It took me a grand total of 3 hours to get all the base forms, and mostly because I was being picky in the hopes of finding a specific stag or cool looking fuzzy raptorcat and while using standard flight, not dragonriding.
It took me an hour or so to fill all the vials with moonwater to get the color variant for the cat one.
And I randomly found the purple Owlbear form for Guardian spec from a rare. Not sure I was supposed to get it on the first try, but whatever.
OP just literally wants it to be easier overall because they are being entitled. They want the colour variants to be easier to obtain because god forbid you don’t get them in one day…
Not an opinion there. It’s just an observation of the words and sentence structure when describing their issues.
I think the one thing op suggested that would solve that, is to make the new rares more like the ones from the Dreamsurges. There is an announcement, then they show up and there is a solid minute before the rare is even targetable.
IT provides a chance for everybody to get to it.
I think it should only be applied to the rares tied to specific events, again like the Dreamsurge.
That alone would negate half the problems people are having.
I’d wager the drop rates are kinda high, honestly. It’s just a cool form. A couple of them are hidden behind some harder content, but they are just the colour variants so I think that it should stay like that
It makes me think of the Legion Artifacts. Obtaining most of the FORMS was mostly simple enough. Some secret ones were hidden, and then all the colour variants were tied to actually playing the game.
But if you want to, go re-read some of what op is saying. They just want things for free (opinion, sure) but they are only talking about the alternate colours, not the base forms.
I think literally every druid can afford the 500g to buy the stone from the dude up north so that you can go pick out some forms.
Easiest thing in the world.
The challenge comes when they wanted to get the rare ones that are hidden behind certain achievements or even the cool flight one that comes from the Mythic raid (which I will be grinding to get dear god its sweet!)
To answer your question, I said it would solve a lot of the issues if the mobs were announced and placed on the map just before spawning like other rares. That way you dont have to sit there and camp unless you really want to.
I have 0 idea where some people came on here and accused me of being entitled or wanting free handouts, but that’s what I get for even trying to bring up an issue here and have a real conversation about it. Never once said make them 100% or make the spawns instant.
That is the more simple fix as people would be alerted to a spawn while playing the game and act accordingly.
You’ll never please everyone, but Devs should focus on the FUN aspect because its a game, it doesn’t matter if another color of the form is provided by easy content, players like a specific color for any reason, that’s why in the council you can find an entire thread about color pink that was replied by Devs.
I think Reward Devs should focus in the less frustating experience, if Hardcore collectors spent a full day with low respawn farming it, then its their way to acquire things even if later cause the issue that content is consume fast, the problem with large respawns of 2-3 hours as mentioned by Rajvi on the other council thread is tha you’re just AFK waiting without any actual gameplay.
When Breezebiter was introduced, I spent most of my time just waiting there while playing Magic the gatherin in their App or watching anime, that’s not an engage activity provided by WoW.
Just take the own Reward Dev words in mind:
When we’re talking about rewards there’s a lot of variants, I was talking on this thread with other players about other similar scenarios. For example, after that comment back in Feb 2022, Chimes promised a solution and It wasn’t discuss with the Council at all, We now have the fix that’s just a daily boost attempt for a limited time event, mount collectors are still doing every attemp possible without any result, you can ask your fellow Council member Artemisha that did event 2 accounts for an extra boost attempt.
She has even brough this kind of topic several times. Since the solution provided didn’t fix the core issue mentioned by Chimes “This isn’t fun” and “but not a great experience”.
Also, the collectors looking for the love rocket for example and now druid colors never ask for hand outs, We asked for a better solution with fun or progress, check Artemisha thread, there’s ideas like using the Evoker legendary method that increase drop % for each attempt done, there’s bad luck vendors…etc
We also have the examples of rewards like the MoP/WoD world bosses that were just an AFK lobby for a lot of players for years, there’s not any content in a boss that last few seconds, it’s a sloot machine, the game was improved to have a better drop % more accordingly, there’s not anything bad with RNG but Devs should check the 2 values around this approach: Number of Attempts and the actual % against the FUN experience that’s the goal of the process.
Think about the next expansion, how the transmog farm changed, now you’ll get any piece of gear from any run for all your character, you can grind Garrosh shoulder on any class…yes, RNG still exist for a lot of items and if the drop % is really low, it should be increased for some items depending on your available attempts but now any legacy run matters for your account, that’s TIME saved for the player.
Another examples:
You can check this list:
the recolors consist of actual gameplay, except for some cases the Hidden Appearances, however; most of those Hidden appearences were drop from grinds that you didn’t have to wait a respawn. We need less AFK content in the game.
Another example:
you can check each demon option and you’ll find that there’s not one related to a 2-3 hour respawn rare, there’s a lot of RNG involve true but those are actual active gameplay, examples:
I can reset Dire Maul, I can do 10 runs today and wait some hours, then another 10 runs, I’ve more control over this grind compared to a 2-3 hour respawn, since those are not even a set respawn of every 2 hous from last kill and you can check this info on wowhead comments:
Shortest spawn timer I've seen: 1 hour and 26 minutes.
Longest spawn timer I've seen: 2 hours 40 minutes.
first spawn I saw was at 1:28AM server, and the next one was 4:44AM server; 3 hours 16 minutes apart.
So it’s possible the spawn window is 1:30-2:00 hours.
Also, it seems like this is a once-per-day loot as the 2 other times I looted it only gave me grey items.
Players will disagree for anything, Its the work of Devs to provide a fun experience and at least from my perspective respawns that leave you afk waiting for an alarm isn’t doing anything good to the game.
Also, take a look how the community received the Salamander mount from Forbiden Reach patch that you can trade with anyone and it was a drop from any rare or the Time Rifts mount that you could gift to someone else or the mounts from Timerift that also have a vendor option if you don’t get the drop without taking in consideration the item that provided a buff, you’ll get an item next time.
Why we don’t see that kind of mechanics for these recolors? Provide more community engagement and also, something that you should take in consideration is how these rewards will be farm by returning / new players next expansion, Is going to be the same frustating experience? Is better now that you can take advantage of something?..etc
It’s a complex topic but I hope there’s more changes in a better direction for the game that provides more engagement.
I appreciate it, it’s being discussed over there as well. I understand the frustration, at the end of the day I’d like my drops as well. I am sure they will look at it.
Most of the druid players are shapeshifted during gameplay and we’ve only gotten additional forms in legion 6 years ago and now again on this patch. Akin to using the same few T-mogs for years in a row. I think it’s reasonable that many players want to collect the options we do have customizations.
At the end of the day you’ve missed the point due to ignorance, stupidity, or not reading the post.
OP is asking that the gameplay loop not involve no life AFKing the spawns. Whether you make the rares appear on the map with an alert, increase their health so there’s time to get to them when they spawn, or add in karmic drops. Solution doesn’t matter. We just don’t want to sit afk for hours unable to even leave the area.
The 2 hour spawn timer is brutal because it often means you either don’t see it in a play session or only get 1 shot per play session assuming you weren’t misaligned.
There’s rumblings that the rares loot is only eligible 1x per day. So it’s possible that after your first kill (reset at 11EST) it’s not worth or wasteful.
The current issue for the average player is pretty straight forward; I’ll try to distill it down into 2 chunks;
Currently there isn’t a good way to casually kill these rares while doing content in ED for most players-- like you would in Zaralek or FR. They’re tricky to track due to variable spawn timers/locations. The average player isn’t going to “happen upon” the rare and get the form. If they do happen to find out it spawns it’ll be dead by the time they can get there since they only have ~1.5m health. It’s essential to have a rare scanner addon to even have a shot.
For the collectors who are trying to make an effort to acquire the skin there’s nothing you can do between spawns. If you go to check another rare/spawn it could spawn early. i.e. Cian right now has reported respawn timers of 1h 7m and 2h 30m. On top of that figuring out when you need to be at the spawn is a crapshoot unless you’re going to play at least 4 hours.
I’ll give examples of why the gameplay loop is problematic. Let’s say I’m a player who gets on at 8PM.
I hop on at 8PM and I’m hoping to kill Cian 1 time while I’m online. Unless someone can tell me his previous spawn time, I need to go immediately to his spawn location and wait. I would need to wait a minimum of 2.5 hours to catch him if someone else can’t tell me his spawn timer. Additionally, there’s no way for me to figure out the last time he was killed from the UI / Map since he doesn’t appear as a silverdragon rare like ZC or FR. At this point, you’ve put 2.5 hours-- it’s now 10:30PM towards getting a kill. Congrats. in 2.5 hours you maybe got a kill for a rare chance at a rare drop.
But lets say I want to do it casually while I do seed farming and the hourly event.
Same scenario. It’s 8PM. Assuming my rarescanner or tracker (there’s no addon that can detect him spawning if you’re on the far side of the zone) catches him spawning. I leave my seed/event and immediately B line it to his location. Unfortunately, he only has 1.5m health. So he dies in 20-40 seconds. So I miss him. OK that’s fine. Maybe I now try to stay closer so my tracker catches him. The only problem, is now I need to stay on an additional ~2 hours (give or take 45 minutes) to see him spawn again. This time though, my scanner misses his spawn and there’s no group finder and no callout in general chat. the players who do find him kill him and leave. I’m now in the dark on what happened. I don’t know if he’s taking longer to respawn and should wait up for him. Or if he was killed and won’t be able to kill him on this theoretical night.
TLDR:
No lifers can’t leave the spawn when they login or risk missing him. Assuming you want to use the forms/tints during the expansion, there’s no other solution.
Casual collectors are realistically never going to stumble upon him until the zone dies or the expansion is over.
Here are some possible solutions:
Make the rares that drop the appearances work like ZC or FR rares. They take a group some time to kill giving players time to get to the rare. Additionally, give them a map icon so players can easily see when it is up.
Decrease respawn time. 2-2.5h is really awkward because realistically you are getting 0-1 attempt per day even if you’re trying to kill him regularly. Unless you’re able to regularly play in 4 hour chunks. 45m to 1h 15m would be a massive improvement although still just as frustrating.
Keep everything the same but alter the drop mechanics. For this you could increase drop chance. Add karmic drop (every time you don’t get the drop your chances increase). Switch the mark from an item to components (bad luck prevention) so after x number of kills you combine the drops and can make it.
All of these still make the tint take effort and time to get. And although it will speed up the time taken to get. It will lead to more engaging gameplay where players don’t feel trapped in place trying to farm the appearance.
It’s not about getting the reward now, this post is about the process…it’ll be the same next year or expansion for these rares, you’ll have to be afk waiting for a respawn of 2-3 hours.
Some kind of bad luck protection will be great or other approach like providing these colors from any rare and short respawns, so we can have more activity on this zone.
Maybe allow the player to force a respawn by farming X item from near mobs, that’s more active gameplay that waiting for an alert from any addon.
I don’t know a percentage but 3 days in and I have 3 of the rare druid form drops and I didn’t even go out of my way looking for them. Just killing rares I see as I happen to pass by.
Give it two to three weeks and most non druids won’t even be in the zone because there is almost nothing to do and the rares will stay up for hours at a time. Particularly because they don’t give rep.
I don’t even know why this was changed again for ED. This back and forth with how rare spawns work is getting so confusing. I was getting used to seeing rare spawns on the map and maybe get an announcement in chat. And I wondered if something was bugged or why there were no rare spawns during the hours I’ve played - when I realized that the rares were just… there.
While other zones and event hubs weren’t perfect in this expansion, the way rare spawns were treated was a good improvement. Do some stuff in the zone and when a rare gets announced, fly over there. Now it’s back to “go camping and watch some documentaries on YT while waiting”.
