That still doesn't mean you can make interesting and challenging 10- and 25-men versions of each and every of the, what 50?, raidbosses that WotLK will sport.
Where did you get the impression that TBC or even Vanilla WoW was trying to make all of its raid bosses interesting and challenging?
I don't think anyone would really argue that Rage Winterchill is interesting and challenging after you've been through Kael, in fact it has been regarded as a "reward boss" for finally getting to Hyjal. Similarly, we're all quite familiar with the snoozefest that MC degenerated into eventually.
Why do you even discuss about complexity/difficulty of 10 man versus 25 man? It's quite clear, that less people is less complex, I'm not saying 10 man can't be complex. Even though it doesn't matter.
After all 25 man raids is where the challenge will always be. Why wouldn't it? It's got the best items and best encounters.
I'm more worried about if 25-man guilds need to clear 10mans for temporary purples to get better progress in 25mans...
That's why I would like to see a lock out from 10 man if you're doing 25mans and vice versa.
(ie. when you get saved into a raid instance, you also get saved to that bracket for that week.)
This shouldn't ofcourse apply to off-progress instances like zul'aman and karazhan. I hope they don't completely stop doing these because it's nice to visit some 10man on offdays...
I'm more worried about if 25-man guilds need to clear 10mans for temporary purples to get better progress in 25mans...
Need?
People have not "needed" to get gear from parallel progression to beat anything in Burning Crusade. That people went and got PvP gear, particularly weapons, or more recently Badge gear that gave them firepower not otherwise available at their level of progression was their choice. The only exception I can think of would be the 2-minute PvP trinkets, but those aren't mudflation.
The Chinese servers proved how little Burning Crusade demanded in terms of gearing.
Blizzard seems quite aware of mudflation. Look at how tightly they are controlling S4 gear. It isn't even going to be released until, at minimum, two months after its PvE counterpart was added in, and the weapons are seriously difficult to get.
Between the history and the stated staggering of tiers of loot - 10 man of a given raid being lower than 25-man - I would be stunned if the 10-man of the "current" progression wound up being relevant to getting down the 25-man encounters, except for maybe the certain niche items that are just unusually good that wind up being scattered around WoW and used forever *cough*BWL trinkets *cough*.
Sure, the "Spirit of the Encounter" can be preserved. That still doesn't mean any 10-men encounter can ever be as remotely interesting as a 25-men if both versions will have to co-exist. Simply put - a challenging 25-men encounter (say, Vasjh) would be not even preserve a fraction of the complexity in a 10-men variant. Why? Because there's less people involved.
What would a 10-man Vashj sacrifice? Probably fewer Water Elementals on Phase 2. But you shouldn't confuse "25 people have to act independently" with complexity. Having 2 people watching for Water Elementals rather than 5 (or whatever) really doesn't make the encounter more complex, it just makes it hard in the sense mentioned earlier, that if each person has a 5% chance of failing than this makes 25-man encounters more difficult than 10-man simply because the former has a better chance of someone fucking up and wiping the raid. Not complexity though.
When ZA came out, my guild had killed Gruul, Mag, VR and Lurker, so we were hardly a top-end guild. We went there and cleared it the second evening in. No, ZA is not hard - or rather - it isn't complicated. You have every boss figured out in about 20 seconds and from then on it's just execution. Yes, I was playing with experienced raiders.
Are you seriously saying that Gruul/Mag/VR/Lurker are all more complicated than any 10-man boss?
You're entirely correct. However, why don't you get off your horse and take a gander over into the Class Mechanics forum right here for a bit.
Blizzard doesn't need to hire mathematians to figure out he optimal DPS cycle for an enhancement shaman. They don't need to figure out on their own that the DPS difference between a Blood Elf Paladin and a Human Paladin will be roughly 150 DPS in high end gear. I doubt they have the math that proves that Spirit is worthless on Mage gear. We have done it all for them.
... etc.
Just because a fix may or may not be 'easy' doesn't mean that it will be guaranteed to go in. It goes back to the software development angle. Right now, I'm working on a game that will go gold sometime in October and be on shelves late October, early November. I've got bugs being sent my way that are somewhat important, and somewhat not. The important ones get fixed. The unimportant ones get filed away and either dismissed by production outright as not important enough, or go on the wish list to fix if we have time. I fix bugs I find all the time, but I'm literally not allowed to go around mucking with stuff I'm not supposed to.
It's even more stringent when it comes to a live product/service for the PC, because you must test it a lot more thoroughly to make sure nothing catastrophic happens on a large variety of hardware configurations. Even if the fix is easy, it has to be approved.
Ultimately, it's production's call whether a bug is important enough or not to get fixed, no matter how easy it is to do.
What would a 10-man Vashj sacrifice? Probably fewer Water Elementals on Phase 2. But you shouldn't confuse "25 people have to act independently" with complexity. Having 2 people watching for Water Elementals rather than 5 (or whatever) really doesn't make the encounter more complex, it just makes it hard in the sense mentioned earlier, that if each person has a 5% chance of failing than this makes 25-man encounters more difficult than 10-man simply because the former has a better chance of someone fucking up and wiping the raid. Not complexity though.
A 10-men raid has 5 DPS. One will be a kiter leaving you with 4. That means, for example, 2 on the strider, one on the Naga's and one on the elementals. That means that it's most likely you will end up with one person dealing with the tainted core and its location being not random. That entirely takes the element of communication between 20 persons out of the equation. It would also have to lose the roots/multishot mechanic because you can't assume a pally in every 10-men. And that's just 2 examples.
Are you seriously saying that Gruul/Mag/VR/Lurker are all more complicated than any 10-man boss?
Well no. And if you read all my posts you'd I didn't. I'm saying that my guild had completed just the easy encounters when ZA came out yet we cleared the place in about 5-6 hours. That makes ZA freaking easy in my book and not because we're that good, but because the fights are so simple to figure out. When you only have 10 people there is a lot less possible seperate jobs to assign. Unlike in a 25-men.
Now, Gruul 2.0 was hard not because it was complicated, but it was hard by numbers. From 2.1 on he was better tuned, but still required some good assignment on the healing as grows started stacking as well as proper position assignments especially when you were still running KZ on the side. Spacing is a lot easier with ~7 people than it is with 17 you know. Sure, now everyone has S3 and badge gear on their third alts he gets pug'd.
Then VR. He is a mobility/spatial awareness fight. While for a seasoned raider that's second nature, it was a new mechanic for many players that started raiding after TBC and I know a fair few guilds who took 2-3 nights to kill him. No it wasn't complicated, it just introduced a skill need that was not needed before him.
Magtheridon is actually pretty complex with the channelers, the AoE fears, AoE shadowbolts, Infernals, channeling, cleave, earthquakes and the ceiling collapsing. I still think the 2.1 version was a very challenging, but well-tuned encounter. You had to assign warlocks to seperate parts of the room to control the infernals, had to assign healers on your tanks, and change it during the fight as the channelers started hitting harder and Mag was loose. You had to assign interrupt duties for the heals as well as the AoE shadowbolt volleys and you had to rotate the clickers. These days he's obviously a joke, but he has been a very good fight for a long time. One of my favorites in TBC, actually.
Lurker is, well, Lurker. The reason he would work in a 10-men is *because* he's so absolutely uninteresting and straightforward.
I don't understand how anyone can argue that a comparable 10 person encounter is more complex than a 25 person one is.
4 Horsemen in 10 person Naxx is not going to require 8 tanks constantly taunting off each other, most likely it will require 4. The 25 person version just might require 8. Although in both instances you could probably use a resto druid in bear gear or a DPS warrior to tank 2+ of the positions.
You want to argue Zul'jin versus Gruul or Lurker? A better example would be Zul'jin versus Kael. Both are multiphase fights, both are at the end of their progression and both drop comparable gear. However one of them was a major wall for people to overcome and the other was not.
I'm sorry but 10 person encounters will never be, and have never been, more *complex* than 25 person ones. You have less people in critical positions and you are managing less people overall. No raid leader of a 25 person raid is losing sleep over not filling that last slot in a KZ or ZA. It is harder to get 25 people into a zone compared to getting 10 people into a zone. Everything about it is more complex. How many people are assigning healers in 10 person dungeons?
More variables in any simulation makes it more complex, not always more challenging, but definitely more complex.
I dont understand some peoples chain of thought here.
Can 10 mans be thoroughly satisfying, rewarding - and complex encounters? Yes.
But do 25 mans have much more potential to be more complex encounters than their equivilant 10-man versions? Yes.
Does the above comment mean that 10 man encounters cant be in-depth, satisfying, enjoyable or rewarding experiences? No.
I really think we should just wait to see what Blizzard does for 10 mans. They have constantly proven how inventive they are with design and I think they have quite a few tricks up their sleeves.
Also, you are comparing fights that are clearly designed for 25 people and trying to shrink them down to 10. Most of it is just not possible due to the logistics of the fight.
Also, you are comparing fights that are clearly designed for 25 people and trying to shrink them down to 10. Most of it is just not possible due to the logistics of the fight.
If they want to keep the same fights between the 10- and 25-man dungeons one version will have to be incredibly simplified. 10-mans can't assume perfect class presence. The devs can't assume you'll have a Warlock for tanking or a Paladin for Blessing of Freedom in a 10 man. In a 25-man the devs can assume a certain makeup and put in fun little things like demon-phase Illidan or root/multishot on Vashj.
If they want to keep the fights the same one version will have to be missing some pretty large components, or both versions will just have to be pretty much tank'n'spanks.
Herein lies the reason I like the idea of making the two versions entirely different. There isn't really a way to make a 4-horseman 10-man encounter without defeating the entire purpose of it.
A 10-men raid has 5 DPS. One will be a kiter leaving you with 4. That means, for example, 2 on the strider, one on the Naga's and one on the elementals. That means that it's most likely you will end up with one person dealing with the tainted core and its location being not random. That entirely takes the element of communication between 20 persons out of the equation. It would also have to lose the roots/multishot mechanic because you can't assume a pally in every 10-men. And that's just 2 examples.
Lower the hitpoints on the strider so the kiter ends up soloing it. Drop the requirement for DPS on the naga, have them despawn when phase three starts, or die to electrical zaps when cores are dunked - now all you need is for the MT to offtank them and stay alive. Bingo, you can now require all your remaining DPS to be chasing elementals and tainted cores while communicating. Healer in the centre does the dunking, which in a 10-man raid means you'll have to be even more careful about timing the dunk. Resize the arena as required (and alter the speed of the elementals' movement) to ensure that the kiter still needs to do something of a precision job to avoid the elemental chasers and the naga tank.
If the roots/multishot thing is deemed essential to the encounter, you can re-introduce it via itemisation if need be, similar to Hourglass sand. Have herbs growing throughout the instance which you can "use" to buff someone with immunity to Vashj's roots. Now you can have 1, 2, or even 3 people paying attention to keeping up a freedom rota on the tank, depending what sort of a cooldown you set on the herb usage.
And that's just your two examples. Come on people, coming up with ideas for raid boss design is not the hard bit!
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.
Does this imply a move away from RNG and towards a more token based system, similar to whats being presented in sunwell, a return of 8 piece sets, exchangable items? Seems like it to me, though I don't claim to know Tigole's mind. A larger number of items from bosses, maybe upwards of 6(3 tokens, 3 non-token) seems stretching it, but if they're planning on increasing loot tables across the board, ie 15 items per boss maybe, then I don't know.
Very interesting comparison between PvP and PvE as well. The barrier to entry statements in the first question are intriguing. These seem to be comments regarding the new rating system, which does increase the barrier of entry in PvP.
If they want to keep the same fights between the 10- and 25-man dungeons one version will have to be incredibly simplified. 10-mans can't assume perfect class presence. The devs can't assume you'll have a Warlock for tanking or a Paladin for Blessing of Freedom in a 10 man. In a 25-man the devs can assume a certain makeup and put in fun little things like demon-phase Illidan or root/multishot on Vashj.
If they want to keep the fights the same one version will have to be missing some pretty large components, or both versions will just have to be pretty much tank'n'spanks.
Herein lies the reason I like the idea of making the two versions entirely different. There isn't really a way to make a 4-horseman 10-man encounter without defeating the entire purpose of it.
I like what the person above said keeping the spirit of the fight alive. Obviously Four Horsemen were designed for 40 players so it's hard to think how they will shrink it down to 10. But from here on out, every fight will be designed with both in mind. Also, they could just as easily make a 10 man fight with the same boss name but the fights will be completely fucking different. There doesn't need to be a mini version of the 25 man fight in the 10 man for it to be fun or challenging or lore related.
One way to do a 10-man four horsemen would be to have some or all of the horsemen be stationary (either make them casters like Aran or make them rooted melee mobs that do something nasty when they have nothing to hit in melee range). Have them each ride to one corner of the room once engaged and then remain there. This solves the tanks issue while still requiring the raid to rotate between horsemen to avoid being murdered by the marks.
Perhaps something like this (all ranged abilities can hit anyone in the room):
- Mograine: Hits hard. Chain-casts holy wrath (direct damage nuke + a (dispellable?) DoT) when he has no one in melee range.
- Kor'thazz: Hits hard. Casts meteor (damage equal to about 80% of the max life of an average non-tank, split as per usual - thus, you only need two people to soak it) whenever he has no one in melee range.
- Blaumeux: Hits for almost nothing (easily "tanked" by anything not wearing cloth). Casts void zones when no one is in melee range.
- Zeliek: Hits for almost nothing (or perhaps doesn't attack at all - he is struggling to stop himself, after all). Heals the other horsemen when no one is in melee range (or periodically attempts to heal them all the time and must be interrupted? Make him silenceable and stunnable to widen the spectrum of interrupts that can be deployed against him?).
The idea being that an alert raid can leave one or maybe two horsemen untanked, but their random target abilities will quickly begin killing people if too many are left unchecked.
There isn't really a way to make a 4-horseman 10-man encounter without defeating the entire purpose of it.
Agree. Yes, there are many encounters where you can be creative (like the above post) and twist mechanics to make it 'sort of' like the 25 man version, but acceptable within the 10 man environment.
But theres also other encounters where that isnt very realistic - unless you water down the unique features of the original encounter to the point where you may as well have just redesigned the fight from scratch. Four horsemen is, of course, a great example.
I just don't see why we can't have Separate 10 and 25 mans in the same instance hub with mostly different bosses (and shared "Big" bosses like Arthas.) That way you still do parallel progression while keeping the 10-mans from becoming Monopoly Jr.-ized.
Because that completely misses the point that they want to increase the number of people that see the same content. Their design philosophy has shifted towards more people seeing content rather than making it a perk for 25 man raiders. Not to mention you just increase their expenses if they have to design two sets of raid instances for every raid locale.
Agree. Yes, there are many encounters where you can be creative (like the above post) and twist mechanics to make it 'sort of' like the 25 man version, but acceptable within the 10 man environment.
Well, they are supposed to be independent progression lines? Independent means also that encounters may be different. Maybe they aim for same kind of encounters, but I don't think 10-man encounters are "25-man divided by 2,5".
In other words, in 25-man version 4-horsemen may act and feel like original version, but 10-man 4-horsemen is actualy "2 horsemen"? Or 4-h, but there is some other trick to it than original.
I am intrigued what the 10-man 4 horseman will be like.
The 25man version would be pretty easy to do. Increase Time between stacks and/or allow more stacks, but lengthen debuff duration to allow rotation with 5 tanks. Modify damage so dps warriors in plate etc can tank (as in 40man version), and make tanks solo-healable (which was possible in the 40man). 3 healers and dps can then be split into 3 dps groups. Would ofc be easier, but 25man naxx is the opening instance not the closing one.
Only way I can really see a 10-man happening if all 4 horsemen are present is it it becomes a Kael'Thas P1 encounter.
If you take Zul'Aman many classes are supposed to be there. Of course it is far from being tighly tuned, but from the essensce they are required. Of course you can do every single encounter without these classes, but it helps a lot as long as you have Karazhan gear.
Nalorrak requires a healing class being able to cast hots during Nalorakks silence.
The gauntlet to Akil'zon and Jan'Alai require AoE Damage (mage or warlock) and an AoE tanking class.
Halazzi requires a hunter.
If the healing effect on Akil'zon was stronger a MS-warrior or rogue would be required.
Malacrass needs AoE healing (Shaman or priest) and three classes capable of spamable crowd control (mage, priest, druid, warlock, hunter).
The list could be continued. Paladins and priests for moroes, paladins for the maiden of virtue, protection warrior for nightbane, warlocks for Terestian Illhoof, Aran and Netherspite...
Of course the 10 men version will be a bit less complex. But if groups try to progress fast through 10 men content they will have to stack classes as well. But regarding 25, 10, 5 or even single player content (Shartuuls transport, Epic Quests) we are still far away from the limit of complexity that could be made. Blizzard could introduce epic single-player quests so complex that only few players could ever beat them.
Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde
Someone correct me if i'm wrong... but I'm pretty sure Akil'zon doesn't have a heal, nor are hots required for the silence on Narrolak, cooldown usage + bubble useage/other methods can cover for the extremely short silence.
Could probably report all these ponderings of 4-horsemen in a 10-man raid posts as "Useless"...
Originally Posted by Talgog
Need?
People have not "needed" to get gear from parallel progression to beat anything in Burning Crusade. That people went and got PvP gear, particularly weapons, or more recently Badge gear that gave them firepower not otherwise available at their level of progression was their choice. The only exception I can think of would be the 2-minute PvP trinkets, but those aren't mudflation.
The Chinese servers proved how little Burning Crusade demanded in terms of gearing.
Blizzard seems quite aware of mudflation. Look at how tightly they are controlling S4 gear. It isn't even going to be released until, at minimum, two months after its PvE counterpart was added in, and the weapons are seriously difficult to get.
Between the history and the stated staggering of tiers of loot - 10 man of a given raid being lower than 25-man - I would be stunned if the 10-man of the "current" progression wound up being relevant to getting down the 25-man encounters, except for maybe the certain niche items that are just unusually good that wind up being scattered around WoW and used forever *cough*BWL trinkets *cough*.
That's all fine and dandy. Because they are all different. The 10-man version Will Not Be different from 25-man.
Blizzard wants more people see the same content. That's why they tune down the 25-man versions to 10-man versions. It will be the same instance. That's why I want a lock out because guilds could possibly ruin all the 25-man content by farming the 10-man content of the same instance. Not only do they ruin the content (for themselves) but they also get a gear and tactic advantage from it (if you want to compete for server first etc.).
Could probably report all these ponderings of 4-horsemen in a 10-man raid posts as "Useless"...
That's all fine and dandy. Because they are all different. The 10-man version Will Not Be different from 25-man.
Blizzard wants more people see the same content. That's why they tune down the 25-man versions to 10-man versions. It will be the same instance. That's why I want a lock out because guilds could possibly ruin all the 25-man content by farming the 10-man content of the same instance. Not only do they ruin the content (for themselves) but they also get a gear and tactic advantage from it (if you want to compete for server first etc.).
Ruin content how? Is this any different from clearing BT 20 times? Or going to ZA over and over again for Hex Shrunken Head?
Could probably report all these ponderings of 4-horsemen in a 10-man raid posts as "Useless"...
That's all fine and dandy. Because they are all different. The 10-man version Will Not Be different from 25-man.
Blizzard wants more people see the same content. That's why they tune down the 25-man versions to 10-man versions. It will be the same instance. That's why I want a lock out because guilds could possibly ruin all the 25-man content by farming the 10-man content of the same instance. Not only do they ruin the content (for themselves) but they also get a gear and tactic advantage from it (if you want to compete for server first etc.).
Everything you said has been completely unconfirmed. It's all speculation at this point.
If the encounters are fundamentally the same I would have no problem with a 'lock out' on the 10-man version until players have cleared the 25 man version. Of course, it shouldn't apply to the first raid, Naxxramas, because: 1) It would be a bit harsh to not give 10 man raiders something to do from the get-go; and 2) assuming Naxx isn't significantly altered the strategies are all common knowledge as of two years ago.
It will be the same instance. That's why I want a lock out because guilds could possibly ruin all the 25-man content by farming the 10-man content of the same instance. Not only do they ruin the content (for themselves) but they also get a gear and tactic advantage from it (if you want to compete for server first etc.).
This is precisely my concern, if the 10 mans are easier or more accessible than the 25 man version then most guilds will just farm the 10 man version a couple of times before trying the 25 man. I hope that they did not mean the '25 mans will be heroic versions of 10 mans' comment literally because I'd hate to head to most 25 man bosses and say "remember the fight we owned last week, its the same but with 2 more adds".
05/11/08, 9:53 AM
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