Abolish the daily valor points from heroics

03/14/2011 10:46 AMPosted by Wasselin

Instead of having a daily cap of 70 valor points a day, make it a weekly cap of 490 valor points a week from heroic 5man dungeons. Would that ruin the game?

Nope. In fact, this is exactly what we're doing in 4.1. :)

Right now, you receive 70 VP for the first random Cataclysm Heroic dungeon you complete each day. In 4.1, you'll receive 70 VP for the first seven random Cataclysm Heroic dungeons you complete each week. Similarly, you'll receive 140 VP for the first seven random Rise of the Zandalari Heroic dungeons (the new Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub instances) you complete in the week, too. Collectively, you'll be able to earn up to 980 VP exclusively from Heroic dungeons, which in turn will count towards your weekly 1250 VP cap.

By transitioning random Heroic dungeon rewards from a daily format to a weekly one, we'll be able to give players more control and flexibility over how they can earn VP -- which is cool! -- but this also means that we've a lot more bookkeeping to do in terms of where those points are coming from. To help with that, we're adding a "Valor Point bar" (similar to an XP bar) to the top of Dungeon Finder UI that will track your weekly cap, as well as how many Heroics you can still run for VP during the week.

We're going to be writing up a pretty big blog about that system since it's somewhat complicated, but here's what you can take away right now:

• In 4.1, running random Heroic dungeons for VP is now something you can do on your own schedule. Feel like spending your entire Saturday queuing up as random? No problem!



• The first seven random Rise of the Zandalari Heroics you run for the week will award 140 VP each. This is double the VP that you’ll receive from your first seven random "tier 1" Cataclysm Heroics, since the dungeons are considered a "step up" in difficulty.



• You'll be able to randomly queue for the Rise of the Zandalari Heroics separately from the tier 1 Cataclysm Heroic dungeons.



• Each week you can earn up to 980 VP just by running random Heroic dungeons. If you want to maximize your VP gains, you can still reach the overall weekly cap of 1250 by defeating raid level content.

This isn't yet on the PTR for testing. We'll let you know when it is, though, and will continue to provide more information as the development of 4.1 progresses.

03/14/2011 11:00 AMPosted by Xmc

Some people don't have time to log in every day, but have, for instance, a lot of time on the weekend to play.

We hear you, and we agree that asking players log in every day (or night) just to keep pace with their VP is a bit unreasonable and can sometimes lead to World of Warcraft feeling less like a game and more like a job. That's ultimately why we're making these changes. We want you to log in because you enjoy raiding, or questing, or -- in this case -- running dungeons, not because you feel like you need to complete a specific chore every day in order to stay viable/competitive.

03/18/2011 10:34 AMPosted by Idej

Even with only doing the dungeons (both types), you'll hit the cap before the week is over, without stepping foot into a raid.

Nah, you won't. You'll only be able to earn up to 980 VP per week from running random Heroics, not 1470 VP (we're purposefully placing a soft cap on VP from Heroics). If you want to reach the 1250 weekly cap, you'll still need to run raid content.

Again, I know it's a bit complicated, so let me give you some examples:

Example 1:

Player A has a blast on a Friday with his friends and runs seven Rise of the Zandalari Heroics, earning 980 VP (7 x 140 VP). The next day, he helps a friend with a random tier 1 Cataclysm Heroic -- let's say Heroic Deadmines. Because player A has already earned 980 VP from random Heroics, he won't receive any VP from the Saturday's Deadmines run.

Example 2:

Player B kills 25-man Argaloth, Council of Wind, and Halfus Wyrmbreaker, earning 270 VP on Tuesday night. She then runs three random tier 1 Cataclysm Heroics during the workweek for 210 VP. Come Saturday, player B wants to kill LOTS of trolls and decides to chain-run a few random Rise of the Zandalari Heroics. At this point, player B has 770 VP available to be earned from Heroic dungeons (980 VP - 210 VP). This means she can run six of those dungeons -- for the first five, she'll get 140 VP; for the sixth, only 70 VP.

Example 3:

Player C raids a lot of bosses, killing 10 of them with 24 of his peers on Tuesday/Wednesday, earning 900 VP. He can still earn 350 VP before hitting the weekly cap. The 980 VP Heroic dungeon cap won't affect him at this point. He can do five tier 1 Heroics -- or three Rise of the Zandalari Heroics, or two Rise of the Zandalari Heroic + one tier 1 Heroic -- to earn those 350 VP.

This is all much easier to understand with pictures (which we'll be sure include in spades in the blog post), but I hope the above makes sense for now.

03/18/2011 11:03 AMPosted by Saberan

No it's implemented on the PTR and it seems the 2 tiers are actually separate for the ZA/ZG heroics and the normal heroics.

Hm. It must have just been in the most recent build. Mea culpa. :)

But, yes. The Rise of the Zandalari Heroics are considered a tier above the current Cataclysm Heroics. You can randomly queue for them separately, but you'll still only be able to earn at most 980 VP per week from running Heroics, period (no matter what tier they are).

03/18/2011 11:38 AMPosted by Telorith

It sounds like you meant that you could do 7 total heroics; not 7 tier 1 AND 7 ZG/ZA... so its possible to get a TOTAL of 980 VP

Correct. :)

I can see why you may have been confused initially, and I definitely apologize for that. I provided further clarity in my last post (which I hope will help), and I'll see what I can do for clearing things up a bit in my first post, too.

Thanks!

03/18/2011 1:08 PMPosted by Spinnerdh

We are not limited to 7 total heroics in a week, the only cap is the number of valor points earnable in a week? So we could do 7 tier 1 and then 4 zandalar tribe heroics to get to the cap?

This is similar to what another player posted, but to reiterate (in 4.1):

• You can earn up to 980 VP per week from random Heroic dungeons.



• Of that 980 VP, only 490 VP can be earned from tier 1 Cataclysm Heroics. The remaining 490 VP must be earned by running Rise of the Zandalari Heroics (tier 2).



• Alternatively, you can reach the 980 VP cap exclusively by running tier 2 Heroics.



• The 980 VP you can earn from running tier 1 and tier 2 random Heroic dungeons will count towards your weekly overall cap of 1250 VP.



• And, as stated before, if you want to maximize your VP gains, you can still reach the overall weekly cap of 1250 by defeating raid level content.

This means if you run seven Rise of the Zandalari Heroics right away, you'll quickly reach your Heroic VP cap of 980, and you won't receive anymore VP from random Heroic dungeons that week.

This also means that the answer to your question is "yes." If you wanted, you could run seven tier 1 Cataclysm Heroics for 490 VP and then run another four Rise of the Zandalari Heroics to reach the 980 VP cap. You'd only receive 70 VP for the last Rise of the Zandalari Heroic, however, due to a small amount of overlap.

03/18/2011 3:01 PMPosted by Tiapriestess

I think you've overcomplicated the descriptions of how the VP combinations will work. I'm seeing a lot of posts here that still don't get the 980 VP soft cap and how you reach it.

That's fair. I can see what you're saying in terms of added complexity, and I think agree. At some point, I'd like to make a sticky that highlights everything discussed in this thread more succinctly, so I'll be sure to incorporate your feedback then and, hopefully, everything will be clearer.

Thanks for the suggestions! /respek knuckles