Does anyone else think Shadowlands looks like time gated rep grinds: the expansion?

[Adamas102]

Time gate and grind are direct opposites

And yet here we have both. Covenant renown is time gated with a weekly cap, but the anima required to progress your covenant is a massive grind fest. I'm fine with the time gate since I know there's a catch up mechanic in place if I let my sub lapse for a couple months, but I don't relish having to catch up on anima for the upgrades, gear, missions, etc.

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OP here, it's actually not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I'm sure some of you disagree but I'm glad that it's finally not just doing WQs to fill up a rep bar, I like that. I'm also playing pretty casually too so there is that.

Instead it's WQs to fill up a sanctum reservoir bar.

[Qnubi]

Instead it's WQs to fill up a sanctum reservoir bar.

I don't do any WQ including Anima that are below 140 and I have 2k on my Paladin (alt) and 3,7k on my Mage (main), where I have wasted 1,5k for a useless cosmetic change (nightfae travel form) so I would be way above 5k there. So the grind is very little. 50% of my weekly anima income are actually coming from quests both daily and weekly. I also make around 150 a day from the command table which takes like 1 minute.

[huth]

And yet here we have both. Covenant renown is time gated with a weekly cap, but the anima required to progress your covenant is a massive grind fest.

That's just a flat-out lie. Anima is quite plentiful, and there aren't any grindable sources for it.

[Adamas102]

I don't do any WQ including Anima that are below 140 and I have 2k on my Paladin (alt) and 3,7k on my Mage (main), where I have wasted 1,5k for a useless cosmetic change (nightfae travel form) so I would be way above 5k there. So the grind is very little. 50% of my weekly anima income are actually coming from quests both daily and weekly. I also make around 150 a day from the command table which takes like 1 minute.

Cool. 5k anima in almost 2 weeks. Soooo at that rate you'll complete your sanctum upgrades (87k anima) in just under 9 months. You're also capped by souls, but acquiring those is a weekly quest so you don't need to log on daily for it. 9 months of logging on every day to do the same WQs, send out missions every 4 hours for small net gains of anima, and do whatever else you can for minor increases in anima. If you also want to spend anima on other things like upgrading your covenant set or buying the renown transmogs when they become available then we're talking about a year long grind. Again, that's just if you log on each day. If you come into the expansion late or take time off, that renown catch up is there, but what about an anima catch up? If anima gains are going to increase over the course of the expansion, then no problem.

Also, do the daily callings even reward anima? I just finished two today and got only greys, conduits, and a piece of gear. The weekly is ok, but that 350 anima is just a drop in the bucket. And 160 anima a day from the command table is 8 missions that take 4-5 hours each. Even if you have a pair of companion teams doing it (because I've yet to see more than 2 of those missions up at one time), that still requires you to hop on at least 4 times a day.

Sure, I suppose that doesn't sound like a grind to someone who doesn't mind logging on every day, several times a day, to do the same repeatable over and over and over. But that's still a grind.

That's just a flat-out lie. Anima is quite plentiful, and there aren't any grindable sources for it.

Just because you can't spam it doesn't mean it's not a grind. See above. We don't have a lot to spend anima on right now because of the time gating, but if you've looked at how much it costs to upgrade your sanctum and buy transmogs/mounts that's a loooooot of grinding the same repeatable content.

[Krakan]

It isn't really reo gated but it confuses me why they have such a hard on for time gating and alternative power progression systems.

That said I'm not the average wow player maybe they badly need the fill the bar design philosophy

[Lolites]

Cool. 5k anima in almost 2 weeks. Soooo at that rate you'll complete your sanctum upgrades (87k anima) in just under 9 months.

sooo LOONG before first half of expansion is over, provided the anima aquisition wont increase...
you do realise MMORPGS are not meant to be played for few days and then put on shelf, but rather over a long time, dont you? i mean it was like that for whole existence of wow, which is 16years so if you just realised that you are realy slow...

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Sure, I suppose that doesn't sound like a grind to someone who doesn't mind logging on every day, several times a day, to do the same repeatable over and over and over. But that's still a grind.

thats literaly the basis of MMORPG genre, if you dont want that go play different games...

[Adamas102]

sooo LOONG before first half of expansion is over, provided the anima aquisition wont increase...
you do realise MMORPGS are not meant to be played for few days and then put on shelf, but rather over a long time, dont you? i mean it was like that for whole existence of wow, which is 16years so if you just realised that you are realy slow...

Oh look, the requisite, low intelligence “it’s not meant to be done in a few days” response.

The point (which you apparently missed) was that the year long scenario was based on a daily grind at current anima acquisition levels. I suppose you also missed the fact that I was responding to posters who claimed that anima was plentiful and not a grind. I’m not saying this is against type for WoW. I’m just saying it’s a grind.

And yes, this becomes less of an issue if anima gains increase over the course of the expansion. Then again, there’s also the chance that they add even more things to spend anima on as well. We shall see.

[huth]

Just because you can't spam it doesn't mean it's not a grind.

Then you have no idea what a grind even is. Having to spam it to get anywhere is a defining feature, so not being able to spam something automatically disqualifies it.

[Adamas102]

Then you have no idea what a grind even is. Having to spam it to get anywhere is a defining feature, so not being able to spam something automatically disqualifies it.

Imagine thinking that referring to something as a grind is relegated only to spammable video game content. I’m guessing you’re not of an age to have actually worked a job if calling daily tasks for small incremental gains a grind is a foreign concept to you. MMO’s are built on grinds, whether they’re weekly, daily, or spammable content. If you do it at regular intervals to slowly build up currency, reputation, etc. it’s a grind.

[Zmagoslav]

funny guy you are

i logged in on wednesday - i did my m0 farm , i did my thorgast im done till next wednesday .

i could as well go on hiatus to play cyberpunk and come back when timegates are over.

so what was your point exackly ?

similiar with my hunter- dinged 60 on weekend - bought 151 gear of AH , cleared all m0 on monday , cleared thorgast on tuesday - guess today i will do the same what i did on main on my hunter and then what ? go and level another alt ? cba that early in expansion to have 12 alt because thats what this is heading.

boring game is boring.

Ok, so you are one of the players who like to burn trough everything on day 1 and complain for the rest of the week?

m0s and torghast on wednesday sum up to atleast 5 hours of gameplay. And that's completely ignoring the half-hour a day maw expedition you should be doing and the half an hour story chapter.

Don't worry, in a few days you get m+ and can spend 6 hours daily doing those on either character.

Imagine thinking that referring to something as a grind is relegated only to spammable video game content. I’m guessing you’re not of an age to have actually worked a job if calling daily tasks for small incremental gains a grind is a foreign concept to you. MMO’s are built on grinds, whether they’re weekly, daily, or spammable content. If you do it at regular intervals to slowly build up currency, reputation, etc. it’s a grind.

If you call your job a grind then it might be a good idea to re-evaluate certain things in your life instead of spending time on these forums.

[nekobaka]

Reps have been time gated for as long as there have been dailies, which was BC. Why are people acting like it's a new thing that the new evil ActiBlizz has put in deliberately to ruin their fun?

As for your whole conspiracy theory about how they're deliberately slowing us down to milk MAUs, here's a piece of info for you. It is literally impossible to create content at the pace the playerbase consumes it. We had people complaining on day three of the expansion that they'd levelled to max, did all the mythic 0s, and then came to the forums crying "is that everything? where's the content?"

Reminds me of the not so welcoming responses I got from players fuming about Firelands daily zone time gating when pointing out the WotLK Crusader zone did so as well. Was sad seeing so many claiming WotLK never did so and this was some new scummy tactic.

[cparle87]

Reminds me of the not so welcoming responses I got from players fuming about Firelands daily zone time gating when pointing out the WotLK Crusader zone did so as well. Was sad seeing so many claiming WotLK never did so and this was some new scummy tactic.

Even before the Tournament came out there were more dailies than the cap would let you do. Icecrown had a dozen little daily hubs, Storm Peaks had one, and there were other dailies sprinkled around.

[Qnubi]

Cool. 5k anima in almost 2 weeks. Soooo at that rate you'll complete your sanctum upgrades (87k anima) in just under 9 months. You're also capped by souls, but acquiring those is a weekly quest so you don't need to log on daily for it. 9 months of logging on every day to do the same WQs, send out missions every 4 hours for small net gains of anima, and do whatever else you can for minor increases in anima. If you also want to spend anima on other things like upgrading your covenant set or buying the renown transmogs when they become available then we're talking about a year long grind. Again, that's just if you log on each day. If you come into the expansion late or take time off, that renown catch up is there, but what about an anima catch up? If anima gains are going to increase over the course of the expansion, then no problem.

Also, do the daily callings even reward anima? I just finished two today and got only greys, conduits, and a piece of gear. The weekly is ok, but that 350 anima is just a drop in the bucket. And 160 anima a day from the command table is 8 missions that take 4-5 hours each. Even if you have a pair of companion teams doing it (because I've yet to see more than 2 of those missions up at one time), that still requires you to hop on at least 4 times a day.

Sure, I suppose that doesn't sound like a grind to someone who doesn't mind logging on every day, several times a day, to do the same repeatable over and over and over. But that's still a grind.

There are a lot of wrong assumptions in your post, lack of knowledge and wrong facts. I will run you through the errors of your post.

First thing is, I did not "only" have 5,2k anima overall on my mage, that is anima that I can't use at the moment because, like you said, I am locked behind spending further on my covenant buildings due to lack of souls. I have built all 4 starting buildings so far, which is another 4k I already spent my anima on, boosting my overall anima to around 10k (command table also costs some anima). 10k in 9 days, I only reached level 60 on Friday last week, I leveled pretty casually. You also seem to ignore that we still have no M+ and Raids, which will 100% yield an insane amount of anima per week for a one time quest/chest. And World bosses will most likely give a lot of Anima as well. You are just too early to complain already my friend, I don't know why.

Currently I have 4 teams (2 story, 1 torghast and 1 renown) and we will get another 4 or 5 down the line. That means I can currently do the same amount you claimed you do with just 2 log ins, on top of that: You can just use the mobile app to send out more missions if you are just on your way to work or have a break in whatever you do. Hell, even when walking to make groceries you can quickly send out a mission, no need to sit in-front of your PC anymore for these mundane tasks.

A friend of mine who has even less time than me because of work (6 days a week each 10 hours) has managed to cap out on anima (no way to spend it anymore) and sits on 2k in reserve. By the time new opportunities arise I will certainly have enough to instantly buy whatever gets opened up. We will be capped by souls, and not because of lack of anima we earn.

If you really struggle with Anima I am 100% confident and certain that you are missing some easy Anima quests and opportunities each day/week. I can recommend a video on what to do each day/week if you want to so your anima problems will disappear shortly after.

There are also multiple one time quests in dungeons that yield 750 anima.

You also need to elaborate what, in your opinion qualifies as a grind and what does not. How much time do you think is warranted for an activity to not feel like a grind. Telling me "it's a grind" is not telling me anything because officially "a grind" is something that is repetitive. My sources for anima: PvP, WQ, Quests, Command Tables, Dungeons, Treasure Chests, Rares. As you can see, that is not repetitive because it's literally the entirety of the game that is yielding anima. It is a byproduct of playing the game, not the focus. Now, if you think WoW itself is just a grind game, welcome to MMOs.

[Blackmist]

I wouldn't mind the rep grinds (and the Avowed is especially tedious) if there weren't covenant specific rewards attached to them.

So you grind it all the way up, and you still get fuck all for your effort.

Covenant rewards should be linked to renown only.

Reputation rewards should be linked to rep only.

[T3ramos]

I am loving the caps. Don't have much time to play in a week, so this addon is the first where I don't think I'm aeons behind in content. But people that play for 4 hours a day or more may feel like they have nothing to to. Maybe play some other games

[huth]

Imagine thinking that referring to something as a grind is relegated only to spammable video game content. I’m guessing you’re not of an age to have actually worked a job if calling daily tasks for small incremental gains a grind is a foreign concept to you.

More like you not being of an age to know that's not what the term refers to in MMOs. We're not talking about the daily grind at work here, we're talking about grinding in MMOs.

[Kralljin]

Reminds me of the not so welcoming responses I got from players fuming about Firelands daily zone time gating when pointing out the WotLK Crusader zone did so as well. Was sad seeing so many claiming WotLK never did so and this was some new scummy tactic.

I think it's a bit comparing apples to oranges.

The Argent tournament was largely a thing for collectors, the item rewards were so laughably bad even in the weeks of its release that most people ignored it.
Vendors sold like Ilvl200 items, which also dropped in Heroic dungeons, which were easy enough in Wotlk.

The Firelands dailies did sell items that were relevant to players who haven't raided Heroic in the previous tier, meaning that it was a lot more relevant to them.
It also had the unfortunate side effect that if you raided normal exclusively, you didn't need those items anymore by the time you got them because they were still worse than Items from Firelands normal.

Even before the Tournament came out there were more dailies than the cap would let you do. Icecrown had a dozen little daily hubs, Storm Peaks had one, and there were other dailies sprinkled around.

Equating the existence of daily content to timegating in general is just straight dishonest, the rewards behind it matter.

In Wotlk, you had the Sons of Hodir, the Exalted Shoulder enchant was slightly better than the Honored one (which you got just by questing there).
We're talking about 10-20 Spellpower / AP and like 15 Crit rating.

In other words, only something you want to engage if you really want the extra bit of power, hardly something mandatory.
Not to mention, the "grind" got much easier over the course of the expansion, the Exalted Shoulder enchant became accountwide later on and you could buy Rep for Emblems which were easily farmable.

Any other daily in Wotlk only granted you gold, which you could farm however you wanted, it's not like those dailies were the only source of raw gold.
Remaining Repfarms (aside from the Ashen Verdict, which only could be farmed in ICC) could be farmed in dungeons via Tabard, no dailies involved unless you absolutely craved the daily experience.

The only legitimate criticism would be the Daily Heroic but that only awarded the most relevant currency since 3.3, wasn't a thing beforehand.
And yeah, people already disliked that back then as well.

To tackle your previous post along with it.
The dailies initially introduced in TBC hardly awarded actual playerpower, the few items those Rep vendors sold were barely relevant for anyone who has played a bit of TBC.
They were just sources of rawgold for most players, Blizzard even capped the amount of dailies you could do per day initially.

Something like the Netherwing was obviously just done by people who wanted the Netherdrake mount, nothing that's somehow mandatory or relevant to player power.

In 2.4, the introduced a faction with relevant rewards, yes.
But, Blizzard there turned it into a massive serverwide event with various stages to unlock vendors, which were unlocked based on the servers progress, not to mention that those vendors sold items for a currency you could farm beforehand.

Let's not forget, this is TBC, not "Play the Patch"-Land that WoW has become, meaning you still had other areas to improve your character if you haven't done so, rather than just [newest raid & Daily zone area].

The only way you could have run out of things to improve your character by the time of 2.4 was if you were a cutting edge raider that jumped into SWP right off the bat and was then timegated by those gates, but this hardly applied to the playerbase at large which were still stuck in T4 / T5 / T6.

The way timegating / dailies worked in Wotlk and especially TBC is just so different to the modern approach of Blizzard that it's hardly compareable.

It's absolutely mindboggling to me how people can be that superficial in their assessment, which to me implies that people that make the argument "Dailies and time gating have existed since TBC!"
1. Are Willfully dishonest for the sake of the argument
2. Have not played TBC / Wotlk and repeat it based on hearsay
3. Have forgotten about what makes these cases very different

Hardly anyone has ever complained about timegating / dailies when it involved collectible items, but that criticism grows when playerpower is involved.

[Adamas102]

More like you not being of an age to know that's not what the term refers to in MMOs. We're not talking about the daily grind at work here, we're talking about grinding in MMOs.

Haha the lack of self awareness is stunning. You seem to understand the concept but for some reason don’t want to apply it. A grind is a grind. Arbitrarily narrowing the definition for one particular thing doesn’t change the meaning of the word.

[huth]

Haha the lack of self awareness is stunning. You seem to understand the concept but for some reason don’t want to apply it. A grind is a grind. Arbitrarily narrowing the definition for one particular thing doesn’t change the meaning of the word.

Arbitrarily applying the definition from one area to another doesn't make it correct, either. Meaning depends on context.

[cparle87]

I think it's a bit comparing apples to oranges.

The Argent tournament was largely a thing for collectors, the item rewards were so laughably bad even in the weeks of its release that most people ignored it.
Vendors sold like Ilvl200 items, which also dropped in Heroic dungeons, which were easy enough in Wotlk.

The Firelands dailies did sell items that were relevant to players who haven't raided Heroic in the previous tier, meaning that it was a lot more relevant to them.
It also had the unfortunate side effect that if you raided normal exclusively, you didn't need those items anymore by the time you got them because they were still worse than Items from Firelands normal.

Equating the existence of daily content to timegating in general is just straight dishonest, the rewards behind it matter.

In Wotlk, you had the Sons of Hodir, the Exalted Shoulder enchant was slightly better than the Honored one (which you got just by questing there).
We're talking about 10-20 Spellpower / AP and like 15 Crit rating.

In other words, only something you want to engage if you really want the extra bit of power, hardly something mandatory.
Not to mention, the "grind" got much easier over the course of the expansion, the Exalted Shoulder enchant became accountwide later on and you could buy Rep for Emblems which were easily farmable.

Any other daily in Wotlk only granted you gold, which you could farm however you wanted, it's not like those dailies were the only source of raw gold.
Remaining Repfarms (aside from the Ashen Verdict, which only could be farmed in ICC) could be farmed in dungeons via Tabard, no dailies involved unless you absolutely craved the daily experience.

The only legitimate criticism would be the Daily Heroic but that only awarded the most relevant currency since 3.3, wasn't a thing beforehand.
And yeah, people already disliked that back then as well.

To tackle your previous post along with it.
The dailies initially introduced in TBC hardly awarded actual playerpower, the few items those Rep vendors sold were barely relevant for anyone who has played a bit of TBC.
They were just sources of rawgold for most players, Blizzard even capped the amount of dailies you could do per day initially.

Something like the Netherwing was obviously just done by people who wanted the Netherdrake mount, nothing that's somehow mandatory or relevant to player power.

In 2.4, the introduced a faction with relevant rewards, yes.
But, Blizzard there turned it into a massive serverwide event with various stages to unlock vendors, which were unlocked based on the servers progress, not to mention that those vendors sold items for a currency you could farm beforehand.

Let's not forget, this is TBC, not "Play the Patch"-Land that WoW has become, meaning you still had other areas to improve your character if you haven't done so, rather than just [newest raid & Daily zone area].

The only way you could have run out of things to improve your character by the time of 2.4 was if you were a cutting edge raider that jumped into SWP right off the bat and was then timegated by those gates, but this hardly applied to the playerbase at large which were still stuck in T4 / T5 / T6.

The way timegating / dailies worked in Wotlk and especially TBC is just so different to the modern approach of Blizzard that it's hardly compareable.

It's absolutely mindboggling to me how people can be that superficial in their assessment, which to me implies that people that make the argument "Dailies and time gating have existed since TBC!"
1. Are Willfully dishonest for the sake of the argument
2. Have not played TBC / Wotlk and repeat it based on hearsay
3. Have forgotten about what makes these cases very different

Hardly anyone has ever complained about timegating / dailies when it involved collectible items, but that criticism grows when playerpower is involved.

"Relevant rewards?" Are you forgetting BC was the expansion of "you had to go through every tier in order to advance to the next one and good luck if you got your tanks/healers attuned and they jumped to a better guild?" I'd say rep rewards were even MORE important then than they are now. Cenarion Expedition had the best feral weapon before T5, which most raiders didn't even get to. And remembering that raiding was an even more niche activity than it is now with more difficulty settings and accessibility.

As for your "play the patch" snide, are you forgetting that 2.4 was the patch that added dailies in almost every older zone that you'd have to cycle around to do. Hmm, where does that sound familiar? Trying to pass off everyone who disagrees with you as willfully dishonest, repeating hearsay, or having bad memory is very egotistical of you, btw. Reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes meme about denying being in denial, just being specific about the reality they accept.