Speculation - New Paragon Cache Rewards

[Mibzo]

I don't want them to contain mounts, ESPECIALLY not the Bee mount.

Resources, crafting materials, gear, reputation tokens that are BOA...

Didn't they mention in a Q&A that the Bee mount was Alliance only? I might be wrong though.

[Powerogue]

I still only have like 1/3 of the paragon cache mounts from Legion. Please god no.

Just make alpacas require getting 50 paragon caches or something, it would be more merciful.

[Darklurker]

As somebody who went for paragon caches with 2 chars in Legion, and is still trying to get most of the mounts... Please God no.

That being said, there are obvious mounts waiting just for that. On the Alliance side:
https://www.warcraftmounts.com/mount...estgryphon.php
https://www.warcraftmounts.com/mount...reseascout.php
https://www.warcraftmounts.com/mount...astwatcher.php

Tired of just getting a bunch of horses? How about a bunch of gryphons now?

[Schizoide]

What I think would be cool is to add a new paragon currency. Call them paragon seals. Then you reward 10 seals every time the player fills up a paragon bar. No RNG.

Vendors sell various stuff for paragon seals. Mounts are 100 seals, (boxable) pets 40 seals, toys 25 seals, stacks of profession materials 1-10 seals depending on value, transmog gear 5-10 seals, and powerful outdoor-only consumables 1 seal.

You price these things so players can buy every unique item after completing 80 paragons, which should take the better part of a year even after they add BoA rep tokens to follower missions. So it still takes forever to get everything, but players can prioritize and get the things they actually want first. No RNG!

[Tartys]

So since Ion said that reputation paragon caches will be back for BfA at a later date, what are your thoughts about what the rewards might be, or what you hope they are?

I haven't played through the Alliance side yet, so I don't know enough about their factions to comment, but I assume one of them will be the Bee mount.

For Horde, my guesses are:

Zandalari Empire - probably a disappointing recolor of a pre-existing dinosaur mount
Talanji's Expedition - the Krag'wa toad mount
Vol'dunai - fingers crossed for an Alpaca mount
Honorbound - some new Horde banner toy or something along those lines

Tortollan Seekers - maybe a baby turtle pet with a perma-divine shield protecting it
Champions of Azeroth - an Azerite elemental mount that uses either the infernal mount skeleton or the Shaman class mount skeleton

What do you think?

I dont care... In Legion I was able to obtain only 2 mounts from Paragon (with 3 alts) and zero toy... why this time will be better?

Considering how RNG is bad this time (island expeditions)... I dont wanna waste my time for this. I have already the Island Expetions that mortify me...

[xindralol]

Paragon boxes should not have any collectibles in BFA if they paid an ounce of attention to the feedback about them from Legion. Their only reward should be a small boost in things like Azerite, war resources, profession mats, and gold.

this and they already said that it won’t. just have to hope they don’t reconsider.

[Nelaphim-EX]

I believe they said they would not put reputation MOUNTS in Paragon Chests. We have the mounts on Rep Vendors. So I would expect toys/pets/transmog from Paragon Chests. Gotta keep people doing those WQs!

[Battlebeard]

I believe they said they would not put reputation MOUNTS in Paragon Chests. We have the mounts on Rep Vendors. So I would expect toys/pets/transmog from Paragon Chests. Gotta keep people doing those WQs!

I know this is not necessarily your opinion, but the opinion from Blizzard.

This is what sickens me in todays game, ways to force people to do content they finished. I got exalted with all factions, I don't want to ever farm rep with them again, or to do WQ, got enough war resources to manage entire xpac, I have no need to farm more WQ. But still Blizzard force me, if I want to collect cosmetics like mounts/Toys, to do these damn WQs over again.

I make lists of what things I'm DONE with, and crossing off something as Done is very satisfying. And maxing a rep SHOULD be enough for that Done mark, but maxing rep + getting paragon mount is INSANE. There are other things I want to do and be done with, not farm the same stuff all over.

Paragon Mounts is one of a few reason why I despised Legion so much and liked BFA, but BFA might just fail just as hard as Legion did

[Schizoide]

WQs are a major part of the endgame now. The devs want players to want to complete their emissaries. So they need to incentivize WQs somehow. If not mounts, what's left? Gear, pets, and cosmetics like transmogs and toys. Gear must be capped or nobody would do mythic+ or raid, so pets and cosmetics are all that's left.

If it was me, I would set paragon caches to reward a currency that could be redeemed for mounts, transmogs, toys, and tradeskill materials. That way even once you get all the mounts and stuff, you still want to do emissaries for herbs and such to either sell in the auction house or use to make gear or consumables. No RNG, each paragon cache is worth 10 tokens and all prices are set.

[Voltsmasher]

I believe they said they would not put reputation MOUNTS in Paragon Chests. We have the mounts on Rep Vendors. So I would expect toys/pets/transmog from Paragon Chests. Gotta keep people doing those WQs!

Of course I'm not a mount collector so the put battle pets on it so that I may know your pain T.T

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What I think would be cool is to add a new paragon currency. Call them paragon seals. Then you reward 10 seals every time the player fills up a paragon bar. No RNG.

Vendors sell various stuff for paragon seals. Mounts are 100 seals, (boxable) pets 40 seals, toys 25 seals, stacks of profession materials 1-10 seals depending on value, transmog gear 5-10 seals, and powerful outdoor-only consumables 1 seal.

You price these things so players can buy every unique item after completing 80 paragons, which should take the better part of a year even after they add BoA rep tokens to follower missions. So it still takes forever to get everything, but players can prioritize and get the things they actually want first. No RNG!

Yeah and given that it has a built in time gate to it it's kind of the best of both worlds or at least a compromise I would be willing to make.

[Deleted]

Anyone know if you can stack the quest rewards from island expeditions that give AP and faction rep and just bulk hand them in once 8.1 hits?

[Deleted]

Only got one of the paragon mounts in legion and go back occasionally to do legion dailies for small chance of getting the rest (its amazing how much more profitable legion dailies are to BfA ones). So hope the paragon reward/caches only give something like a large amount of AP or something like that, even gold. just not mounts!

[Torvald]

WQs are a major part of the endgame now. The devs want players to want to complete their emissaries. So they need to incentivize WQs somehow. If not mounts, what's left? Gear, pets, and cosmetics like transmogs and toys. Gear must be capped or nobody would do mythic+ or raid, so pets and cosmetics are all that's left.

Legendaries were the right way to do it. They want players to do WQ's, but for most players in Legion, they weren't actively focused on doing WQ's to farm rep, they were just getting their daily emissary done. Why did they keep up with the daily emissary long after hitting exalted? Because it advanced their characters to getting their next legendary, and if your character got all his legendaries, he'd start getting legendary BoA tokens to send to the other characters. Trying to incentivize WQ's via low drop rate RNG collectible drops is more or less just a method to punish a sliver of players, while the bulk of players will continue not caring about them.

I really liked Legion, but Paragon chests were the exception to that. They were a crummy addition to the game. I agree though that a currency system, or a true bad luck protection system (no nonsense of "bad luck protection" getting used up on duplicate mounts) would fix it. I don't trust them to do either of those things right now, especially given the truly horrendous design of Island Expeditions, which shows their addiction to terrible design around collectible rewards in BFA.

Blizzard really messed up by not keeping the legendary system in place for incentivizing daily emissary engagement in the long term. It is bizarre to me that they couldn't recognize that legendaries in Legion were the linchpin of world questing engagement by the bulk of players. And it's demoralizing if they really think that paragon chests are the way to tackle that lack of engagement.

[Casperite]

I know this is not necessarily your opinion, but the opinion from Blizzard.

This is what sickens me in todays game, ways to force people to do content they finished. I got exalted with all factions, I don't want to ever farm rep with them again, or to do WQ, got enough war resources to manage entire xpac, I have no need to farm more WQ. But still Blizzard force me, if I want to collect cosmetics like mounts/Toys, to do these damn WQs over again.

I make lists of what things I'm DONE with, and crossing off something as Done is very satisfying. And maxing a rep SHOULD be enough for that Done mark, but maxing rep + getting paragon mount is INSANE. There are other things I want to do and be done with, not farm the same stuff all over.

Paragon Mounts is one of a few reason why I despised Legion so much and liked BFA, but BFA might just fail just as hard as Legion did

Legion didn't fail.

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this and they already said that it won’t. just have to hope they don’t reconsider.

Sounds amazingly boring, why would you hope for that to be the reward?

[Schizoide]

Legendaries were the right way to do it.

I really strongly disagree. Couldn't possibly disagree more. Legendaries represented one of the worst design choices from Blizzard since they nerfed demo because they "didn't want people to play that spec".

Legendaries were hugely problematic for all the reasons everybody said back in Legion beta. They were way too powerful, game-changing items. Once you got your BiS you kept it equipped for the entire expansion, meaning those slots were ineligible for gear upgrades. If you didn't have your spec's "correct" legendaries you were hot stinking garbage. And of course the drops were completely RNG so some people lucked out and got theirs right away and some had to grind for months.

Of course the dropchance increased over each patch and eventually they took out the RNG, rendering them just fine. But that was at the end of the expansion and for most of Legion, legendaries were truly terrible additions to the game.

[Torvald]

I really strongly disagree. Couldn't possibly disagree more. Legendaries represented one of the worst design choices from Blizzard since they nerfed demo because they "didn't want people to play that spec".

Legendaries were hugely problematic for all the reasons everybody said back in Legion beta. They were way too powerful, game-changing items. Once you got your BiS you kept it equipped for the entire expansion, meaning those slots were ineligible for gear upgrades. If you didn't have your spec's "correct" legendaries you were hot stinking garbage. And of course the drops were completely RNG so some people lucked out and got theirs right away and some had to grind for months.

Of course the dropchance increased over each patch and eventually they took out the RNG, rendering them just fine. But that was at the end of the expansion and for most of Legion, legendaries were truly terrible additions to the game.

Legendaries were easily one of the best design choices Blizzard's ever made. That's not to say there weren't problems, most of which were improved as the expansion moved forward.

That they were "too powerful, game-changing items" is the source of why they were so successful. No matter what tier you were in, legendaries presented a significant power gain. For most specs, your "best two" legendaries shifted depending on what task you were doing. PvP was different than Mythic+, which was different than Raiding. Some legendaries were underpowered and never really found their footing as optimal for any task, others were extremely important for a unique task or a very situational fight. And how people approached legendaries reflected this. Even if people got their "best two" as their first two, they kept hammering away at emissary chests to work towards their next one, because significant situational benefits could come from having the full set of legendaries to work with. Legendaries did interesting, satisfying things, the way Azerite gear kind of wishes it did interesting things.

Legion probably had the most consistent and wide-spread world-engagement of any single expansion of WoW. The satisfaction that engaging in world content would lead to a worthwhile, powerful item to enhance the power of their characters was the driving force behind it. There's trade-offs to every system, and certainly legendaries could have been better balanced. I'd rate that more as a fine-tuning problem though. (Although even a fine-tuning problem can create a terrible problem if it's particularly bad for a particular spec).

As a general statement though, I think it's pretty hard for anyone to argue against the proposition that legendaries were the driving force of WQ engagement. Of absolute, critical importance in that system was that the bad luck protection of legendaries was well established and well understood. Blizzard was open about it, and the general playerbase knew it as a fact, that every emissary chest you opened got you closer to your next legendary. And that you could never receive a duplicate of what you had received before. Bad luck protection + prevention of duplicates + powerful gearing item + long-term benefit to off-specs and alts if you finished off your main's collection = A massively superior system than what BFA can hope to offer. The fact that you could only wear two also meant that the gear reward from raiding or PvP wasn't overshadowed.

Paragon chests were little more than an after-thought which mostly just added a kind of intermittent disappointment to most players each time they crested that additional 10k rep needed for the paragon chest. And the crowd that paragon chests were meant to target, collectors, generally gave negative feedback from start to finish. Nearly all of that can be fixed by a currency system or robust bad-luck protection (including duplicate prevention). But even then, it's not going to hold much of a candle to impact of the legendary system for the bulk of players. Only a sliver of players are going to place importance on acquiring the mounts (or toys or pets) on offer by paragon chests.

Bottom line is that if they are trying to accomplish the level of day-to-day WQ engagement in BFA with Paragon chests that they got in Legion through the legendary system, which was tied in so deeply to emissary chests, then Blizzard's really looking at things very wrong. Then again, if island expeditions are anything to go by, when it comes to reward structures, it feels like BFA is being run by Blizzard's D team.

[Aeula]

Fortunately they're just putting some toys behind the Paragon Cache's.

Disappointing that there's any collectables at all, but at least toys can be ignored easier than mounts.

I only just got my last paragon mount a few weeks ago after bringing my alt-army out of retirement and putting them back in their order halls for about a month for the first time since BfA launched. It was a horrible grind.

[xindralol]

Sounds amazingly boring, why would you hope for that to be the reward?

yes that’s kind of my point. I don’t want to feel forced to do WQs for all eternity because of some stupid rng mount that can only be obtained this way.

[Deleted]

Legion didn't fail.

But that's just your opinion, people have some levels of tolerance and loyalty towards the game they spent years in, so even if you throw shitty systems at them, they won't leave immediately. But the breaking point can come very swiftly after realization that Blizzard is going to make them go through exact same thing again.

I needed more than 800 paragon chests to get everything in Legion and surely I'm not winning that race, there might be people still not done. Good luck putting same effort in BfA paragons with current levels of reputation rewards. LOL.

Paragons are the worst and the most disgusting way Blizzard is artificially making you to play the game to this date and few people who got all the rewards in 2 weeks back in Legion screaming aren't going to change that.

[Schizoide]

I think it's pretty hard for anyone to argue against the proposition that legendaries were the driving force of WQ engagement.

Not at all. Across the entire expansion, and now in BFA, I skipped all WQs that didn't a) give a gear upgrade or b) is an active emissary that I needed the paragon mount for. It was immediately clear that optimal play was to do emissaries and skip everything else. I didn't grind for legendaries, in fact they turned me off the game big time. Not enough to quit, so I didn't show up in Blizzard's metrics, but they most definitely negatively impacted how much I enjoyed WoW. Since I didn't grind many of my alts didn't get their spec-defining legendaries until very late, heck, some not until patch 8.0. End result, I played less.

Now I'm not every WoW player, and I know tons of people did grind for them. But unless you enjoy grinding, that sucks too.

Comparing Legion legendaries to BFA azerite... well, yeah. In many ways, legendaries were better. But that's a pretty low bar.