rewards doesn't seem like a good idea considering how ineffective suggestions of this type seem to be.

Ultimately, the fact this type of suggestion has at least one definitive issue leads me to think it's too quick of a fix, but maybe parts of the idea can be put to good use.

Other Info to Consider

After a few discussions on Titanforging where I learned what others thought of the Titanforging system, I considered my own suggestion and how well it addressed specific issues that are at least partially caused by the existence of such a system. To put it another way, I reviewed my own suggestion rather extensively to look for flaws and found it could be updated to address the following:

As I briefly mentioned above, the balance of Mythic raiding, at least in Nighthold, seemed pretty poor in the sense of providing a feeling of personal progression as more bosses were put on farm status. Specifically, kill times did not change much which is partially indicative of how geared players were by the time Nighthold became available. This seemed to change a little in Tomb of Sargeras and it appears it's possible to beat very challenging bosses with a modest item level. However, this doesn't change the fact that the luck associated with Titanforging may compound on how much effect randomness has on the Mythic race, which might discourage players from taking part. Furthermore, in a broader sense, bosses may end up being overtuned to account for how geared players can get due to Titanforging (among other factors such as Artifact traits).

In addition, something I could've emphasized more is the Valor rewards for doing very challenging content since the players who benefit most from being able to upgrade equipment with Valor to compensate for bad luck will likely be the most competitive. However, even they shouldn't be subject to unreasonable grinds which is why I intentionally overtuned how much Valor Mythic raids awarded to begin with. This idea also helps to address how unrewarding such content is perceived to be.

The point of this brainstorming is I don't think I did enough to account for the cutting edge competitive players and while they shouldn't necessarily be given concessions that are to the detriment of the rest of the playerbase, I think there's ways to address possible grievances such players have without upsetting other players.

My Revised Suggestion

This leads me to the latest iteration of my suggestion to address Titanforging. Fundamental parts of the idea remain such as adding an alternative upgrade path for gear with Valor that can be acquired from doing most content. With all of the above in mind though, I've made the following changes to my suggestion.

Valor Rewards and Upgrade Cost Changes

While I think the initial suggestions I made for Valor rewards and upgrade costs were decent, insights regarding Mythic raiding and recent Mythic+ changes have led me to make a few tweaks to Valor rewards and upgrade costs. While not everything listed has been changed, listing all of the Valor reward amounts and upgrade costs should help for anyone comparing old and new values. Changes will be italicized.

• World Quests: Varying amounts in addition to base rewards (up to 50 Valor depending on difficulty, but typically more like 20 Valor)
• Heroic Dungeons: 75 Valor per boss.
• Mythic Dungeons: 100 Valor per boss.
• Mythic+ Dungeons: The chest contains 275 Valor on average at level 2, increasing by 25 Valor per level to a cap of 600 Valor on average at level 15 or higher. Lengthier dungeons like Halls of Valor will award more Valor and shorter dungeons like Maw of Souls will award less.
• If the dungeon is completed within the time limit, up to 100% additional Valor is awarded based on the remaining time.
• (Mythic+ Valor award equation: (Dungeon timer / Average timer (34.77 as of this writing)) * (Valor award) * (time completion bonus) = Total Valor award
• LFR: 200 Valor for completing a wing.
• Normal Raids: 200 Valor per boss.
• Heroic Raids: 400 Valor per boss.
• Mythic Raids: 600 Valor per boss or 900 Valor per boss if the raid is current content.

While some of the changes like the Valor awards for Heroic and Mythic dungeons as well as Heroic raids are more of a tweak, Mythic+ dungeons and Mythic raids have received a more significant change. In the case of Mythic+ dungeons I had to change how much Valor was awarded for completing the dungeon to what I considered a more appropriate value because of the removal of additional chests as a timed reward. In addition, I added a bonus for completing the dungeon within the time limit, which means that beating the time limit by a substantial amount will be more rewarding. This is similar to a suggestion I made regarding Nethershards.

Here are the updated Valor costs for upgrading gear with the anticipated item level cap when Antorus is made available:

825-930 - 250 (unaffected by the weekly upgrade limit)
935-955 - 500
960-970 - 1000
975 - 2500
980 - 2500
985 - 5000

Overall, the costs went down because I think they were too high especially when considering that players were likely to upgrade multiple pieces of gear weekly. I also provided a way for players to grind a lot of Valor for very low item level gear by allowing them to ignore the standard upgrade limit of once per week for a specific piece of gear up to a certain threshold. This serves as a catchup mechanic for more dedicated players who don't want to rely on luck (or being carried through raids).

Staggered Item Level Cap Change

The more important change in my opinion is changing how the item level cap is staggered when a raid releases to reduce the effect of luck on the Mythic race. It should also allow Blizzard to be a little more lenient in their balancing of raid content since overgearing it early on will be less of a problem. The item level cap rules for when a raid is released would generally go like this:

• On the week the raid is released, the item level cap is set to the highest possible item level obtainable from Heroic raiding (955 for Antorus)
• The following week, when Mythic raiding is available, the item level cap is set to the highest possible item level obtainable from Mythic raiding (970 for Antorus).
• For the next few weeks, the item level cap is increased by 5 until on the final week, the true item level cap is reached (985 for Antorus). Based on recent trends, this will typically be a month after the raid is initially made available.
• The Valor cost to upgrade equipment is always relative to the true item level cap. One doesn't have to pay 5000 Valor to upgrade equipment each week - only on the final week.
• In addition, the Legendary upgrade system would be made available only once it's possible to upgrade gear to the true item level cap (whether currency can be collected prior to this is up for debate). Legendary gear item level will drop at the lower item level until the upgrade system is made available.

This idea was inspired by the Titanforge limitation suggestion but done in a more flexible fashion that allows the positive aspects to shine through once the most competitive phase of raiding in a given tier is (hopefully) completed. Another advantage of having a soft limit that increases over time is that it's complemented by the Valor upgrade system since an early bout of good luck can be maintained with a little grinding instead of leaving the player feeling like they got screwed by being lucky too soon. Speaking of getting screwed, I added a small change to how I think the Legendary upgrade system should work that follows up on what I suggested in an article on that topic.

Final Statements

The final patch series of Legion approaches and I expect Blizzard will want to end it with a bang that attempts to repeat the success of Icecrown Citadel without subjecting the playerbase to a lengthy content drought. It's not too late to implement a feature that could improve the lifespan of gear-yielding content that the playerbase seems to hunger for. I think that a revolutionary, yet relatively simple change to the Titanforging system that attempts to extract the positive aspects of a luck-based system while not compromising game balance helps accomplish that goal.