Valor reward discussion

[Shoju]

As much as what I'm about to say makes me cringe, I think that a Shatari skyguard style rep grind would be better than just dailies.

with Skyguard, you had the dailies, and you could do them, but every mob also gave you rep, and you could collect the items, and get the pieces, and fight the elite mobs, and then fight the boss, and you could theoretically grind out the rep nonstop. At level, it was.... tedious, but could be done.

For me, I still think that raid quality gear being locked behind the bottleneck isn't the answer unless you are going to give the raiding player a way to work on preparing themselves for raiding (cough cough tabards) while earning the rep.

The Epic gear at raid ilvl is just a just reward. I hate using this argument, but if the idea of the rep vendors is to give the people who don't raid "a reward" why do they need raid level gear?

[degre]

Raiding players don't need the rep gear, they have other ways of earning, especially as you consider that raid drops are already higher quality than Valor gear.

Reputations have nothing that is compulsory. Nothing. If you want to do it is up to you, and while I can understand that people felt pressured to do them the first few weeks, now you just don't need them.

You want the reward? Do the grind.
You don't want it? Don't do it.

But for god's sake, stop whining that you want the reward without the effort.

[Shoju]

Raiding players don't need the rep gear, they have other ways of earning, especially as you consider that raid drops are already higher quality than Valor gear.

Reputations have nothing that is compulsory. Nothing. If you want to do it is up to you, and while I can understand that people felt pressured to do them the first few weeks, now you just don't need them.

You want the reward? Do the grind.
You don't want it? Don't do it.

But for god's sake, stop whining that you want the reward without the effort.

Completely disagree.

Not every raider is clearing content every week.
Not every raider is already working on Terrace of Endless Spring
Mogu'Shan Vaults is the VERY SAME Ilvl as the gear from the Rep Valor Rewards.
Valor Points, you know, those points you get from running dungeons, and putting in effort? Yeah, they are USELESS if you aren't able to purchase gear with them. They become SLIGHTLY useful in 5.1 when you can use them to upgrade the ilvl of pieces. I say slightly, because you aren't going to bother wasting the time to upgrade some POS piece of gear with them. You are going to upgrade your best pieces with them to make them last longer.
They want the reward. They did the grind.
They don't want to do a second grind.

[Teranoid]

Raiding players don't need the rep gear, they have other ways of earning, especially as you consider that raid drops are already higher quality than Valor gear.

Reputations have nothing that is compulsory. Nothing. If you want to do it is up to you, and while I can understand that people felt pressured to do them the first few weeks, now you just don't need them.

You want the reward? Do the grind.
You don't want it? Don't do it.

But for god's sake, stop whining that you want the reward without the effort.

No one is saying they don't want to put in the effort. What they're asking is for more avenues to put in that effort. Why was is it completely alright in Wrath and Cata that all we had to do to get valor gear was raid or do dungeons?

Why is it so important now to lock all that shit away behind rep grinds and then make some offhanded defense that "well you could always get something somewhere else" aside from trying to string people along because they can't fix what was supposedly broken in the past without flipping the needle to the other side with such a blinding force it snaps.

They're so afraid of people blowing through everything in a week that they're starting to alienate the people who asked for these changes to begin with.

[econ21]

But for god's sake, stop whining that you want the reward without the effort.

I don't get this argument. It's a game. It's not a morality play, it's not about working hard IRL. We're not infants whining. Whose to say the effort for a given purple pixel reward should be 2 hours a day rather than 2 hours a week? Players want the game they are playing to be fun. Grinding dailies every day is just not fun.

In fact, come to think of it, dailies are just not a fun concept. You do a quest once, that's hopefully fun. Doing it 1, 2, 3, X times more on your alts? Ok that's fine, though maybe speed it up please (heirlooms? thanks!). But doing them every day for a couple of your months and then facing it on your alts? That's just a bad design and hence why I've yet to hear anyone saying how much they love doing dailies.

[The only exception might be if the dailies were so much fun, you did want to do them repeatedly. Gnomebliteration in Cata comes to mind, why was that not a daily? I can only think because it was too much fun, Blizzard did not want to undermine it by forcing people to do it to death.]

I guess the key problem is how to keep players playing a subscription game with a limited amount of content. Random drops from raiding is one way. Long grinds via dailies is another.

Given the constraints of what is available, my solution would be to make reputation BOA, solving the alts problem. And maybe make dailies into weeklies. Rather than be given 6 dailies of a faction today, another another raid 6 tomorrow, a final 6 the next and repeat, just give us all 18 now and let us do them at our own pace in the week. Perhaps doubling the rep rewards or something to balance it out. I think the pace of rep accumulation was ok but heck it has been hard work to accumulate it.

A bit more cross over with PvP, 5 mans and scenarios would be good too. No reason only dailies should give rep or why PvE/PvP rewards can't be exchanged. Perhaps something like double rewards with the first X of each kind of content a week to encourage people to play a variety of content. (I do think it is bad design if you just go nuts on heroics or dailies or whatever seems most efficient, ignoring the rest.)

Forgetting about reputation for a minute (I'm done with it on my main), I think the VP model in MoP is quite promising. It seems to strike a nice balance between different activities - I think I'll do LFR for half my VP cap, then mix it up with some dailies, five mans and even scenarios at a pace of my own choosing. But I'm glad I'm done with the daily rep grind.

[Sabindeus]

I think what it comes down to is the "fill in the gaps" model of points gear distribution that we've had in WotLK and Cata is being radically changed here, and people don't like that change. Since I'm not raiding this time around I'm not sure how I feel about it. But I will say that it does feel like we're back in vanilla, where drops are the only thing that matters unless you invest significant time outside of raiding.

[benebarba]

I think what it comes down to is the "fill in the gaps" model of points gear distribution that we've had in WotLK and Cata is being radically changed here, and people don't like that change. Since I'm not raiding this time around I'm not sure how I feel about it. But I will say that it does feel like we're back in vanilla, where drops are the only thing that matters unless you invest significant time outside of raiding.

^ This. And I have this suspicion that the Devs either aren't in agreement on this philosophy change or they are trying to make the change without anyone 'noticing'.

If indeed the 'purpose' of VP isn't to be helping fill out slots that don't drop: the system needs some relatively minor tweaks but the community needs a major adjustment.

I think the trouble is an attempt to 'please them all' - mounts, patterns, special non-combat on-use items, and pets don't appeal to everyone. Gear pretty much has universal appeal, but if it can be obtained 'individually' prior to or parallel to raiding/heroics you can bet a large number of folks will feel compelled to try for it.

The current system, I believe, was intended to dissuade this last item by making the grinds very long (so some just don't want to bother). However, the result is that one of the original purposes of badge gear (fill in slots that won't drop) is necessarily lost if you don't want to do a specific (and unrelated) grind.

[jere]

I honestly think that Golden Lotus is the only rep I really disagree with. I don't like how you have to be revered with them to rep with some of the other factions. I feel that is too much time investment for people trying to target reps for specific rewards. I also think their implementation of the GL dailies is too much on the side of number of dailies vs actual amount of rep gained. The Great Wall daily is one of the few of theirs I actually enjoy. They aren't tough dailies, just too numerous and forcing the first set to always be the same location is very grindy feeling.

That said, I felt the other reputations were fine in terms of time investment to revered/exalted (they could use some improvements, but not terrible). You only need honored for VP items 1250 and below, which was remarkably easy to get timewise, and revered for the rest, which took another 1-2 weeks depending on the faction.

I think I like the cloud serpent peoples the best as you could do semi rare turn ins to speed up the process. I also liked the buff system for the Klaxxi. That made their rep grind a lot more enjoyable and faster. They could have done a better job introducing the enhancements/augments to the player though. Most of my guildies didn't even realize they were available. The Shadow-pan were just barely over the "grindy" line for me as some of the quests did take some time, but it wasn't bad as rep rewards were good for 2/3 of the dailies (they need up the rep on the blackguard dailies section). My only complaints with August Celestials is that you start with lower rep with them and I didn't really care for the torch daily. I've enjoyed the Red Crane storyline.

One thing I thought about was they could possibly have dungeons give rep in some fashion up to a certain point (Revered for example) like how they handled some of the reps in Vanilla WoW, which would cover the gear issue and still leave the other half of the rep grind (rev->exalted) behind the grind wall for those who like mounts/pets/patterns.

[Sabindeus]

The current system, I believe, was intended to dissuade this last item by making the grinds very long (so some just don't want to bother). However, the result is that one of the original purposes of badge gear (fill in slots that won't drop) is necessarily lost if you don't want to do a specific (and unrelated) grind.

I take issue with that claim. In Burning Crusade, Badges of Justice didn't actually fill in any gaps at the cutting edge raid level. The item level was for 5 man heroics/10 man raids, not actual raids on the SSC/TK level. Even when they upgraded the gear, it was due to the release of Zul'Aman, a 10 man instance, and brought things up to that level, whereas 25 man raiding was still ahead. The whole "fill in the gaps" for raiding purposes didn't happen until Wrath.

[halabar]

Reputations have nothing that is compulsory.
But for god's sake, stop whining that you want the reward without the effort.

Sure, none if it is compulsory, assuming:

1) You are willing to slow down progression by relying solely on gear drops to gear up.
2) You are willing to slow down progression by forgoing bonus roles
3) You are willing to pass on any of the professions items cock-blocked behind reputations.

It's not about not doing the work (although they went too far in slowing the gearing), it's the paths and the rate. As I've repeated, fixing it so it's not tied to having to login every day would be a big help, time spent is the same, but you gain the choice on when to spend that time.

In my raid group, we have a boomer/tree that is struggling to gear up both specs, and a few others who have time commitments that hinder the rep grinding. Making some adjustments to the current system could really help.

[Klaudandus]

In my raid group, we have a boomer/tree that is struggling to gear up both specs, and a few others who have time commitments that hinder the rep grinding. Making some adjustments to the current system could really help.

But you see, that's where 5.1 fixes everything with being able to buy the 100% rep bonus! So shut your mouth and take it!

[bldavis]

then 5.1 needs to hurry the f up...

[Klaudandus]

Well... if I recall correctly, you need to be revered so you can get the rep bonus on your ALTS

Horray!

[bldavis]

this is true, but you also gain double rep from revered to exalted

the thing i want to know is ...
is it that server only?
or is it all alts on your account?

this does have an impact for me as my main and my other raiding toon are on different servers

[Klaudandus]

still not a proper solution imo.