Forced rep grinding? A plus or minus in MoP

[Lilfrier]

As tedious as rep grinding can be, I find it to be an upgrade over the Cata system. I thought having tabards to reward you for something you were already getting rewarded for was dumb. This at least adds a bit of gating towards content, so it gives you something to do outside of getting free epics. I'm not an elitist in practice (as I'm not that great at the game), but I do have an elitist mindset, that if you want something, you should have to work for it. Giving out gear, Valor, AND rep for a dungeon run is too much of a reward for the content, which takes little to no effort to complete.

In my opinion, they should have kind of taken a middle route here: The rep needed for stuff should take only a few days to complete, rather than requiring Exalted status with everyone to get the gear. That, or the rep stuff should be STRICTLY vanity items (such as transmog gear and mounts). It's just crappy when I see people cry for content, then cry that they get that content next time around. Sure, dailies aren't fun when you force-feed yourself ALL OF THEM every day, but that is your choice--to consume them as quickly as you want.

As much as we talk about the uses of Valor here, remember that there is plenty of gear to be had via dungeons, scenarios, and professions as well. IF you want to keep up with the highest-level players when it comes to earning gear, you should have to put forth more effort. Putting on a tabard does not count as that.

Besides, were the tabards REALLY any good? All the tabards did was make grinding dailies for an hour or two a day into grinding dungeons for days when you have already gotten all of the gear you could need from them. I ABHORRED heroics in Cata, once I got the gear out of them, as being required to run them to efficiently get rep via tabards was a chore on a greater scale than dailies. Dailies require you to farm a few mobs and do a few mini-games, while dungeons required you to queue (Which was for 10-20 minutes as DPS), then PRAY you got a decent 5-man group to clear the content in a reasonable amount of time without having the tank rage-quit because he was too terrible to hold aggro.

[Granyala]

Once i started raiding at a sufficiently high level, an "option" to gear up stopped being optional, because anything that can make me a more effective part of a raid team i feel like i need to do. If i don't, i'll feel like im letting down the other 24 people in my raid team.

We are raiders.
We don't bitch and moan like pansy weaklings when there's free gear offered.
We go and get it.

[Lilfrier]

a lot of players can´t, or don´t want to raid. Those players STILL need gear progression..and that is what the reps are for. that was the biggest problem with original WOW. A lot of players got to 60, then had no options for increasing their character. I think that is the real disconnect here, people keep linking raiding to rep gear... they are not linked, they are different alternatives. If you don´t raid, then you increase your power by doing LFR, heroics and reputations. If you do raid, then yes there is a short period after a new raid is introduced where LFR and reps can help you, but for the most part that closes within a few weeks when you start getting gear AND it is completely optional to begin with. A lot of guilds fully cleared MSV-normal after only a few weeks, and before they even had the VP necessary to buy rep gear.

people don´t talk enough about the 1k valor cap in these discussions.. that one factor alone makes ALL this talk about forced dailies moot. You can only earn enough VP to buy 1 pieces of gear every 2 weeks. The amount of dailies you need to do to spend that VP is minimal. You ding 90, you should already have Klaxxi to honored, that meansyou have 2 weeks to get GL to honored ( which takes about 3 days of quests).. so in 2 weeks, you have to do 3 days of dailies... after that, you have 2 weeks to either get GL or Klax to revered..

There simply was never any reason to do crazy amounts of dailies every week because you NEVER can earn more than 1000 VP anyway.

Good point on the pace.

However, if you wanted to improve gear after 90, you still have:

1. PvP
2. Heroics
3. Scenarios
4. World Bosses
5. Professions
6. BoE drops via the AH
7. BMAH

You can totally ignore dailies, valor, AND raiding and still get gear, but if you choose to skip all content that requires any work, then what the hell is the point in even going after gear? More importantly, why should you get gear if you choose to skip all gear-related content? If you want better gear, you need to earn it. Sorry, but what is the point in having tiered, difficulty-based content if you're going to trivialize it by handing out the gear and letting it get rolled over?

If you don't want to raid, why do you want raid gear? Why SHOULD you get raid gear? It's like you hate practicing playing Halo online, but you still want to be in a world championship tournament. It's like wanting to get a job that requires a Master's degree but you don't want to go to college. I know that WoW is a game, not real life, but this is a game where you are supposed to better your character, and, sorry to say that, you have to WORK to get stuff.

I think that the thing I am most bothered by with these complaints about dailies is how people refuse to recognize that:

1. You don't really need to grind the hell out of them every day, as you mentioned (unless your goal, like mine, was to get the mounts ASAP).
2. There are MANY way (which I listed) in which you can still get gear without touching dailies at any point in time.

---------- Post added 2013-01-27 at 06:42 PM ----------

Once i started raiding at a sufficiently high level, an "option" to gear up stopped being optional, because anything that can make me a more effective part of a raid team i feel like i need to do. If i don't, i'll feel like im letting down the other 24 people in my raid team.

You can claim that its a choice i make, choosing to go through content i don't enjoy rather than let 24 of my friends down, but to me it isn't. And i still can't see a reason why this gear-rep link is there.

The link is there, in my opinion, because if you want to raid at a semi-high level, you should have to work for it. I am fine with that. When I raided (and I wish I still could, but school conflicted with it, so I stopped playing WoW), I did not once complain (well, that's probably not true, haha) that I had to EARN my gear. I mean, with this mentality of "I don't' like it, but I don't' want to let others down," it shows you're a team player, which is a GREAT thing in raids. It says you're not going to stand in the fire to keep the Recount numbers high, for one. When you get to "I don't like it, and I think the gear-rep link is dumb," you've lost me a bit.

Honestly, what else can they do here? You can get gear from:

1. Heroics
2. Scenarios
3. LFR
4. World Bosses
5. Professions
6. AH BoEs
7. BMAH, via gold
8. Valor+Dailies

You have 8 different ways to get gear, and that's without considering each set of dailies a gear source. You have so many options that complaining that one is there is rather ridiculous. It's pretty clear that if you CHOOSE to bust your butt at the fastest route, that is on you. Doing it because you don't want to let other raiders down is irrelevant in that respect--you can choose to go raid casually if you want to play casually.

The one thing I would change is that there should be many repeatable dailies. If you want to hit 90 and spend a full day grinding one rep to Exalted, I'm totally fine with that. Making the dailies non-repeatable to fake the gating isn't a good thing, in my opinion. Let people kill as many mobs as they want to earn rep as quickly as they want. They'd DEFINITELY need to increase respawn rates, though.

[Scot]

Good point on the pace.

However, if you wanted to improve gear after 90, you still have:

1. PvP
2. Heroics
3. Scenarios
4. World Bosses
5. Professions
6. BoE drops via the AH
7. BMAH

You can totally ignore dailies, valor, AND raiding and still get gear, but if you choose to skip all content that requires any work, then what the hell is the point in even going after gear? More importantly, why should you get gear if you choose to skip all gear-related content? If you want better gear, you need to earn it. Sorry, but what is the point in having tiered, difficulty-based content if you're going to trivialize it by handing out the gear and letting it get rolled over?

If you don't want to raid, why do you want raid gear? Why SHOULD you get raid gear? It's like you hate practicing playing Halo online, but you still want to be in a world championship tournament. It's like wanting to get a job that requires a Master's degree but you don't want to go to college. I know that WoW is a game, not real life, but this is a game where you are supposed to better your character, and, sorry to say that, you have to WORK to get stuff.

I think that the thing I am most bothered by with these complaints about dailies is how people refuse to recognize that:

1. You don't really need to grind the hell out of them every day, as you mentioned (unless your goal, like mine, was to get the mounts ASAP).
2. There are MANY way (which I listed) in which you can still get gear without touching dailies at any point in time.

Its not about getting it for free. Its about getting it at your own pace. If I want to do 10 heroics a day, why cant I get valor for all of them? I'm constantly VP capped in a maximum of 48 hours after maintenance. I do most factions dailies every day for maybe a max of 20 min per faction. Why can't I spend 3 hours grinding rep for them and get 9 times the rep? Why does the content have to be artificially gated by a low rep/day cap and VP/week cap?

[Count Zero]

I'm getting a little tired of the whole "it's not forced on you" arguement - because by that faulty logic - nothing is forced on you. You can pay Blizz and never log into wow at all - logging in isn't forced on you. If you paid that's all they care about.

but if you want to advance in the game (and im sorry I have never experienced a game that is not about advancement or gaining experience/skill) these are absolutely forced on you, for the sake of advancement.

From here on in when any mongoloid moron on this site tells you "it's not forced on you. You don't have to do dailies." What they are really saying is... You don't have to log in - no one forces you to play what you paid for.

Thanks for letting me know that, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to NOT play wow.

They are not forced. You can get into heroics, lfr, and normal raids without doing a single daily.

[Azrile]

I'm getting a little tired of the whole "it's not forced on you" arguement - because by that faulty logic - nothing is forced on you. You can pay Blizz and never log into wow at all - logging in isn't forced on you. If you paid that's all they care about.

but if you want to advance in the game (and im sorry I have never experienced a game that is not about advancement or gaining experience/skill) these are absolutely forced on you, for the sake of advancement.

From here on in when any mongoloid moron on this site tells you "it's not forced on you. You don't have to do dailies." What they are really saying is... You don't have to log in - no one forces you to play what you paid for.

Thanks for letting me know that, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to NOT play wow.

Of course if you want to increase your power, you have to do SOMETHING. But there are multiple ways to do it, dailies are just one option. If you want to increase your power than you are FORCED to do one of the following, more more likely, a combination of all of them

1. Raid - no requirements, find a guild, get heroic blues, start raiding
2. Dailies - no requirements, do quests, get vp from heroics, buy items
3. PVP - Arenas, RBGS, BGS
4. LFR - do heroic dungeons, SoA and you can qualify without doing dailies

The fact is you can ONLY earn 1000 VP, so even if you feel compelled to help your guild raiding, the amount of dailies you had to do to spend your VP is very minimal, and spread out over 2 weeks. People who were doing 20 dailes a day the first week were just idiots who couldn´t figure out the whole 1k vp issue.

[Keoren]

a lot of players can´t, or don´t want to raid. Those players STILL need gear progression..and that is what the reps are for.

I don't think anyone is arguing for the complete removal of valor gear. Furthermore, why do you think that the valor gear should be tied to the reputations?

I think it's a very clunky solution and the reputations should focus on rewarding things that do not increase one's character power. Anything that increases the character power will be perceived as compulsory by a large part of the community.

We are raiders.
We don't bitch and moan like pansy weaklings when there's free gear offered.
We go and get it.

Yes, many raiders will use every advantage that they can get, but if one of those is gated in an unreasonable way then there is no reason why it couldn't be brought up as a quality of life issue. There is nothing wrong with criticism, as long as it's reasonable. It doesn't make a person less e-macho.

[Azrile]

Its not about getting it for free. Its about getting it at your own pace. If I want to do 10 heroics a day, why cant I get valor for all of them? I'm constantly VP capped in a maximum of 48 hours after maintenance. I do most factions dailies every day for maybe a max of 20 min per faction. Why can't I spend 3 hours grinding rep for them and get 9 times the rep? Why does the content have to be artificially gated by a low rep/day cap and VP/week cap?

because if they uncapped it, then a ton of people would feel even more obligated to do it. It was the same reason the original pvp system did not work. You shouldn´t have to play ungodly amounts of hours to keep up.

[ChenStormstout]

Golden Lotus and Klaxxi were bullshit, 15 and 10 quest per day respectively. Shado-pan, August Celestial, and Dominance Offensive weren't that bad with around 5 quest a day. The best would have to be Tillers and Angler. The Tillers were very quick and easy quest, while there were 3 quest for the Anglers.

Each faction gave you around a total of 1000-1500 rep per day. I think around 5 quest per day, per faction is the best.

[Deleted]

Minus, Blizzard fucked up but don't want to admit it

[lupii]

It feels forced due to access to Valor items being restricted by Rep.

I actually took a break after hitting 90 because I felt pushed by my guild to do dailies. The only dailies I do at this point are Dominance Offensive. (Thats more enjoyable though. Every second day get new lore.)

At this point I don't feel forced, but there was a lot of pressure on a lot of people at the beginning of the x-pac. Most of it was player generated of course.

Do I agree with locking us out of the majority of our valor items unless we have revered reps? No.

[Veliladon]

Dailies aren't the problem. They're a symptom of the overarching problem that Blizzard is facing right now. That problem is essentially that their post-90 character progression system is purely based on gear and it sucks.

[skitzy129]

I don't think anyone is arguing for the complete removal of valor gear. Furthermore, why do you think that the valor gear should be tied to the reputations?

I think it's a very clunky solution and the reputations should focus on rewarding things that do not increase one's character power. Anything that increases the character power will be perceived as compulsory by a large part of the community.



Yes, many raiders will use every advantage that they can get, but if one of those is gated in an unreasonable way then there is no reason why it couldn't be brought up as a quality of life issue. There is nothing wrong with criticism, as long as it's reasonable. It doesn't make a person less e-macho.

Nothing in MoP is gated unreasonably. I'm actually bored because I don't have anything left to do besides log on for raids and cap valor at the end of the week.

[Azrile]

I don't think anyone is arguing for the complete removal of valor gear. Furthermore, why do you think that the valor gear should be tied to the reputations?



Yes, many raiders will use every advantage that they can get, but if one of those is gated in an unreasonable way then there is no reason why it couldn't be brought up as a quality of life issue. There is nothing wrong with criticism, as long as it's reasonable. It doesn't make a person less e-macho.

I completely disagree about raiders using rep gear though. The ´gated´ones were a non-issue because they were so far down the road that there was no advantage to doing them. Klaxxi and GL were different though, but again, to get Klx and GL to honored requires no effort at all. If you were a raider, that is all you had to do and you had about 6 weeks worth of VP to spend. Klaxx was honored just by questing through the zone, and GL honored took about 3 days of dailies. As a raider, you then had 6 weeks of raiding and those few rep gear items, along with crafting, LFR, SoA to get gear. After 6 weeks, was there a chance that there was an upgrade on the AC or SP vendors? sure, always a chance, but not very likely, and more than likely you would be upgrading only an LFR item to a Rep item. The fallacy in your argument is that you make it sound like as soon as you unlock a rep vendor, you can just buy everything. The VP cap kicks those vendors so far down the timetable that unless you have obscenely bad RNG and refuse to do SoA, LFR and buy BOEs.. they shouldn´t even be part of the debate.

If we agree that VP gear is only a short-term thing for raiders. Then we can agree that it is mainly in place for non-raiders. If you remove Dailies as part of the equation for rep gear, then you basically have wotlk, where non-raiders do nothing but grind heroic dungeons. I personally like it the way it is now, for non-raiders, you need to do a mix of things.. heroics, lfr, dailies and scenerios.

But the biggest reason we can´t have a real debate about this is because of the hyperbole that goes on regarding dailes. The FACT is you only have to do one faction at a time, and you can even skip a lot of days and STILL not have enough valor points to keep up with the items you are unlocking to buy.

Domination point is the perfect example. I hated doing the quests where you had to go inside the ruins/cave area. So when they showed up, I simply didn´t do them. I also didn´t really like the ones where you had to go into the enemies stronghold.. so most of the time I skipped those too. So basically I was doing that faction a little more than half the days I could. Even at that pace, I was still waiting on VP to buy the trinkets... I was revered long before I could buy them.

[Conscious]

No facerolling your way into epics this time.

Could've fooled me.

[Keoren]

Nothing in MoP is gated unreasonably. I'm actually bored because I don't have anything left to do besides log on for raids and cap valor at the end of the week.

So you would have less things to do if the valor gear was separated from the reputations? How so?

Klaxx was honored just by questing through the zone, and GL honored took about 3 days of dailies. As a raider, you then had 6 weeks of raiding and those few rep gear items, along with crafting, LFR, SoA to get gear.

Unless I remember wrong, the valor items required revered and exalted in the beginning of the expansion. This was soon changed to honored and revered, which was a good thing.

After 6 weeks, was there a chance that there was an upgrade on the AC or SP vendors? sure, always a chance, but not very likely, and more than likely you would be upgrading only an LFR item to a Rep item.

Mogu'shan Vaults loot tables did not have an item for every slot for any of the classes. I'm confident in saying that most of our raiders were using reputation items six weeks into the raid content.

The fallacy in your argument is that you make it sound like as soon as you unlock a rep vendor, you can just buy everything. The VP cap kicks those vendors so far down the timetable that unless you have obscenely bad RNG and refuse to do SoA, LFR and buy BOEs.. they shouldn´t even be part of the debate.

I think it's you who is reading that part into my posts. Also, see my previous note about the loot tables and people still needing items from the vendors at that point.

If we agree that VP gear is only a short-term thing for raiders. Then we can agree that it is mainly in place for non-raiders. If you remove Dailies as part of the equation for rep gear, then you basically have wotlk, where non-raiders do nothing but grind heroic dungeons. I personally like it the way it is now, for non-raiders, you need to do a mix of things.. heroics, lfr, dailies and scenerios.

But are the dailies a good way of gating the items? I am willing to argue that they aren't and that there are better and more exciting alternatives.

If the reputation requirements are there to fill a void in lacking interesting content, that is a game design issue and the gating is a band-aid fix.

But the biggest reason we can´t have a real debate about this is because of the hyperbole that goes on regarding dailes. The FACT is you only have to do one faction at a time, and you can even skip a lot of days and STILL not have enough valor points to keep up with the items you are unlocking to buy.

I think this is a sub-topic that hasn't really been touched. It doesn't change that the players would still have to grind them at some point in the near future.

Domination point is the perfect example. I hated doing the quests where you had to go inside the ruins/cave area. So when they showed up, I simply didn´t do them. I also didn´t really like the ones where you had to go into the enemies stronghold.. so most of the time I skipped those too. So basically I was doing that faction a little more than half the days I could. Even at that pace, I was still waiting on VP to buy the trinkets... I was revered long before I could buy them.

Yes, that is a better scenario than pressuring you into doing content you don't enjoy.

[Conscious]

Nothing in MoP is gated unreasonably. I'm actually bored because I don't have anything left to do besides log on for raids and cap valor at the end of the week.

If that was truly the case, you wouldn't be seeing the commendation boosts or the heroic and scenario reps.

Besides, who're you to define 'unreasonable'?

[Scot]

because if they uncapped it, then a ton of people would feel even more obligated to do it. It was the same reason the original pvp system did not work. You shouldn´t have to play ungodly amounts of hours to keep up.

More time in = more/better rewards is what wow should always be about.

[Mimi-KT]

Rep Grinding has been a staple of MMO's since back in my Everquest days.

[SunspotAnims]

Obligatory "you're not forced to do them."

Anyway, assuming that you want to do the factions but not the dailies, it seems that Blizzard's working on ways to work that out. Some factions (Order of the Cloud Serpent, for example) have non-daily ways to earn rep, though the amount given is usually enough for a bonus to dailies rather than an alternative. Items were added in 5.1 that made the trip from revered to exalted much faster, and any other rep grinds for that faction on other characters twice as fast. 5.2 will have a pretty hefty rep gain for the faction of your choice by the first dungeon and scenario of the day, as well as a somewhat small bonus amount of rep (300, I think) for at most two factions of your choice for daily work orders on Sunsong, which can be done as long as you're exalted with the Tillers.

By the time 5.2 is released, I'd say that there's no excuse at all to feel forced to do dailies if you don't want to do them.