Ideas to improve Paragon Reputation rewards

Community WoW Community Council
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Hello! I’d like to have a discussion about Paragon reputation caches.

Paragon caches were implemented in Legion as a (supposedly fun) way to keep us engaged and keep us doing world quests/content to grind out another 10k past exalted for possible rewards inside the cache. It kept world quests relevant beyond the players who would go out to look for the Marks of Honor or Artifact/Azerite/Anima quests.

It is an “interesting” system that keeps people going out in to the open world for content when they want a pet, toy, mount, etc, but it isn’t a rewarding or even engaging system for a large chunk of the people doing it. Halite touched upon this a bit in the Reputation Factions in Shadowlands and Beyond thread a few days ago.

While the drop rates have been increased a small amount, they’re still abysmal. Prior to the Legion and BfA paragon item drop increase, it took me 78 paragon caches for the Valarjar Stormwing and 42 for the Leywoven Flying Carpet (I use Rarity to track, in case anyone is wondering how I pulled those numbers). Have to grind out 78 paragon caches for a reskin mount is not fun content. There were a ton of other things I would have rather been doing (transmog runs, pet battles, m+) but I value mount collecting and thus prioritize that. I’m not the only one with paragon mount horror stories, either.

My luck with Shadowlands paragon caches (so far!!!) hasn’t been atrocious unless you count the Maldraxxus callings for the 3 Necroray mounts. If we count those callings, it took me 284 turn-ins with my alt army to get all 3 mounts. My first egg wasn’t until my 183rd hand-in. Nothing about that is fun.

You could argue that I’m not ~forced~ or ~required~ to go out and do this for mounts, and it’s an active choice for me to continue doing what I do, this how I choose to play the game. I don’t raid or do much group content anymore, so I’m focused on transmog and mounts. Theoretically, we aren’t ~forced~ or ~required~ to do anything on this game, but that doesn’t mean everything should be punishing and grindy. I’m not going for Gladiator or Hall of Fame mythic raiding. Certain aspects of the game don’t need to be as grueling as they currently are.

So how do we improve this and at least make it fun, rewarding, and feel like something a player can work towards as a goal? Instead of having layers upon layers of RNG like we are recreating the movie Inception (but with RNG!) perhaps there can be some more straight-forward rewards from the caches.

What if we abolished the RNG-riddled cosmetic/pet/mount rewards contained in those caches and instead inserted a type of currency that would be unique with that reputation, i.e., Marks of the Wild Hunt or Marks of the Ascended. These currencies (which obviously would be in the currency tab and not crowd our precious bag space) could then be used to buy things off the Quartermaster for that faction. Things could be priced separately - like 1 token for a transmog item (gloves, helm), 3-5 for a pet, and 5-10 for a mount. This would be in addition to what Quartermasters already offer as rewards for various levels of reputation. I’m not asking that those be removed and require currency tokens from a paragon cache to acquire.

Implementing this could remove the element of “ughhhh” away from Paragon cache grinding while still keeping them relevant for people who continue to do world quests and callings. It would also provide a light at the end of the tunnel for people who want to collect the transmog, pets, toys, or mounts locked behind the caches. Example: If each cache dropped 3 tokens for that specific faction and the items a player wants cost 12 tokens total, that player will at least have something to look forward to and not have to worry about being shorted by RNG for the next 6 months.

Another option would be to completely remove the paragon caches and just use Quartermasters as a gold sink to purchase what you want like the pre-Legion days, but I don’t think that taking away content would be helpful in this situation. My personal belief is that the paragon caches keep the player engaged (a good thing!) but layering a ton of RNG into it to lock away rewards (a bad thing!) is not something the players necessarily like.

What are your thoughts?

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Agreed! I’ve been doing my Calling’s that are up daily. For the Maldraxxus Calling’s I’ve only gotten (1) Necroray mount, And this was close to the start of the expansion. Since then I’ve gotten nothing but gold from each Maldraxxus Calling.

This would be very nice to see for future and past content when it comes to Paragon Caches. It would make it easier for players to obtain the various rewards from Cache’s from the various expansions this game has had come out.

I know there is some players out there that are still grinding older rep cache’s from Legion for example. And they have been for a very long time now for some of the mounts. I’m not sure exactly on how many of each related currency you would need to buy stuff off of the Quartermaster. But still this would make it easier for a lot of players!

This is another good idea which I strongly support! Would personally love it if Paragon Cache’s were removed. For the prices of gold for each item, I would have each mount sell for 50,000 gold or so. Same with toys. As for pets, You would buy your pets from each Quartermaster using the current Pet Battle Currency in-game!

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This is more or less exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my post, glad to hear your thoughts too :>

I think this is the most important aspect of any grind; does it respect your time, and is it worth putting in that time to get that reward. 10 000 reputation in order to get a chance to roll the dice and get a loot box is a lot of work for a whole lot of little. Like you say, there’s so much more content you’d actually like to do. Grinds shouldn’t end in RNG, because that can invalidate your work if you’ve been unlucky, thus incenvitising you to not do that content because it isn’t worth doing.

I agree that removing paragon boxes wouldn’t be great, they make reputation feel valuable post-exalted and thus makes content you might be doing for other reasons feel a little more valuable. I wouldn’t mind expensive rewards on the rep vendors, though, whether that is gold or a special currency, and simply allow players to collect either gold or that currency a little faster with paragon boxes. Ideally not only through paragon boxes, but depending on currency costs/rewards, there’s a case to be made for it.

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I think the idea of bad luck protection for getting stuff is a good idea but just leads to every single person having the same exact thing. I think certain things should really just be elusive as its part of the game. I think anything below a 1% chance is just sadistic especially for a time consuming game it should at least be reasonable.

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This isn’t strictly speaking true, and if it was, would it really be a bad thing to allow everyone to collect everything? Bad luck protection means everyone who is willing to put in the work gets to have it, and not everyone is. It depends entirely on how high or low the bad luck protection cap is. If, say, you get on average 1 paragon box per week, and the bad luck protection kicks in at 50, that’s 50 weeks of farming to be guaranteed to get what you want inside the box. If the protection kicks in at 2, you’d need to do it for two weeks. Bad luck protection is about respecting the player’s time and effort, it isn’t a free pass for everyone to be able to get everything without having to work for it. It doesn’t make items less elusive if the tuning is right.

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Would much rather have an alternate approach that takes inspiration from other games (and systems of old-WoW) where you would get a currency from each Paragon chest which would be expansion specific and you can have these as an alternative progression path.

The idea here is to have a defined end goal rather than disappointment when you don’t get it. it would also serve as a motivation to complete the content.

From the perspective of someone hunting something specific, then if you “loot it early” then your currencies can be used elsewhere.

From the collector perspective. You knew what you signed up for. I look forward to the reddit posts about having enough currency and looting it on your last paragon making your currency useless. But hey, at least you have an end goal now.

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