The Weekly Marmot - What's Wrong With Rep?

[Theotherone]

tied VP gear to them to force raiders into doing them. Not a very creative solution to the existing problem and I would argue one that has created problems of its own.

What they're doing is moving away from the paradigm that VP will gear you up quickly; the Vaults are very doable in a combinatin of heroic dungeon, crafted and LFR gear; what's happening is that Blizzard is saying if you want to out gear it before you walk in, it will take a while. Would it make it easier to have a gear buff? Sure, but it is not necessary. I believe Blizzard is countering the past practice of easily obtained gear with stat inflation being a virtual insta-buff.

[Mwawka]

What they're doing is moving away from the paradigm that VP will gear you up quickly; the Vaults are very doable in a combinatin of heroic dungeon, crafted and LFR gear; what's happening is that Blizzard is saying if you want to out gear it before you walk in, it will take a while. Would it make it easier to have a gear buff? Sure, but it is not necessary. I believe Blizzard is countering the past practice of easily obtained gear with stat inflation being a virtual insta-buff.

I'm not sure I agree. The VP cap is the limiting factor in obtaining this gear IF you grind out your dailies. They just put the requirement of doing your dailies everyday in order to be able to obtain the gear, other than that barrier, the gear is obtainable at the same rate it always has been. I'd argue that if anything the existence of raid finder gives an extra option of gearing up rather than there being less ways.

Having put some thought into it, I think the idea of having weekly rep caps for each faction, but offering multiple ways to gain that rep is the way they should have gone and a way to go in the future. So each faction could have had dailies, maybe a weekly quest, a dungeon or two, some scenarios, maybe a world mini boss and some rare spawn turn in items tied to it that provided rep for that faction. If they'd set a weekly cap of how much faction rep you could gain eliminating the ability to grind max rep in one day, then all those options become very valid ways of getting to your weekly rep cap. It gives you options and variety which is good for game play.

[Theotherone]

Anyone elses realm get a realm wide buff on Monday nights that allows you to gain 50% more VP? Noticed while doing the Anglers I was getting 7 VP instead of 5, looked up and saw a buff next to my Map that said "VP gained on this realm increased by 50%". Forget what it was called.

[Ermin]

I could be mistaken but I think that kicks in once one character has maxed VP for the week.

[Theotherone]

I could be mistaken but I think that kicks in once one character has maxed VP for the week.

That could be it, now that you mention it. I had just maxed VP on my Pally before I switched over to the hunter to do the Anglers. Guess that's incentive for us altaholics to max VP early in the week on one toon.

[Cyoor]

This episode was bad. =(

I think LORE got PMS problems.

[Anarkis]

Hi Lore:

After I have seen your video on the The Weekly Marmot - What's Wrong With Rep? it set me thinking and I agree with it being a pain to do dailies.. Alot of us do feel the pain.. some do enjoy it but.. It does need fixing of this "non optional option".

Currently due to the discussed issues/implementations why Blizzard implemented dailies to offer "options" for activites outside raiding time.

It set me to think of "Options of Flexibility" instead.. I have a few ideas wonder if it would work.

1) Cap the weekly rep since it's capped based on the rep(honoured/revered etc) you have with that Faction anyway determined by the number of dailies u can do.

2) Next offer another way to earn these rep other than doing dailies base on that faction and Faction rep you have. (So anyone can have slightly different rep cap. Depends on the rep(Friendly/Honoured/Revered they have with that Faction).
2a) You mentioned farming some items that could be turned in for rep... Eg The sons of Hodir Faction rep.. turning in Relic of Ulduar to exchange for rep. (Grinding)
2b) Offer a Faction Tabard that allows players to run dungeons at the same time get these faction rep.

At the same time Blizz can open up/gate them base on the current Daily Quest flow to open the other Faction rep after Golden Lotus at revered. Players could just do some Quest/Dailies to get to Friendly/Honoured to get the other Faction Tabard. I consider till honoured are still pretty acceptable to grind on dailies to get access to Faction tabards so I can have other options soon.

Wish this help. I enjoy your videos from day 1 of Weekly Marmot. Happy 3rd year Anniversary~ Big Gratz *pat*

[Knighterrant81]

2) Next offer another way to earn these rep other than doing dailies base on that faction and Faction rep you have. (So anyone can have slightly different rep cap. Depends on the rep(Friendly/Honoured/Revered they have with that Faction).
2a) You mentioned farming some items that could be turned in for rep... Eg The sons of Hodir Faction rep.. turning in Relic of Ulduar to exchange for rep. (Grinding)
2b) Offer a Faction Tabard that allows players to run dungeons at the same time get these faction rep

I don't think there's something else out there really. Here's a couple of givens:

They can't give us rep for doing something else related to gearing up for raids, like giving rep for tabards - no two for one sales, basically. If you want gear from rep, you do the "rep thing," and if you want gear from heroics, you do heroics.

So what can the "rep thing" be?

It probably needs to be something that gets you logging in beyond just for raid time, and somewhat daily. It doesn't have to be absolutely necessary to do it *every day*, but it should require your attention.

Scenarios are just heroics in another, easier-to-complete package, so they're out as well.

Being soloable is helpful. No waiting for queues, it gets you out of instances (which break immersion) and gets you exploring the world.

However, grouping should be encouraged. I particularly like the dailies that let you get credit for helping with a kill, not just if you were in a group that tagged the mob.

Basically, whatever you end up doing, in order to meet these requirements, whatever comes out is going to come out smelling a whole lot like a daily quest.

I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are some great dailies in there! Rep is going to have to be repetitive no matter which way you slice it. A few adjustments, and we've got a good system. I think the biggest first step is to cap the amount of rep you can get per week and remove the Golden Lotus lock. Let us choose when and with whom to grind rep, please.

[sifuedition]

If rep was simply an alternate gearing path, I would gladly skip it. Unfortunately, it's not. Some of the best crafting patterns you can train at this point are locked behind rep. This includes things that are typically considered a standard part of being raid prepared like the weapon enchants. Also since valor gear islocked behind rep and the valor tokens, this isn't just an alternate gear path, it's the optimal one. Sure, for some, they will have the raid drop that makes the rep gear obsolete before they can even access it, but that's kind of hard to count on. Until that drop actually happens, you should be working rep just in case.

That puts a major monkey-wrench in what I'd consider can be labeled "optional". IMO, they've simply tried to do way too much with rep. Just like dungeons used to do too much with tabards, they've swung a little too far the other direction. If you are going to make so much depend on rep, then earning it needs to have some flexibility. I thought they learned that when they changed the daily valor dungeons to weekly caps, etc. Here we are right back to the "every-day" grind though. IMO, this is all because of wanting to encourage world pvp.

As to world pvp, I think they are barking up the wrong tree. I don't care if you are on a pvp or pve server but who decided it's a good idea to force people into activities and play-styles they didn't choose? Especially on a pve server, many of the changes become a huge pain in the butt for no purpose since the players have made an emphatic choice to not pvp unless they want to.