How to rework reputations

Community General Discussion
1

Ahh, reputation. A mechanic back from “vanilla” WoW that still exists to this day. The question is: does it still holds itself? In its current state, sadly not.

WoW has come a long way with its mechanics and we’ve seen a lot of quality-of-life changes over the years, and yet reputation remains the same. It worked back in the old days, but it is severely outdated by now.

On paper, reputation is an interesting mechanic to add more depth to the gaming experience, where your character, the Champion of the Alliance/Horde interacts with other factions in order to gain their favor.

On execution, it means grinding. A type of grinding that I doubt any person alive finds fun. Now another question would be? How could we make reputation grinding actually fun and fair? To make it actually matter, and not just be another boring statistic you have tire yourself out trying to max?

So far, this is what I propose, and I’d love to hear your feedback and your own ideas. I’ll even update the main post with your ideas and provide proper credit.

1) Make Reputation tiers part of quest chains.
It is simple: lock reputation behind quest chains. Each expansion already features plenty of quests related to every faction, so the idea would be to reach tiers of reputation after completing specific quest chains for the respective faction (i.e. complete some few quests, reach “Friendly”, complete a few more, “Honored”, and so on), similar to WotLK’s Sons of Hodir. So instead of it being locked behind numbers, it would be locked behind content.

2) Make all reputation gear avaliable from the start.
From a merchant perspective it makes little sense for quartermasters not sell all their goods just because “you’re not friends with them”. So the idea would be that they sell all their gears regardless of your reputation tier, but the vendors will charge exorbitant amounts of gold the lower your reputation tier is.

3 Likes
2

So basically, you want even more free handouts without putting any work into it. Also, no thanks about #1. Reputations are extremely easy to hit exalted now. We don’t need to do a few quests chains to hit the levels of rep. This is an mmo.

PLEASE Blizzard, stop listening to these types of players. Let people work again for their gear and things they want instead of a simple, “Let us get purples before we hit max level.”

7 Likes
3

i’ve been questioning the value of the current rep structure myself. it doesnt make sense to me that a bigtime champion saving the world and proven multiple times from saving things in the past would be told ‘well I don’t trust you!’. eventually it gets stilly having to prove and reprove.

im not against the idea of having SOME work to do, just the whole ‘fill meters’ seems kinda meh.

i like the idea of things having quest interactions built into them in some way. maybe having a quest akin to the suramar huuuuuuge questline for each faction could be one way to do it (i.e. wouldnt be a simple or quick thing, but would be much more interesting than simply watching a bar fill up from innane tasks).

the gold idea wouldnt work, since then those with TONS of gold would be buying their way through the expa far too quickly.

1 Like
4

Makes too much sense for Blizz to implement.

5

Some people have become exalted with an extensive amount of factions across their account. What if, after unlocking a special achievement for being exalted with x number of factions, you begin at revered with new factions. You could even begin half way through honored.

Idealy, the numerous factions you associate with have dealings with the world. Your name is common for the good of the land. That could mean this not be an account wide benefit, but goes to your toon with the most reps.

It gives the reputations achievement a much better benefit.

3 Likes
6

Personally I think rep is a good mechanic that has been tortured, twisted and abused so much as to be unrecognizable to its former self.

People I know used to grind that odd reputation because they collected tabbards or wanted a special recipe and not all their toons would have equal reputation. I’m sure there are tons of reasons folks did the grind for some of their toons but not others.

I guess what it feels like is the freedom of choice in the matter is removed and what used to be an odd thing to grind out for a personal goal is now (robotic voice) all our goal…we all must exalted with everyone before the next expansion. Why wouldn’t you want to be exalted by all? …Join us…

So yeah, from my point of view, they took it, ran with it and stretched it so thin, it got tired and snapped in two.

4 Likes
7

I would rather do dailies/world quests thanks.

I hate quest chains with a passion. It is okay once through but when you start having to take 5 plus characters through those quest chains it is really really boring. With world quests you have a choice of dailies to do which is a lot better way to handle things than the one size fits all approach you suggest.

8

Extremely easy to hit exalted? How so? World quests give roughly 30-40 reputation, and you need 21000. Please, explain to me what is the point of this tireless grind? Is it fun at all? Do anyone have fun grinding for reputation? Making reputation tiers gated behind quests makes questing actually more enjoyable.

1 Like
9

What world quests are you doing that they only give you 30-40 rep ?

2 Likes
10

I think rep is fine, but the daily “limit” on them is irritating.

I actually hit it some, for Mechagon. You do all the stuff you can there, all the stuff in the alternate one, then the 250/whatever rep from all the fishes you can catch.

I think there should be less of a limit, like it was weird that the rare mobs in Mechagon did not give you rep (well, past the FIRST kill, if I recall.) You also only get the rep from each pet battle, in Mech and Naz, the first time you fight that pet (worth it, though.)

If someone really wants to go crazy, they should not have a limit on grinding that rep.

Yeah, but you don’t really do the rep that way. I was exalted to every existing BFA rep, when Naz and Mech were added.

  • Daily Emissary.

  • Mission board rep.

  • More stuff, mainly for 7th Legion (first exalted rep, of course.)

It is weird to see people, who were playing all this time, complain that they are not exalted to the old ones yet. I mean, it kind of took “minutes” a day.

Didn’t really bother to “farm” any of the reps (as in, doing every SINGLE WQ), until Mech/Naz since in more of a rep to get flying. Had pathfinder in under 2 weeks, after they dropped.

2 Likes
11

But still means extra unnecessary steps. If that is the case, I’d rather Blizzard re-adding rep-gaining Tabards so you can get rep in Dungeons. Worked fine back in WotLK.

I just think the reputation system is really outdated and overused. There is really no reason at all to gate content behind reputation; it is just there to do more grinding. :thinking:

1 Like
12

Yeah let’s grind for Copy pasted allied races just so we can play them, It’s not even a good business tatic.

2 Likes
13

Achievements should be more than enough for unlocking allied races. Blizzard said they will make the unlocking of them easier in Shadowlands, so maybe they’ll get rid of reputation requirements for them.

2 Likes
14

Reputation in its current state works just fine, no need to lock it behind quests - as if you don’t like questing, you’d just be hurting your playerbase.

I already have the Esteemed title, as do many others, so those that play through the content and pursue Exalted reps, do so by filling up their rep bars just by playing, and find no trouble with the game as is.

Perhaps you should gain a few Exalted reps before you critique the system?

15

back when i was leveling up this character ten years ago, even on my backwater realm, there were several level 80s farming mobs for Timbermaw rep. i couldn’t get any quests done in Winterfall village unless i showed up at 3am realm time

16

I made 3k rep for a single faction just doing dailies and WQs, like Honorbound I hit a new paragon chest every week without even thinking about it. Also was it fun back in vanilla farming rep for the timbermaw? Did it excite you to endlessly circle for netherwing eggs or keep getting your sky guard summons stolen?

1 Like
19

I don’t think some of these people in this thread were playing all the time. Some of them the last achievement date on their armory is from 2016, so it is more likely they aren’t even play at all hence the 30-40 rep per quest remark.

20

You just answered your own question. World Quests take a whopping a 1-5 mins to do. Most of them are under a minute. Pretty easy. Talk to me when you experienced Argent Dawn rep.

Tireless grind? People throw this term around wayyyyy too loosely. You likely started in WoD then because tireless grinds were in Vanilla, BC and MoP for reps.

People who think like you don’t seem to understand how mmos work and if you guys were to make an mmo, I am willing it would go under faster than Wildstar went f2p.

edit: To add, it took me maybe a month to hit exalted with all the reps and that was me only doing the emissaries. Averaging 10 mins to complete each emissary. So yeah, that isn’t a grind. It is extremely easy and fast. Reps in Vanilla, BC and MoP to hit exalted took longer and actually had a real grind. If reps now weren’t gated, we could hit exalted in a couple of days.

21

This one I like because I noticed once I was high enough rep to buy armor off the emmissaries it wasn’t as good as what I currently had.

22

While i dont like reputation locks and grinds, i dont mind them. I have a problem with them being extremely timegated, and rep not being account wide. Even if you just made them account wide and kept the timegate, people would like it better bc its one and done.