What is the Point of Anima Shortage?

[ashblond]

I have 5 level 60s doing weekly 1K anima quest and Oribos dungeon quests every week, also anima missions whenever possible.

I use anima upgrading some covenant sets, transmog appearance and feature upgrade. So far, I haven’t bought any mounts/pets and only managed to upgrade 1-2 rank 2 buildings on 2 chars. None of my chars unlocked any rank 3 buildings or mounts.

The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

Covenant is THE core feature of SL. What is the point of spending so much time and effort designing a core feature that players don’t have anima to use? Or players can only fully experience when SL is over???

This severe lack of anima design makes no sense. And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

[A Chozo]

And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

Oh c'mon don't make us explain that "correlation doesn't imply causation" again, it's tiring.

Anima was calculated to keep you playing for the whole of 9.0, maybe 9.1, and for the more casuals, the whole expansion. It also exists as an investment of time and effort into a given Covenant, putting value in their choice and making each player less inclined to keep changing Covenants.

It was all done to please the requests for more meaningful choices in the RPG, and it's working.

[Barzotti]

People complained about infinite power level grinds in Legion and BfA. There isn't an infinite grind anymore, Anima is only useful for cosmetics, and people are still complaining.

I have multiple chars with the rank 3 mission table and I don't farm anima at all. I don't know how you can't afford not a single level 3 building four months after the expac launch. Maybe the OP is using anima to heal his followers.

[Zorachus]

Oh c'mon don't make us explain that "correlation doesn't imply causation" again, it's tiring.

Anima was calculated to keep you playing for the whole of 9.0, maybe 9.1, and for the more casuals, the whole expansion. It also exists as an investment of time and effort into a given Covenant, putting value in their choice and making each player less inclined to keep changing Covenants.

It was all done to please the requests for more meaningful choices in the RPG, and it's working.

WTF are you smoking?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

WTF are you smoking?

Of course you wouldn't understand.

[Raugnaut]

I mean anima has already been increased by 200% in both dungeons AND raids, and PvP has been a great source of anima since the start. Considering that there's also at least 1k anima available each day...

Still, if it goes by any other expansion, you'll lack the expansion-specific resource at the start (Order Hall Resources/Ancient Mana, War Resources/Island Doubloons, ect) but by the end of the expansion you'll have hundreds o thousands of them.

[Razion]

Think you answered your own question: there's an Anima drought.

We're probably meant to feel the drought and care about it. Frankly, I don't.

[Adamas102]

Think you answered your own question: there's an Anima draught.

We're probably meant to feel the draught and care about it. Frankly, I don't.

Yeah, it makes sense for the narrative, but it's a pretty feel-bad game system.

It doesn't feel rewarding to get it since it comes in at such a trickle. And spending it doesn't feel rewarding either since you don't really get all that much compared to the time spent acquiring enough currency.

[ntlntl]

It's meant to be a patch long or expansion long system.
We are not meant to max anima after 1-2 month

[VinceVega]

I have 5 level 60s doing weekly 1K anima quest and Oribos dungeon quests every week, also anima missions whenever possible.

I use anima upgrading some covenant sets, transmog appearance and feature upgrade. So far, I haven’t bought any mounts/pets and only managed to upgrade 1-2 rank 2 buildings on 2 chars. None of my chars unlocked any rank 3 buildings or mounts.

The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

Covenant is THE core feature of SL. What is the point of spending so much time and effort designing a core feature that players don’t have anima to use? Or players can only fully experience when SL is over???

This severe lack of anima design makes no sense. And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

While i agree, that anima is annoyingly hard to come by... i don't think it matters much.
You said it yourself. It is only for transmog and optional also you have more than 2 years for everything... guess i am a tard?

Their intention is to give you stuff you can do over the complete course fo the expansion. As a side project. Not somehting you finish in 1 month like everything else. Sort of like Evergreen-content light.

I just keep my souls and get now 500 anima each week for free for 20 souls from the maw. the 1000 anima quest is laughable fast now.

[T-34]

The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

You just answered your own question. It is a system designed to keep people enganged = subscribed for the whole expansion.
For some people, I don't share their opinion, cosmetics/mounts etc are the most important in the game and with this new system Blizzard has designed something to keep them hooked.

As you yourself have answered your own question then you should also be able to answer the next question: Is this system fun for me? And if not, then you know what you should do.

[WowIsDead64]

I have 5 level 60s doing weekly 1K anima quest and Oribos dungeon quests every week, also anima missions whenever possible.

I use anima upgrading some covenant sets, transmog appearance and feature upgrade. So far, I haven’t bought any mounts/pets and only managed to upgrade 1-2 rank 2 buildings on 2 chars. None of my chars unlocked any rank 3 buildings or mounts.

The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

Covenant is THE core feature of SL. What is the point of spending so much time and effort designing a core feature that players don’t have anima to use? Or players can only fully experience when SL is over???

This severe lack of anima design makes no sense. And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

Answer is simple - 9.1 isn't even on PTR yet. And we don't even know, how much content it will have. May be it will be WOD 2.0 with almost 0 new outdoor content? Because only solid info, we have - is new raid and new M+ only dungeon. (Isn't making new dungeons M+ only a big waste of resources?) We don't know, how big chunk of content Maw 2.0 and new zone will be. And simple fact, that this zones will be no flying forever, just instantly kills this content for me. I just hate so called "sandbox" design. It's not, what should be real "sandbox" content, because "sandbox" content is about freedom to choose your own approach to content. Not being restricted even more by walls of rat maze.

I've also unsubbed. Because current amount of anima is so big nonsense, that it's obvious, that it will be nerfed in future patches. Because this content should be completed by the end of SL. Some stretching of content by just several % in first patch is reasonable. But overstretching it by several hundreds of %??? No, I'm not going to waste so much effort.

And if it won't be nerfed, then hello BFA 2.0. Sorry, but catering to players, who play one character only - is big mistake. I understand, that at some point Mr.Kotick realized, that while players pay their sub fee for 50 character slots, he don't actually want to pay for such amount of server DB storage, so it would be good, if players would be restricted to one character only. But Pandora's box is already opened. It's not interesting for me to play on one character only. Especially because this game lacks fun casual content, so we have to replay it on alts, while losing global progression on our main.

This game naturally has large amount of content to replay. It has 12 classes. It has 4 armor types. It has several weapon types. Large amount of content for collector. But all of a sudden Blizzard don't want us to play all of this content. They want us to "choose" just tiny piece of it. Yeah, all that "meaningful choice" misconception. They just kill their own content! And then they wonder, why their players quit due to nothing to do.

We have constant war with Blizzard about what should be considered character progression and what should be considered account-wide progression. Long-term grind HAVE TO BE account-wide. Period. If it's not - it restricts me to one character only. And it's bad.

[lozza]

I think you might be feeling the draught more as you are spreading your time across 5 characters. I play a main and 1 alt and have lots of anima, mainly from m+ and raids. Even taking your alts through raid finder, or normal CN you can get yourself a lot of anima. I think on average you will get over 1k just from one raid

[callipygoustp]

Personally, I love. I've made a killing selling Anima on the black market.

[Alanar]

Anima was calculated to keep you playing for the whole of 9.0, maybe 9.1, and for the more casuals, the whole expansion. It also exists as an investment of time and effort into a given Covenant, putting value in their choice and making each player less inclined to keep changing Covenants.

It was all done to please the requests for more meaningful choices in the RPG, and it's working.

Working in what sense?

There realy isnt much gameplay evolved or choice. If i can choose an upgrade every what.. when we need 10 to 15 k anima doesnt make it anymore meaningfull then changing a talent. Which feels like a bigger choice in general.

Idk I dont want to call it false advertising, because they did give us certain things which false into choices. But it realy doesnt feel like we have a lot of choices or costumization with anything realy.

The fun part if that players already notice this very early on. The expansion itself is quite hollow if see it. I understand its a way to keep players engaged, but it feels cheap and very limited once again. Gating content and very spread out doesnt make it very engaging to begin with:/

[Squigglyo]

Anima is a royal pain in the ass.

I have a few hours each day to play.
So I can either spend an hour or two each night grinding out anima, or do the things I like to do more (raids/mythic+).
Which result in substantially less to zero, anima.

If I invest any time into my main, my alts simply dont have enough anima to do anything.
Likewise, if i spend time on my main playing the way I like, I get barely any anima and am behind.

With Rated BGs giving 250 for the first win of the day, my PVP wife has 10s of thousands spare.
Meanwhile, I PVE and have nothing spare and am behind hugely.


Sure i could do WQs every day and get anima faster, but the WQs are horrible and boring. 10 mins for some of them (flying, traveling, questing) for 70 anima is just a slap in the balls.
My time is worth more than that.



But, if you look at it with Math.
We've had, 21 weeks since release.
Thats 21,000 worth of anima from the weekly 1k quest.

So if you did the bare minimum, thats how much youde have. If we assume 9.1 is slated for Spring, that gives another 10 weeks give or take. so 31,000 anima for the bare minimum.
That is about 10% of the total anima you need to buy everything.
To fully upgrade your sanctum alone costs approx 90k anima.

So you would need to earn 3k a week in order to upgrade your sanctum by 9.1 - that seems like a stupid amount for a feature that only 'casuals' care about (no raid, pvp, pve, WQ, any - benefit). Its purely cosmetic by the point you finish it.
Its completly designed around being something that takes a long time and to keep you busy till 9.1, but it fails at that simply due to the rewards not being worth it by the time you get it. Hopefully 9.1 adds some more substance, but then again, it would likely just add another goal so far out of reach it is pointless by the time you get there too.


Offtopic, i think that
Mythic+ should do the same, 1st completion for the day 250 anima and Each 'wing' boss (Inerva, Council, Generals) and Sire should give 250 anima per as well to encourage raiding the 'lesser' bosses too. Just to try and match the rewards that PVP give.

[ashblond]

Think you answered your own question: there's an Anima draught.

We're probably meant to feel the draught and care about it. Frankly, I don't.

Why is 35 anima per dungeon a drought? I think 350 anima per dungeon is also a drought.

Who decides how a drought should be?

Lorewise, I am not against anima drought because of SL story. But gameplay wise, it is rubbish.

[Venziir]

At least have it increase in a way, like AP did in Legion, or how azerite worked in BFA.

[ashblond]

You just answered your own question. It is a system designed to keep people enganged = subscribed for the whole expansion.
For some people, I don't share their opinion, cosmetics/mounts etc are the most important in the game and with this new system Blizzard has designed something to keep them hooked.

As you yourself have answered your own question then you should also be able to answer the next question: Is this system fun for me? And if not, then you know what you should do.

Cosmetic/mounts is the ultimate endgame of wow. The only thing that matters and lasts.

[dope_danny]

They need to create the illusion of some reason to log in when not doing pvp or raids and this is their choice. Like a lot of recent WoW mechanics stuff its not surprising devs that are self professed "mobile only gamers" lift ideas and mechanics from mobage. Anima is your clicker energy meter or whatever. Just open the app and tap a little and keep visiting that ecosystem and stay subbed or visiting the cash shop for wow tokens and maybe more purchases while you are there. Its all this strange series of mechanics to try and make something a drop in and drop out none entity of convenience while also making it a habit forming retention loop.

But shockingly just like islands or artefact power or world quests or anything else that feels made for a gacha with light rpg mechanics on your phone the pc using audience who want the mmorpg still just find it a befuddling combination of grindy and pointless.

I have to wonder at this point if some higher up has actually said out loud "the next time will work!".