Warning: the following is an opinion.
At the moment, one of the things that isn’t working so well in BfA (and wasn’t brilliant in Legion either) is reputations. They’re very bland and homogenised.
I feel like there are two steps Blizz could take to fix this:
- Make the acquisition of reputation different, in some meaningful way, for each faction.
- Make the rewards you can get from each faction quartermaster different in some meaningful way.
The first one is pretty easy. There are a bucketload of different activities within WoW. So you could have the following:
- Faction A. Reputation gained by completing the main storyline.
- Faction B. Reputation gained by completing world quests. And here, it’d be world quests in any zone, not just one zone.
- Faction C. Reputation gained by killing the traditional enemy of the faction (e.g. murlocs or naga or whatever).
- Faction D. Reputation gained by acquiring certain items from treasure chests or by killing rare mobs.
And I’m sure there are other options we could add to this list. In fact, if you have any ideas, suggest away!!!
The second point of difference actually requires a little more thought and work, in my opinion. But here’s how you could do it:
- Faction X. Unlocking reputation allows you to purchase ‘glyphs’ that boost non-combat abilities. For example, a bonus to mount movement. Increased gathering speed for gathering professions. Increased yield for gathering professions. Increased gold yield when looting. Flying.
- Faction Y. Unlocking reputation allows you to purchase certain profession crafting ‘recipes’.
- Faction Z. Unlocking reputation allows you to purchase gear enchantments that boost combat effectiveness, but not in stupidly powerful ways. For example, a small buff to non-mounted speed. A small physical or magical damage reduction buff (you can choose only one). A small increase to maximum mana or mana regeneration (you can choose only one). And so on.
Again, I’m sure there are other options that could be added to this list and am perfectly happy for people to make suggestions.
Of course, this has the potential to be unbalanced. But having played WoW since WotLK, I’m at the point where I’m saying “@#$% balance”. Balance, in my opinion, leads to homogenisation, which is one of the reasons why the game has become so bland.
2 Likes
My biggest problem with factions in BfA (and to an event, Legion) was that the rewards weren’t available for purchase until long past the point where they would’ve been useful. They’re ok for protection against atrociously bad luck, but that’s pretty much it.
One of my favorite models for a reputation and its vendors is actually the Tranquillen in Ghostlands for the following reasons:
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Progression through the reputation happens naturally when questing through the zone. By the time you’re done with the Ghostlands you’re Exalted with the Tranquillen, which feels great.
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Vendor items are actually useful. It doesn’t matter how many items you cram onto a faction vendor if they’re all useless and/or fluff.
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You don’t have to wait until revered to buy good rewards. It’s super nice being able to look forward to getting actually good items for hitting Friendly and Honored.
Just applying these three things to Legion and BfA factions would improve them dramatically.
2 Likes
Make the rewards only cosmetic.
Interesting. Nothing says reps need to be symmetrical. Reminds me of EQ dragon/giant rep.
Instead of making new stuff from scratch, I would pull from what’s already there. Gear, collectables, craft recipes, etc. Things that every rep seems to have one of, one rep instead could have all of. And the method for gaining rep would be doing relevant content. Gaining rep with the Gear faction would come from dungeons and raids, the Collection faction from toys/mogs/pets, etc.
And a thematically relevant faction choice like in EQ could be cool. Or at least one where you can get rep just from grinding some favored enemy.
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Perhaps there could be a faction which only gave cosmetic rewards - toys, pets, mounts, transmogs, etc. But I’m not sure it’d make reputations more interesting if all factions only gave cosmetic rewards.
Expand on legion’s profession quests and you remove recipes from the list. Take out gear since as it was mentioned it’s pointless now with wqs being easier anyway. That leaves cosmetics, something people are inclined to get in the first place and making reputations more desirable since getting to a new rank isn’t just some useless item you can’t use anyway.
A more forward thinking design for gear would reduce the amount of gear you can get from WQs, and make crafted gear upgradable like benthic gear or like in WoD. Maybe with currency from WQs.
Also having rep gear that is obsolete long before you can get it (per typical MMO design) should not be a thing. Instead, rep could also offer gear upgrade currency at a rate that makes it relevant.
Of course, none of this would necessarily be required for progression. It would be more like a baked in catch up system.
Lot of that can be offered outside of the reps though.
Personally, my solution would be to increase contacts from 10 to 100 and make them able to learn at exalted instead of reverred. That’ll solve the alt needing rep thing i think
Yes, but it might be nice if the gear rep offers isn’t meaningless like it has been. Kind of silly to have gear on rep vendors that no one ever buys.
I guess that’s why I figure you could just go fully cosmetic for reps
I don’t know which is easier. Getting rid of non cosmetic stuff no one buys and having to develop a separate system like benthic, or integrating that kind of system with rep.
I think both are about the same since you’d have to create a system regardless
I think it would be great if we could just buy a faction’s mount (or mounts) once we reached Exalted like how the game worked from Classic->WoD. Grinding random loot boxes via further reputation for a mere chance at a faction mount sucks in comparison to the old way.
Also, by the time you are exalted, and have access to any reputations “best items” you UNDOUBTEDLY already outgear it by months. It sucks.
100% agreed. I think the process to acquire things within the game should be to grind a rep and then fork over the bucket of gold, not for us to get random loot boxes and cross our fingers.