Technically this doubles the number of levels from 160 to 320 possible combinations but it makes the entry into weaves open to the entire playerbase. They can adjust the difficulty to what the group can actually handle.
Key part of this is if a level is completed at a higher difficulty, it unlocks all the 1st time completion rewards for the lower difficulties.
Anybody mad enough to go for Cata 3+ has the potential to earn 400 Emporer Vaults.
Mostly this is just to get a lot of people interested in completing weaves. Having a decent reward structure after the 1st time completion would make LFG’s have an easier time filling a group up.
If there was a checkmark system in game where you could see what levels at what difficulties each member of your group has completed, you would have the ability to pick levels & difficulties that would best reward your group overall without needing a mic or keyboard.
Having the checkmark system show up during the vote as well would be perfect. This area could even show exactly what rewards you would earn if completed.
Anyway, tying difficulty unlocks to item progression when lots of feedback suggests that players don’t like to (re)level their gear in the first place is… a bold design choice. Also leaves the taste of some quite arbitrary difficulty gatekeeping.
Vaults as rewards won’t do the trick either, in my opinion, because they’re lackluster. Their contents are irrelevant, Lohner’s Emporium offers cosmetics to players in a far better (i.e. targeted) way. I’d rather have shillings rewarded than chests in this regard. And Weave weapon skins obviously but that’s beating a dead horse by now.
I also doubt that new(er) players would farm chests in Weaves just to unbox and raise their powerlevel for adventure progression, even though this would appear to be the only effective use of chest rewards here.
EDIT: I’d rather suggest to debundle the Weaves game mode and the WoM DLC to make it accessible for everyone who owns the base game. That worked quite nicely with Chaos Wastes, gameplay differences and appeal aside.
I actually forgot WoM DLC was even a gatekeep for the game mode. That would improve number of players on its own drastically just making it accessible for everyone.
I feel a lot of people farm CW for gear, why not make weaves the same thing?
The problem with ranked weaves is there’s no matchmaking and the majority of palyers don’t play in pre-mades. Solve that problem and the lack of replayability of scripted weaves and maybe people would actually muster some interest in this game mode.
