Dailies are the Raw Prawn…
…and I say:
Maybe I have just eaten a batch of Bad Clams, but I am very, very sick of dailies.
Don’t nerf ‘em!
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to nerf Dailies. Generally I think they are a great idea, and most likely the majority of WoW players benefit from them.
Unfortunately I am not in the Majority.
If we take the definitions of Hardcore & Casual I have seen thrown around lately:
- Hardcore: You play more than me.
- Casual: You play less than me.
Then you are probably all Hardcore, most of you would be unbelievably hardcore…
Get a Life folks! 
I doubt there are many casuals around though by my definition… ohh maybe those that haven’t logged in for the last 12 months can average their time out and tell me they are casual… maybe…
OK, to be fair, I do play about 6 hours per week on average, which may be more than some people. My problem with dailies is that I play 4-6 hours in a block. One day, and one day only (under threat of divorce).
So while others do dailies, I do weeklies.
It can’t be that bad Gnomer, surely you get them done regularly…
OK, let me ask you a question…
How many days a week do you log in and do dailies (or did you when it was advantageous to you if you now have all the recipes you want)?
Guess how many dailies I have managed to achieve since the Achievement system was introduced… 6+ months ago… Go on guess… ahh don’t worry about it, let me show you instead.
You know the achievement to do a daily every day for 5 days…. Guess how far I have ever made it into that one… Once again, I will show you…
My issue with dailies are the “rewards” associated with them.
- Reputation increases – Do the dailies or don’t increase your rep.
- Marks of Honor/UberGear etc. – Do the heroics/daily instances to build up enough marks to buy your way into a raid. (OK, I know that Heroics are not dailies… but to build up the marks, you need to be running multiple instances per week)
- Tradeskill recipes – Do the dailies or starve, or shelve your profession.
- Discoveries – Do your craft, a limited number of times per week, and pray that the RNG gods are on your side and hand you a new recipe.
I know some people are screaming out for tradeskill dailies… at least that way there is a guaranteed manner of gaining new recipes…
I feel for you, so feel for me
OldSkool Skill
In TBC, before the Daily Invasion began, to get cash you either needed a spare zone or two up your sleeve (and that well would eventually run dry), or you needed to have some knack with the Auction House (with or without tradeskills as support).
Luckily for me, I had both. AH nous and enough incomplete quests to keep the Gnomeregan Exiles in food and clothing for the next couple of expansions.
Dailies were introduced, or ramped up, which was great for everyone. While you didn’t have to do them, if you did, you would have a regular source of income plus the occasional side benefit, whether rep or other reward. I liked them, and occasionally participated in them. Who is going to look a few honor points, or heroic tokens in the mouth?
Thing is, these dailies didn’t adversely effect my gameplay.
I could do dailies, if I wanted, or ignore them, if I didn’t.
Generally I didn’t. My normal Friday playnight went something like this:
[Gnomeaggedon has come online]
[Mate to Gnome] Summon incomming…
[You have entered x Instance]
[Gnome to Mates] Thanks for the run guys, gotta go, busy day tomorrow…
[Gnomeaggedon has gone offline]
Not much room in there for extra curricular activities like dailies… but then it really didn’t matter. I have never gone higher than Honored with SSO… but then, it never stopped me progressing my skills.
Anything I NEEDED could be sourced from the wilds through drops, or regular cash transactions with vendors.
WoLK, has gone Daily Crazy.
Now if there is something you want, let alone need, you “must” log on every day… well more than once per week anyway. In theory with 6 hours per week playtime, I could log on 6 times for 1 hour. Sure I wouldn’t get anything other than the dailies done, and sure network connectivity from the Divorce Courts is average… but hey I could level my cooking etc.
Suggested solutions.
Replace/augment dailies with tradeskill quests.
You know I love a meaningful tradeskill quest! In many ways they are much more fun than the average kill x number of y mob. Killing Dig Rats for the hell of it would have been frustrating. Killing them in the quest for (an otherwise worthless) Dig Rat Stew recipe made it fun.
If instead of having to do 3 dailies I had to do 3 quests (fundamentally taking the same amount of time and effort… probably more) to get a new recipe, I would be happier than a Gnome snacking on a cupcake!
In this scenario I would:
- Get the opportunity to complete multiple quests/end goals in 1 session. Sure possibly all of them, but that means that I have consumed the equivalent amount of time as the dailies, but at my leisure.
- Get to progress my tradeskills in a timely, not lengthy manner. Will I really bother with cooking if I can’t get the recipes to level it for another 12 months?
- Have a hell of a lot more fun than just gathering 4 mushrooms and 2 chilled meats!
Introduce more RNGs
I know, I felt the shiver going down your back from here, but…
Instances
As much as the random and very unlikley drops in TBC for tradeskill receipes caused much anguish, they also had some side benefits.
- They were a reason to rerun instances all of their own. I ran shattered Halls sooo many times with people, not so much for heroic badges, but for the tailoring drop.
Did you need them? No, they were BoE items, so as long as you knew someone with the recipe you could get it crafted, but it was still worth the run, just on the off chance. - The OMFG! moments, when the recipes drop.
Tell me, what is more exciting… Doing 3 (of the same old) dailies to get the tokens for a recipe, or clicking the dead boss only to see that long dreamed of recipe flash up.
Hell, increase the drop chance if you want Bliz, just give us some reason to be excited about killing a boss other than rapidly outdated gear.
On a related note, tie the seafood recipes to fishing drops. Thus if you are mad enough to participate in the mind numbing profession of fishing, at least you will get an additional, useful reward. I might even go fishing for the odd raw prawn recipe!
World Drops
Random World drops… mmm maybe not,well not without a reasonable RNG% and a wide range of drop mobs. But, in a similar fashion to farming instances, the joy of finally seeing the recipe appear in a loot bag still brings tears to my eyes.
Once again, it doesn’t need to be easy (or any easier than TBC), but that 0.1% chance may mean 1st kill, or 1500th kill. The thrill is in seeing the receipe in the bag. At that point, it doesn’t matter how many kills it took, it just matters that you are working towards completing the set.
Let the vendor make some money.
Maybe buying from the vendor makes (or made) life too easy to level professions. But how about you introduce a expensive range of vendor recipes that make it possible, if difficult, to hit max skill.
Difficult by:
- Make the recipes relatively expensive. After reading a post by Wowgrrl, I decided I would drop by and buy myself a skull to go with my wraith. My 1st reaction at the 40g price tag was “Hey, that’s a bit pricey”. My 2nd was “Who am I kidding… 40g is 8 quests”. So make it a 100g per recipe… If you don’t want to quest/RNG your way to the top, then buy your way there.
- Make the recipe ingredients complex and pricey. Yep, throw recipes that require 2-3 mats (always a pain) to the vendor. Make the mats BoE and farmable (or creatable).
Now we have a situation where if you have the cash, you can buy the recipes and the mats to level your profession. If you have the time you can farm the mats, if you don’t, then you are creating a secondary economy for the other farmers and crafters.
I am also going to blow a pile of cash on these much more readily than on Haris Pilton’s handbag.
Give me the love Blizzard, Second That Emotion!
Let me enjoy my blocks of playtime as much as others enjoy their blocks of dailies.
Once again, I repeat, don’t remove the dailies. I know some people are reliant on these for cash, so don’t remove them and you might as well leave the profession purchase options there as well, because some people will prefer to do the same old same old to skill up. I will even permit you to throw in a few recipes that can only be purchased via daily “tokens”, expensive recipes, like the honor or badge gear…
I don’t mind if I never get them, or only get the occasional 12 months down the track. It will be like prioritizing gear upgrades. Do I want the spell damage food or the +hit food? … let me decide!
Anyway.. enough QQ’ing from this short (QQ), green haired (QQ), time limited (QQ), Gnome (Yay!), Mage (QQ).
Gnomer and Out!
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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/03/06/dailies-are-the-raw-prawn/
Aaawww. This wasn’t qq:ing. I think you’ve got valid points and good suggenstions. And I feel a bit sorry for those npc:s with their single-dish diet. If I were them I’d turn sick at the very thought of a mushroom meatloaf.
Maybe instead of “Daily” quests we could switch to “Quest Lockouts”. Lockouts would limit the number of quests you can complete – within a category – each week. Maybe even allow players to repeat the same quest as many times as they want, up to the lockout number (maybe not… if I could pick I’d do Mustard Dogs every day because it gives me 2 Tokens).
So you would have a Tradeskill Weekly Quest category that would allow you to do… say… 18 quests a week. This would be enough to do Cooking, Fishing, and Jewelcrafting (with some overflow).
You would have a Heroic Dungeon Weekly Quest category that would allow you to do 7 quests a week. Same number as you can do today, but you can pick all 7 quests at once. Similarly there would be a Normal Dungeon Weekly Quest category.
Lastly there would be a Reputation Weekly Quest category that would allow you to complete something ridiculous like 100 quests a week.
Hey Dorgol, that’s a vey clean simple idea (the execution, not the ideas itself). Simpler again would be a 175 “dailies per week, no questions asked model”. Whether professional rep or consumable dailies. Limiting each quest to 7 per week.
It would knock my issue on the head.
Still, I would really like them to change the prof quests to be meaningful.
Don’t get me wrong, if I could complete all my essential dailies (my choice) I would be a happy gnome.
If the games better, targetted pprof quests for recipes, then you would see me sing and dance.