The Queue: Forbidden Hwest Edition
Hello and happy Thursday, February 17! I once had a college professor who would put an “h” sound in front of “wh” words (so, hwheat). I didn’t find it annoying or anything, but now any time I decided to put an h sound in front of a w, I think of that professor and that class (it was an Anthropology/Archaeology course about early civilizations, for the curious).
Anyhow, it’s an exciting Thursday so we’re diving right in!
Queue Powers ACTIVATE!
Q4tQ Are you playing Horizon Forbidden West this weekend?
Yes. Next question!
…Just kidding. I am, in fact, playing this weekend and plan to co-stream tonight when the game goes live! I’ve also taken off tomorrow + all of next week because, frankly, I deserve it. (And so do you! Schedule that PTO!)
Q4tMitch: You been paying attention to that Elden Ring buddy? How is that Elden Ring? Did he rekindle the flame?
I actually haven’t been paying super close attention to Elden Ring (or Horizon) content ahead of their launches. I’ve seen bits and pieces of things, but trailers and gameplay previews and the like? I’ve completely avoided.
I started doing this with movies a few years back, and it always made the experience better. I know I’m going to like Elden Ring and Horizon, so why not leave the surprise of discovering things to me?
How would you all want them to fix mount drop rates from holiday events?
I’d obviously like a currency or ramping bad luck protection that guarantees a drop after X number of drops (Also for the Timereaver, please) but I feel like the easiest way to accomplish their goal without making the mount ‘trivially easy’ for the minority that care about that would be to make the mounts a special kind of personal loot where you get once chance per account per day and the drop rate is multiplied by the number of eligible characters on your account.
That way the drop rate stays where it is, effectively, but you can get it over and done for the day in one attempt rather than spending whole play sessions on it for two weeks.
Honestly, before I even read your full question, the idea of making it one chance per day but still multiplied by eligible characters crossed my mind. This is, of course, assuming the math works out — I know it’s not actually as simple as (drop percent)(number of characters).
If it does work out and that’s what Blizz goes with, I know that might still rub a lot of people the wrong way — and it would completely h*ck me over, since I rarely level more than a few characters — but at least from a numbers standpoint, it would save a lot of time without changing too much at the core.
Alternatively, put a cap on the number of times an account can farm a certain mount, but have that cap be an inverse of how high the drop percentage is (up to a point). If you’ll forgive some more bad math, it would be something like a mount with a 5% drop chance can be farmed once per day while a mount with a 1% drop rate can be farmed 5 times per day. Blizzard would still be able to have mounts with low drop percents, but with the addition of a hard cap that they set.
I think I prefer both of these over other alternatives because, to me, RNG on some mounts is okay. I know not everyone agrees, but I don’t want every mount to be purchasable with currency or guaranteed after X number of Ys. Conversely, I don’t want every mount to be a random drop percentage! I like a mix of things — though rep mounts that cost gold feel like an unfair double dip — and I think low drop percentages can lead to a rewarding payoff as part of a player’s gameplay loop. It’s good to re-evaluate when certain instances as just plain unfun, though, and it’s nice to see Blizz looking at this.
Q4tQ: Since time loop stories are all the rage right now, how would you do one inside of WoW? Would it be an entire patch storyline, a raid / dungeon, or something smaller contained to just a series of quests? Would you involve established characters, particularly those of the Bronze Dragonflight, or would you want to create entirely new characters that have no idea and must puzzle thing out along with the player?
I definitely don’t want time loop stories to be done on a large scale. It’s just not a great fit for an MMO (especially one part of a long-running franchise). Does the Deaths of Chromie scenario from Legion count? Because I thought that was really well done for a time loop.
I definitely wouldn’t want to have a new faction be the driving force behind something like this — we have established time-h*ckers who would gladly mess with time to stop us from doing something. It might be fun if, say, the Infinite Dragonflight dropped us into a scenario with a completely unfamiliar race, especially if they could react to the player taking things very casually.
But at the end of the day, please just make it (almost entirely) self-contained. The Deaths of Chromie was more or less self-contained, but it’s tied to a larger story that’s just… been hanging here for ages. I’m okay with that level of tie-in at most — but I’d still prefer it to just be its own, fun thing.
So, I wish there was a poll option for Disqus. How many of you were taught about diacritical marks in school? Really, functionally taught about them.
Oh hi, diacritical marks!
I actually learned nothing about these in school. At most, we’d give a proper name to macrons in my college Latin courses, but that’s about it. In high school Spanish, it was only ever “accent marks.”
That’s our Queue today! I hope y’all have a fantastic weekend! And don’t forget to give yourself some relax time.
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