This comment reflects some of my frustration with Garrison Missions:
I have 25/25 level 100 followers as well. All are epic. All are ilevel 630 or higher. I’ve seen at most *3* ilevel 630 quests in the past WEEK at least. And I keep getting nothing but quests for more exp. I don’t mind it *TOO* much since I have a salvage yard, but it’s really annoying when it plateaus into uselessness…
In my case I have 20x active followers, and two inactive. 9x Epic, 11 Rare. All are ilevel 610 or higher, 15x or so are ilevel 630 or higher, 2x are 645. Yet my available higher level (615 & 630) missions are rewarding gear that is below what my character can use, and not rewarding upgrades for the followers either. Further the list of missions contains a large amount of xp missions and frankly almost everything on the rewards lists is almost pointless.
So I get gear I cannot use and nothing to help improve the situation. That’s frustrating. It appears that the inactive followers also influence what missions are offered. That’s silly.
Garrison Missions need to be changed, and changed in a way that allows players to prioritise or alter what missions they get. The WoW Forum thread above has some reasonable suggestions. Here are a few:
- Firstly increase the drop rate of Follower upgrades. God it is terrible now. Then when the list of active followers is wearing all epics, greatly reduce the drop rate of those rewards.
- The gear rewards should be either potential upgrades, or don’t show them at all. There is no point doing a mission which rewards a 630 gear item when you’re wearing an epic. Particularly true when the same reward appears twice (i.e. the bloody trinkets).
- Allow a player to select what type of reward they wish to prioritise (follower upgrades, gear upgrades, xp, gold) and the missions will tend toward that. Allow the selection to be changes per day.
- Allow 10x missions per day to be “dropped” and replaced with different rewards? I dislike this as it is replacing a random unknown selection with another unknown random value.
- Lower the cost of making a follower inactive. Where is the rationale that it is 250 gold? It means that I won’t collect any more than I need. Ever.
- Inactive followers do not factor into the mission selection. I’m sure they are not meant to, but they must be.
I had more fun in the early days of doing garrison missions than now. We had more diversity in missions, better combos, and far more tangible rewards. What felt like an interesting mini-game and offered rewards for the character now feels like a waiting game and a grind.
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 
First point: you need 3 followers at a given ilvl to unlock missions for that ilvl.
Second point. With a bunker, a salvage yard and a barracks lvl 3, chainrunning any and all lvl 96+mission has a lot of my followers decked out in 655ilvl gear. I might have been lucky with follower gear, but doesnt feel like it. Sheer number of salvage boxes seem to have done the trick. If you do not have a salvage yard, get one. If you do, then start running every mission you can. If you want followergear, screw the bunker (its decent, but thats it), get a salvage yard and spam those lvl 96+ missions!
I disaggree with most every point about going away from randomness, as i fear it would soon lead to either too effective missiongearing, or too few missions. What I think they need to do instead, and i mean they REALLY need to do this, is make the “rules” more clear. If you havent read various posts online there is no way to know how to unlock various missions. Also there is nowhere to see what ilvl missions you have unlocked currently, making it impossible to discern between being unlucky to not get any, and not having unlocked it yet.
About the inactive followers point… Im all with you, it makes no real sense. If there is already a maximum of 1 follower-reactivation per day, the price is stupid.
I knew you needed the three followers to get the missions at higher levels, the point was that I’m seeing so many missions that are far below 630 and only a few 630s. I’d think that most of the missions would be 630s if it was based upon the capacity of the team. There seems to be no logic to it at all. I agree with your point about making the rules known and clear – that would help a great deal.
I have the barracks level 2 and salvage yard level 3 already and yet don’t see much in the way of follower upgrades. The big crates have a really poor rate of delivery. They used to be so much better.
Happy to agree to disagree on the moving away from random. I don’t think asking for less random in a mini-game is unreasonable. It does not affect anyone except the character/follower. The economy and performance are moot.
“2x are 645.”
As mentioned, three being 645 unlocks the raid mission.
“Yet my available higher level (615 & 630) missions are rewarding gear that is below what my character can use, and not rewarding upgrades for the followers either.”
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Missions give the next tier of gear relative to ilvl. So 600 missions give 615, 615 gives 630, 630 gives 645, and 645 gives full-fledged raid gear. And apparently you’re not happy with 645 gear, so what in the world are you expecting? 655+ gear from every 615 and 630 mission? Garrison missions aren’t supposed to replace gearing from raids.
And as mentioned, with a Salvage Yard/Bunker you should be getting lots of upgrades on average — and every level 100 mission is guaranteed to have a Salvage Crate. Level 1 Barracks unlocks extra missions, level 3 Inn unlocks extra missions.
“Further the list of missions contains a large amount of xp missions and frankly almost everything on the rewards lists is almost pointless.”
The missions with the spyglass are bonus missions from having a level 1 Barracks. They’re simply missions that you wouldn’t even have otherwise. Basically, each sub-category of level/ilvl (90, 91-94, 95-99, 100, 615 ilvl, 630 ilvl, 645 ilvl) will spawn missions if you have followers at least of that threshold (though 90 and 91-94 missions stop spawning since Blizzard figures you don’t want any of those if every follower is at 100). Then you can get further bonus missions from Barracks/Inn. So you aren’t losing anything by having those XP missions.
What would you find to be a more useful reward?
“It appears that the inactive followers also influence what missions are offered. That’s silly.”
It would be silly if true, but it’s not. Why do you think it is?
“There is no point doing a mission which rewards a 630 gear item when you’re wearing an epic.”
Well, except for off-specs, challenge mode gear, or simply disenchanting it for a shard or 10+ dust. Plus those missions are guaranteed to give a salvage crate.
“Allow a player to select what type of reward they wish to prioritise (follower upgrades, gear upgrades, xp, gold) and the missions will tend toward that.”
You’re going to get one raid mission for 655+ epics once every week or two. You’re not going to get more than that, garrison missions aren’t supposed to replace actually doing the raids. Focusing the type of rewards wouldn’t be bad, though I think a potentially simpler solution is simply to spawn more missions, period, so that you can’t possibly do even like 30-40% of them — do the ones with the rewards you want.
“Lower the cost of making a follower inactive. Where is the rationale that it is 250 gold? It means that I won’t collect any more than I need. Ever.”
Er, what? It doesn’t cost anything to deactivate a follower. Only costs 250g to activate them.
@Balkoth, to clarify:
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Missions give the next tier of gear relative to ilvl. So 600 missions give 615, 615 gives 630, 630 gives 645, and 645 gives full-fledged raid gear. And apparently you’re not happy with 645 gear, so what in the world are you expecting?”
I’m saying that I have a huge amount of followers at 630 or higher and my missions are for 615 and 630 gear. It was only now that I have two 645+ and many far above 630 that I’ve seen one 645 mission. One! Meaning that it is not functioning as you and many other are suggesting it should. Why in hell do I still see gear rewards for 580, 615, and 630?
I understand the way it implies that it should work, but I am not seeing that behaviour.
“What would you find to be a more useful reward?”
Follower upgrades and gear for my character.
“Well, except for off-specs, challenge mode gear, or simply disenchanting it for a shard or 10+ dust. Plus those missions are guaranteed to give a salvage crate.”
Doing a mission for a salvage crate is a last resort. Which is exactly what I’m trying to impart – at present the fun and enticement which started missions has disappeared, and it is now a game of finding a mission worth doing. There seems to be one or two a day, the rest are borderline pointless.
“I’m saying that I have a huge amount of followers at 630 or higher and my missions are for 615 and 630 gear. It was only now that I have two 645+ and many far above 630 that I’ve seen one 645 mission. One! Meaning that it is not functioning as you and many other are suggesting it should. Why in hell do I still see gear rewards for 580, 615, and 630?”
No, that’s…exactly how it should work. You’ll get a 645 raid mission once every week or two. It’ll give you a random raid item from a tier above what you’re doing. So if you’re doing LFR, you’ll get a normal item. If you’re doing normal, heroic item. If you’re doing heroic, mythic item. If you’re doing mythic…well, you just get some bonus gold in addition to a mythic item.
Think about what you’re saying here — the 630 missions give 645 gear. 645 gear is *better* than LFR! You’re not going to get multiple quests per day to get better gear than in LFR! And you’re certainly not going to get multiple quests per week to get gear from normal raids or above!
Just like gearing slows down once you’re done with (heroic) dungeons, so does gearing from follower missions. And the 580/615/630 items are still useful, at the very minimum, for enchanting mats (plus guaranteed Salvage Crate).
“Follower upgrades and gear for my character.”
We’ve already established above that you’re not going to get more missions to gear your character. Do LFR or actual raids — the 645 raid mission will be once every week or two and you may also see some 630 missions with 645 gear, but most of your gear should be from LFR or raids.
Which leaves us with follower upgrades — you’re expecting to get 20 missions a day for follower upgrades or something? That isn’t going to happen, Blizzard doesn’t want you to be able to go from 600 ilvl to 655 ilvl on all followers in a day or two. It’s supposed to take a little time.
And the thing is, Blizzard is fully factoring in salvage crates in terms of gearing speed for followers. Which brings us too…
“Doing a mission for a salvage crate is a last resort.”
This is one of your major issues. You may not have noticed this, but at the beginning of the expansion people would keep a 91-94 follower active and a 95-99 follower active in order to get extra missions — solely to get more salvage crates. Blizzard didn’t like the fact the best gearing method for 100 followers was spamming 30 minute level 92 missions and changed things — 91-94 missions don’t give crates with upgrades, 95-99 missions spawn without needing a follower in that level range, and 100 missions give a guaranteed salvage crate (rather than just a chance).
I mean, right now I’m doing salvage missions and am running a Dwarven Bunker and I have more follower upgrades than I can use! I’m just stockpiling them now and getting followers to 655 ilvl because why not?
Now, you might think that using salvage crates for upgrades isn’t FUN, but that’s very different from:
“it is now a game of finding a mission worth doing. There seems to be one or two a day, the rest are borderline pointless.”
Right now the game is set up so you’ll get 1-2 follower upgrade missions a day plus you can get like 30 salvage crates that will contain, say, 6 follower upgrades. So you do about 30 missions total to get 7-8 upgrades.
Or…you can get a total of 7-8 missions a day for follower upgrades and the salvage crates disappear. Both give the same rate of gearing followers — but Blizzard isn’t going to give you 30 missions for follower upgrades per day.
If only the gear rewards were bind to account instead, then it would make this all worth while and everyone’s argument invalid.
I like the BoA idea. For follower gear, and then much later for all the 500-615 reward gear. Why not let mains farm for alts to get them into content faster.
Then you would have people like Tobold complaining about how you can get such a powerful item at 91:
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2014/12/epic-crap.html
No, I’m not kidding.
“Why not let mains farm for alts to get them into content faster.”
The problem is the reverse — people would make a bunch of alts to send the follower gear to mains to get the raid missions ASAP. Would have to do something like not allow it for the first month or something or come up with a clever way to prevent funneling stuff to the main from alts.
I saw that post from Tobold, and just shook my head. He’s a great blogger, but comes from a different place, and certainly plays for different reasons to me.
But wow, yep, great counter-point on the alt farming. Dead right, I hadn’t thought of that.
It could be cyclically available. Current tier gear tokens are BoP, Tier-1 are BoA? The tiers have a gear level range, but who knows how hard that is to implement with what they’ve already written for those tokens.
I don’t think they have any philosophical objections to your general idea, but yeah, the devil is in the details — both in terms of coding and in terms of preventing abuse.