Valerian

As long as boss despawning timer is long enough that an "average" guild can spend a normal evening on them without getting blocked because of it, I dont have a problem with it.

A short despawn timer just means the lesser guilds are going to get frustrated and screwed by it.

 

Hildegard

The downside is that the race starts under different levels. If you had a two to three hour despawn timer execution instead of time would be the deciding factor. I personally think that it would be somehow better for many people to restrict that time. Because top end raiding forces you basically to do everything you can do to be most sucessful.

A very harsh example with professional sports. If doping would be allowed to use freely - what do you think how many top end players would decide not to us it ? So sometimes it is better for a sport to limit certain things you are able/allowed to do in order to suceed. Of course you cannot compare doping to raiding 50 hours, the example is simply about the fact, that limiting possibilites can enrich a sport.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Vaeys

What if it is based on the number of attempts per week, and not a strict timer? eg, 10 attempts a week - regardless of if you do them all in one sitting, or spread across multiple days. (or adjust that number higher or lower - 5 attempts, 15, 20, whatever).

 

Bula

Tuning content to the super hardcore is a sure fire disaster that blizzard is going to try to avoid. As was said, you tune the content for the average and accept the fact that the power guilds will eat it up almost as fast as you can cook it. Doing something like this would only hurt the casual guild in the end; "well our top 2 dps are out tonight, I don't think it's a good idea for us to attempt gruul because we only have 8 more attempts this week, so lets save him til Johnny can be on tomorrow to give us the best shot, sorry guys go run heroics or something". This is a game you want to pay monthly for?

 

GSH

Casual guilds rarely attempt new bosses on multiple evenings. In many ways, most casual guilds would not even notice a 4-hour despawn timer. Combine that with the two-instances-per-Tier structure of TBC, and it pretty much would have zero direct impact on how the lower end raids.

 

Hildegard

The idea is to increase the amount of tries/time for bosses over time. You wouldn't really need to start it in Naxxramas or atleast not for anything but perhabs Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad for the first few weeks of the expansion.

Casual guilds didn't start on gruul three weeks after the expansion was out.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Pamandria

You could also have a model where you're only allowed 4 hours per day (something like a boss being up for 4 hours after his first pull, despawning when 4 hours are up, and respwaning 20 hours later). That way you can avoid a situation like "We cleared MC on Tuesday, killed razorgore and got our hour on Vael on Wendsday, see you next week."

 

Ralnar

Number of attempts per day/week could also be an exhaustible resource for the entire instance. Unneeded attempts on earlier bosses could be used for extra attempts on a later boss.

Using "The Eye" as an example:
Al'ar - Entry boss unlimited tries, on death drops [Nether Key]x3
VR & Sol - Mid bosses 2 "free tries", after the free tries Kael grows wise and protects one of his many lieutenants with a barrier than a [Nether Key] will unlock for another attempt. Both would drop [Nether Key]x3 on death.
Kael - End boss 3 "free tries", after which he locks his room to prevent distractions, [Nether Key] can be used to enter for another attempt. On death, he would drop [Keeper's Key] which would allow unlimited retries on bosses in "The Eye". (would be a good candidate for a "guild bound" item flag)

(Numbers used are just made up)

In a purely linear progression raid environment (TBC before attunement removal) I would be strongly against this setup as a "medium" raiding guild for anything but the final raid instance. However with WotLK being opened up where you have multiple progression paths this is more appealing, since getting stuck in one instance wouldn't end a raiding week early.

It would also reward the players who took the time to learn the boss in the 10 man instance before switching over to the 25 man version.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

What's the real goal of this?

I don't think anyone really enjoyed Ragnaros despawning, or Vael/Nef despawning as a way to slow progress. I don't think the consumables option in Naxx was fondly remembered either (unless you really love picking grave moss). They also tried this in Naxx with frozen runes, but server transfers pretty much nullified that part of it.

Giving limited tries on a boss isn't really fun. If you're going to slow people down, it's better to do it after an accomplishment.

You killed Twins but the next gate isn't open? Enjoy your win, take a break for a few days, and come back next week. There were very very few complaints about this, and nobody had to spend insane amounts of time trying to catch up.

 

Bula

How in the world can you be so sure what casual guilds do and don't do on their raiding week? My guild which I raided with pre-bc and for a while post-bc was incredibly "casual" yet put many attempts into bosses like Prince, HKM, Gruul, etc. each week. Why? Because those bosses were the pinnacle of tier4, thats where my guild was at the time, and we couldn't kill them reliably so it took many attempts. Explain to me again how this is a zero-impact on the "lower end" of which you know so much about?

If there were 8 bosses before Magtheridon in his lair that could be taken out by a guild on their way to him to provide upgrades and then magtheridon was on a 10 attempt limit per week that is one thing but putting players right in front of a huge challenge and then telling them they can only try 10 times is crippling, and would be flat out stupid of blizzard.

You are using the pre-bc mentality of having expansive zones with relatively simple bosses in the post-bc world of t4 raid zones containing 1 to 2 bosses.

Again, the only reason this is even an issue is because people perceive the guilds who kill the bosses first as powerful. And they may be so, however there are thousands of guilds in this game who aren't SK gaming. Telling those guilds that even though they are efficient in their attempts and possible resets of a boss that they can't try anymore that week because they hit "the wall", and the only reason the wall was erected in the first place was due to something player driven and completely and totally outside of their control... quite frankly that sounds like griefing on a large scale to me.

Tried to post this like 10 minutes ago and timed out =(

Edit - You guys are all describing a pacing mechanism which has already been used by blizzard for a long time. It's called trash mobs. Putting a hard limit on a boss attempt and saying "you have tried enough, now come back next week" is borderline idiotic, it's telling people you don't want them to keep trying. However, having a simple thing like trash respawn on a timer will have the exact same effect but wont leave the players feeling like blizzard is sticking it to them on purpose, because trash respawning is a mechanic that players understand.

 

Tanoshii

To be honest. I think they were doing option one with BT/Hyjal (the top guilds cleared it extremely fast, but for the average raiding guild at that progression level, which would still be considered hardcore by most WoW players, the zones lasted anywhere from 2 months+. In the end, yes some people complained it was too easy, but I never saw it cause near the instability and unhappiness some Sunwell bosses seem to be causing guilds who killed Illidan well over half a year ago. A boss that takes a long while to kill may keep some people playing and paying longer, but at what cost in guild breakups and player frustration, which could have the opposite effect and lead to cancelled suscriptions?

I may get some heat for it but I think in the end, they leaned too far towards the extremely hardcore/world top <insert number here> crowd with Sunwell and didn't consider enough the countless other players who killed Illidan many months ago and would prefer content that didn't burn them out even further.

 

PSGarak

If you cap a boss at five or so hours of contiguous tries, who will this realistically affect? The dozen or so top-end guilds, because realistically they're the only ones that when they're slamming their heads against a boss for more than five hours a week, those more-than-five hours are contiguous. Now... why do we want to slow them down? Is slowing these few people down even a good thing, and if it is, is it a large enough good that it's worth developer time? There's a realistic counterarguement that this is just a pipeline fantasy at people who are jealous of Nihilium et al's dedication and want that advantage somehow categorized as unfair.

Bula has a point--trash already serves this purpose, and a soft-cap is far less disruptive to the game environment and easier to impliment. The only people that such a change would realistically affect are those who are much more concerned with completing content first than those who want content to last longer.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Kumar

I am in a casual guild.

We killed Alar and Astro on the same raid night and we killed Leo and FLK on the same raid night.

Also, restricting attempts on bosses by tying them to how many times you pull the boss is bad, if you want 4 hours everyday or something I am fine with them.

 

GSH

I may have worded that poorly. I meant that casual guilds don't normally attempt the *same* boss on multiple evenings in the same week. It's rare that a casual guild would spend two raid evenings on the same boss.

 

Lamaros

Err...

Trash is a slowing mechanic, not the type of pacing mechanism being described here. What is being suggested by a few people is a method that lets you try a number of times, or for a certain time, and then says "ok, no more for the day/week".

Trash does not do this. It is not a fixed limit but a variable one; the more time you have to spare the more attempts you get.

A slowing mechanism is not the same thing as a hard limit, and many would argue much less fun. I, and I expect others, would prefer a situation where you kill trash once then get x attempts on a boss for the day before he despawns for 12 hours or so instead of one where you have as many attempts as you want, but they try and limit you to 5 by making you clear trash over and over and use up your spare time. If I have 5 hours to raid one evening I would rather clear trash once, try the boss x times and then be done in 3 hours than clear trash y times for x attempts and be done in 5 hours. The first one gives me 2 spare hours and less frustration, but is just as much of a slowing mechanism.

Hardcore masochists would prefer the later, as it allows them to get in 2x attempts a day if they play for 10 hours instead of 5.

Anyway, that's just explaining the point. I personal agree with BEEF and others: If people want to torture themselves and raid all day then let them, if the trash is acceptable for the non hardcore also. If we go back to early SSC trash in order to stall people beating content then it's just stupid. Better to not release the content unless it's ready and let people do other things with their time.

 

Prinsesa

Lamaros, your description of trash as "only" a slowing mechanic only works if you assume the raid is willing to reclear.

After 2-3 hours of wiping on Aran, nobody ever wanted to kill the post-Curator trash again, especially the magic immune Mana Wyrms in a caster-heavy group. I feel that the despondency caused by having to kill all those mobs again just so you can waste more gold on repairs is a lot more effective than outright deleting the boss after so many tries.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Talgog

This is all discussing ways to theoretically stop the absolute top, and in SK's case, semi-professional, guilds from clearing content within a few days /played of seeing it. What's the point in that? These aren't Blizzards player base, and they don't affect content lifespan. Going off WoWJutsu, that Kil'Jaeden is beaten is relevent to less than 40 guilds worldwide, because no one else has beaten M'uru.

It's not like this content is easy. AFAIK, no one has seriously claimed that the back half of Sunwell is easy.

There is no economic reason to design content around being unbeatable by what are realistically "perfect" guilds, and plenty of reasons not to do it. What are you going to make harder? Something that SK Gaming can't beat until they are fully geared in the rest of the instance loot is going to be flat unkillable to just about everyone else WITH that gear. I think 2.1 raiding proved that most of the player base, and most of the raiding population, does not enjoy content that is tuned so incredibly hard.

 

Lamaros

You seem to have missed the points:

1: Some people/guilds will reclear. I've seen it, read about it, and done it. People will scream and moan about the trash and then clear it anyway. Your 'nobody' is actually quite a few people.

2: Better to clear the kind of anoying trash once and then try Aran 4 times before he despawns in a 2 hours period than kill the annoying trash twice and try Aran 4 times before giving up over a 3 hour period, no? The first one takes less time and is less frustrating but both are equal insofar as slowing mechanics. (Personaly I prefer to feel optimistic and expectant for the next nights efforts after failing to kill a boss, not despondent. Seems a rational position to me.)

Anyway, repeating again what I said above. I have no problem with trash when it is done well and think hard caps on encounter attempts is a bad way to do things.

e: Spellings.

 

Tanoshii

If they learned something from 2.1, I feel they forgot it when designing the later half of Sunwell. In particular I think they overdid it on the raid stacking and far too varied group composition required for each fight (pretty much requiring you have hybrids with Sunwell ready gear for multiple specs or a lot of people content to sit outside for half the fights). I don't know if the fights themselves are the problem - if they found some way to tune it so that they could be this difficulty while all requiring a more similar number of tanks/healers and if stacking shamans wasn't so stupidly op they might feel a lot more fun/balanced at least to me - but in the current context I think they messed up.

Now maybe their intent was that these fights were supposed to be too hard for an average guild that gets to them, and are supposed to take weeks and more gearing to kill but, I don't see that satisfying players who managed to keep playing despite months of BT and Hyjal farming.

I will give raiding in WotLK a try - I'm attached to the character, and I do hope (perhaps foolishly) Blizzard can learn from their mistakes. But it saddens me that at this point I'm not raiding because the current design model is fun but because I'm stubborn and want to kill the last two bosses and be done with it.

I don't think limiting hours spent on a boss is the way to go - I think they need to let go of trying to slow down the very top guilds in the world and just design content to be realistically beatable by 90% of the group that can clear to it.

 

• Playered

TBCs problem was; alot of the potential gear checks could be avoided by very optimal raid setups (re: more Shamans, more Leatherworkers) to some degree - you didn't need to wait a month or two farming if you could field a raid overflowing with synergy, hardcore guilds are used to this type of idea and can manage to do it quite well.

The gate mechanism is misleading, it stopped the very top being able to rush things too much but some people have the mentality that everyone should be able to access the bosses once the gate is open - making guilds feel inferior when they are behind, especially as they know these bosses have been killed without having months and months of farmed gear.
M'uru? people mention alot about how much every upgrade in Sunwell helps make this easier each week and quite honestly I dont think many people are truely at that level of gear yet - hence the rather low kill rate as people akwardly struggle with trying to pimp their raid to compensate.

 

Tanoshii

But can you really blame people for that expectation when the past year+ of raiding has been once you got to a boss you were pretty much ready for it and just needed to practice the mechanics. People were used to that, and a lot of people probably expected/wanted it to continue because they preferred it to enforced extensive gear farming or stacking. I mean if there wasn't a gate, people would have gotten to whatever the boss in question is (usually Twins or M'uru right now) with probably even less gear from the previous bosses and still had to deal with exactly the same issue.

 

Leviathon

Going a bit off topic of what others have been talking about the past page or so.

Noticed a couple days ago when I was looking through the spell.dbc file for shaman spells a new Earthquake spell. I find it unlikely its just going to be a mob ability and probably will be a new shaman spell/talent as it was a Far Seers' ability in Warcraft 3.

 

• Chicken

I skipped spells that had no rank or otherwise lacking important data unless they were confirmed by interviews somewhere. That Earthquake spell in particular had no rank in the database, it's description doesn't mention it's damage dealt or it's duration, and it also had no listed mana cost. All of those taken together means that even if it's a new Shaman ability, it's development is still too much in flux to consider listing it. Raise Dead and Army of the Dead, both Death Knight abilities that lack some key parts of information, were listed however as it was clearly stated in an interview these were Death Knight abilities.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Althor

There are only very few player spells that don't have an associated rank with them. Spellsteal being one. But the general rule is, if it's a player spell it has a rank, even if it's just rank 1.

 

rhea

I think it would be a good idea to put a 5 hour "permaberserk" timer on bosses, then they are back to normal in 12 hours. This would just prevent guilds from going 12 hours straight on a boss and they can come back the day after. Would mean nothing for the average guilds because their raid times are usually less than 5 hours per day.
It would make the world first race more exciting because guilds would have limited tries on bosses giving more guilds the chance to compete and those who learn better are higher up the ladder. The 12 hour brake would just be good for everyone, refining their tactics and get some sleep to wake up refreshed for a new day of tries.