Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

What dailies tell us

The Hyjal dailies, especially the ones on the Molten front, before wardens/talons are extremely fast in group. The elite giant part should be skipped anyway, due to being slow, and the stupid programming that made Hyjal defenders attack other hyjal defenders making it a gankfest even if no one is stupid (which is rare).

Leaving that nonsense and maybe the root collection and bird gathering out (non-group), The remaining ones can be done in 2 mins/quest, while the close front ones take 3-4 minutes all, the shadow wardens take another 5 in a group. On average 1:30/quest. Each quest provide 20G. 800G/hour on the top of the marks is good, even for a goblin. Of course there are better methods, but none of them is questing that can be done without preparation, tradeskills, investment and brain.

I thought it's just a gold shower to everyone to help out "casuals". But then I saw posts about it how hard and time consuming they are. What? 15 minutes are too much for you? Then asked around and it turned out that alone they take 30+ mins, partially because of gankers (who are just minor nuissance when we are in group).

OK, these quests are slow alone, who cares when you can form groups? These quests are kill or "perform action" quests, if one groupmember kills a monster or heals a burned victim, everyone gets credit. So forming groups, even ad hoc, inviting the people around should be the standard. I mean why would anyone do differently?

Then it hit me: for socials, every action performed with other people is social. Inviting someone to a group demands niceness, helpfulness, responsibility. And no one wants to do that with a complete stranger. So they rather quest alone.

For an asocial, there is no difference between a player and an NPC. If he does the job, it's better with him than without. I don't feel the need to chat with him, have no problem rejecting when he start asking for help, ignoring his random attempt to socialize and so on. For me, he is just another NPC, like the Shadow warden who wants to trap the flame druid. I'm not more committed to the groupmember than to the NPCs. Funnily, the socials also don't want to be committed, but they can't do it without distancing themselves from the guy.

The easiest way to practice asociality and speeding up your quests is inviting people randomly in the zone. Maybe with a macroed /w "Hi, I'm questing here too, the quests are faster in group". Do the quests and drop group. Can't be too hard. And it significantly increase the quality of your questing. Try it out!

20 comments:

Ephemeron said...

If dailies took 2 minutes in total, 1 of which would be spent AFK, some people would still complain that they take too much time and energy.

Of course, if they required 11 hours of non-stop playing, some people would still claim that they are too easy and 'welfare'.

Some people just like to complain. That's all.

Anonymous said...

I don't think they're that slow to solo either... just mindnumbingly boring and repetitive - after a month of the grind with only a few days missed here and there I'm still looking to 2-3 weeks more.

Even worse is that while some of the geaar would have been useful at the start of Firelands... it no longer is. would be for my alts, but no way I'm doing this mindless grind again on them, even running ZA/ZG is better.

As to you idea... I'd rather solo them than group up with strangers. Maybe grouping up would be a little faster, but I really can't be bothered to spam some a "want to group up?" macro at strangers, who most like won't do more than 1-2 quests with me anyways due to starting at different times. It's fast to solo anyways; the only thing at motlen fron that takes longer is patching up the soldiers, other than that as an arc mage I just stand in the midle, pop Cd's and burn - by the time I'm oom I'll have everything dead that needed to die.

Sangre said...

If you are a pet class you can set your pet to passive and the hyjal defenders won't bother anyone. Additionally the elites remain untagged after being damaged so you can cooperate with members of the opposite faction without their consent. Simply use a ranged attack, when the mob dies mount up immediately, rinse, repeat.

Coralina said...

I solo them and did so on four toons each day (now down to three).

If I wanted to group up I’d be raiding or in a troll dungeon at that time. The whole reason I am questing at that particular time is because I can constantly start-stop, drink, answer my phone, send SMS messages, talk on Messenger, whisper Real ID friends and watch TV etc.

If someone invites me I will knuckle down and focus to clear the quests immediately – they wouldn’t want me stood there doing nothing...

I don’t therefore go out of my way to invite even though I totally agree it would be a lot quicker.

WoW also doesn’t have cooperation in its nature. Too often questing is a PVP experience – pitting players against players of the SAME faction to steal quest mobs. In Rift where you can join up without the other person having to accept or decline you find people are automatically far more cooperative. It is second nature in that game and the entire culture feels different.

In WoW asking someone to join you would often result in abuse or being put on ignore ("I don't need your help n00b"). The mind set of many players was no doubt that they want to do as little as possible to help other players. Especially those planning on selling the new weapons etc, anything they could do to slow or deter others from reaching 125 marks as soon as themselves would result in less competition on the AH.

I will give Blizzard credit though for ensuring that respawn rates on these new dailies are fantastic. This prevented most of the usual tom foolery.

I have often observed that if people put as much effort and ingenuity into raiding as they do into working out ways in which they can tag quest mobs or steal quest items faster than the next guy then my entire realm would be 7/7 in Firelands HC.

When attempting to steal a quest mob/item they discover all manner of spells and abilities to speed boost themselves or stun targets so they don’t get interrupted when picking something up.

Yet ask them to perform the same actions in a raid (say fast switch from a boss to ads and stunning to reduce damage) and suddenly they forget how to play…

Yaggle said...

I never even considered grouping because they are so easy and go so fast already. Firelands dailies is such easy money, gear, achievements that the only downside I worry about is in a few weeks, the flaming hippogryphs will be flying around Orgrimmar like fireflies.

Anonymous said...

"I have often observed that if people put as much effort and ingenuity into raiding as they do into working out ways in which they can tag quest mobs or steal quest items faster than the next guy then my entire realm would be 7/7 in Firelands HC."

What kind of bollocks is this? Only 2 guilds in the whole world are 7/7 HC: Paragon and Method. Other hardcore raiding guilds are still raiding every day for many hours yet aren't even 6/7 HC. Blizzard had to nerf Baleroc and Staghelm. No amount of effort you put in daily questing will get you quicker through these HC raids. It won't increase your raiding skill at all. What gets Ragnaros down is a huge amount of time, a good amount of skill, and the best gear/spec and raid composition. The people who are raiding FL HC aren't bothering with these quests until they are 7/7 HC, realm first, and so on (after that they are bored and go for Insane achievement). No amount of effort from people who do those quests would have made any of these people 7/7 HC. You have NOT observed such!

The mobs on bottom (the hardest) you cannot tag. You can just put one DoT on each and get credit. No need to be grouped. Just be careful with AoE when opposite faction is there. Don't use AoE like Mind Sear, Living Bomb, Consecration or Hammer of the Righteous. Meanwhile while you DoTed one, you nuke another one. You will get credit for both kills. The person's mob you DoTed should DoT yours if he is smart, and you both win.

The quests inside at start are perfect to group up and can save you various minutes. Quests with drops from mobs you need to pick up in inventory are not quicker in a group except that if you have a healer you have less downtime, and you are protected from PvP combat if you stay together. A few tips: that, stay together. If you get seperated you might as well not be in same group. Be sure the other person doesn't slack. While not everyone is equally geared and skilled just standing there /yawning while the other person is putting effort is not what you want to be grouped with. Pre-make it: ask in trade or guild chat, or if you see someone flying into the new map while you do too chances are you're already on the same pace. The mobs inside can also not be tagged but easily agroed. If you kite them back the NPCs will help you; who needed to be grouped again?

Anonymous said...

(Cont.)

I also advice to grind them on a crafter character alt first (your main will be ilvl 378 full in no time; your alt won't! And your alt will upgrade ilvl 346/353 -> 365 while your main is already full ilvl 359/372). Check the gear which drops. You should have opted to do it on a crafter when 4.2 hit. If you want a big profit from your crafting you're now probably too late. Don't bother doing the dailies on too many characters. You will get burned out. Play 1 main and 1 alt character seriously and screw the rest. You must focus on your characters in order for them to perform well. You cannot focus on 4 characters at the same time. Even if you're a no-lifer. There are good reasons raiding guilds have a max 1 alt policy; this is one of them.

Anyone who engages in PvP in this questing area is a lolkid, no exception. The best way to evade a lolkid is don't play with them. He will feel he won; but if he was a serious PvP player he'd have engaged in serious PvP combat. He'd be in arena, rated, or do a wargame to practice his optimization in keybinds. If you get ganked, go play on some other time or use strategic positioning to complete the quests without getting too far out of the neutral area, or team up. Going PvP is a complete waste of time if time is money. After all, the only reason to be there is to do the quests getting gold and marks for the least amount of time. Therefore only engage in PvP (defend) if someone else is attacking you. If you can beat them once in a fair fight you can probably beat them again but don't: just do the quests instead. If you make some fellow pissed off he will get you back with his guildies next day. If you get ganked you can use /1 to communicate with fellow faction. Often, they will help you just because the other player is from opposite faction, for the challenge, for being social or heck I don't get why but they do it.

lancore said...

You shouldn't ignore the elite giant daily. It's one of the fastest if done right. Just run through the area, attack 6 different (already fighting) Mobs and let other players finish them. You don't even have to tag them for getting credit for the kill.

Coralina said...

@Anonymous 11:02

Nice wall of text about how to down Rag but my comment was actually a sarcastic joke so the official wow forums style anal analaysis and response was not required.

It was just a general observation of how amazed I have been at the creative techniques and strategies people use to screw over fellow players during questing when the “invite” button would have sufficed and saved everyone a lot of time.

That contrasts with a complete inability to think creatively in raids with said players only able to follow the most simplistic of tactics and restricted to two spells unless the raid leader shouts instructions to them on Vent… Although I don’t agree with Gev’s no-vent policy I can at least understand why he does it.

It is like they are Pro’s when levelling from 80 to 85 or doing dailies, but then they turn into drooling morons the minute they step foot in a HC or raid.

Bryksom said...

Then it hit me: for socials, every action performed with other people is social. Inviting someone to a group demands niceness, helpfulness, responsibility. And no one wants to do that with a complete stranger. So they rather quest alone.

And it pisses me off to no end. I always ask in general chat to group up, but very seldom get a positive response. Sometimes I even get a "lol u can do it alone it's not hard".

Anonymous said...

I group up (always did for dailies since the Sunwell event). One tip: Adding that they can leave without helping you finish makes the macro more successful.

Anonymous said...

When I had enough from WoW, I tried out Rift, and while I think WoW is still better that Rift for me (environment, feeling), Rift has awesome grouping features. Like, if you go to a Rift to close it, you are asked automatically about to join in a Public Group, where you get grouped up with strangers, you close the rift, and you can leave the group. You don't have to ask for group, you don't have to be nice, you just push "yes" on a button to join, fight, and leave. I wonder why is it hard to implement this in wow. :S

Joshua said...

I agree with Lancore, it is efficient to run in and do a little damage to 6 of the stone giants and get the credit/drop item for killing them. However, my experience only comes from a pve realm. Perhaps this is not the case for pvp realms? Anyone care to enlighten me?

Laken said...

For me it was not a matter of them being too hard. I simply stopped caring. After turning in my first 150 marks I realized that I simply do not want to do dailies anymore. My gear is gemmed and enchanted, I don't really need the gold, and the one upgrade I can get from them just doesn't feel worth the effort.

Cutting dailies has been part of my "eh, screw it" campaign for WoW. I still enjoy the game have enjoy healing for the new Firelands raid, but not doing dailies, not worrying about gold, not actively trying to build my off-spec gear set, and other various tasks has allowed me to play less and enjoy my current play time even more.

Anonymous said...

@Joshua: It works the same on PvP realms. Hit six mobs engaged with other players' guardians with a ranged ability, wait for them to die, quest done. While other players' guardians are already engaged, your guardians will also not attack them and theirs will not attacks yours - so you stay safe from that threat, too.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand why you refer to ganking as stupid when you initiated your own large scale ganking project a while ago, offering rewards as an incentive for players to be "stupid".

Ganking people who are doing the new dailies is an easy way of grinding honor. Tol Barad is the best way hands down but why bother queing for BG's during the week and risk ending up in a group of road fighting idiots when you can make up to 3000 honor an hour by ganking at the Molten Front.

How is that stupid?

Anonymous said...

3k HP/hour by ganking people at Molten Front? Yeah right. That means 50 HP/min. I call bullshit.

Anonymous said...

Someone touched on it above, but I think some people choose to do their dailies while they are queued in a bg or dungeon group. If you are a dps queueing alone and into the latter half of a 35 min queue, I don't blame you for not grouping up.

Toris said...

There's also low pop servers to consider. I usually meet 3-4 other players during questing, including players at other quests, afk and horde. Which generally means there isn't a lot of people to group up with.

Grey said...

A good example of this is quest updates. If you need to kill ten rats and you have 8/10 and a new guy shows up who's 0/10 and wants to group you don't want to group because after two more you are 10/10 and he is 2/10 but the more social a player is the more they *feel* they now have to stay and help the other guy finish.