Paragon Cache / Rep Hoarding for 8.2 Nerfed

[themaster24]

If that's the case then Blizzard should be using announcements to tell people ahead of time.

"If you are currently maxxed out on Azerite Power and saving up Caches in order to gain a large amount of Azerite Power as soon as the patch hits and the current cap of Level 50 is removed, please stop! The Azerite Power from these Caches will be removed so that everyone will be starting at the same level."

They could've said that 2-4 weeks ago and saved people a lot of annoyance.

I do agree that Blizz needs to abandon their approach of only making advanced announcements for things that deviate from what is presumed to be their standard operating procedure. It is silly that they will announce that Residium will not be before that was really ever a concern, but they do kind of force you to assume XYZ. Only because, on occasion, people have been burned by assuming blizzard would not allow certain things, based on previous efforts on blizz's behalf, but ended up allowing them, or vice versa.

However, I do think it only really impacts an incredibly tiny amount of the population. Also, to be technical, those that did do this haven't actually lost much of anything. The only way they have truly lost anything is if they by setting themselves up like this, that the actually wasted Rep gains by idling at 19,999, and therefore progress being lost to a 4th potential cache. Blizzard removing the AP from the cache itself after 8.2 doesn't negate the work they did for the cache, since it will still exist and still have almost all the possible rewards in it. What does alter, is the opportunity cost of them doing so, since they planned their current course of action with their assumption that would get the AP from the cache's they've turned in, whereas they could have just grinded out 19,999. Ultimately, I believe this is what players are likely most upset about, whether they realize it or not. The time spent on the those 6 cache's could have been spent maybe grinding out island maps until you can say, have 2 missions pending completion that reward large chunks of AP, or whatnot.

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How do we know the intent of the boxes? Did Blizzard at any point in time in the last 6 months or so since they were introduced come out and say "you shouldn't hoard these if your neck is at 50?" It would appear to any logical person that if the full reward wasn't available from the box (like if your AP or WR were capped) then you should hold off opening them until it was (in this case 8.2).

I mean look at it this way. Do you go out and spend your entire paycheck as soon as you receive it, or do you bank some of it for a proverbial rainy day? Actually, never mind...I don't really want to know.

You know the intent isn't to hoard them because A.) you can only actually have one box at a time, and B.) you have a strict limitation on how many pending cache's you can have. I Blizz intended for you to be able to actually hoard boxes, not to just have one sitting in your bags you choose not open, but to stockpile them, they would have no such restrictions. Also, because they have done this exact thing in the past, and expressed their feelings about this exact kind of thing in the past.

A paycheck is also a terrible comparison, but if we want to go with real world stuff, compare it to sick/personal days. Many places will allow you to rollover left over days year to year, and most companies have limitations in place for how many days (or hours for some places) you can rollover. Someone might decide they are going to save up as many days as they can, and towards the end of the year, try to say, take a month and a half off. Most companies will not allow you to do that, and will instead recommend you use it in smaller blocks. Just because a system theoretically could allow for something, doesn't mean it can or will, especially when patterns indicate it will not.

[FelPlague]

How do we know the intent of the boxes? Did Blizzard at any point in time in the last 6 months or so since they were introduced come out and say "you shouldn't hoard these if your neck is at 50?" It would appear to any logical person that if the full reward wasn't available from the box (like if your AP or WR were capped) then you should hold off opening them until it was (in this case 8.2).

I mean look at it this way. Do you go out and spend your entire paycheck as soon as you receive it, or do you bank some of it for a proverbial rainy day? Actually, never mind...I don't really want to know.

we know the intent because blizzard did this exact same thing in legion....

a paycheck is not meant to be spent all at once

when you get a gift for your birthday do you go "nah im not gunna open this on my birthday, im gunna wait 2 months"

[Revamp Man]

If you are reading this, do not turn in the quest for a paragon rep cache, it's being nerfed:

https://www.wowhead.com/news=292432/...-quest-turn-in

Instead of opening the cache, you will directly receive the rewards from a quest turn-in. All caches you have in your bags right now will not contain AP as of the patch on tuesday.

Standard procedure of Fun Detected -> Fun Removed.

I had a feeling they would do this, but i just wish they hadn't waited until the last minute after people have been farming rep this whole time.

That's the strangest definition of fun I've ever heard

This happened in 7.2
None of the caches you hoarded had essences

Now the caches won't have AP.... punished the stupid

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we know the intent because blizzard did this exact same thing in legion....

a paycheck is not meant to be spent all at once

when you get a gift for your birthday do you go "nah im not gunna open this on my birthday, im gunna wait 2 months"

Somehow this is not similar... according to twitter

[Jester Joe]

we know the intent because blizzard did this exact same thing in legion....

a paycheck is not meant to be spent all at once

when you get a gift for your birthday do you go "nah im not gunna open this on my birthday, im gunna wait 2 months"

I also remembered this now, but you're comparing a completely different situation.

The turn in rewards from doing the emissary in general was caches in Legion, so you could stockpile one each day basically from every single emissary.

Not really fair to use that as a judge when you could have 7 from one week alone compared to the max of what, 6 from reps right now in your bags?

[FelPlague]

I also remembered this now, but you're comparing a completely different situation.

The turn in rewards from doing the emissary in general was caches in Legion, so you could stockpile one each day basically from every single emissary.

Not really fair to use that as a judge when you could have 7 from one week alone compared to the max of what, 6 from reps right now in your bags?

there was emisarry and also the paragon caches.
both of them got their stuff removed.

right now its 6 in bags, 12 in wait

[Elias01]

Any player who thought they could game the system by hoarding like that is not very bright. Blizzard has been very consistent in nerfing those things to prevent gaming the system. It boggles my mind that anyone who think this time would be any different.

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YOu tried to game the system by using mechanics in an unintended way to gain an advantage. Blizzard took care of it so everyone sstarts out equally on day one of hte patch.

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People were hoarding Paragon boxes because they will contain mounts in 8.2

They wont. Loot from boxes are alredy decided by its system. So becouse mounts were not part of loot table you wont drop any mount from those boxes. Ot works same way as raid bosses. Loot from raid bosses is also decides when you enter instance no when you actialy kill boss.

[Jester Joe]

there was emisarry and also the paragon caches.
both of them got their stuff removed.

right now its 6 in bags, 12 in wait

Yes but the emissary was FAR more ridiculous with how many you could stack up and how many chances that would be at a new legendary.

It's understandable why they'd take that action to prevent stockpiling them. But that action doesn't automatically make this abuse. Again, to stress this, I don't disagree with them doing this, but it doesn't even fix the issue and waiting until the last week to do this as a change of a bit of misplay.

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They wont. Loot from boxes are alredy decided by its system. So becouse mounts were not part of loot table you wont drop any mount from those boxes. Ot works same way as raid bosses. Loot from raid bosses is also decides when you enter instance no when you actialy kill boss.

They won't because there aren't mounts being added to them.

I'm not sure where that idea came from even honestly.

Also loot specialization kinda shoots a hole in your "loot is determined when you enter".

I could wait until the boss is killed, change from ret to holy, and when I loot the corpse it would be holy gear.

[GhostlyBG]

I started saving the chests when I hit 50 on my neck on 5 of my 6 toons. So currently I have 30 chests in the inventories of 5 toons and 4-5-6 additional waiting to be turned in on each of the characters. Losing the azerite on the chests I have does not really bother me, I would have lost it anyway basically had I opened the chests. The thing that bothers me is that I diligently did my 4 WQs per toon per day for months, stayed subbed in the content-void barren wasteland basically, and still I am not allowed to have even a (full) tiny advantage over people who have been unsubbed for the past six months, or did not bother doing any world "content". Isn't getting the full reset on our gear progression enough of a punishment already? I don't really see the purpose of this "fix". The amount of chests one could hoard was limited anyway. It is not like you can hoard 200 chests... Oh well.. whatever I guess..

[JohnRoads]

Pretty much this, I have turned in the 7th legion cache so I could avoid wasted rep a lot of times already. Ultimately now we are getting 12 instead of 18 caches.

That said, I'd love it if Blizzard would actually do these changes early on and not wait for the last week.

My plan was to only open the first set anyway and then open one when I was getting near the cap. That way the opening could be pushed a week and get more out of it due to AK. So this wont change anything for me other than I don't have to keep 6 boxes in my bags.

[Raelbo]

Standard procedure of Fun Detected -> Fun Removed.

More like loophole detected -> loophole removed.

Sorry, but people whining about stuff like this is just plain asinine. Please explain exactly what is "fun" about hoarding caches?

It's pretty clear that the whole point of stopping AP advancement at level 50 was to allow everyone to start the next patch on an even keel. It's pretty clear that we weren't meant to be able to go into the new content with any extra AP. I am not going to lambast anyone for trying, but surely anyone who did so must have realised that they were taking a chance that they should have not expected to have pay off. Talk about entitlement.

[Tradu]

Considering Blizzard pretty much always killed off any ability to Hoard to get a jump ahead of everyone else, I'm more surprised People thought this WOULD work, rather than being surprised it got nerfed as usual.

No, they said they killed it off, but in Legion they only succesfully killed it off once out of like 3 times. Saved up emissary boxes absolutely did give new legendaries in 7.1.5 or w/e the patch was, for example.

OT: It's a good change, but the lack of communication and the timing are a complete joke, but I guess that's to be expected at this point.

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More like loophole detected -> loophole removed.

Sorry, but people whining about stuff like this is just plain asinine. Please explain exactly what is "fun" about hoarding caches?

It's pretty clear that the whole point of stopping AP advancement at level 50 was to allow everyone to start the next patch on an even keel. It's pretty clear that we weren't meant to be able to go into the new content with any extra AP. I am not going to lambast anyone for trying, but surely anyone who did so must have realised that they were taking a chance that they should have not expected to have pay off. Talk about entitlement.

If it was an exploit/loophole they should honestly have fixed it a long time ago. That's also ignoring that this "fix" doesn't even solve the problem really, because all it does is make it so people get to hoard 12 paragon chests' worth of AP instead of 18. And honestly, my biggest issue isn't the change itself(doing something about hoarding paragon caches is the correct thing to do, just like they should be changing to a new azerite currency to effectively reset residuum), it's that they sprung it on us within the last week of PTR with 0 prior communication(and 0 communication after the fact either)

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Well if they really wanted to squash this they could;
Change the cache so as not to award AP past 8.2 as they have AND
Add a new quest for paragon completion to trigger after 8.2

Then all the caches you had in the bank would give no AP and all the queued quests you had would still lead to the old quest and give neither AP (as the quest does now) and grant the cache which has no AP as well. Which would mean you could at best get 6 caches.

They said they did that in Legion with emissary caches going into 7.1.5 or whatever the patch was where they added new legendaries. Turns out that "fix" did nothing and the old caches still gave new legendaries for whatever reason.

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there was emisarry and also the paragon caches.
both of them got their stuff removed.

right now its 6 in bags, 12 in wait

No, they said they made old emissary caches not give new legendaries. They either lied or fucked up, because they absolutely did give new legendaries. They did succesfully fix it when they added the legendary currency, however. The difference is that this time they didn't even say anything about making this change and made it right at the end of PTR(in Legion it got added earlier on in the PTR cycle, but people hoarded anyway because there was no downside, and it turned out there was still an upside to hoarding)

[Marrilaife]

They made boxes unique so it was already a nerf since legion when people stockpiled 50+ of them. Why did it need further nerfing, no idea. AP ramps up so quickly that you can't stockpile anything meaningful anyway. Whole AP system is planned to make you believe you have any control but in fact it's there to narrow the gap between those that farmed their asses off and those who did fuck all, so basically if you are putting work into it you're hitting extreme diminishing returns on all fronts.

Now that I think of it, it's extremely scummy compared to plain timegating or weekly cap, I'm seriously thinking doing bare minimum is what is encouraged here, so thanks Blizz for making yet another "effort = reward" loop a mockery.

[Raelbo]

If it was an exploit/loophole they should honestly have fixed it a long time ago.

Honestly, no. The requirement was to close it before it could get exploited. Which they have done. I mean, I get that it would have been nice for those who were trying to game the system to know for certain that they were wasting their time, but honestly, that is a very poor reason to place undue priority on something like this when I am sure they had a hundred more immediately pressing issues to address - like basically anything content-related that actually needed to be tested on the PTR.

And honestly, my biggest issue isn't the change itself(doing something about hoarding paragon caches is the correct thing to do, just like they should be changing to a new azerite currency to effectively reset residuum), it's that they sprung it on us within the last week of PTR with 0 prior communication(and 0 communication after the fact either)

But why is that an issue? That's what I don't get. Why do some people feel entitled to "fair warning" regarding an issue where they are clearly trying to game the system?

[Hittion]

Honestly, no. The requirement was to close it before it could get exploited. Which they have done. I mean, I get that it would have been nice for those who were trying to game the system to know for certain that they were wasting their time, but honestly, that is a very poor reason to place undue priority on something like this when I am sure they had a hundred more immediately pressing issues to address - like basically anything content-related that actually needed to be tested on the PTR.



But why is that an issue? That's what I don't get. Why do some people feel entitled to "fair warning" regarding an issue where they are clearly trying to game the system?

I might be out of the loop since I am in the classic camp but the underlying systems seem to be the problem not the hoarding. If people despise artifact power so much they are looking for anyway to game the system perhaps it's time to get rid of the system.

[Pendragon]

Standard procedure of Fun Detected -> Fun Removed.

How was that fun at all, you absolute berk?

[Ange]

If you are reading this, do not turn in the quest for a paragon rep cache, it's being nerfed:

https://www.wowhead.com/news=292432/...-quest-turn-in

I was betting on this and turned the playtime down to start fresh with 8.2.

AFAIK it was leaked information at the same time they announced the rise of residuum costs with 8.2. At least every powergamer (AP TOP10 LEGION/BFA) on my server was chilling and nobody but a few streamer kids where collecting paragon caches.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Now it feels really good not having to have logged in now for well over a month.

[Super Kami Dende]

No, they said they killed it off, but in Legion they only succesfully killed it off once out of like 3 times. Saved up emissary boxes absolutely did give new legendaries in 7.1.5 or w/e the patch was, for example.

Psssst... They didn't just do this in Legion.

[Raelbo]

I might be out of the loop since I am in the classic camp but the underlying systems seem to be the problem not the hoarding. If people despise artifact power so much they are looking for anyway to game the system perhaps it's time to get rid of the system.

That's not the issue here. There is a cap on how much AP one can get at this point in time. They are trying to get a jump start for the next patch. I suppose you could say it's a bit like trying to find a way to farm some honour/conquest for next PvP season before it officially starts.

[Dracullus]

How was that fun at all, you absolute berk?

Well, they were talking this shit about fixing exp pot in 8.1.5 and preventing people from AFK boost just last week. This phrase lost it's meaning years ago (if it had any, I always see this whining when Blizz fix some exploit).