EDIT: Wish to emphasize this is not a whine post, it's a way to think about all the possibilities, and see what's good, and what directions could be expanded. Not very constructive, 'cause our suggestions have a very low impact on the game, but I had a lot of fun thinking about it.

There's been a lot of talk about keying and attunement and what drives the raid progression order between the threads. I'm creating a new one to talk about design in general to give creative people a place to discuss.

So - what avenues are there to give a structure to the raid game, a reason to progress, and a way to control both the pace and order of progression? In the end, I think a mixture all the possibilities adds up to be the most fun and immersive.

Item-based Limits / Controls on Progression:

Basic Gear Requirements
This is the most natural and obvious control. To progress through harder fights, you need "better" gear: more DPS/longevity/stamina/mitigation/healing. This method is often the most satisfying, and ties in with basic character progression. The major drawback is gear inflation, and the effect of the raid game on the rest of WoW. In TBC, this route has been heavily scaled back, to reduce its side effects.

Specialized Gear Requirements
This is the heading I'm giving to resist gear, because although resist gear is the most common specialized requirement, other ideas are conceivable. Resistance gear is a popular choice for instance designers for severeal reasons, I think:
- It is an alternate gear progression route, and it can either apply mostly to the guild (gearing your MT / melee in FR for Ragnaros, the inner 15 on Huhuran) or you can design it such that the whole raid has a certain minimum requirement (Vaelstraz). This gives it a high degree of flexibility
- Players can be allowed to choose how fast they meet this requirement. Moreso than basic gear upgrades, which traditionally only come from raid instances past a certain point, players can be allowed to farm outside of raid time to help meet their resistance requirment. They can do Heroics for FR, farm mats for craftables, or be forced mostly to get raid instance limited drops, like FrR gear / Frozen Runes for Sapphiron. In this way it can provide either a timesink, or be used to force raid instance order (if AQ40 dropped all the FrR gear, you'd have to do AQ40 first). The developers could restrict access to resist outside of raids, if they wanted raiding only to beget raid progress, etc etc.
- Minimum impact on non-raiding
EDIT: One con probably not often considered for players is this is the only requirement that eats heavily into bag-space. There must be a solution here if the designers with to continue using this one ...

I think resistance gear checks are fine, in moderation. You get a sense of accomplishment getting your MT his FR gear to take down Ragnaros, and there are many plusses to this route, as long as it is not over-implement.

I also think there's room for creativity here. Another example of specialized gear requirements is the Four Horsemen. Gear which droppped previously in the instance is warrior Tier 3, which provides a key bonus for a mechanic of the fight.

What other routes are available here? You could do all kinds of crazy things with specialized gear! Burning swords could drop which your rogues must be equipped with to help set the bosses adds on fire, staves which apply specific debuffs / counter boss abilities might drop in a previous instance - think of the fire elemental on the top of Un'Goro Volcano, whose shield you must remove with the quest item. This is by far the most unexploited route for raids.

Specialized Item Requirements
The goblins in Blackwing Lair drop hourglass sand, which is necessary for Chromaggus. They also drop Elementium, which you need for some of the best items from AQ40. Again, this is a very under-utilized avenue that gives a guild progression, but has no player or non-raid timesinks.

Other options inlcude the Onyxia-cloak requirement for Nefarian. This imposes a timesink, but it occurs in a fun raid instance and for the guild as a whole. Bob the Recruit does not need 20 Onyxia kills, he can join tomorrow and be handed an extra cloak from the guild bank.


Quest-based Limits / Controls:

Reputation Requirements
Okay, these are the new flavor of the month. Edited to change my perspective: because they chose one basic path for TBC, it can get a bit boring when there's a full spectrum possible.
- Crafter requirements, such as getting a TB armor crafter. This affects the guild as a whole, but not Bob the Recruit.
- Loot requirements, such as needing revered with Brood of Nozdormu to get the final armor pieces.
- Boss-summoning requirements, such as needing the Hydraxian Waterlord faction reputation necessary to summon Majordomo. Again, affects the guild as a whole, not an individual.
- Zone-entering requirments. Naxx had a sliding scale, you could get the rep, or you could pay the gold. In TBC, it's much more strict. You need the reputation to enter the Heroics to complete your zone-attunement quests. Serpentshrine requires revered Cenarion, Tempest Keep has four revered factions, etc.

Quest Chain Requirements
Before TBC, these only requiremed small-group play. There were no series of raid-quests for the next raid. However, every raid has now been chained, so that each instance past Gruul and Magtheridon has a previous instance completion requirement. This isn't so bad, as its not to hard to kill Gruul for the new guy (short encounter). Becomes more tedious 3 instances in (who in Naxx wants to kill Ragnaros for Bob the Recruit?). In general, it's fun and provides a sense of accomplishment. This really becomes onerous when the required instances have steep entrance requirments of their own ...

Quest Chains to Unlock Bosses
Not heavily implemented, it really only appears for Majordomo (some raid reputation attached), and Nightbane (requires small group play and non-raid reputations). Generally these do not affect Bob the Recruit. Again, provides a sense of accomplishment to the guild as a whole.

New Skills
Molten Core introduced the first raid-only class skill: Tranquilizing Shot. Obviously a gimick, and later a gimick to give a class necessity for certain fights, it was nonetheless a creative requirement. You need a few Lucifron kills under your belt to attempt the next boss. This gives players a sense of accomplishment and something to do (you learn a new skill!) without affecting non-raid play. I'd like to see more and better uses of this as well.


Well, what do people think? What methods are under-utilized, and what directions could designers take them in to give more "progression" options to characters and guilds without affecting the non-raid game or adding boring time sinks (farming mats, I'm not counting heroic runs as "boring").

EDIT: Wish to emphasize this is not a whine post, it's a way to think about all the possibilities, and see what's good, and what directions could be expanded. Not very constructive, 'cause our suggestions have a very low impact on the game, but I had a lot of fun thinking about it.

Tigole has posted that they have plans for "backflagging" in the long run, so I wouldn't worry about the "Naxx guild running MC for the new recruit" scenario.

In the short run, the keying requirements are all quite reasonable. The only "hard" one is the Trial of Mercy, but everyone who's completed that has also found it very fun and satisfying. It's a good type of challenge.

I mostly agree with you, and my post is fishing for under-utilized fun areas. The hardest part, I think, if power-repping someone. You'd have to run a lot of 4 different non-heroic instances each to get Bob the Recruit his heroic keys. Arguably, however, this is something they should be doing in their off time if they want to join a raid guild, and gets them their baseline gear and class-awareness.

I don't really agree with this. It is not challenging at all to get revered (or even exalted) with any of the new factions. Ones like Consortium, aldor/scryer, etc are easy to farm in a couple days. The others are gained through quests and running instances. Most of the level 70 instances give roughly 2000 reputation, if not more. I got revered with all of the necessary factions involved with heroics just by leveling and questing normally, with the exception of Lower City. I did ~5 extra runs of Shadow Labyrinth and 70 to get revered there.

The new 5 mans have such a wide variety of loot that pretty much anybody can find upgrades from pre-BC raid epics in them. They are also fun, in general. Maybe not so much after running the same one 20 times, but you can still find ways to enjoy yourself. Pulling 8-12 mobs at a time in Shadow Lab and AEing them all is a blast, and gets you out of the instance in under an hour.

In general, I think the largest problem are the random nature of some encounters. Prince and Gruul come to mind. While it's possible to beat both encounters even with poor luck on infernals or timings of reverb, ground slam positions, etc, they can be many many times easier if the RNG is treating your raid nicely on one attempt.

Yeah it would have been nice to have some variation for how you gain access to heroics. I really like the idea of the Naaru trial with heroic shattered halls, and think that there should be more quests that reward performance in an instance rather than focusing on repetition. Things like 3-manning some of the normal instances for quests, or having some sort of a timer or escort throughout the zone.

I dislike the keying approach to "unlocking" content reminiscent of all the Tiger woods style of game. Punishing people for not running x content x times is not a way to do it. Reward people for running x content x times.

Bad
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Punishing players
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Content not accessible at all if you haven't done x content x times
Examples: Heroic keys, 25 man raid keying (TK/SC)

Good
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Rewarding players
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More loot / gear available after running x content x times.
Examples: Rep rings, AQ token turn-ins, BWL hourglass sand / Elementium ore, Runes of the Firelord to summon Rag, Naxx Frozen Runes, Rep rewards from vendors.

Questionable (can be good or bad)
-------------------
Questline Keying
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Locking content based on quests completed. If the quest is good then there is no problem. If the quest is bad then it's... bad....

Arcatraz/Kz key = good, the quest requires one trip through multiple dungeons. Guaranteed drops.
Onxyia key = bad, way too many steps.
UBRS key = bad, Parts of the quest are chance drops.


The main reason behind why upfront locking of content based on previous content is bad besides the fact that it's annoying is the fact that you are then locked into one main character unless you play a TON. This could be partially resolved by making account wide keying instead of character keying. Then you only have to jump through the hoop once instead of multiple times. Though this wouldn't solve the problem for people coming late to the party to catch up with everyone else.

I want to play the game I pay for the way I want to play it. I do not want to do 100 dumb things just to get to something I want to do. That is why locking courses in Tiger woods golf is dumb and that's why locking dungeons in WoW is dumb.

The strange thing here is that they had most of it right in WoW1.0 and screwed it up in WoW2.0. A large step backwards in pretty much every way. Why change what wasn't broken?

Terrible, bad, awful. You pay for a service because you want that service. Companies accept some feedback and it can be a productive 2-way street, but the mantra of "I pay for it therefore it should conform to my every demand" is abrasive and crass.

I'll agree with you on the UBRS key because of the random element. But for the Onyxia key I think all they needed to do was seperate out the multiple UBRS runs so that it could be accomplished faster. Just like how the scholo quests required you to run in, kill a boss, run back in, repeat, it's bad design. Other than that though, the Onyxia quest was fantastic because of the epic feel of it.

I really liked that in ZG, the optional bosses were the ones where you had to something extra to get them, but your ability to clear Hakkar was your gear and ability alone. Pre-expansion, things were tuned well enough (I started raiding late) that all the keying business was unimportant compared to your ability to kill things. You could attempt BWL or Naxx early if you wanted, but you'd get put in your place quick if the gear wasn't there. The Karazhan and heroic keys are like that: you get them on the way, doing things you need to gear up anyway. If you havent run things enough for those keys, you probably don't belong there anyway.

Gruul is a little different, a heavy duty roadblock that shuts out an entire instance if he isn't killed. I can't speak to his or serpentshrine's relative difficulty, but I'm just going to ignore the keying business and pretend he's the first boss of serpentshrine, because he functions as the gateway to an instance not unlike Razorgore or Skeram. Except, once people have the gear they want from him, he'll be more skippable.

I mostly agree with Dinadass, but only when talking about your main. I've got an alt that I'm leveling that might be useful to sub into an instance now and then, but between my time spent raiding, running heroics for badges/nethers, and farming consumables/gold, it's going to take me a very long time to get all my rep values up. Even moreso because the rep grind is largely finished in my guild, so I'm going to have to resort to pugs, which can be pretty painful.

Also, it would be nice if there were soloable ways to earn rep up to the keying requirements -- quests are great, but they only get you so far, and it would have been really nice if doing ALL the quests would let you hit your keying requirements. As it stands, you're still going to need to do 5+ instance runs for each rep, which can be hard to do when you're just playing during non-raiding hours. I'd love to be able to earn a little rep during my lunch break, or for an hour post-raid before bed. Also coming up 100 rep short sucks because it means you've got to do a whole rep run, or find people who are willing to bail out mid-instance (not likely).

Also, the way things are tuned right now means that it's going to be harder to effectively 24-man some encounters if you just want to get an undergeared member or alt quickly geared up. But hopefully that'll be changing in the near future.

I'm in agreement there, with the ability to gear yourself comparably with alternate means like crafting you should be able to do so. Well-tuned content shouldn't need artificial blocks like that, it didn't before. But in case you haven't heard,