OldCoaly wrote on Oct 30
th, 2018 at 10:39am:
Two of the "stated goals" are
- Introduce a new legendary raid currency that we can support going forward
- Provide design space to move forward in future content without overlapping what we’ve already introduced
The implication being that this NEW SYSTEM will allow some utility in as-yet non-existent content.
However, it is clearly stated that "moving forward in future content" will not "overlap what's already introduced". It's EXPLICITLY stated that this New System will ignore old systems and that it will continue to do so in the future.
It's the ESSENCE of New Systems development at Turbine!
Meet the New System, same as the Old New Systems.
The root of this NEW SYSTEM is that it denies players the opportunity to leverage their past efforts to enjoy current prizes, which is completely consistent with past practice. What makes it potentially brilliant is that by not "overlapping what we've already introduced", they may have built in shitting on any New System that becomes an Old System, provided it continues to do this moving forward (for example, if two years from now this New System fails to overlap something introduced next year).
@Ash, That it also happens to agree with your hypothetical "the concept that people can acquire them on day one without actually running ever running the raid is considered a negative" is an emergent property of their demonstrated practice of holding past efforts as valueless.
Turbine's NEW SYSTEMS always disregard extant systems, the development effort that went into them, the player effort in working through them, and the lessons that should have been learned from the process.
This is the real reason that there is not and never will be a "universal currency" that goes backward or forward. Such a thing would require that NEW SYSTEMS integrate with and not break old systems, which also requires more effort than ignoring the old stuff, and also means that the NEW SYSTEMS wouldn't really be new.
Let's not pretend it's ever about the player experience, it's about monetization. New Systems are monetizable by Turbine through the Store and by developers through their resumes. Enhancements to extant systems are not New Systems, require more effort than New Systems, produce less interesting bullet points on resumes, and implicitly require that extant systems be seen to have value.
Within two or three "updates", this will become another of many deprecated systems. At that time, if we're lucky, Raid Runes will be more useful than Portal Fragments.
I see what you are saying. I don't agree with some of the rationalizations for why old systems aren't used. For the most part you could have stopped at "It is about monetization". That's the root of it all, imo.
SSG makes adventure packs and expansions on the premise that people will pay for them. That way they can pay their employees and return value to their shareholders. That's the concept of SSG (and all for profit businesses). Any system they design needs to support that core concept. Why do people buy packs and expansions? Some do it because they enjoy running content. Some buy it only if there are rewards they want in the pack. We see it every time a pack is released. A decent number of posts that suggest the purchase decision is entirely linked to the desirability of the loot. If they produce an update where the loot is obtainable without running the content or purchasing the pack, but relies only on past purchases, it undermines their core revenue concept.
Past expansion packs are sunk cost and sunk revenue, correspondingly, past systems from them are mostly depreciated.
You can make it be about "its too hard to incorporate past systems" "it doesn't look good on my resume" and all that other stuff without facts to support them, if you want. I don't know about any of that. That gets too into the individual personalities of people who I don't know nearly well enough to speak on with confidence. I'd rather just go with the most basic business fact of all: They make stuff so that you will buy it. Doing something that makes you less likely to buy it would be counterproductive. Occam's Razor and all.
Now, you do make a good point that if there is a way to incorporate past systems without putting the current pack/expansion's value proposition at risk, then that would be worthwhile to explore. That would be in the form of consistency with UI, methodologies, structure, naming conventions, if not reuse of ingredients.
One way for this would be for lost souls to be usable as an ingredient in upgrading future raid items (assuming we go back to a system where raid items can be upgraded) but not purchasing the base items themselves. No matter how many LS you have from old content, you still need to run the new content to get the base items. And you can tweak the number of lost souls needed for new content upgrades to be higher than past content (and have the lost souls drop in higher quantities in newer content such that the most efficient acquisition path for LS at any time is the new content) thus preserving the value of the new content while incorporating the old content.
You had another good point that I agree with. This one:
Quote: the lessons that should have been learned from the process.
And that's a valid point. They should not be doing BtC ingredients anymore. Or slotting systems that don't allow you to remove individual items or re-slot things. (Slave Lords crafting, I'm flipping you off) A system where you have to destroy the whole item and lose all your ingredients if one thing is wrong is a bad system. They should have learned that lesson by now.
Best practices for systems can definitely evolve over time and be reused.
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Dev Talk "The Endgame, Raid Loot, and Tomes" (Read 9681 times)
