Pacing the Release of Raid Content - Page 8

Narugh · 06/05/07, 10:22 AM

I'm not in a raiding guild but have a couple of questions to you who raid "end game".

1. How do you feel about the earlier strategy of releasing very hard bosses that only the really good guilds could kill and then after some months nerf them to ease progress for the not so skilled/not so hardcore? Do you find it unfair that "newbieguild1" did not have to kill Boss 1.0 to get the same loot that you had to or is it a nice strategy to challenge as many people as possible?

2. Would it be viable for Blizzard to hotfix some of the Black Temple bosses now and add more hp/dps/whatever to make them more of a challenge, or would that stir up a shit storm if suddenly people(including nihilum and curse) are stuck on Teron for example.

Vernichter · 06/05/07, 10:26 AM

With regards to pacing of content releases, I am personally a proponent of the WoW 1.x timetable; whereby, the top guilds farm content and then take breaks while lesser guilds have time to catch up. I am also a strong advocate of meaningful gear progression, as it gives a sense of accomplishment, provides a mechanism for allowing less skilled guilds to succeed by farming the previous tier more extensively, and contributes to pacing within dungeons. Gear progression was very evident in WoW 1.x (and now in 2.1). The transitions in gear from 5-mans>ZG/MC>BWL/AQ20>AQ40>Naxx were all significant and meaningful (with the possible exception of all the side-grades and off-spec gear in AQ40). Periodic content releases give the best guilds time to farm and then take a break while allowing less dedicated or capable guilds to catch up. Furthermore, as Elendril noted, it prevents guilds from having *too* much to do.

If BT and Hyjal were not out yet but the tuning was the same in SSC and TK, Nihilum, the top guilds would still raid those on a weekly basis until they were satisfied with their gear. They might only need two or three nights a week to raid, but they could continue to do that for a month or two now that Kael'thas and Vashj are properly tuned. Instead, they racked up one or two Vashj kills and one Kael'thas kill and jumped right into BT and Hyjal. They have consumed content at a frantic pace because it was there to be consumed and there were no checks in place to impede them. Honestly, I wish that Vashj and Kae'thas only dropped 4 vials again, simply as an artificial method of stretching out content.

At the end of the day, pacing in a MMORPG can only be accomplished in a handful of ways:

- Content release timetables
- Artificial timesinks
- Fight complexity
- Character requirements (aka gear or some other similar limiter like feats, skill books, etc)

Whether intentional or not, WoW 1.x effectively used release timetables to limit top guilds, fight complexity to limit lesser guilds, and character requirements to limit everyone to some degree. WoW 1.x also used artificial sinks such as essentially impossible encounters (like C'thun 1.0) in order to give the developers some margin if they mistuned fights.

The problem with BT and Hyjal is that it seems like Blizzard only used fight complexity and character requirements to dictate pacing, and they failed to properly implement the character requirements. In one action they made SSC and TK accessible, reduced the timesink of consumables, and opened the doors to bosses after SSC and TK which did not require extensive gear from Al'ar, Solarian, Vashj, or Kael'thas. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that fight complexity was effectively maxed out in SSC and TK. The fights in BT/Hyjal can be new and different, but they really cannot be more complicated. The only tool that Blizzard really had to impede the progress of top guilds is gear requirements, and when they missed the mark on those they made it possible for the best guilds to annihilate the new content in a matter of days.

I am glad that the content is accessible and that even a lowly casual guild like mine might one day complete it, but Blizzard took away all their pacing tools except for gear requirements, and then they goofed up those requirements. I can think of no other explanation for Nihilum and Curse killing the Illidari Council within a few hours of seeing them for the first time and within two weeks of their first Kael'thas kills. It cheapens SSC and TK, it cheapens BT, and it really undermines the longevity of all of this new and exciting content.

Ed. What the hell is all the shadow resist gear from the Ashtongue for, anyway? In Naxx they used resist gear as a pacing mechanism, and while it might have been somewhat inelegant, it worked. Why in the world is that gear unnecessary for some intermediate BT boss? I will be extremely dissappointed if you fight Illidan in shadow resist gear instead of shiny Tier 5/6, but, by the same token, I'm going to be flabbergasted if you do not need it for anything (like the badge FR).

Nausicca · 06/05/07, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by Vernichter

I'm going to be flabbergasted if you do not need it for anything (like the badge FR).

Apparently Illidan has some spawns that are doing massive fire damage, thats probably what the badge FR is for.

♦ Praetorian · 06/05/07, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by Vernichter

Ed. What the hell is all the shadow resist gear from the Ashtongue for, anyway? In Naxx they used resist gear as a pacing mechanism, and while it might have been somewhat inelegant, it worked. Why in the world is that gear unnecessary for some intermediate BT boss? I will be extremely dissappointed if you fight Illidan in shadow resist gear instead of shiny Tier 5/6, but, by the same token, I'm going to be flabbergasted if you do not need it for anything (like the badge FR).

My understanding is that the SR is for Mother Shahraz. But uh, yeah, we saw how that turned out. (Correct me if I'm wrong, just going on what I've been told.)

Vernichter · 06/05/07, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by Nausicca

Apparently Illidan has some spawns that are doing massive fire damage, thats probably what the badge FR is for.

<- Starts a heroic mechannar run to gear up for Illidan. Swaps out drop from SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT.

While part of me would see some justice in this, the rest of me would be weeping. Note: I left out the demon tank for Leothras on the FR comment. That was my mistake.

Originally Posted by Praetorian

My understanding is that the SR is for Mother Shahraz. But uh, yeah, we saw how that turned out. (Correct me if I'm wrong, just going on what I've been told.)

That could be the most depressing thing I have read with regards to WoW in quite a while. If true, that would be completely assinine, because it would mean that two partial clears would be enough to get the requisite resist gear for the raid. How could they have possibly screwed up the tuning on a resistance fight so badly? The Sapphiron method of an aura that hits everyone and makes the healing requirements too high without said gear should be trivial to tune compared to other boss tuning.

Nuveena · 06/05/07, 11:11 AM

Which would be different from all the other "resistance" fights in TBC in what way?

Seems like we will have gear for all 5 types of resistance available, but only a few tanks will use it, on Hydross.

• Chicken · 06/05/07, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by Nausicca

Apparently Illidan has some spawns that are doing massive fire damage, thats probably what the badge FR is for.

I find it kind of amusing how the 'What is the heroic FR gear for?' questions get pushed farther and farther back.

Initially people said Magtheridon, then it changed to A'lar, then to Kael'thas, then to Supremus, and now to Illidan.

♦ Praetorian · 06/05/07, 11:14 AM

Didn't you know? The real use for the epic SR gear is for when you see a shadow priest + warlock 2v2 team running out of the opposite gate.

(Seriously though, it's kind of odd that they've given us full epic resist sets for two elements now with no apparent use beyond one or two specific players in specific fights.)

Alhena · 06/05/07, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Amera

Well that was the point several other posters were making. Other than broken bosses, high consumable requirements, or staggering instance releases, there is simply no way to make a fight a guild can't beat in a week or two of work. So since they released it all at once, they are left with the real possibility of having many people having worthwhile to do in a few weeks and months.

I'd add "massive learning curve" to that list, but even then, I think the top end of the raiding community has gotten much more used to solving very complex encounters, and complicated execution is no longer as big a deal as it was. Same with consumables, actually, based on what I read here. Even casual raiders like me think of consumables in a different way than we used to.

In retrospect, it should have been clear this would happen when Blizz put the majority of the raid content into TBC at the start.

How fast would a good, skilled, dedicated guild have progressed through the old world content had it all been available at once? That's a serious question. If you could take a top guild, and drop them into WoW 1.0 a few months after release, and make all the raid content available to them, MC through Naxx, how long do you think it would take them to down Kel'Thuzad?

I'll bet you the answer isn't "almost 2 years." The staggered release schedule was a good idea, in my opinion, if only because it prevented the best of the best from devouring the content in one massive gulp. I honestly don't think Blizzard is capable of releasing content as quickly as bleeding edge players defeat it.

Suesse · 06/05/07, 11:19 AM

If the developers accidentally design a fight which benefits from FR, they don't want people going back to MC (Maraudon style) to get their FR.

Crowl · 06/05/07, 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Didn't you know? The real use for the epic SR gear is for when you see a shadow priest + warlock 2v2 team running out of the opposite gate.

(Seriously though, it's kind of odd that they've given us full epic resist sets for two elements now with no apparent use beyond one or two specific players in specific fights.)

Maybe blizzard were worried people wouldn't want to run heroics so they put in all that FR kit with the intention of putting in a fight that needed it, as it turned out people run plenty of heroics anyway, so there was no need to carry through on actually implementing the resist fight.

• Chicken · 06/05/07, 11:24 AM

On the subject more of whether Blizzard should have staggered the content, we should remember we're benefiting from hindsight when viewing it now. It's easy to say now that it's been tried out in the expansion that it's probably better to stagger the content, but if you'd asked most people before the release "What'd you prefer, always a next step ready or having to wait for it to get patched in?" most people would definitely have picked the first option.

I know I would have, though due to the fact that I'm not in a cutting edge guild (far from it), that's pretty much how the game has always seemed to me. By the time my guild had killed Ragnaros, BWL was well tuned, by the time we were basically done with BWL, AQ was released, by the time we were practically done with AQ, Naxx was released, I think the only content we've seen that was adjusted after we'd initially tried it was Gruul, Magtheridon and the SSC trash; the rest was already 'tuned' by the time we got there (Chromaggus' Time Lapse is one of the few other exceptions I can think of).

Shadout · 06/05/07, 11:25 AM

The shadow res and fire gear is for Neltharion! Or maybe not.

Wondered one thing when reading through this topic, many people are stating that the expansion is 1 year away, which is probably true, and thus, if Nihilum clears Illidan tomorrow, they got 12 months for wanking.
Afaik, blizz has not stated they will not add more raids before next expansion?
(other than the 10 man troll instance ofc, talking about 25 man).
Sure, it would still give a long time for farming old stuff, but they could "easily" throw in another instance in a half year for example.

Other than that, its hard not to agree that the new encounters seems too easy. Blizz was probably afraid to redo the early BC mistake. But overtuned new bosses really is better than undertuned ones. Since it feels worse to rectify the unbalanced encounters toward being harder after some months.

Whether or not mass releasing instances is the right thing to do, I hope and somewhat believe Blizz has learned from BC, and will tune down the scope of future expansions somewhat (and thus trying to release them more often too). Add less new instances, zones etc per expansion, which has proven to be impossible for them to balance decently at one time. They get a much better knowledge about how later dungeons should be tuned, by watching the progress in earlier dunegons, and ofc, it allows them to test it better on PTR, compared to the awful (non-existing) BC-beta testing.

Gumibear · 06/05/07, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Jager

I really hope they don't go back and do a tuning pass on this stuff. After Naxx -> Original Gruul -> SSC 2.0 -> TK 2.0, nothing would make me happier than going back on farm mode for a few months, with a night in SSC, TK, Hyjal, then BT to wrap everything up, enjoying the rest of the week to play with my new toys. Wiping to "farm content" because it's so tightly tuned is not my idea of a fun game anymore; perhaps I'm lazy/selfish but that's the way I feel.

I think the most fun I had playing the game was after we got our first Rag kill and had 2 nights of farming Onyxia/MC, and the rest of the time to PVP or do whatever.

I love raiding. But I love other areas of the game too, and I agree that I'd like to see an end, if only temporarily, so I have more time to enjoy other areas of the game. I know if I'm killing Illidan several months before the next expansion, I won't be quitting for lack of things to do. WoW offers too many fun alternatives to raiding to simply quit once one is finished until the next expansion.

♦ Praetorian · 06/05/07, 11:28 AM

Well, to retreat from my own griping for a moment, here's a sense of perspective.

MC v1.0: All bosses died as soon as organized groups of 40 attempted them. We killed Lucifron on our second trip to MC (2/5/05) and then continued to kill bosses every day or two until we hit Domo, with no raiding UI and no goddamned clue what we were doing.

Ragnaros: Killed within one week of being fixed in April 2005.

BWL: Steamrolled by Fury on Day 1. Thereafter every boss died immediately upon being hotfixed/patched. Nefarian died ~10 days after being patched, though the main delay there was simply that most guilds did not know how to trigger phase 2. There were all sorts of theories. Once people learned it was "kill 40," kills came quickly.

AQ40: Fury on Medivh had cleared to C'Thun within a week of their gates opening, in January 2006. Most "good" guilds were at C'Thun within ~10 days of their gates opening. Obviously C'Thun/Ouro died the day they got hotfixed.

Naxx: DnT had cleared through Thaddius within 2 weeks of the zone opening, while other guilds had gotten Heigan/Gothik in the meantime. Loatheb took another couple of weeks just because people were still coming to terms with the whole "ok, yeah, you need to world buff for this shit" dynamic. Then 4H. 4H were the roadblock for over a month. Sapphiron died within a week after 4H, and Kel died within a week after Sapphiron.

So yeah, in the history of WoW, there is a grand total of one fight that has taken guilds longer than 3-4 weeks to learn without being bugged/untuned, and that is 4H.

Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised?

Though, to play devil's advocate with myself, I think it might have taken much longer for fights like Loatheb, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad to be learned if not for world buffs. Loatheb was kind of dumb, but Sapp/K'T without world buffs were MUCH harder than 4H could hope to be.