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9071 Posts
...is bad, ok? But let me provide a different perspective on the issue. I don't mind myself the thrill of the slot machine and having to try a couple of times for the shit I like. My main problem is that the quality of the sets is bound to decrease in the long run if the only way to buy them is in chests. Even if sets accepted into the game are hand picked, there's simply not enough incentive to try hard as a designer. If someone puts a lot of effort into a set there needs to be 4 more people with the same mind set, otherwise one particular entry will market the chest for everyone else.
Valves solution is to make exceptional item being extra rare drops. The real reason for that is that Valve only wants to sell the good stuff directly - all immortals and arcanas are produced by them and obviously have priority getting added to the game. A good example will be the LC arcana - guess when valve will rig a hero a new to accommodate for a cosmetic idea such as dual wield. The only instance I can think off when they did that was with the Loda PA set. If you do something incredible you got tough luck, even if it gets added it happens like 1 year later - case in point the new witch doctor ult item with the frog. That item was just too fucking good when it was uploaded on the workshop, most of valves own items couldn't compete. So instead of accepting that sick set into the game as soon as possible to reward creativity and encourage people to do sick shit they decided to wait like 1 year until all recent items produced by them have similar visual impact. And then only the helm and the ward made it in from the entire set - get fucked. And even if people go wild and buy 20 chest to get the special reward where's the incentive for the rest of the items in the chest to be any good?
The dilemma is basically work on something for months and months, put it on the workshop, get everyones positive feedback and wait for valve to decide your creativity doesn't harm the sales of their own stuff. Don't get me wrong , valve still takes 75% from everything but if the items in regular chests were really good, there would be less incentive to buy compendiums cause the items inside wouldn't be anything special. The other option is just to shit out a set in a week and be like meh if valve dont add it its whatever, if they do it will be just cause the set is barely acceptable and some guy too passionate for his own good decided to make smth really nice to carry the value of the entire chest.
My solution to maintaining the quality of the sets in the long run is not to handpick the stuff and leave that to a public vote. Say if a set gets 10k likes or whatever in a month it should definitely get in. Valve can continue to eliminate manually the inappropriate sets so we dont have a volvo gyff diretide IO ball. Their strategy now is just to make a clear distinction in terms of quality between the stuff they make themselves and sell with compendiums and the rest that is getting sold in regular chests.
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I think to assume the decision to delay the WD's frog for so long was made due to revenue is a bit silly. I recall the author saying that their particle system was a bit fucked up, especially with how WD's ward worked and I can understand Valve wanting to not hack together a solution just for one set. The EG shaker set got added months before the Gravelmaw immortal came out.
I agree though that in chests there are often 1-2 high quality sets and the rest is just a filling that you use if you don't have anything else for the hero and certain heroes seem to suffer from overabundance of sets. They should really make more heroes customizable, Undying, Troll, Phoenix, ET, Io, Enigma, Visage, Tinker and WW have been in the game for ages and no, Valve Immortals don't count.
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9071 Posts
I could be wrong but I think GGA had a contract with Weta digital and after Alliance won TI3 a whole bunch of sets made for the GGA teams were added into the game, so I wouldn't take the EG shaker set as a coincidence but more of valve honoring some agreement.
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Now you are really grasping at straws, Alliance, as Ti3 champions, had a chest that made its way into the game before Ti4, and I think those sets still hold up. In fact, whole bunch of player sets got made at that point, including the Fnatic ones, but not all of them made it in. If there was an agreement between GGA and Valve (which I doubt, Valve always has the last word what goes in) the EG doom set, which was created around that time shouldn't have waited for almost a year to make it in, since it is very very good.
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9071 Posts
I just know for a fact that GGA worked with Weta on a bunch of sets and Weta worked with valve on some things, including the Aegis trophy. I don't know if valve directed GGA to Weta but word among the designers is that the split GGA got from their sets was way better than what anyone else got by working with workshop artists. What Im saying is that gga and weta had an exclusive relationship and valve also worked with the same studio on stuff. If there was any agreement outside of that I have no idea.
In my experience dealing with valve about the rainmaker bow, having an ongoing conversation with valve about that stuff is worth way more than getting overwhelming response on the workshop. You still have to put everything there but if there is some talk with valve and they said yea sure we will add it, that is pretty much what happens right away. This is not a common channel to get items into the game but given the relationship between weta valve and gga I would assume thats how it went, didnt even need to be some sort of binding agreement to the TI winners.
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EPT
