What form of grind (example, mounts) do you find the most unnacceptable ?

[Raelbo]

people think the solution is to work hard, not smart. I also, have all legion paragon mounts and literally never grinded any 1 particular emissary.

Yeah. I also think that some people are just impatient for rewards. They want that mount and they want it now. So they'll do it the ineffecient way.

Personally I don't care either way how anyone else decides to play. Everyone is free to decide for themselves what works best for them. What does annoy me though is when someone chooses to do things in a way that is so unenjoyable that they need to go onto a forum and complain about it, when the obvious solution is to just change the way they approach the game. What annoys me even further is when Blizzard responds to these kinds of complaints by taking away nice things, because the alternative - telling people they're being daft and playing the game wrong.

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Anything that feels mandatory to increase power level.

If only more people could come to the realisation that this is actually something within our power to control. Because there is a huge difference between what feels mandatory and what is mandatory.

That's why just about every whine post about Titanforging, Artifact/Azerite Power, rep grind, benthic gear etc etc etc pisses me off. They're all premised on this delusion that grinding those things is somehow mandatory if you want to achieve anything in this game.

[Zexaniro]

Time gated essence grinds!

[BeepBoo]

Anything mindlessly easy.

In other words, I will not trade hours of no fun for anything in a video game. People who reify "work" in video games are to be pitied. Playing an un-fun AND un-challenging game for hours each day for a month to unlock special polygons is the height of ridiculousness.

My feelz exactly.

[hulkgor]

This seems more like a lack of perspective issue on your end.

What is?

Considering that doing boring activities that one actually dislikes\hates, for hours on end, for minimal 'gains' like a pet or achievement, is a weird notion, and people doing it should consider it?

The big aspect here is doing stuff you - HATE -. ie : Archeology achievements.

I don't see how that's a lack of perspective.

[BeepBoo]

That's why just about every whine post about Titanforging, Artifact/Azerite Power, rep grind, benthic gear etc etc etc pisses me off. They're all premised on this delusion that grinding those things is somehow mandatory if you want to achieve anything in this game.

If your goals are to achieve top tier parsing because the rest of the rewards in the game leave something to be desired, they essentially become mandatory. Or you can accept never getting your goal, and at that point... why play (this is where I'm at)?

[Somewhatconcerned]

Heritage armor.

Don't mind earning it...just hate the leveling process.

[Fwankk]

World Quests... like.. they weren't that bad in legion but having to do world quests every day for the past two+ years has really sucked the life out of me. It's miserable.

[Raelbo]

If your goals are to achieve top tier parsing because the rest of the rewards in the game leave something to be desired, they essentially become mandatory. Or you can accept never getting your goal, and at that point... why play (this is where I'm at)?

If your goals are to achieve top tier parsing, then be prepared to put in the hard yards.

The reality of your goal is that it means competing against other people. That means putting in more effort and more time than them. If they removed things like TF and AP so that everyone was on a level playing field, players would simply find some other way of converting time and effort into a competitive advantage (eg split raiding).

Honestly, I think that AP is probably one of the better possible mechanisms for this.

[BeepBoo]

If your goals are to achieve top tier parsing, then be prepared to put in the hard yards.

In the context of sports, all this means is getting better (increasing your skill) at the game. That's exactly what it should be in wow. You don't get better guns in COD. You get better at the mechanical control of your character.

That means putting in more effort and more time than them.

Time and effort are irrelevant. Skill is what matters (or should) which people acquire at different rates. Someone that learns how to do a backflip in 10 minutes versus someone that learns how to do it in a few weeks still both know how to do a backflip. The results are the important part, not the time or effort.

If they removed things like TF and AP so that everyone was on a level playing field, players would simply find some other way of converting time and effort into a competitive advantage (eg split raiding).

If you can't get random McForges, and gear is capped, the only thing that would matter for split raiding would be getting gear faster. No one cares about that when you'll EVENTUALLY be able to have BIS regardless except the people who want to win the world first/server first race. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in hitting the plateau so I can compete as closely as possible with other people who hit the same plateau.

Honestly, I think that AP is probably one of the better possible mechanisms for this.

Honestly I think stat templates are the best. Let everyone have their number fascinations and the impacts of gear outside of what should be the competitive environments: raids, m+, and ranked pvp.

[Raelbo]

In the context of sports, all this means is getting better (increasing your skill) at the game. That's exactly what it should be in wow. You don't get better guns in COD. You get better at the mechanical control of your character.

That's bullshit.

Firstly, any accomplished sportsperson can tell you that being successful at sport is about a lot more than just practicing at the sport. There are issue like fitness and nutrition and doing research on the sport to better improve your understanding of it and to keep abreast of what your competition is doing.

Secondly, WoW is not CoD. WoW is an RPG, and a big part of any RPG is building your character, gaining experience and accumulating stuff that makes your character more powerful. As a PC game, WoW also involves a big element of skill of course, but true to the RPG genre, your effectiveness in the game is, as it should be, a combination of skill and accumulated power through effort.

Time and effort are irrelevant. Skill is what matters (or should) which people acquire at different rates. Someone that learns how to do a backflip in 10 minutes versus someone that learns how to do it in a few weeks still both know how to do a backflip. The results are the important part, not the time or effort.

That's also bullshit.

Time and effort are integral to the development of any skill. Yes, some people may develop skill faster or more easily than others, but without time and effort no one will ever come close to meeting their potential.

True, not everyone will become a brilliant WoW player just through time and effort
True, some players will be significantly better than other players in spite of putting less effort in

But, if you want to be your best, and compete against the best, then you absolutely need to be putting in time and effort. You say that the results are what matter, but the simple fact of the matter is that results don't just magically appear, they require effort to achieve.

If you can't get random McForges, and gear is capped, the only thing that would matter for split raiding would be getting gear faster. No one cares about that when you'll EVENTUALLY be able to have BIS regardless except the people who want to win the world first/server first race. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in hitting the plateau so I can compete as closely as possible with other people who hit the same plateau.

To be blunt: This is not what RPGs do well. This is not what WoW does well. And wanting WoW to do it well would fundamentally change that game into something it is not.

If you're looking to compete with other players purely on skill, then go play a game that works that way like CoD. But don't delude yourself into thinking that it's going to mean you have to put in less time and effort to compete at the top level. It just means that instead of dividing your time and effort spend between skill building activities and character growing activities, you're going to end up spending all your time on the former.

Also, it is my perception that players who like to talk about "skill" and wanting to compete purely on "skill" without all the nonsense of effort-not-skill based power gains actually aren't nearly as skilled as they like to believe they are. They just want to have an excuse for the fact that other players are more accomplished than them.

Honestly I think stat templates are the best. Let everyone have their number fascinations and the impacts of gear outside of what should be the competitive environments: raids, m+, and ranked pvp.

Except that WoW is an RPG. Let it continue to be an RPG.

[Dominga]

Paragon mounts, they can fuck right off.

[Swarzey]

Paragon system. The drop rate is too low and there's a daily limit on how much you can farm it up. That grind to get it done is so much for a reward that might not show up after many, many, many different times filling the Paragon bar. This isn't "well I can try once a week", it's "work for however long, across multiple days and repeat it endlessly"

Really typing it out, the Paragon system sums up so much of what is wrong in this game.

[Sangfoudre]

Time gated essence grinds!

This is true, especially for healers, whose 3 BiS essences are heavily time gated (Nazj rep, Nazj followers and Mech rep), so it's a pain in the buttocks to fast level an alt raid ready.
We can even expand this thought to HoA, pointing out that the whole HoA system should be BoA now (with a limit, say you need one @lvl 70)

[Raelbo]

Paragon system. The drop rate is too low and there's a daily limit on how much you can farm it up. That grind to get it done is so much for a reward that might not show up after many, many, many different times filling the Paragon bar. This isn't "well I can try once a week", it's "work for however long, across multiple days and repeat it endlessly"

Sorry, but I think this is a very poor assessment of paragon mounts.

Your description of the problems tells me that the real problem with your experience is that you approached the paragon system wrong. Now before you get triggered that I told you you're playing the game "wrong" and that you can play it however you like, please allow me to explain:

The paragon mount rewards were designed around the idea of long term play rather than an intense grind. Paragon Chests are tied to the whole design of WQs and emissary rewards which are designed around players aiming to complete emissaries quests on a somewhat regular basis. However the system is flexible in that players aren't restricted - nothing stops a player from doing all the world quests available, but it's entirely optionally with a substantially lower reward:effort ratio.

Throughout legion, if a player focused solely on doing just the emissaries and no other world quests on a single character for the duration of the expansion, the drop rate of the mounts and the expected amount of rep gains would have resulted in getting about half of the mounts. That is for putting in the bare minimum amount of effort - effort that was necessary during Legion regardless of whether you were wanted the mounts or not, because emissaries were the most effective way of generating Order Resources and gold that you pretty need to play the game.

If, however, you are a serious mount collector the smart way of earning all the mounts is to use a few alts and simply repeat the process. The way I did it was to focus on the factions I needed mounts from and ramp up my number of alts as the number of mounts I needed got smaller. So basically I started the expansion with my main doing all the emissaries and ended the expansion with four characters doing the one emissary quest I needed (Farondis) + Kirin Tor which was a wild card.

At no point during the expansion did I ever need to "grind" reputation or do shitloads of WQs. It was literally just do a few world quests a day, or do 10-15 every 2-3 days and I got all the paragon mounts by the end of Legion, simply doing stuff that I would have been doing anyway.


Now as I said above, the game allows you to grind all the WQs in order to accelerate your quest for the mounts. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that...provided that doing it this way works for you. The reason I said you're playing the game "wrong" is that you're choosing a playstyle that is not optimal for what you enjoy.

By all means, grind the shit out of the world quests on 10 alts in order to make sure you have all mounts ticked off your list in the first 2 months, but then don't whine about a) how much you hated the grind and b) now you have nothing to do.

Figure out what is important to you, apply your mind to the problem, taking into consideration how the game was clearly meant to be played and take it from there. I think you'll find yourself accidentally enjoying the game a whole lot more. At least that is what works well for me.

Really typing it out, the Paragon system sums up so much of what is wrong in this game.

I would argue that the fact that player complaints led to the removal of mount rewards from paragon chests sums up what is wrong with the "community" :/

[Zyrinx]

Legion Paragons != BfA Paragons (except Mechagon which is easy).

[UhmHi]

Flying. Make it a vendor item at max level again. There is no fun grinding for it, and it's got alot of people fleeing.

[Djuntas]

Agreed

I don't know what they were thinking with the drop rates.

Island expeditions are designed so that you should be doing just enough to hit your weekly quest. The drops rates should use that as a baseline for how frequently the mounts should drop. I believe that if a player is going to be committed to hit that cap on a single character every week for the whole expansion, they should see around half the mounts drop. Do this with 2 toons and you should see 3/4. If you're doing it with 4 toons, you should expect to have all the mounts by the end of the expansion.

From what I can tell though you need to do about 50 expeditions per week to have a reasonable expectation of getting all the mounts during the expansion. Which is ridiculous.

There are people who have done over 1500 islands exp with no mount drop.

[Torvald]

Paragon system. The drop rate is too low and there's a daily limit on how much you can farm it up. That grind to get it done is so much for a reward that might not show up after many, many, many different times filling the Paragon bar. This isn't "well I can try once a week", it's "work for however long, across multiple days and repeat it endlessly"

Really typing it out, the Paragon system sums up so much of what is wrong in this game.

Yup.

Sorry, but I think this is a very poor assessment of paragon mounts.

His assessment is spot on. Paragon chests are obnoxious, eat up a lot of time (either a ton in a short-run or a lot spread out over a long-run, with the long-run making the incidental benefits you get from doing the relevant activities getting less beneficial - i.e., if you're still doing Legion paragon chests now, your Order Hall Resources mean nothing). That you can speed it up with armies of alts and time investment into building up Legion followers for multiple characters doesn't render it into a good system. It looks ridiculous to act like they're some kind of even halfway decent design. The game would be better off if paragon chests were simply used as a resource boost (gold, expansion-specific resource currency) without RNG soulbound collectibles locked behind them. (Or they could keep RNG collectibles inside them, but put in bad luck protection to cap how far the bad RNG can go for any item).

Even Blizzard devs took the time to acknowledge paragon chest mounts feeling bad at the end of Legion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep2OUD0W2CA&t=10m00s

One would think Blizzard would recognize that what "felt bad" about paragon chests was the delivery mechanism rather than being dependent specifically on "mounts" (some people had a really bad time trying to get the warden paragon chest toy in Legion for instance, and RNG Rank 4 essences put in paragon chests in BFA have also led to really crappy experiences for many). When the dev mentioned paragon chests being about power gains in BFA (azerite power, resources), he was on the right track about how they should have been, but they didn't stick to it sadly.

Once again there's another mount behind a paragon chest with Nazjatar. (And even at a higher drop rate on wowhead than the Legion mounts, you still see comments in the forums and on wowhead of people working up a bunch of alts and opening 20+ chests (200k rep) and still not having it. And that's combined with the issue of some Rank 4 essences. (For extra fun, Nazjatar doesn't even provide mission board rep tokens, and Rank 4 essences aren't account wide, so anyone pursuing those for a character needs to earn it strictly on that character).

Island expedition mounts were worse. I agree with that. Then again, Blizzard's supposedly putting a fix in for that next patch which will let people who've been earning dubloons all this time potentially get the mounts with much more ease (jury's still out on how well that works, you can't necessarily trust that RNG drop rates on the PTR will be the drop rates they use for live). Obviously they should have fixed Island Expedition reward stuff more than a year ago, because the complaints about island expedition mounts were clear like 2 weeks into the expansion. (I'm still a bit disgusted that they decided to make their fix yet another RNG mechanism, but if it's an improvement, at least it's something).

I would argue that the fact that player complaints led to the removal of mount rewards from paragon chests sums up what is wrong with the "community" :/

I'd say anyone actually defending something like paragon chests is encouraging bad developer impulses and inviting worse practices. The players complaints were reasonable and an example of what's right with the "community." It actually pushes for better approaches by Blizzard to reward structures (when Blizzard bothers to listen and can actually manage to remember the lessons they've learned for more than two content patches).

It's no surprise that island expeditions were apparently brought to us by the same team that was responsible for paragon chests though. Both were poorly done. But there's no reason to defend something as bad as paragon chests just because Blizzard managed to out-do themselves and come up with something even worse.

[Fabinas]

Paragons. Made me quit WoW. Not that the Legion AP-Legendary Hunt didn't also help, but it was the last drop in the bucket for me.

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Sorry, but I think this is a very poor assessment of paragon mounts.

Your description of the problems tells me that the real problem with your experience is that you approached the paragon system wrong. Now before you get triggered that I told you you're playing the game "wrong" and that you can play it however you like, please allow me to explain:

The paragon mount rewards were designed around the idea of long term play rather than an intense grind. Paragon Chests are tied to the whole design of WQs and emissary rewards which are designed around players aiming to complete emissaries quests on a somewhat regular basis. However the system is flexible in that players aren't restricted - nothing stops a player from doing all the world quests available, but it's entirely optionally with a substantially lower reward:effort ratio.

Throughout legion, if a player focused solely on doing just the emissaries and no other world quests on a single character for the duration of the expansion, the drop rate of the mounts and the expected amount of rep gains would have resulted in getting about half of the mounts. That is for putting in the bare minimum amount of effort - effort that was necessary during Legion regardless of whether you were wanted the mounts or not, because emissaries were the most effective way of generating Order Resources and gold that you pretty need to play the game.

If, however, you are a serious mount collector the smart way of earning all the mounts is to use a few alts and simply repeat the process. The way I did it was to focus on the factions I needed mounts from and ramp up my number of alts as the number of mounts I needed got smaller. So basically I started the expansion with my main doing all the emissaries and ended the expansion with four characters doing the one emissary quest I needed (Farondis) + Kirin Tor which was a wild card.

At no point during the expansion did I ever need to "grind" reputation or do shitloads of WQs. It was literally just do a few world quests a day, or do 10-15 every 2-3 days and I got all the paragon mounts by the end of Legion, simply doing stuff that I would have been doing anyway.


Now as I said above, the game allows you to grind all the WQs in order to accelerate your quest for the mounts. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that...provided that doing it this way works for you. The reason I said you're playing the game "wrong" is that you're choosing a playstyle that is not optimal for what you enjoy.

By all means, grind the shit out of the world quests on 10 alts in order to make sure you have all mounts ticked off your list in the first 2 months, but then don't whine about a) how much you hated the grind and b) now you have nothing to do.

Figure out what is important to you, apply your mind to the problem, taking into consideration how the game was clearly meant to be played and take it from there. I think you'll find yourself accidentally enjoying the game a whole lot more. At least that is what works well for me.



I would argue that the fact that player complaints led to the removal of mount rewards from paragon chests sums up what is wrong with the "community" :/

Blah blah blah...

The randomness of the drops was the problem. Not the rate you could complete the paragon level to get a cache. Instead of letting us accumulate a currency to eventually buy the mounts, they just made it a casino roll. And that sucked.

[Fistfighter]

The Nazjatar and Mechagon mounts/pets.


Soundless has lesser droprate than previous mount rares on top of a excrutingly long respawn timer. All the TOTALLY random rares that spawn under unknown conditions. Just tons and tons of RNG stacked on top of RNG.
All the schematics and rare items having lower chances than previous contents did, and of top of that the chance of the rare being active that day is not always 100%, and then you still have to wait for them to actually spawn.



The Island Expedition drops before 8.1
RNG on top of RNG. In order to have a CHANCE at getting a specific mount, you had to - have a week with one of the right islands, get queued into the right island, have rares of that mount spawn, get there in time to kill them and THEN you got a less than 1% chance of a mount.

The situation now is still horrible. Endless grind, but atleast it's not totally fucking horrible anymore.


Paragons.
Everyone already stated their mind on this shit, no need to add more. I am still farming Highmountain and Wardens.


Legion Invasion weapon skins.
You have to complete 4 horribly repetitive WQs, then you have to complete the fucking long and boring hold-your-hand scenario and then you get a EXTREMELY small chance at a transmog weapon. Repeat 38 times if you want all the skins. I just wanted one, but never got it after 100+ invasions.





Wish they could go back to more work-towards it collector things.

The Timeless Isles Blood Coins grind? That was such a great, challenging and hard grind. But it was totally fair. Get 500 kills and the mount is yours. No dropchances, no RNG, no bullshit, just your pure skill and dedication.

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There are people who have done over 1500 islands exp with no mount drop.

that would be me

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Paragon Mounts are not even close to being in the same league as Island mount. Seriously, I am struggling to understand this hatred for paragon mounts. I got all Legion paragon mounts without any farming whatsoever. All I did was be to be diligent with emissaries, smart with how I used my alts and patient, taking the long view rather than rushing it.

When I started out in Legion, I was just doing emissaries on my main. But I made sure to do them all. As the expansion wore on I worked on my alts and this enabled me to get in extra emissaries. Over the course of the expansion I levelled up 3 alts who were all pretty effective at world quests (not exactly demanding content, so it didn't really require anything special). Part of the trick here was every time I looted a paragon mount, that became one emissary that I didn't need to focus on. So I started with my main doing all the emissaries, then moved to 2 alts doing 4/5. By the time I was up to 4 alts I was only doing 2 of the emissaries.

Essentially my level of effort never really ramped up at all and I ended up getting all the mounts basically for doing a handful of WQs per day.

I'd guess if people were trying to grind these mounts by doing every WQ on every alt as soon as the pop up on the map, then I can understand getting burned out, but really, that's just people being silly, not bad game design....

I am just doing Emmisaries and collecting Class Order Halls mission reputation tokens (and waiting for the 10% darkmoon buff) and I am still fucking burned out from not getting a single thing for a year straight