That's the whole point. Keep in mind the other blanket statement: That 25-man content is inherently and (implied) always harder than 10-man content. That's simply not true. Logically speaking, this is the premise:
Statement 1: All A are less than all members of B
Statement 2: X is a member of A
Logical Result: Therefore X is less than all members of B.
However, if there exists an X that is a member of A that is NOT less than any member of B, then statement 1 is proven false. Likewise, if there exists at least 1 10-man that is harder than at least one thing from the set of all possible 25-man content, then the statement is false. It's logic. That's why I don't believe anyone who says '10-mans cannot be harder than 25-mans'. It's a logical mistake. Are *some* 25-mans harder than *some* 10-mans? Sure. But conversely, is it possible to make 10-mans harder than 25-mans? Sure is. You've proven that very possibility in your above example.
Note that I am not discussing complexity here either. It's just logical proof and the way sets and members of sets work.
I believe the intent of the original statement was that for a given instance, the 10 man will always be easier than the 25 man version of the same instance (due to class/group balancing and fight design/modifications), and was not a blanket statement to the effect of implying that 10 man Icecrown Citadel will be easier than 25 man Naxx (which is your example).
Would the term " welfare raids " discribe what blizz intends to provide the 10 man community with ? I remember reading a number of articles a year ago which vp Ron Pardo mentioned his donut philosophy. Basically the casuals make up the outer-ring and the hardcore are the hole, eventually players move from the outside in as they progress in the game and expand the hardcore playerbase. It seems to me that going with their current strategy is moving away from that. Very hard 10 man's, presumably Ice Crown's raid, will end up being a watered-down version of the real thing.
When Tigole talks about providing 25 man's with " more loot ", does that mean more than 10's will get or a increased rate than we have been getting in TBC? I'd rather have better loot itemization, for example rogue daggers, less spirit on maje gear, crit on sp loots, lack of hit on tank gear, and worthless trinkets.
Would the term " welfare raids " discribe what blizz intends to provide the 10 man community with ? I remember reading a number of articles a year ago which vp Ron Pardo mentioned his donut philosophy. Basically the casuals make up the outer-ring and the hardcore are the hole, eventually players move from the outside in as they progress in the game and expand the hardcore playerbase. It seems to me that going with their current strategy is moving away from that. Very hard 10 man's, presumably Ice Crown's raid, will end up being a watered-down version of the real thing.
When Tigole talks about providing 25 man's with " more loot ", does that mean more than 10's will get or a increased rate than we have been getting in TBC? I'd rather have better loot itemization, for example rogue daggers, less spirit on maje gear, crit on sp loots, lack of hit on tank gear, and worthless trinkets.
I think you are going a bit far calling it a welfare raid when you don't even know the level of complexity the raid would require.
I believe the intent of the original statement was that for a given instance, the 10 man will always be easier than the 25 man version of the same instance (due to class/group balancing and fight design/modifications), and was not a blanket statement to the effect of implying that 10 man Icecrown Citadel will be easier than 25 man Naxx (which is your example).
That's not what was said. That's not even close to what was said. Read it yourself:
I keep seeing people saying "oh well, 10mans will be as hard as 25mans, you just wait and see", but nobody has yet given a plausible example of a 10man raid being even remotely as difficult as a 25man raid. The fact is, a 10man raid CANNOT be as difficult as a 25man because of these class composition issues. If anything, 10 mans should be upped to 15mans, and 25mans upped to 30mans. That would buy some breathing room in guild rosters to guarantee one of each class in each type of raiding.
Be wary of absolutes. I fully believe it is possible for the 10-man version to be more difficult than the 25-man version, unless you're purposely trying to raise the complexity level beyond what is acceptable (i.e. doable by a reasonable portion of your player population). However, due to the self-imposed rules the devs have, this may not be the case. That's more an issue of the arbitrary rules than anything else though, not anything inherent with 10 vs 25.
It's actually fairly easy to make an encounter so complex that it's not really feasible, without hitting the complexity cap. If Blizzard required every raider to solve a randomly generated set of differential equations to defeat M'uru, I'm pretty sure that the successful percentage of players to beat him would be too small to be considered acceptable. For this reason, I believe the theoretical complexity cap to pretty much be infinite. Anything one could make that would be "at the cap" for complexity, I can make more complex simply by saying "Now do it twice."
There's a great IGN interview that talks directly about the lessons learned regarding itemization in TBC. It seems to suggest we'll see more items dropping in raids; or at the very least, no more zones like ZA with only one per boss:
IGN: What were the missteps?
Jeffrey Kaplan: Not having the complete balance between PvP and PvE itemization. In the sheer quality of items you could get. An example would be the barrier to entry to doing something like Zul'Aman and the skill required to kill a boss there versus the barrier to entry to getting a pair of boots out of the honor system that are very high quality. Just not having enough levity there to balance out between the two. I also don't think we rewarded PvE enough, meaning not enough items dropped in PvE instances.
IGN: Just in terms of numbers of drops per boss?
Jeffrey Kaplan: Numbers. Like kill a boss and he drops one thing, for example. It's just not enough with the amount of people there, not when competing with the other avenues of itemization in the game. Some good lessons [included] learning about badge[s] of justice as a currency and that was very successful. Players enjoyed being able to pick what items they wanted rather than the game telling them, "Here's the random thing we're going to give you." That was very successful and expanding more on that system, I think, will be good. We learned that we didn't itemize our heroic dungeons well enough; they were too similar to the normal mode of dungeon and it just didn't feel rewarding enough when you did those heroic modes. So making sure that loot feels awesome and stands on its own tier and is not compared to the tiers below it.
Given the way they're going to itemize PVP gear (3 levels of gear: high Arena requirements; mild Arena requirements; honor/no Arena requirements) it does sound like they're going to be taking a more gradient approach to gear. If the raiding rewards are handled the same way, it would certainly help.
Or don't bother and let a raid of shadow priests win the fight. I mean you can surely beat Supremus right now with 22 holy priests, 1 shadow priest and 2 tanks. I realize this hasn't been done, but does anyone doubt it could be done? 23 priests need to output ~6000 dps while keeping up the tanks and each other. I'm not sure every fight needs to be immune to raid stacking.
That's not what was said. That's not even close to what was said. Read it yourself
Read what he you quoted yourself again. He says the original intent of the statement is that for a given instance, the 10 man will always be easier than the 25 man version of the same instance. No it didn't say that literally, but it sure has been the intent all along and until proven otherwise it holds true.
Other than that -
Thorgrim: Excellent post there even though I don't agree with you :-)
To start it off:
To provide a little perspective from the other end of things, speaking as the leader of one of those Kara guilds, ZA is very difficult for us, in our Kara gear (though it is getting more approachable as we get more badge/MagT gear.) I think the main issue that alot of you guys are missing is that going Kara->ZA without any other T4/T5 content is not really a smooth progression in terms of gear. I think the difficulty gap is a bit wider for that jump than it is (or was, pre-nerfs) from T4 to T5 or T5 to T6. We've got the first two bosses down, and we were about 3 seconds short of the first timer chest on our last run, but we have a lot of trouble even with trash in there and it is going to be a long long time before ZA is 'easy' like Kara is for us now (and that's still a 2 night clear, about 5 hrs total). So, arguments about 'the 10 person bosses will be too trivial' really only matter for that cutting edge of players, I think, the actual intended target audience like me will still struggle with things at first and we will have to work our way through the hard way.
Well that's alright, obviously. It needs to be said though, that the ZA fights are not hard to understand in terms of abilities and what you need to do. They may be hard for you, because you lack gear or your guild doesn't try to play their characters to the absolute limit or your healers and tanks are inexperienced or whatever, but not because they are hard in concept. Simlarly a good friend of mine is in a guild that still flask on Moroes and stacks priests, while we on our last free-badges-for-everyone-run just AoE'd the adds. For a guild like yours (and that of my friend!) the 10-men path is an excellent addition, because there would still be new content ahead of you and you can always look forward to new, exciting and (for you) tough fights that you may not ever see.
Anyway, down here, we're all ecstatic about this change, because it promises, finally, a real raid progression that we can manage with our little guild alliance, without getting bogged down in all the extra management overhead that comes along with 25 person+ content. None of us begrudge "real" raiders their gear advantage, and it sounds like that will be maintained; the only thing that is a bit annoying is that T4 is spread across both raid types. Fixing that, and giving us access to far more content in the expansion means Lich King is the best present Blizzard could give to guilds that are in that casual/raider borderland like us and many others.
The problem "we", the 25-men raiders are having, is the option of an alternative, less complex and inherently easier path to the endgame. To quote Sahael here, "the intent of the original statement was that for a given instance, the 10 man will always be easier than the 25 man version of the same instance". What that means that "we" 25-men raiders can go in the 10-men version, use our "hardcore-ness" to just waltz through the place in a few nights and grab a load of tier7- loot while we pick up the basic principles (the spirit, if you want) of the fights.
We then grab 25 people together and apply this knowledge plus the tier7- gear to have a fairly easy time clearing the 25-men version because we've seen everything already *and* are overgeared for the intended entry-level. While the current lockout idea where the 25'er needs to be cleared at least once works for any given server's top guild, it won't work for all those coming afterwards which is naturally 99%.
What you might get is a mentality that has been prevalent in so many guilds before during the Kz -> Gruul -> Magtheridon transition after 2.1: "oh, this guy is too hard. Let's just farm the 10-men and move on to the next tier (in this case: Lurker and VR)". Some of you will say that such a mentality is bad and not befitting a true raider and I would agree. HOWEVER, we all know that every guild except maybe the top 100 or so has a fair few of players that sign for every farm raid, but can't be arsed to wipe for 3-4 nights on a new fight. And then there's the players that don't really mind wiping given no alternative, but given the alternative they would prefer farm more loot. Giving these two catagories of players the option of running easymode content may very well be detrimental to a LOT of guilds that actually want to run 25-men content.
I think you folks should also consider just how much this is going to open your recruitment possibilities at level 80. Right now guilds that are sitting at the end of BT wanting to go into Sunwell have to cannibalize people from other big raiding guilds to get someone even close to geared well enough to contribute. With a full 10 man progression sitting one gear tier behind the 25s, suddenly the possibilities for recruitment look *much* better to me, especially since there's that set bonus preservation thing going on. In the end I think it will open raiding to a much bigger segment of players, and that can't hurt anyone I don't think.
What I do think is that various 25-men raiding guilds that currently exist will just fall apart somewhere when Naxx25 gets more challenging (not having done original Naxx I wouldnt have a clue where that is but I'm sure there will be something) and that from the ashes of these guilds new 25-men guilds are reformed/merged.
Then after a few months we will all be standing in Ironforge, visually wearing the same sets of armor with the badge/arena loot outclassing the t7/8 sets by miles, while the casuals complain they can't clear tier8 10-men, a big chunk of the 25-men raiders stuck in the t8 content and just farming the 10-men versions until the server's top guild finally kills Arthas-25 so they can do Icecrown Citadel-10.
So, in short - while I do think that for the targeted audience the 10-men raiding will be quite cool for at least Naxx and one or two raids up from than that. It will probably end up "too hard" after that anyway for that specific audience. I also think it will be hurting raiding as a whole. 10-men instances with the same loot of the same sets that looks the same, maintains set bonuses and only has 3 less stamina are a giant carrot that has written "do not go 25-men instances" all over it.
10-men instances with the same loot of the same sets that looks the same, maintains set bonuses and only has 3 less stamina are a giant carrot that has written "do not go 25-men instances" all over it.
I think this thread needs more baseless assumptions. Anyone?
So why couldn't you assume one of each class for 10's?
If you lack a Warrior's MS, go out and make a recruitment post, assuming Wound Poison or Aimed Shot couldn't fit the bill.
This illustrates, IMO, the reason it can't be done.
A lot of the people who are unable to make the jump from 10-man to 25-man today are the people who would quit playing the game entirely before they made any kind of guild recruitment post. These are people who are in guilds with their buddies, who did not build their guilds with any sort of in-game goal in mind, who just want to play.
There is nothing truly magical about having 25 people. Do you believe that the reason most people never make the jump from 10-man to 25-man is really just the numbers and nothing else?
Me, I don't believe that. I think there's a qualitative difference between 10-man raiding and 25-man raiding, and that difference is the reason most people don't make the jump. A 10-man raid is not going to require particular classes, and is not going to require truly min-maxed specs, and is not going to forbid hybrid configurations of hybrid classes. Or, if a 10-man raid does... many of the people who are avoiding 25-man content today will avoid that 10-man content too, and Blizzard will have to go back to the drawing board again for the next expansion.
This illustrates, IMO, the reason it can't be done.
A lot of the people who are unable to make the jump from 10-man to 25-man today are the people who would quit playing the game entirely before they made any kind of guild recruitment post. These are people who are in guilds with their buddies, who did not build their guilds with any sort of in-game goal in mind, who just want to play.
There is nothing truly magical about having 25 people. Do you believe that the reason most people never make the jump from 10-man to 25-man is really just the numbers and nothing else?
Me, I don't believe that. I think there's a qualitative difference between 10-man raiding and 25-man raiding, and that difference is the reason most people don't make the jump. A 10-man raid is not going to require particular classes, and is not going to require truly min-maxed specs, and is not going to forbid hybrid configurations of hybrid classes. Or, if a 10-man raid does... many of the people who are avoiding 25-man content today will avoid that 10-man content too, and Blizzard will have to go back to the drawing board again for the next expansion.
(IMHO, YMMV, IANABE, EIEIO)
There are a number of factors involved, sure. Perhaps it's because they can't get the scheduling down to get that many people on at once. Perhaps it's because some people just aren't good enough players to know not to stand in the fire. Perhaps it's because they feel that they will have to have some sort of gimmicky fight like requiring mind control, spell steal, mortal strike, or something else for a specific battle and not having an alternative method of doing it. And you're probably right in that this solution isn't going to fix everything for everyone.
However, the real big difference is that this will definitely help eliminate certain factors from the equation. How many people don't raid because of scheduling concerns? How many people don't raid because they are bad at seeing fire on the ground? How many people don't raid because they aren't willing to bend on the class requirements? By relaxing certain aspects, you can distill it down and look. Maybe right now you've got X% of the players running 10-man content, and Y% running 25-man content. Next expansion, collect the data and see what X'% and Y'% are. Then in XP#3, they can further tune the model, so they have different selectable difficulty levels (Normal, Heroic, Legendary) or something.
You're right. They'll go back to the drawing board. But it isn't going to a clean slate, they're amassing valuable data about how large player populations distribute themselves, and they're probably the only ones in the world in the position to learn about and capitalize on it.
The problem "us", 25-men raiders are having is the option of an alternative, less complex and inherently easier path to the endgame. To quote Sahael here, "the intent of the original statement was that for a given instance, the 10 man will always be easier than the 25 man version of the same instance". What that means that "we" 25-men raiders can go in the 10-men version, use our "hardcore-ness" to just waltz through the place in a few nights and grab a load of tier7- loot while we pick up the basic principles (the spirit, if you want) of the fights.
I understand this problem, and agree, and this is why even though I don't expect to do any of the WotLK 25-man stuff myself, I hope they stick with the tentative idea that a 10-man raid on a given server is not unlocked on that server until someone has beaten the 25-man version. That's a little harsh for underpopulated servers, but a "beat the 25-man or wait a certain amount of time, whichever comes first" plan would work.
Imagine if Naxxramas-25 was introduced in patch 3.1. On Mal'Ganis, a bunch of people blast through it in only three weeks, so in three weeks, Naxxramas-10 opens up on Mal'Ganis. On Earthen Ring, this takes five weeks, so after five weeks we've opened Naxxramas-10. But on all the servers, Naxxramas-10 opens up in 2 months if it hasn't yet.
This way, the people who are actually surfing the progression wave, beating bleeding-edge content while it's bleeding-edge, will have the 25-man version be the only one available to them while they're learning and gearing up. The "second wave" and beyond of raiders, the ones who wait for other guilds to write up strats on the web, who gear up in PvP and badge gear, who wait for nerfs, they will be able to waltz through the 10-man versions as an accelerated progression path, sure. But that's okay! We have accelerated progression paths today! In fact, this is much better as an accelerated progression path than PvP gear and badge gear are, since you actually get to see some version of all the content.
Seems like the best balance, to me. And it seems like as of the most recent interview, that's exactly what they're considering doing.
I think this thread needs more baseless assumptions. Anyone?
We could have a gallup about that.. Will you or will you not farm 10man version while raiding 25man version?
What do we get from doing only the 25man version? If we do 10man too, are we essentially spoiling the 25man version for ourselves? If you are going for server firsts and do it by farming 10man version, are you "cheating"? There's always those who fall behind a bit, like 3 horde guild clears 25man but alliance doesn't, will the 10man be unlocked for them too?
I suppose a solution to encourage 25mans in WoTLK, is to make the gear extremely better.
MC gear still had items superior to Zul Gurub.
Why must 10man #2 be superior to 25man Naxx? Maybe it won't. But if Arena stays the same, then you can be sure Season 6 will be > Naxx 25 in terms of ilvl.
But I honestly want a real reason to raid large scale encounters. Remember the reasons for doing MC and up?
Unique looking gear - Removed.
Unique encounters - Removed.
E-peen - "How come your Season 3 shoulders have no resilience?"
Long term gear - Removed. If you stopped raiding, your raid gear would most likely be the best you could get for the rest of the game. Now non raiders can look forward to upgrades outside of raiding every patch.
People will only put out so much effort for so much reward until they say "25mans are not worth it". A good analogy is (building a computer from scratch usually provides you large cost savings and better performance, but purchasing a prefab one is the majority of PC purchases). Most people will choose the inferior reward simply because they believe the effort involved in the superior reward is not worth it. Or look at computer processors. Why is it that a 2.5ghz process costs X, but a 2.6 costs sometimes double that of the smaller one.
Just make all 25 man gear better then any 10 man ever released in Lich King, and you likely won't have the problem we are currently looking at.
There are even tiers within that for the 10 and 25-person, so while the art is shared between the 10 and 25-person instances, there are color variants of it, so for example you'll be able to see the difference, but thematically it's the same. Also the sets within that tier, within that instance, work with each other. So a lot like right now the Season 1 Gladiator, Season 2, Season 3 are all part of the same armor set, you can mix and max the pieces and still get the set bonuses. That will be the case for 10 and 25 man instances, so with Naxxramas 10 and 25, if you have the leggings from the 10 man zone and the chest piece from the 25-person zone, you'll be able to wear them together and get the set bonus.
I understand this problem, and agree, and this is why even though I don't expect to do any of the WotLK 25-man stuff myself, I hope they stick with the tentative idea that a 10-man raid on a given server is not unlocked on that server until someone has beaten the 25-man version. That's a little harsh for underpopulated servers, but a "beat the 25-man or wait a certain amount of time, whichever comes first" plan would work.
Imagine if Naxxramas-25 was introduced in patch 3.1. On Mal'Ganis, a bunch of people blast through it in only three weeks, so in three weeks, Naxxramas-10 opens up on Mal'Ganis. On Earthen Ring, this takes five weeks, so after five weeks we've opened Naxxramas-10. But on all the servers, Naxxramas-10 opens up in 2 months if it hasn't yet.
This way, the people who are actually surfing the progression wave, beating bleeding-edge content while it's bleeding-edge, will have the 25-man version be the only one available to them while they're learning and gearing up. The "second wave" and beyond of raiders, the ones who wait for other guilds to write up strats on the web, who gear up in PvP and badge gear, who wait for nerfs, they will be able to waltz through the 10-man versions as an accelerated progression path, sure. But that's okay! We have accelerated progression paths today! In fact, this is much better as an accelerated progression path than PvP gear and badge gear are, since you actually get to see some version of all the content.
Seems like the best balance, to me. And it seems like as of the most recent interview, that's exactly what they're considering doing.
This idea essentially means 10 man gear will trivialize 25mans for the guilds that can complete the 25man in the first place, because the 25man will require no more then heroic gear to complete cause you only have that gear to unlock the 10 man in the first place.
Blizzard said these paths of progression are to be seperate. People complained that being forced to do Kara to do 25mans was unfair. People will complain that being forced to do 25 mans to enter 10man Naxx will be unfair.
Also what about guilds on small servers that could keep the entire server hostage by refusing to attempt the final boss. Already had enough problems with trying to complete Gruul attunement quest with Horde camping the instance every night, making wipes extremely painful since running out would waste an additional 5-10minutes, etc.
This idea essentially means 10 man gear will trivialize 25mans for the guilds that can complete the 25man in the first place, because the 25man will require no more then heroic gear to complete cause you only have that gear to unlock the 10 man in the first place.
Blizzard said these paths of progression are to be seperate. People complained that being forced to do Kara to do 25mans was unfair. People will complain that being forced to do 25 mans to enter 10man Naxx will be unfair.
Also what about guilds on small servers that could keep the entire server hostage by refusing to attempt the final boss. Already had enough problems with trying to complete Gruul attunement quest with Horde camping the instance every night, making wipes extremely painful since running out would waste an additional 5-10minutes, etc.
How, exactly, will 10-man gear "trivialize" the 25-man encounters? Even on those encounters where gear is a significant advantage, like DPS burn fights or heavy tank-damage fights, the only place where a 25-man guild will have a legitimate advantage from doing 10-mans is Naxx. Since 10-mans are a "tier below" 25-mans, then when it comes time to move on from naxx-25 to malygos-25/malygos-10 or whatever, there will be little or no gear incentive to choose the 10-man. It drops loot of an equivalent tier to what drops in naxx-25, after all.
AS for guilds on small servers purposefully bottlenecking 25-man bosses, I don't see it. It would only happen on servers where there is only a single guild that's qualified to do that content, AND has a malicious or exploitive streak. If it happens at all, it will happen on a few servers, and those servers will auto-complete soon enough. Easy.
As for Gruul - wha? The graveyard at that instance is literally less than a minute from the instance door. Just ghost back after a wipe.
This illustrates, IMO, the reason it can't be done.
A lot of the people who are unable to make the jump from 10-man to 25-man today are the people who would quit playing the game entirely before they made any kind of guild recruitment post. These are people who are in guilds with their buddies, who did not build their guilds with any sort of in-game goal in mind, who just want to play.
There is nothing truly magical about having 25 people. Do you believe that the reason most people never make the jump from 10-man to 25-man is really just the numbers and nothing else?
Me, I don't believe that. I think there's a qualitative difference between 10-man raiding and 25-man raiding, and that difference is the reason most people don't make the jump. A 10-man raid is not going to require particular classes, and is not going to require truly min-maxed specs, and is not going to forbid hybrid configurations of hybrid classes. Or, if a 10-man raid does... many of the people who are avoiding 25-man content today will avoid that 10-man content too, and Blizzard will have to go back to the drawing board again for the next expansion.
(IMHO, YMMV, IANABE, EIEIO)
I think this is a very accurate description of what motivates most of the people in my guild, at least. We don't mind technical fights, but when you get to the point of person X having to respec in a specific way for fight Y, then it moves out of our comfort zone for sure.
It should be said that I doubt there are very few 10 man raiders who care much about the speed at which our content is 'unlocked' compared to the 25 person raids. Having to have Arthas die in a 25 person raid before I can go in there in a 10 person version doesn't bother me in the slightest, because frankly when it happens we will still be at least one or two raids back from that. Granted, it is easy for me to say, since I can probably safely assume that Juggernaut or Drow will still be pushing through the newest content pretty quickly on my server, but as long as there's a failsafe timer for the small servers, it should still be OK.
How, exactly, will 10-man gear "trivialize" the 25-man encounters? Even on those encounters where gear is a significant advantage, like DPS burn fights or heavy tank-damage fights, the only place where a 25-man guild will have a legitimate advantage from doing 10-mans is Naxx. Since 10-mans are a "tier below" 25-mans, then when it comes time to move on from naxx-25 to malygos-25/malygos-10 or whatever, there will be little or no gear incentive to choose the 10-man. It drops loot of an equivalent tier to what drops in naxx-25, after all.
AS for guilds on small servers purposefully bottlenecking 25-man bosses, I don't see it. It would only happen on servers where there is only a single guild that's qualified to do that content, AND has a malicious or exploitive streak. If it happens at all, it will happen on a few servers, and those servers will auto-complete soon enough. Easy.
As for Gruul - wha? The graveyard at that instance is literally less than a minute from the instance door. Just ghost back after a wipe.
Because the 25 man instance has to be designed with the assumption that a reasonable amount of guilds using only Heroic gear can complete the instance. If guilds can't complete the instance, then the 10 man doesn't get unlocked, and everyone waits for the auto unlock anyway, so why even put the condition on if its not to expected to be completed. It just dumbs down the instance if you are expected to be able to do it with gear quality below the 2nd best source of gear in the game (The 10 man it unlocks).
They tried this technique with Shattered Halls heroic, and completing the timed run was far more difficult then Void Reaver, something you needed to do to actually fight VR. Pre nerf Shattered Halls was one, if not the hardest heroic in the game. That strategy failed, and attunements were removed relatively fast. They are now trying to force people to do harder content to unlock easier content. If it failed before, why are they even considering repeating it?
Also, the guilds that do the unlocking are essentially working on a harder then normal version of the boss, because everyone that does the boss after them will have superior gear then what they had to work with. Is this really fair? Great motivation, to create easier bosses for every successive guild under you.
Because the 25 man instance has to be designed with the assumption that a reasonable amount of guilds using only Heroic gear can complete the instance. If guilds can't complete the instance, then the 10 man doesn't get unlocked, and everyone waits for the auto unlock anyway, so why even put the condition on if its not to expected to be completed. It just dumbs down the instance if you are expected to be able to do it with gear quality below the 2nd best source of gear in the game (The 10 man it unlocks).
They tried this technique with Shattered Halls heroic, and completing the timed run was far more difficult then Void Reaver, something you needed to do to actually fight VR. Pre nerf Shattered Halls was one, if not the hardest heroic in the game. That strategy failed, and attunements were removed relatively fast. They are now trying to force people to do harder content to unlock easier content. If it failed before, why are they even considering repeating it?
Also, the guilds that do the unlocking are essentially working on a harder then normal version of the boss, because everyone that does the boss after them will have superior gear then what they had to work with. Is this really fair? Great motivation, to create easier bosses for every successive guild under you.
Ouch...this logic astounds me.
First, the difficulty with the attunements was that the "scrubs" had to do it themselves. Here they don't have to do anything, just let the crazy hardcore people open the 10 man for them.
Second, that's happening RIGHT NOW with badge loot. And yeah, people bitched about it, but most people just raced into Sunwell. Who the hell cares what everyone else is doing when you're going for server firsts?
I think this thread needs more baseless assumptions. Anyone?
How is it a baseless assumption when it's basically a summary of what the interviews are telling us?
The interviews with the devs have already told us the sets will share set bonuses (which I'm not really looking forward to, considering ZG/AQ20 set bonuses were hugely inferior compared to T1-T2 set gear). This whole thing seems to be aimed at recycling art: just create one set, change the colors slightly for each avenue of raiding/pvp, and finished. Honestly, Blizz could do better, especially since Naxx25 is just going to recycle Naxx40 tier designs again.
How is it a baseless assumption when it's basically a summary of what the interviews are telling us?
The interviews with the devs have already told us the sets will share set bonuses (which I'm not really looking forward to, considering ZG/AQ20 set bonuses were hugely inferior compared to T1-T2 set gear). This whole thing seems to be aimed at recycling art: just create one set, change the colors slightly for each avenue of raiding/pvp, and finished. Honestly, Blizz could do better, especially since Naxx25 is just going to recycle Naxx40 tier designs again.
The interviews also told us that the 25-man set would be approximately one tier above the 10-man set. Are you honestly saying that going from T5 to T6 gained you a total of 3 stamina? It's not even a baseless assumption, it's an outright falsehood.
In TBC as a whole, gear was never a problem, I mean fully MC geared priests had about +400 healing that went to about +650 in BWL and ZG enchants, so that's more than 50%ish buff, while moving from crafts and blues to T4 improved my healing from +1400 to +1700, which is about 20%ish buff.
So, as assumptios as this may sound, when at 80 numbers start hitting the +3000 healing would require about a 1000 just to make moving from tire to tire a real game breaking buff.
There are however items in the TBC that did prove to be quit the buff, most of the 4 part tire 6 bonuses, and some really great trinkets (skull, madness, memento) and lastly the warglavies. no matter how high a level a badge item is, or a 10 man raid item for that matter, if items like these are 25 man exclusive, then it will still have an audience.
The interviews also told us that the 25-man set would be approximately one tier above the 10-man set. Are you honestly saying that going from T5 to T6 gained you a total of 3 stamina? It's not even a baseless assumption, it's an outright falsehood.
Some classes, only one stat is of any signifigance, such as +dam for shadowpriests. Some cases, a higher tier of item spends all the extra budget on everything the person doesn't want, and as such is hardly a worthwhile upgrade for their primary role in a raid.
Its not just Tier 4 that 25man gear is competing against. Its arena gear, badge gear, profession gear. I remember a time when Tier 6 was an "ok" upgrade over Frozen Shadowweave. How much of an upgrade is the 25man gear going to be compared to the rest of the game. The smaller the upgrade, the less incentive to do the effort required to achieve it.
Oh and here is hoping that the 25man gear gets the decent looking colours for the rehashed armour sets. "Haha, you got pink power ranger outfit, that means you did the 10man. Well I am the white ranger, and that shows I did the 25man!"
How much of an upgrade is the 25man gear going to be compared to the rest of the game. The smaller the upgrade, the less incentive to do the effort required to achieve it.
If you cant be bothered to do it, then, uhm, dont do it?
I'm sure others will.
Originally Posted by SanSul
Because the 25 man instance has to be designed with the assumption that a reasonable amount of guilds using only Heroic gear can complete the instance. If guilds can't complete the instance, then the 10 man doesn't get unlocked, and everyone waits for the auto unlock anyway, so why even put the condition on if its not to expected to be completed. It just dumbs down the instance if you are expected to be able to do it with gear quality below the 2nd best source of gear in the game (The 10 man it unlocks).
They are now trying to force people to do harder content to unlock easier content. If it failed before, why are they even considering repeating it?
Normally the second best gear would be from BOTH the previous 25-man and new 10 man?? I Fail to see the issue.
People unlocking the next 10 man in a 25-man would have the gear from the previous 25-man.
If you are only talking about the first 25-man in WOTLK, then its pretty fair to assume you wont have to unlock the first 10-man, but it will be available from the beginning (And offer whatever-gear, since it obviously cant offer the tier of an 25-man which doesnt exist). No way they will have the very first 10 man locked in the beginning, giving the majority of people nothing to do when they hit 80.
Now we dont even know if they will make the 10 mans unlockable at all, its all speculation. Obviously Blizzard can see issues with it too, since they are only considering it.
For the reuse of item set art, its fun how this always seems to be of great concern to Blizz. They will make you lots of different new stuff, but new looking armors? No way!
It can only mean it takes a hell of a lot art design time to make new items, which is hard to believe, but there arent much other reasonable explanations (wanting to piss people off with a Pink Tier 9 hardly works... even if I could understand the wish to do so)
I think some of you are reading a bit too much into this parallel raid progression thing. Players wanted this. Remember how there was such a huge uproar created by players at the starting of raiding TBC? Because a lot of guilds felt forced to do Kara first, then after that, having to jump straight into King Maulgher and Gruul and Magtheridon, which were a big step up in dificulty was difficult. And SSC at that point before nerfs was almost undoable by most guilds.
There was tons of drama. Whole guilds that split, dissolved, etc. All the A team, B team business. And at the core of it, it was because the raid game was Kara -> Gruul -> Magetheridon -> SSC. It forced guilds to field seperate 10 man teams which then later had to bombine to form 25 mans.
All this only evened out much better later when 25 man raiding progressed beyond ssc/tk into MH/BT territory. People asked for a return to MC days at the peak of the outroar and displeasure over raiding before MH/BT came out. Why? Because MC was easy. A guild just needed numbers and it could still get epics. MC and Onyxia was 40 man raiding on training wheels. BWL, AQ40 was progression where things got progressively harder. And later AQ40 starting at huhuran and Naxx was where the gloves came off.
So, a guild raid force could start out as total newbies to raiding. And MC/Onyxia would wipe them into shape. By the time they killed ragnaros, they would be ready for BWL. Raiding as 40 was different from raiding as 10.
Simiarly, raiding as 25 was different from raiding as 10. So Karazhan, was in no way or form "raid 25" on training wheels given that it didn't even require 25 people. You could have an A team that cleared Karahan in one day, and if you remaining 15 people weren't up to speed, you weren't even going to kill High King.
Blizzard realised in TBC in hindsight with experience now that it was the wrong progression. you do NOT go from 10 man easy kara to 25 man Gruul without a lot of difficulty. And magtheridon, which stayed difficuly until only recently, frustrated even more 25 man guilds.
They realised that regardless of how many people had alredy raided pre TBC, there were new guilds being formed all the time, and experience was always uneven. So, you HAD to have a 25 man training wheels instance to get the newbie 25 man raid team working together cohesively for more. High king, Gruul, and Magetheridon were NOT suitable as such because these bosses were too complex for their starter level.
And they also found that there were guilds that for various reasons would never form a 25 man. They just never grew big enough. But the core team was tired of only having kara to raid. They then realised that they needed to provide two concurrent raid games to satisy everyone. a 10 man progression track and a 25 man progression track and these had to be seperate.
Now, ideally, these would be seperate in all ways. Right down to the content itself. So, you would have 10 man starter raid dungeon -> 10 man moderate raid dungeons -> 10 man difficult and 10 man ultimate. And you would have a 25 man progression lots of dungeons too. And all of these would be different. That is the ideal.
But to really achieve all that, they would need to develop and build double the content. Like the above exmaple, they need to build 8 seperate raid dungeons just to keep 2 seperate progression tracks happy. The resources required are extreme.
The only way is to modify it somewhat. So, design 4 or 5 raid dungeons. But have a 10 man version and have a 25 man version for it. Its the only way to still hve two seperate paths which will keep both groups happy, and yet, not have to hire another entire team of designers just to build so many more new raid dungeons.
Many of you think guilds will gravitate to the 10 man. Maybe some will. But the bigger guilds will still do the 25 man. Especially if they have a "training wheels" version 25 man starter raid like MC and Onyxia was in WOTLK. Imagine, if I already can get 25 people together, and get easy epics via magalos (onyxis version 2). Why bother splitting into two groups to kill puny magalos version nerffed to get inferior epics?
Once the 25 man raiding gets going, and the weekly supply of epics come in. It will alway continue. the ten mans will be done casually be the super hardcore, or those with more time, on offdays and such. The serious raid days will all go to 25 man content.
Think: I am guild/raid leader. Which will I do.
Say I already have starter 25 raid dungeon A on farm. 20 T7 epics every week. Do I push aggressively into moderate 25 raid dungeon B to get T8 epics? The alternative?
I split my raid force up into two and a half or three tem man groups. To try and do moderate 10 men raid dungeon C. And all I will get for my troubles, is T6.5 ? or at best T7 ? And they are doing that anyways on off nights in the first place.
Any serious raid leader will just push on deeper into the 25 man raid dungones. See? each has its own progression path! So, as long as blizard doesn't make the same mistake, and front load some magtheridon style difficulty raid boss at the very start of 25 man, and block all 25 man raiding from ever taking off, it will work like a charm.
The only danger is that the ten man raiding may progress much faster than the 25 man version. So, 25 man progression gets boring because the people have seen it and done it in ten man versions. This is a real danger that doesn't exist right now because the content is totally different. ZA and Kara are different content wise from SSC/TK/MH/BT. You fight different bosses, in different settings.
But since they don't have the resoures to keep it that seperate content wise, they have to make do with a ten men and 25 men version. So, it runs the danger of making the 25 man version boring cos people will have seen it already. I mean, if we had killed Kael as a ten man boss once, even if he was much harder, it would be kinda boring to kill him again in the 25 man version.
One way is to stagger out the roll out. The 25 man version will always come out first. the ten men version dungeon will come out much later when a significant percentage of the guilds have already conquered the 25 man version.
So, 25 man raid dungeon B comes out first. maybe 2 months later, then 10 man raid dungeon B comes out. This way, 25 man raid dungeons stay as the cutting edge of raid content and difficulty, as they should be. Now, this is not so ideal cos it means the ten men raid guilds have to wait longer for their content to come out. But its better this way.
Ideally of course, if the two were totally different content wise, then they can be a simultaneous roll out. But it would probably create a lot of pressure to come out with so much new content all at once. So, the best way I see it would be to have staggered rollouts, with the ten man version specifically delayed two or three months behind the 25 man version.
05/12/08, 6:35 PM
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