The panda are fond of saying a lot of things and slow down is one of them. Many people might think that it is just something that was randomly put in but it is not. Them saying that was meant to be something the players would hear and it was aimed at them to tell them to slow down. The idea was to let the player know they can slow down and not rush everything. To take time to smell the roses. To enjoy the game more by taking your time.
I am going to say I have not figured out how I could do that this expansion. It is great advice, I agree, but it is not practical advice, at least not in the way the game is designed.
On tuesday I log on to my main and capping valor is my priority. Being we can upgrade gear now there is never a time when I can relax on doing that, as I see it at least. I need to continue to cap as long as there are upgrades to any gear I have that can be made and being there is the occasional new piece even if I ever did upgrade everything I need to make sure to have the valor stacked up so if I get a new piece I can upgrade it immediately.
Add to that the new valor buff that if you are capped out on one character on a server all others on that server get 50% extra valor from everything they do. Being I am the type of person that believes in efficiency that means that capping on my main as soon as possible becomes even more important. Why do even one quest on an alt and lose the extra 2 or 3 valor they would get from doing it? Why do a random dungeon and miss out on 40 additional VP? And I would end up basically losing 45 VP if I run the LFR on an alt before I capped my main.
So because of that tuesdays are rush day. I try to do all dailies and as many LFRs and LFDs as possible to get to cap fast before I even think about doing anything else. So the feeling I need to cap all the time because I need the valor added with capping is basically required to maximize my valor gain on other characters, I don't exactly feel like I have the time to slow down.
I only have a set amount of time to play and even if I play the most I can on a tuesday I can not cap. I have come close to capping once or twice, but there is not enough time in my play day. Usually it takes two days, if I press it and rush it, to cap out on my main before I can even consider doing anything on other characters.
Slowing down is good. I enjoy the feeling of doing whatever I want and taking my time doing it. That is one of the reasons I level fishing on alts. I stop at every pool because it really brings a little life to the game and it does slow me down like the pandas suggest.
The valor part of the game however has made me feel as if I do not have that option, the option to slow down. I could just do a little here and there on my main and get some stuff done on my alts but I would be wasting effectiveness. Why do dailies on a few characters on tuesday knowing that every daily I do is a loss in valor if I am not capped on at least one character? This is where my problem is.
How can I slow down when I feel I have to rush to cap one character each week or I feel I am playing ineffectively?
I can't believe I am saying this, but I sort of miss the days when you could cap valor in one day during the zuls. I would usually cap two characters on a tuesday during that time frame. Now, even if I play from the second I get home from work and move as fast as I can doing quests while spamming dungeons and raids I can not get more than 700 in one day most of the time.
I can't slow down, at least not as long as there is a feeling that I need valor on my main and I need to cap to make playing alts more efficient.
It is all my own doing because it is my personal feeling that I need to cap out. It is an option, as they love to say, but one I feel I have no option in because of the type of player I am.
I wish I could slow down Mr. Panda, but I can't. Not in your expansion. In your expansion there is no such thing as slow down.
Heck, the new raiding patch will be coming soon and only three guilds on my server have even finished the current raiding tier on normal. How can we slow down when we have not even been moving fast enough to do the current content.
Slow down you say? Heck no, it seems like we are not moving fast enough as a player base. There is no time to slow down in this expansion. Not when there are so many benefits to speeding up, not when there are so many things to do that aren't getting done before new things for us to do come out, not when you will never see a moment when you can just say I don't need valor any more, at least not if you want to be the best you can be, when the upgrade guys is around.
The slow down the pandas say is aimed at us, the players, telling us to slow down and enjoy the game. Oddly enough, this is the first expansion that has ever been so full of things to do that even if you play as much as I do, which is a lot I feel, there will never be enough time to get it all done. Sorry, no time to slow down.
Slow down is great advice but...
Anyone else out there feel as if slow down is not an option if you want to maximize what you get from your play time?
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I fully agree.
ReplyDeleteI think that because we're "penalized" so much for taking it slow, that I'm actually taking it slower than I normally would anyway. I'm playing less than I did in Cata or at least it seems that way. Maybe it's just that the progress takes so much more effort than it did in Cata.
It just seems like a lost cause because I'll never upgrade all my gear or buy all the valor pieces. So why bother?
It's sad...
I have all the valor pieces, and the one raid piece I wanted, a normal raid weapon, it is the upgrading I feel I will never be caught up with personally.
DeleteI take it easy on my alts. I used to try to cap whomever I was currently using but I just do not care any more. I take it easy but sometimes it eats at me a little because I know I can do more, if I worked harder at it.
Where do you stop in this game? If you capped out valor on one character, would you then spend the next few days capping out on your characters. There is so much to do that instead of slowing down, I am choosing to go and do something else instead. If Blizzard can disenchant someone as addicted as me, I am starting to fear for the game.
ReplyDeleteNobody does fun runs any more, everything is about maximising valor, rep, gold, and time.
I was behind on launch day, and every day just sees a larger gap, if I get any further behind I might have to let Kobolds keep their candles.
Fun runs are dead for me too. We did them all last expansion, every weekend was old school raid night, getting the LK dungeon achievements for people that didn't have them, etc. We just do not do that any more because no one has time to. There is always this and that they need to do first.
DeleteAnd we were talking in guild, all 3 of us that were on during prime time monday, asking, where is everyone?
Mondays were usually a day when we had at least 15-18 people on and could try together a quick old school raid or do something even if it were not scheduled. Now, 3 people. What? SO much more to do and it seems no one wants to do it any more because they feel forced to. It is chasing them away instead of keeping them interested. I think that is where you are now.
I really have to say this: Blizzard announced the endless dailies all those years ago with the comment that they wanted people to have choices. They never intended for people to do every single one of them every day but that shows hwo little they know the players sometimes. I laugh when people complain about "too much" whenthe concept of mandatory is self-imposed!It is a choice to kepp up with the joneses and saying NO was part of the way I regained some self-respect. I will never be at the top of anything in this game but i will also NEVER be a warm blooded bot. i was gathering hearts last year when suddely i said: "why am I running in circles for hours on a beautiful saturday??" Sometimes the whole rat-cheese metaphor makes me very angry - mostly at myself.
ReplyDeleteI love the dailies as an option idea. I just think that because it takes all of them and tons of other things to cap out quickly, that it worked against what they intended. If doing all the dailies for 2 days capped you, that is an option, not with as little as they offer and as little as everything else offers. They feel mandatory for many.
DeleteI understand that I make them feel mandatory myself, I do not blame them for that. It is also why I asked for opinions here on how I can break away from the feeling. I really need help because I feel if I need to run myself ragged each tuesday in an effort to feel like I am doing the absolute least I can do, the game is going to burn me out. I can feel it coming already.
I think that was what I was trying to say: they thought "optional" but the community said "mandatory" because anything that can give you the edge is worth doing. I think that was the reason for caps in the first place. There are people who would never eat or sleep to get the advantage. Thinking people would simply choose a few was insane but there is also personal responsibility. if you work a normal job 80 hour weeks then die the world only blames you. moderation is our own responsibility. Lower the cap? Give people no reason to stay plugged in no longer than X number of hours - make the rest feel truly optional for fun only. If that thought makes you angry then welcome to addiction. Anger at limits is a huge signpost for self destructive behavior.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. If there was no weekly cap I would play more, a lot more, and try to maximize everything asap even more so. I think the cap is a good thing. I am sure I would burn myself out and quit in less than a month if there were no caps because I would feel I need to do it all and that would make it worse knowing I couldn't.
Deletespoiler alert you don't have to cap valor each week! we raid 2 nights a week 3 hours a night and have cleared 16/16. I don't cap valor every week. I don't expect my raiders too either. you're looking for advice on how to get rid of the feeling that you must? The best advice I can give you is to just not do it one week. simply slow down :P don't do it when the sky doesn't fall you can step back and see oh yeah its okay not to do something. if it feels like work it probably is. That's my advice I used to be like you. I'm not sure how old you are but as I've aged into my middle 30's (gulp) it just kinda happened. its funny my partner is in his 20's and he's always racing around trying to do things some times I turn to him and do my best panda impersonation and say "Slooooow doowwn"
ReplyDeleteYou DO need to cap if you are not raiding and want to keep that character geared. My raiding character has not capped ever this entire expansion.
DeleteYou can't just look at things from a singular point of view from a person that raids as that is such a tiny percentage of the player base.
For the majority of the player they need to cap. For my main, which sadly I have not been able to play, he needs to cap each week to stay as up to date as possible without raid gear.
I think for me my issue is that it is my main and I am not raiding with it, so because it is my main I feel I have to do everything I can and that means capping, even if I do not want to.
strongly disagree, You do not have to cap. You want to cap because YOU FEEL you must. I know you will argue but there IS a diffrence. Your looking at it from a perspective too but your forgetting that you don't need max everything to enter into a raid and be succesful. Does it help? sure is it required? Absolutly not. Unless your pushing cutting edge content the state of the game is that you don't need to be at your 110% best you can be more relaxed, slow down and still be succesful. If your not raiding with it what does it matter if its not capped? more to the point if your not raiding with your "main" is it still your "main"? and if so why are you not raiding with it? If the answer is anything else besides I don't want to raid with it your doing something wrong. Just because "the community" has decided something doesn't mean its right.
DeleteI think I'm at a similar stage. For a while, I would log on my rogue every day and farm up 120 ghost iron ore to send to my priest to turn into trillium bars for living steel. One day, I realized that I didn't want to do this anymore, so now I'm just going to buy whatever I can't get on the farm and do what I want to do. It's a small thing, but that 120 ore a day was like a damn job.
ReplyDeleteI think valor is the big thing though. Right now, to cap it means I have to do about 500 points worth of things that I just don't really want to do. I've decided that after the legendary 6000 valor thing is finally done, I'm giving up on the valor capping and enjoying my life. I wish they would lower it to about 600. They correctly perceived that the Cataclysm model was too narrow, so they gave us more ways to get valor, but they then lowered the amounts awarded so you have to do too damn many things to get it all.
I was like that and stopped too. Was making sure to do all my farms, all my one a day profession things, etc and I stopped them nearly completely already.
DeleteYou have to draw the line somewhere and for me that was it. I'll do the valor thing each week on my main because I feel I have to just to keep up, but the other stuff, just isn't worth it. So in that case I did slow down... some.
Reminds me a bit of the pre-MoP blues about being able to pick and choose the dailies you do. I was excited to think that I wouldn't need to spend hours doing dailies and just to focus on doing what I felt like. This was a long way from the reality of what was required if you were serious about getting geared and capped. I'm so burnt out that I level my monk for an hour a day at the moment. This is the first wow expansion that I've felt burnt out on from just gearing and raiding with my main. Normally I can get to my 3-4 alt before I feel this way.
ReplyDeleteI am right there with you. It was usually around the 4th alt I started to feel a little burnt out because it was me putting more on my table then I could chew. Now you can easily get burnt out on one character if you do not have a lot of free time to play.
DeleteIn cata you could be a two day a week player and do just fine, unless those two days are 5 hours days you have no prayer of keeping up this expansion. Not very casual friendly which is odd because I thought that was the intention of it all. Maybe it looked better on paper, which happens all the time.
Taking my sanity in my hands and commenting on my phone. I can see this from both sides. I started the expansion wanting to not be behind for once. I wanted to do it all/have it all. I got all my alts to Pandaria for farming ingredients to level my cooking as fast as possible. I mined up ghost iron to transmute into trillium, to transmute into living steel every day. I did the dailies, all of them that I could, every day.
ReplyDeleteI burnt out within a couple of weeks, so how you're going on 6 months defies my comprehension. It started with me going 1 day without running the dailies. I hadn't had time and the sky didn't fall. Yes I was one day behind on rep but that suddenly didn't seem as big a deal. You see I was already behind, people had levelled faster than I had and got an extra couple of days. I dinged in a fresh reset so lost the previous weeks valor cap, I realised that however hard I tried I would always be behind someone.
I wanted to set a good example in my guild but I needn't have worried. My off spec is in better shape than some of their main specs. I know that I could do better except I couldn't and still enjoy it. I do the best that I can. My friend caps like you do, efficiently. He spams dungeons/whatever on one character until he's capped and then caps others. I think he capped 4-5 characters last week. I almost managed 2. I won't run LFR now bar Terrace as I don't need the gear. I also dislike running dungeons for the sake of it, even if I can just pull everything on my pally. So I run a dungeon and a scenario everyday plus a few quests. I cap 2 days before reset usually. On my alt I'm more fluid and do spam a few dungeons in a row when I feel like playing it. Yes it's horribly inefficient to raise valor equally on 2 characters but my alt is only for fun.
Basically what I'm saying is work out what is truly necessary, what truly matters and what you truly enjoy. I won't think any less of you if you miss the valor cap one week. I spent today, reset day, doing pet battles mostly as I felt like it. So give it a go maybe. Try choosing your activity by what you want to do/makes you happy than what's efficient. Oh and as for fun runs I go Ulduar every weekend and I'm leading an ICC on Friday, so some people still do them :)
Don't get me wrong. I do not do dailies on my main every day. I do them on tuesday only and some on wednesday if need be. Just enough to cap out. I have not needed to do dailies since 3 weeks after the expansion came out and I was exalted with everyone.
DeleteIt is not the dailies that I mean, it is the feeling I need to cap on valor that is what makes me rush it each week. I know it is self imposed and I do not need to but I have always been the type that if I am not going to try my best, why try at all. I can't do things half assed if I actually are to do them.
I only cap my main. Rarely do I cap any alts. But I still believe that I need to cap my main because it is my main and if my alts do something they should get that 50% extra. It would be wasted valor if I were not capped on one character.
Last week was the first time in 6 weeks I would guess, that I capped more than one character. My "raiders" get whatever they get from raiding. My main does everything to cap, and my other alts get a little here and a little there from when I feel like doing something with them, which is usually no more then once a week.
As stupid as this might sound I have to say it.
My problem, which is mine only and self imposed I admit, is that buff. If I did not get a buff on my alts for extra valor I would no feel compelled to max my main every week. So like I said, as odd as it sounds, that buff is what is keeping me from slowing down. I wish it were not there.
Ah ok I didn't explain that right. My fault for commenting at 1am I guess. What can I say I couldn't sleep. Anyway, what I meant was that you don't maximise your alts anyway. You don't cap them every week, and give them the same sort of love that you give your main. So maybe you should think "I'm not maximising these alts to their full potential" and then stop worrying about maximising them.
DeleteI know you said that it would be ignoring a bonus by not having that buff, and that if you didn't have the buff you wouldn't worry about capping so fast/at all on your main. Well, you're already losing out on all the valor you aren't capping on your alt. So why drive yourself crazy? Cap slower on your main one week and see how it feels. Like I said I usually take about 5 days to cap, and I don't stop playing my alts before that. My alts are for fun, I don't worry about capping them, so I'm not going to worry about any extra I might get from a buff. Like I said I'm already losing out on whatever valor I don't cap that week.
I'm not sure if that makes sense. I got about 2 hours sleep last night. Anyway, I do understand what you mean about efficiency. I thought the same with my pally and my monk last week. They were both going up with about the same amount of valor on each, which seemed stupid. I should just do one and then bonus the other. However, how I was playing, how I wanted to play it, it didn't work that way. So I decided not to worry. It still seems stupid to me but I'm not going to do any different, just to satisfy a buff. If I could cap on my main doing things that needed to be done. Like when I was running all LFR's for gear, then it would be different. However, doing activities for the sake of them, just to get valor. Well I don't have it in me.
As I said, knowing the buff is there makes me want to do it. Even if I do not plan on worrying about my alts. It is still 120 valor for a dungeon instead of 80. So I want 120, even if I do not care about maxing out that alt. I hate the idea of throwing away 40 valor even if I don't intend to use it right away I might need it some day and would prefer for there to be more then when that some day comes.
DeleteWhat you said makes perfect sense. If I am not maxing an alt anyway, why should I care if they get 80 or 120. It makes sense, but that is why I explained why I want to max even if you do make sense.
I can't just not care even when I don't care. There is always that piece of me knowing I am wasting potential to earn if I do not cap.
Removing the 50% valor buff thing would mean I would take my time because there would be no reason to do it all in one week to help my alts.
I gots ya'll beat - I just don't care and take my time. :D
ReplyDelete-roo "a sad sad sexual harassment panda"
How do Night Elf brain cells die? Alone.
I wish I could share in that way of enjoying the game on my main.
DeleteI am playing my alts that way. If I do something, I do it. If I don't, who cares, it will get there soon enough.
Now to teach that attitude to my main. lol
ahh, my quirk, is no toon is better than another. I have no main, I have no alts. When I play, each one is separate. Sure, they will send each other itmes they each can make, but to me, thats because they are friends, not main or alt.
DeleteI treat all my characters as if they are all friends like that too. Even if I do not RP with them, I think of them like that in my head.
DeletePerhaps one day, perhaps even soon, I might learn to step back and smell the roses and find a different joy of the end game like you have.
Everyone enjoys things in their own way.
Grumpy, its not just you. But this phenomenon is not limited to WoW either. There are a number of other RPGs that I have played that have "optional" content that pulls you away from advancing the main story in order to complete side quests or collect random crap.
ReplyDeleteAnd although these games do not specifically force me into completing this content, nonetheless, its just my own particular quirk that I feel the need to complete anything optional as it comes up. The result being I get bored with all the side-grinding and give up on the game. Most recently this happened with Xenoblade; good lord that game has way too many things to do.
Its easy to blame the player and say that optional content is optional, there is no requirement to finish it, but there is a role for the game designers to place limits on how much optional content is going on at any moment.
If the team at Blizzard, for example, decided to increase the number of times you could run a raid before being locked out to 7, you'd probably hear a lot of feedback claiming that people felt burnt out from having to run the same raid 7 times a week.
Perhaps that is a great way to put it, "my own particular quirk" that makes me want to complete it. That is exactly how I feel.
DeleteWhat you say is so true and it is why limits need to be in place. It keeps people under control because people will always try to do the best they can do.
I think blizzard can really fix it all by making the one thing that seems compulsory for many, valor capping, easier.
If people felt like they could cap easy the pressure to cap would not be as much, and if there were no valor of the ancients buff, the one that makes you feel you need to finish one character first to get the most out of the others, capping would be something you would feel more comfortable doing during the week at a more relaxed pace and you would be able to slow down as the pandas suggest.
The valor grind really seems to be the main issue.
ReplyDeleteIn Cata, there was no valor grind. If you played for a few hours, you could cap.
Dungeons gave 150vp. LFR gave 250vp. Raid bosses gave 100vp.
Raiders: Full DS clear + 1 LFR/2 dungeons = capped
Non-raiders: 2 LFR + 4 dungeons = capped
And Valor gear was not behind any rep.
Now in Mists, the gains are pathetic in comparison.
Dungeon is 80 for the first and 40 after. That's half and then 1/4th. So you can efficiently run them all in one day.
LFR is 90 and 45 for secondary runs. Secondary runs didn't exist before but 90 is almost 1/3rd of what it was before.
Raid bosses are only 40vp.
We have scenarios now but their only 40 for the first and 20 after.
And then dailes give 5vp each.
Raiders: A normal group is not going to clear all 16 bosses in a week. So let's say they do half that. 360vp MoP... instead of 800vp Cata... Even after doing all 5 LFR, they don't even cap.
Non-raiders:
Daily players - Let's say they play a couple hoours 5 days a week. That's still a lot of playing. Daily dungeon + Scenario = 600vp. Plus all 5 LFR gets them to cap or 16 dailies every day. That's a packed 2hrs per day, so they can't do anything else in game.
Weekend players - Let's say they have one full day or two half days to play. Do all the LFR plus all the dailies while waiting in the queues. That's maybe 700 vp and a lot of waiting for LFRs. Add a dungeon and scenario to get up to 820. Then the last 180 is just a major pain.
I'd make the following changes:
Dungeons should be 100vp with no half vp for the second runs, so you can run 10 in a day to cap.
LFR should be 150vp, so you can do them all plus a few other things to cap.
Raid bosses should be 100vp, so you can kill 6+ bosses and do a few dungeons or couple LFRs to cap.
Scenarios should be 50vp with no half vp for the second runs, these are for the casual daily players. They should be able to do a couple most days, plus some dailies and cap.
Dailies should be 10vp once exalted.
Valor gear should not be behind any rep restrictions.
Get rid of Valor of the Ancients so people aren't compelled to rush to cap on their main.
I agree 100%.
DeleteUp the valor you get substantially.
Release valor gear from the reputation wall as long as one character has hit exalted with the faction in question.
Remove the valor of the ancients. Exactly. This is why I am hung up on getting that first one capped so fast each week making me feel like I can not slow down.
from your comments your little quirk is what your asking for help with it sounds like. I think the best advice to beat any quirk or habit be it smoking or valor capping is to take it slow when you feel the urge maybe remind yourself that its unlogical and do something else that distracts you from that want.
ReplyDelete