Cataclysm Badge and Honor Changes

[Rendakor]

Sauce: http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/cataclysm-badge-and-pvp-point-changes-194181/

We're continuing to refine the badge/emblem and PvP point systems in Cataclysm and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we're changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we've used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds. There will be a total of four types of points you can earn in Cataclysm (two for PvE and two for PvP), and these will remain the same even as we introduce new content.

Here's the breakdown:

PvE

    * Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
    * Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)


PvP

    * Honor Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.
    * Conquest Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)


When a new tier of raiding gear is released or a new PvP season begins, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points, and similarly if a new PvP season begins your Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Of course that means with these new releases you'll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

As noted for Conquest points, the Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons. We might offer a few items to the absolute best players based on personal rating, largely as cosmetic or 'bragging rights' type items. And you'll have the option of purchasing the previous season’s gear with the more readily available Honor points.

We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Hero points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

I like that they're streamlining the badge conversion process for when they introduce new tiers of gear. At the very least, we won't have to trade badges 4 times to buy epic gems anymore.  

On the PVP side, I like the removal of personal rating requirements (although I note that they did not say TEAM rating requirements). After the relative pain in the ass it's been to get endgame weapons on my melee characters, I say bring on the welfare epics. The lolesport crowd gets thrown a bone in the form of cosmetic rewards, and PVP is made accessible again.

[Simond]

Ding dong the witch Arena is dead! 
Maybe now Blizzard will quit fucking over classes for small-scale-PvP reasons.

[caladein]

On the PVP side, I like the removal of personal rating requirements (although I note that they did not say TEAM rating requirements). After the relative pain in the ass it's been to get endgame weapons on my melee characters, I say bring on the welfare epics. The lolesport crowd gets thrown a bone in the form of cosmetic rewards, and PVP is made accessible again.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the omission of team ratings as Rated Battlegrounds don't have set teams so you'd only have a Personal rating that determines how many points you get and a Match-Making rating.  As for the rewards for having very high ratings: there's the current 2.3k rating tabard and they've mentioned land mounts and the old PvP titles.  Still good stuff.

Overall, I like this because it brings the very sensible Arena/Honor Points system over to the mess that are Emblems.

[Merusk]

This makes me rofl.  I asked years ago why they didn't just introduce some sort of personal DKP system into the game itself and let you buy your loot that way.   Then it didn't rely on your guild tracking the silly shit, or that you 'reset' if you swapped guilds.  It never occurred to me that badges were exactly that until just now when they've announced they're converting them over to points.

I love the change.  There will be as many tears over this as the initial introduction of badges, but it's great.  I hate having to convert shit down and my priest still has a bunch of valor/ hero/ conquest badges I need to turn into something because I never had enough to buy an item.

[Hawkbit]

I know two years from now we'll be talking about how much better this system could be as it evolves, but right now I'm not sure how it can get better.  It's the most sensible system I've seen yet.  It allows the leet to stay ahead, yet us casuals are only one step behind. 

[Selby]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

[K9]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I didn't read that as a daily cap, just an absolute cap.

[Rasix]

Here's hoping there's a better diversity of items on the point vendors.  Yes, I know I bring this up often. 

This is a really nice system for someone like me.  One of the better and most common sense changes that they're making for Cat. 

[Hutch]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I have been converting my Wintergrasp shards into Honor tokens. 30 shards buys one token, and the token is worth 2000 honor. The tokens are account-bound, so I can send them to whichever alt I want to get geared up.

Whether this system will exist in some form in Cata remains to be seen, of course.

[Malakili]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I didn't read that as a daily cap, just an absolute cap.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available.

Seems like it is a weekly cap, and only on the "higher tiers" (maybe that would be the equivalent of what frost badges are currently, but triumph badges would still flow like water?

[K9]

Ah I missed that.

That doesn't seem so unnatural. Currently you are uncapped for honour and triumph badges. Arena points are effectively capped, and frost emblems are capped at about 73 per week (ICC10 (25), ICC25 (25), weekly (5), daily heroic (14), VoA10 and 25 (4)). So that is just a minor gate on the rate of progression through the newest badge items, which is what we have had for all of LK and has been generally fine as far as I'm concerned. I guess this makes further sense if they continue allowing tier to be purchasable (rather than dropping) since this prevents hardcores from grinding out 4/5 or 5/5 on release day/week/whatever.

Seems like a healthy move.

[Rendakor]

Yea K9 I figured that they were sort of adjusting it so that you could grind out the capped amount of Frost Badges in 1-2 days, or slowly over a week.

[Ingmar]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I didn't read that as a daily cap, just an absolute cap.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available.

Seems like it is a weekly cap, and only on the "higher tiers" (maybe that would be the equivalent of what frost badges are currently, but triumph badges would still flow like water?

Yes, that's the idea. The overall cap is like the honor cap, its there just so you can't hoard all your points up to some ridiculous total right at the start of the expansion and then get fully decked out instantly every time they release a new batch of pve gear.

[Sheepherder]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

Per-character caps on progression favours alts, not the other way around.

[Malakili]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

Per-character caps on progression favours alts, not the other way around.

Well, I see your point, but it doesn't address his point, which is that right now you can gear up an fresh 80 in a week if you play enough.  With the restriction it'll take longer (how much longer depends on the cost of gear, what the limit is, etc)

[ezrast]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

Per-character caps on progression favours alts, not the other way around.

Well, I see your point, but it doesn't address his point, which is that right now you can gear up an fresh 80 in a week if you play enough.  With the restriction it'll take longer (how much longer depends on the cost of gear, what the limit is, etc)

You can gear an alt in a week, but not in full ilvl 264. Hero/Valor points are (read: could be) directly analogous to current Triumph/Frost emblems. It's only the very latest tier of gear that you can't get unlimited amounts of right away.

Change sounds good to me. Definitely like the ability to convert between PvE/PvP; I just hope there will be a way to transfer points between characters like how WG commendations work now. Gearing up my shaman would have sucked a lot more if I couldn't have bought some nice PvP stuff right away from commendations bought on my mage.

[Ingmar]

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

Per-character caps on progression favours alts, not the other way around.

Well, I see your point, but it doesn't address his point, which is that right now you can gear up an fresh 80 in a week if you play enough.  With the restriction it'll take longer (how much longer depends on the cost of gear, what the limit is, etc)

No, it won't.

There's no cap on the points that are equivalent to triumph points, other than a cap on how much you can have at one time. You just have to spend it, then you can keep on earning it. That's *exactly the same* as things are currently.

The one that has a weekly cap is equivalent to frost badges now - those are already on a de facto daily/weekly limit. Again, same as it is now.

[sickrubik]

Clarifications posted:

Here are some clarifications to some common concerns we're seeing:

Q u o t e:
So this means that at some point I'm encouraged to stop playing because I know my current valor will convert to hero and I'll have a huge stockpile of points which I can then just use to buy the set I'd be after anyway.

Our basic model throughout Wrath of the Lich King has been that you can get the shiny hotness now, or wait until it “goes on sale” next tier. In this example the set one would be after would be the old set and everyone else would be pursuing the new set.

Q u o t e:
People should have to progress through more than just two tiers!

They will, just not at the 4.0 stage. All we’re really doing with the badges is removing the need to keep adding new types every tier, which proved confusing.

Q u o t e:
What is the valor total cap? (a little more than double the highest item point cost?)

We haven’t made that determination yet. It will be something in line with how Honor works today; that is you can save up for expensive things but can’t have so many points that you can just rush out and get everything all at once and be done.

Q u o t e:
What is the valor weekly cap?

We haven’t made that determination yet. We want to pick a number such that you don’t feel compelled to complete all of the content every week just for points if you choose not to.

Q u o t e:
What's the system/time between when a new raid is released and points are converted?

Probably almost simultaneously. The points will be converted before new loot appears on the vendors.

Q u o t e:
Why are rating requirements being removed?

The current system has a touch of the rich-get-richer syndrome where players who lack the ratings can’t get the most competitive gear and feel like they have no hope of competing. Better players will still gear up much more quickly because they will have more points to spend. Rating requirements on, for example, weapons was pretty unpopular in the community.

Q u o t e:
And won't this bring back the issues of people gearing weapons through PvP for raiding?

PvP equipment spends a chunk of its budget on resilience so it’s always going to be sub-optimal for PvE compared to equivalent raiding gear. We don’t mind players using PvP gear in PvE (or vice versa) as long as it’s a stepping stone towards getting more appropriate gear.

Q u o t e:
Why not have a 'heroic' equivalent for PvP gear?

We are still tweaking item levels, but the basic concept is that there is the current season and there is the previous season. In this first season there is no previous season, so we also have to provide the “Honor gear.” That is supposed to be roughly equivalent to the pre-raiding tier that you’ll want for PvE before you begin raiding.

Q u o t e:
Essentially all of the PvE changes together seem aimed to disincentivize 25s, is there some reasoning as to why 25s are no longer being encouraged?

Our goal through Wrath of the Lich King was that players could choose 10 or 25 as a personal preference. We think we missed that mark though. Because 25s still provided more powerful rewards, it felt like that was the “real” raiding, and 10s were what you did on off-nights, or if you just couldn’t stomach the logistics of recruiting or pugging 10 more players. We know there are a lot of players out there who just prefer to raid 10s but felt like we didn’t deliver on our promise to let them just raid 10s. The Cataclysm model is to let players raid 10s or 25s as they see fit. There are advantages and disadvantages to both raid sizes. The larger raids can feel more epic, yet the smaller ones tend to have less loot drama because there is less competition per item that drops. The smaller raids in some sense are more hardcore, because there are fewer opportunities to include novice raiders or folks who just aren’t carrying their weight.

We understand that changes like this can cause social upheaval and we didn’t make the decision lightly. The community was similarly concerned when we removed 40-player raids (and we literally did remove those; today we’re just offering an alternative to the larger raids). We think there is a non-trivial audience of players who prefer the 25-player raids and we’re going to continue to support them. We tried many different raiding models in Wrath of the Lich King with regard to Heroic modes and lockouts, and rest assured that if we don’t like how the 4.0 raiding game evolves that we will revisit it for 4.1.

Q u o t e:
The term 'points' is not RP enough for PvE

This is a legitimate concern and something we struggled with. On the other hand, one of the problems we kept running into with the current badges was granularity -- you can’t offer half a badge the way you can offer 1, 3 or 5 points. Depending on your perspective, you can argue that your character “earning”; valor for defeating an enemy makes more sense in the game world than the dragon having all of these badges on its corpse.

[Morfiend]

... but right now I'm not sure how it can get better. 

Make the points account wide.

[Dren]

... but right now I'm not sure how it can get better. 

Make the points account wide.

Crap, don't do that.  I'll never stop playing this damn game then.  (Whiskey to an alcoholic. This to an altaholic.  Same thing.)

[Hawkbit]

... but right now I'm not sure how it can get better. 

Make the points account wide.

Crap, don't do that.  I'll never stop playing this damn game then.  (Whiskey to an alcoholic. This to an altaholic.  Same thing.)

He's right.  That would be one way to make it better.  I know Blizzard is against it, but frankly I don't see what the big deal is.

[Sheepherder]

Transferable points might even solve the tank shortage problems.

[ezrast]

How?

[Ingmar]

The theory goes that a player will play the character with the shortest queue times (his tank) and just use the points on the other character.

The main problem I see with this theory is that ultimately the reason people are playing said other characters is because they want to play them.

[ezrast]

It might help some, but I suspect that most people hardcore enough to be maintaining multiple geared characters will be overflowing with hero points on their mains anyway. Maybe I'm underestimating people's determination to alt.

I don't know what I'd do if I decided that I wanted to dps again. Probably sit through three queues and then unsubscribe.

[Selby]

I don't know what I'd do if I decided that I wanted to dps again. Probably sit through three queues and then unsubscribe.

That's why among my 6 80's I have 3 healers, 2 tanks, and only 1 DPS (which is the "main" that has been gearing up since WotLK launched and thus doesn't need to chain-run heroics).  Once my rogue and 'lock are 80, I doubt I'll ever seriously consider raiding or heroic'ing with them since I dislike queues.

[Sjofn]

I don't know what I'd do if I decided that I wanted to dps again. Probably sit through three queues and then unsubscribe.

That's why among my 6 80's I have 3 healers, 2 tanks, and only 1 DPS (which is the "main" that has been gearing up since WotLK launched and thus doesn't need to chain-run heroics).  Once my rogue and 'lock are 80, I doubt I'll ever seriously consider raiding or heroic'ing with them since I dislike queues.

Four tanks (two of them with a heal offspec) and a dpser I never play anymore here. :)

I could see it "helping" the tank thing for me, personally, just because I don't do randoms on two of my tanks because their gear is shit, and I really don't feel like dealing with the ZOMG UR GEAR IS SHIT (as if I don't know). If I could buy them gear with my real tank's points (or my lower-seeming-bar DPSer or healer), I'd gear them up to the point where they weren't embarrassing that way, at least. But. Really. I have a bunch of tanks, and I am pretty sure that is unusual.

[Lantyssa]

It would benefit my tank.  I'm not very confident of her abilities due to a lack of gear and the "OMG this instance will fall apart if I suck" feeling.  My Druid is easy pew-pew and geared in her T9 set, so I don't mind doing randoms as much with her, so all those excess points are just going towards heirlooms now.

[Sheepherder]

Blizzard should at some point create a bunch of instances that just require five DPS.

[Ragnoros]

Blizzard should at some point create a bunch of instances that just require five DPS.

They are working on it. Codename: Diablo 3.

[Paelos]

Blizzard should at some point create a bunch of instances that just require five DPS.

They are working on it. Codename: Diablo 3.

 

[Dren]

I don't know what I'd do if I decided that I wanted to dps again. Probably sit through three queues and then unsubscribe.

That's why among my 6 80's I have 3 healers, 2 tanks, and only 1 DPS (which is the "main" that has been gearing up since WotLK launched and thus doesn't need to chain-run heroics).  Once my rogue and 'lock are 80, I doubt I'll ever seriously consider raiding or heroic'ing with them since I dislike queues.

Same here.

I wasn't kidding about my "problem."  I have 9 80's...  I only tank one (he also is a healer) and actively heal with 3 others, which means I'm only really active with 4 chars.  The rest are just there as leftovers from levelling yet another alt.  Plus, they made/make me lots of money from quests and dailies.  I'm also fully self sufficient for crafted items of the general everyday use variety.

I definitely would be farming the heroics with my tank if they made points/badges/whatever transferrable.  I rarely get my 1-2 DPS chars into even heroics let alone raids because I don't have the patience to wait on queues.  I farmed them with my tank to get his gear "max'ed" out enough to do ICC 10 and it only took less than a week at 1 heroic per 15-20 minutes.

I'm currently not doing any daily heroics unless it is a full guild run because all my healers and tank get very little from them other than frosties.  I'd be going for the frosties, but I'm just burned out on the game enough right now that the rate of return isn't enough.  Implement cross character points and I'd be in there to tank for everyone as much as I could.  Plus, I'd make 3 of my other characters good enough to tank too. (DK, Druid, and War)

THAT is why this would be the death of me...

[Sheepherder]

...but right now I'm not sure how it can get better.

Instead of paying points or raid tokens just for a piece of armor, you also unlock the ability to pay a nominal gold fee for similar pieces from the earlier on every character linked to your account.  Eg: you buy the Ulduar chest, all your other characters can kit themselves out with Naxx chests.

EDIT: Neckbearding, don't get excited.

[Rendakor]

Newest announcement says that base level PVP Weapons have no rating requirement, but that the higher ilvl ones will. The comparison they made was that the Raid-level weapons would have no requirement, while the Hardmode-level ones would.

[Hawkbit]

What?  There will be raid rating?  I'm guessing it's based off a gearscore or something like it?