It wasn’t intended as an insult. I feel I’ve been very clear, and it seems like you’re dodging around the point on the basis that a tool with obvious drawbacks is fine despite those drawbacks and no tool that eliminates those drawbacks is needed.
I’ve felt the same when your initial response was ‘you might want to read what I’m asking for’ as though my response did not at all make any relevance to what you’re asking for when it did.
You’d then written
“But the lore!” is not a relevant argument in a conversation that seeks to address people buying a character service they don’t need and don’t really want in order to bypass a rep grind.
The way you’ve summarised my argument is the equivalent of me saying ‘So you’re basically just asking for paid or free race unlocks’.
In any case I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I’d honestly agree with point A) even though I’ve got all the Alliance races (and 2 horde even though I don’t play Horde.)
(This is actually an alt - we actually get a long pretty well on the main character I post on the forums on. I’ve been posting on alts in an attempt to get myself off the forums, it’s not working! )
Would you believe I rewrote that sentence three times trying to find a better way to phrase it? In hindsight, I think it might’ve been better to abandon the suggestion to reread and just say, “Perhaps I’ve been unclear,” but… well, we were already neck-deep in discussion by that point.
Now why in the world would you wanna do that? And on Sunday of all… oh wait, it’s Monday now. RIP.
I mean… it kind of is? But I’d also be okay with Chroesire’s idea. The problem is, I don’t think Blizzard would do that, because making those changes would be more difficult and costly than implementing A) or B).
Well here’s my more active character. I do think Chroesire’s idea is pretty good.
Especially when there’s Shadowlands and people are already getting Wild Hammer Dwarves (well customisation) off the bat, it doesn’t really make much sense to restrict Dark Irons anymore.
Honestly, I’d have to say Chroesire’s idea is the best one – from a gameplay perspective. The problem is, it doesn’t look at the problem from Blizzard’s perspective as a business, and that is key if one wants them to make a change to existing systems.
Any change they make is going to require an investment of money and time, so from their perspective, the best changes to make are the ones that cost them the least money and time for the greatest increases in engagement and profit. Because that’s true, I stuck with the three options listed. None of them are particularly elegant from a gameplay perspective, but all would be easy and cheap to implement.
I’m not sure if you’ve read the thread, or if perhaps you intended this post for that other thread that simply asks for a rep-for-cash option. That’s not the goal of this thread, although it is a potential solution to the problem this thread points out – albeit not the best potential solution.
Option A: pay to get out of doing work
Option B: ask blizz cut the amount of work required in half
Option C: You asking for a paid service to be made worse
“not a sacrifice your players should have to make to get around your gating on ARs.”
I’m sorry, but who is making you buy a faction change?
I’m in the complete opposite camp. I think A would be an absolutely terrible move, and would make everything so much worse. Honestly, C should be the thing they do in the first place.
The point to AR’s is to earn their trust. To go through the process, go through the quests, get the achievements associated with them, and establish a bond through your character. A faction change shouldn’t completely cheese the process, and it never should have in the first place. The process should be something that remains in tact.
I know - unpopular opinion. I’m sure people will hate my stance on that. But I believe in execution of an idea being done in a proper manner. The idea was that we earned the trust of people involved. Horde had to earn the trust of the Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren, Vulpera and Zandalari. Just because I wanna spend thirty bucks on Shadina and move her to Alliance doesn’t mean that suddenly the Kul Tirans, Void Elves, Lightforged and Mechagnomes should give a damn about me. Who the hell am I to them? A faction change literally drops you out of the sky with a new look. No build up.
Disclaimer: I’d be fine with B too. If we’re going to address that one Horde character doing it, or one Alliance character doing it should count for both, fine. At least the process was done and remains in tact because the process was completed. But that should be something Blizz should then come out and make a forum post about to inform us that was the intent.
My point is… do 1000 of the exact same task over and over and over again is NOT lore friendly as people in this thread are pointing out.
To unlock the AR it should be complete the entire zone, Do a long quest line (goblin starting zone or longer) and that be the end of it…
The fact that they tied races (A MAJOR part of the game giving some people a massive advantage over others in things like pvp) to a gated 2-4 month long grind for most people is the stupidest $#!^ I have ever seen.
Gear is different in that every time you run something you have a chance to get gear.
Not as unpopular as you might suspect. It’s my opinion as well.
The goal of this thread ultimately isn’t to put people in a position where they have to grind out reputation for their ARs, nor is the goal to eliminate the need to grind out reputation – really, I don’t want to change the way the game is played at all.
It’s to save people money, or failing that, save them from loss of progress should they opt to spend money.
To that end, I’m willing to make compromises regarding how I think ARs should be unlocked.
To be fair, most of the AR’s racials are total crap in all situations. HMT charge and Velf port aren’t bad. Situational and requiring map knowledge. DI Dwarf is exceptional because of the stat bonus and cleanse (more so the cleanse). But the others? Meh.
Vulpera can hit someone hard briefly, NB have an increase of magic dmg by 1% and a dispellable slow, LFD can hit someone hard and explode on death, Mechagnome passive Last Stand is pretty good, but again with PVP being what it is currently, it won’t mean much. Haymaker’s not bad. Situational. If someone uses Haymaker to punch someone back into a smoke bomb and prevent them from being healed, that’s a damn good use of Haymaker. But most people don’t think like that.
You get the idea. Most AR racials are very situational. It’s not like if someone gets bopped, I immediately belf racial to try and get rid of it if I’m one on of my melees. Or macroing my burst CD’s with berserking.
Perhaps we should focus on the issue that these races are locked behind meaningless busywork, rather than the fact that people are trying to avoid them?
If there were any other way to accquire these things but mash your head into world quests for a few weeks, I don’t think people would have quite as high an incentive to basically sacrifice a character to unlock them. I have almost all the Allied Races now, but I don’t think the process to unlock them was ever fun - it was dragged out well beyond its welcome by timegates and stingy rep payouts.
That’s why I provided option A. It allows them a means to continue stacking paper should they decide that stacking paper is or should be a priority for them.
It’s not how I’d prefer they handle this issue, but it doesn’t dry up their income stream.