#502 - Nov. 13, 2012, 2:54 a.m.
zahrym what you said is offensive.
That's silly. The idea that I should have a placating "grin and bear it" approach to players on the forums -- as was discussed last week -- is what you should actually find offensive. And I'm only responding to this to make a quick point:
A lot of people have called my recent posts (and me personally) any number of negative things. Let me just say that I read a lot of great critical posts on the forums everyday -- there are some great ones in this thread. And we're constantly discussing the feedback with our developers. Just because I'm challenging a person's analysis of the game doesn't mean I'm not listening to them, or don't think they're making any good points.
If I can offer counterpoints to threads that will focus the debate on further specifics and details of a topic, that allows me to take more succinct feedback to the developers, often times including many of the great suggestions I see. ;)
Just let it be known there's a reason I started my post this way:
11/12/2012 04:30 PMPosted by
Zarhym There is definitely legitimacy to your post, and we've been reading a lot of the feedback players have been sharing lately as we evaluate our endgame progression systems. Even as World of Warcraft evolves over each expansion, and as happy as we are with the experience we crafted for Mists of Pandaria, we always know we can do better.
Anyway! :)
Because you have locked away a portion of the progression path behind endless dailies.
But character progression isn't blocked entirely "behind endless dailies." You can get into Raid Finder without any reputation rewards. Sure, it's clearly more effective to be earning some steady reputation with the core factions (which is the point) while running other content, but that's less relevant when an argument is made in absolute statements, such as "forced," "mandatory," and "locked away."
I'm not naive and I know that if you invest more time into your character by doing dailies along side your group content, your rate of progression will be faster. And again, that's by design. But certainly we enjoy hearing feedback about the design and how things could be tweaked to improve the model.
For instance, we talked recently to the developers about an evolution on the idea of being able to champion a faction via a tabard. What we don't want to repeat is the design that let players max out every faction reputation just by wearing a tabard while doing other content. So instead of endlessly getting reputation for every dungeon, maybe you only get a bonus once a day. It doesn't allow you to skip dailies altogether, but you can at least pad your rep gains a little bit.
Another cool part about this idea is that we can probably make it work through the UI, rather than requiring you to wear a tabard you may not think matches your bracers (teehee). It could be as simple as making it so that you champion the faction you selected to show as your XP bar.
And since it's brought up a lot, I completely understand the existing concerns players have about earning Valor through other sources and being locked from spending it for reputation rewards. It's something we'll continue to talk about -- be precise and feel free to suggest improvements!
It's worth throwing out there that it really doesn't take many daily quests to hit Honored with Golden Lotus, and you can easily hit Honored with The Klaxxi before you even unlock their daily quests. So it doesn't take much to give you a bear minimum of two ilvl 458 blues to spend JP on, and two ilvl 489 epics to spend VP on. That's a pretty fair boon if you're climbing to ilvl 460.
Important! I want to make sure it's totally clear one last time. I'm not saying our model is perfect and your feedback is incorrect. I'm trying to offer counterpoints so we can all signal in on the root of some of the popular concerns within the community. Operative word: TRYING. :D