Leveling is basically fine; takes a week or two of missions.
The problem is gearing, for the classes that can't talent into work orders for follower equipment. I have alts I leveled to 110 in the first week of the expansion who still don't have all followers epic at 850 with 2 item slots filled. And then I have alts that hit 110 last month whose followers are all epic ilvl 900 with great items in those slots.
It's not a big deal on mains, but if your alt's class is stuck with "sometimes missions return a free piece of equipment" he is screwed, no two ways about it.
Same deal with the free daily WQ versus the free weekly seal. The free daily WQ is an infinite source of order resources, which means you can slowly advance your alts without actually playing them. Now it's debatable whether that should be in the game at all-- I'm personally against it. But it's in there now, and as alts, the six classes with the weekly seal talent are screwed.
Last edited by Schizoide; 2017-04-23 at 01:09 PM.
They should just replace the borderline garbage "Followers have a chance to return with items" with the Workorder one.
nope. I firmly believe that if you are lazy or tired of the game and take time off from it the onus should be on you to do any catching up. the catch up mechanics in game are insanely stupid. they almost guarantee you will have lazy people take off for half the expansion wreaking havoc on raid teams and then resurfacing at the end to reap the same rewards as those who steadily worked at things.
There is no Bad RNG just Bad LTP
It's not really "versus", there are 4 possible upgrades on that slot and each class has "randomly" 2 of them available:
- free seal
- free 1 non-elite WQ per day (18h cd) (paladin, dk, warrior, dh, mage, lock)
- special troop (druid, monk, shaman, dk)
- 100 OR resource when completing a WQ (really the worst one, as if you're doing WQ, you have OR, if you aren't, it's worthless)
I wish there were at least a few more armor token missions for the classes who can't do work orders for them, such as druid. On my main I've managed to keep up, but some of my alts are still at like 780...
No surrender! 70 Vanguard - The Star Forge
Only the daily WQ talent is any good, and it's actually amazing on alts. But only 6 classes out of 12 can get it.
Special troop just costs more garrison resources, it's a waste. Free seal is worth 1k gold/week, which is nothing. And as you said if you're actually playing the alt and completing WQs, the extra 100 resources isn't a big deal.
It really does substantially disadvantage alts who can't get that talent. And the proper fix, the fix I would actually prefer, is to remove the daily WQ talent from the game. Then I wouldn't feel obligated to log-in those 6 alts every single day-- I would only play them when I actually want to.
@Vajarra: I go the opposite route when it comes down to follower item work orders vs. "sometimes you get a free one". IMO, everybody should get the work order talent baseline as it is essential to building up your followers in a reasonable amount of time on alts. The work order talent should be replaced with "sometimes your missions return a free artifact power token" or "sometimes your missions refund the resources you spent on them".
Barring that, I agree that the missions for follower items should reward, like, 3 of them per mission. Help the druids/etc out. Alternatively make them more common, cost only 50 resources, but reward only half the XP of other missions. (So everybody doesn't just use them to level.)
Last edited by Schizoide; 2017-04-24 at 12:00 AM.
Let me guess, this is a class that has work orders for equipment?
If so, yes, it's easy.
My shaman and hunter hit 110 about the same time. Hunter? All followers easily geared to 900, including inactive ones. Shaman? Not even close. I have 3 up to 900, and two more around 850. And this is after several months.
For classes without work orders, there's no reliable way to gear followers- you're stuck at the RNG of missions for items spawning. My druid was one of the first to hit 110, and I still don't have all the followers geared out.
There is no Bad RNG just Bad LTP
Or you make them quit, either or. Funnily in half the threads where people claim for example mythic raiders deserve the best rewards because they put the most effort, immediately some people spring out with "hurr durr you deserve nothing you elitist pricks", there is next to zero notion better rewards would make them step up and do mythic raiding instead there is plenty of notion "hey you guys up there we deserve a piece of the pie too", so I don't know why this would be any different in any other aspects like levelling, rep grinding, gearing followers etc.
Look at flying discussions, how many voices rise "cba, I just unsub if I can't simply buy flying" or have some work around to get the rep easy.
Policy of stick instead of carrot works if the person can't simply walk away. You can whip a slave, you can force an employee to work harder if he knows he can't easily find a different job due to high unemployment rates or his qualifications being not very much sought after. But you can't "force" people to do stuff in a game because they always have an option to not play that game and do something else in their free time they find more fun and bigger pleasure.
It's hilarious when all the armchair devs think "just do this Blizz to force people do be more social, step up to the challenge, put more effort, form longstanding bonds and communities" etc. etc. completely forgetting WOW is not a big jizz anymore and has a lot of competition from games that don't require long term dedication to stay relevant like shooters or mobas.
WOW has already troubles attracting new players, not only due to age of the game, engine and graphics, but due to the fact game so old accumulated so much insider knowledge it feels daunting to break into the "inner circle", the community itself isn't very welcoming (typical answers for any question include "wowhead it" and "google it" if not blatant trolling and insulting) and now you'd like the game systems to be inherently newbie unfriendly as well to the point "sorry bro, you started the game late you're always 12 years behind".