For some context, I am one of those players who greatly enjoys farming just about every collectible in the game.
In the past two expansions, Blizzard’s open world rare design has revolved around multiple rares with variable spawn times dotted around every zone’s map. As someone who in the past has spent a great deal of time running around these zones killing every rare to obtain what they drop, this shift in design since BFA has greatly diminished my desire to engage with this aspect of the game.
Back in WoD, for example, rares were pretty much always up and had a guaranteed drop rate on all of their items. I am not blind to the disadvantage this presents for Blizzard as it enables players to essentially “complete” outdoor content in a single day of dedication, which can exacerbate content droughts. I am not advocating for a return to this system, but I do believe that rares should return to being permenantly up and retain their current CHANCE to drop a special item. This way players can at least develop a routine of running around zones completing their daily cosmetic chores without the headache of having to rely on achievement/mount collecting discords in order to enable having a chance at even seeing these rares on a given day. Rares could also be tuned around requiring at least a small group or more of players so that the premade finder retains its current function of faciliatating group farming.
The issue with how things stand right now is that groups don’t appear often enough, which forces players to stand around either waiting for groups that have the rare up on their server or simply waiting for the rare to spawn before their eyes. Simply standing still and waiting is not fun.
I do believe their is value in having rare spawns that are genuinely rare such as the Time-Lost protodrake, but these rares should be limited in number to 1 or 2 per expansion or 1 per patch. The current system simply kills any desire to pursue collectibles in the open world.
I agree with this in general.
My issue is primarily with the act of waiting itself. I don’t generally believe that these rares should be something you wait for at all unless they are dropping something truly special, once again like TLPD, in which case absolutely they should have a 100% drop rate. Things retaining a chance to drop their items, but being always up for you to be able to get that small chore out of the way quickly is simply way more fun than standing around waiting for the rare to spawn or someone to post a group about it.
This is a game. We should be actively engaging with content. Not waiting for content to happen.
Lol the lack of content falls on the team behind creating the content, not because of some reverse blame on the player wanting to farm rares. Player agency is a huge componant in an MMO. And shaming the player for wanting engaging pve content is not how we improve the game. GuildWars has great rare events all the time. There is no shortage of content there. So to believe that completing one day by killing a rare does not equal a content draught whatsoever. The minuscule drop rates, lack of rares generally, and consistent micromanagement over rewards so you have to grind currency would be the biggest pain points for casual farmers strolling in game looking for something to collect.
I agree. But at the end of the day, blizzard doesn’t and we will never see change in the context of this topic unless we appease their desire to have us run on the “hamster wheel” for extortionate periods of time. You win some, you lose some. But we never win unless Blizzard feels they are winning too, sadly.
My thoughts are ive been gaming since video games became a thing…and this particular game is the VERY FIRST to ever actually annoy me in new and creative ways.
And this is coming from someone who bought and actually gave Battle Cruiser 3000 AD a chance, for god sake. lmao
Battlecruiser 3000AD was released against the wishes of its main designer, Derek Smart, as it was still incomplete and buggy. [GameSpot] gave it a score of 2.6/10, writing that “it will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released.”
I had always enjoyed the MoP system of rares. Whenever I was farming I could stop and pop a rare for the blue, which was free vendor gold (a bonus while farming herbs).
Plus, when rares were in that style of system, I would remember their locations after a few times of looting them, which gave cadence to having POI’s on the map for every zone. It gave me more immersion in the zones by having those POI rares (for free gold); I would actively adjust my flight path to fly over rares and see if they were up no matter what I was flying for or to. Basically that style of rare system, where they were ALWAYS rare, always meant an invisible road (pathing) in the air to check if they were up.
I know. Regardless though, one zone having 50 rares, even if they are truly rare, is just toxic. If everything is truly rare, then their is little reason to engage with any of it, because you would have to invest hours simply “waiting around” in order to ever see any of it. I want rares that are truly rare, but their should be few of them to make them special. These new special encounters in recent xpacs should be something you can reasonably farm, because they are not rare and we do not want them to all become rare.
Those Zandalari Warscout rares were always special, imo; combat with them was always fun and terrifying. They had a great loot table too; super worthwhile!
Completely agree. This is why I want most current “rares”, which are not rare at all to simply always be up with a chance to drop their items, so that I can at least establish a reasonable routine to farm them. True rares should be something you have to camp out, but with a guranteed drop.
A great example of a rare with a reasonable spawn time, a high drop rate, in zones that were not diluted by multiple “rares” and thus allowed them to truly stand out as something special.
If their are 50 rares of this type in one zone, however, then none of them are special or engaging.
they could at least up the drop rates of some of the drops especially on stuff that has been in this game for so long and some people just having bad luck no matter how much they try to farm.