Caducus

Just a little idea i got while reading a few entries here .

Lets say everyone can enter the normal instance portal and get to a buffing room or something like the space before the double giant pulls the stairs up to razorgore you get me.

To get beyond that room your raid would require 15-20 "clickers" who press a portal to open the first door which would be open for a set amount of time and would reset upon members leaving the instance or something like that.

It would allow your raid to be not completely attuned but still require the majority of the current raid to be past the attunement stage.

pro: obv you can now take a new member or trial with you into the high content without actually attuning them (yet!?)

con: could be used to sell epics to ppl not attuned

I think if the gate/door would reset/close whenever somebody joins/leaves the raid or even upon zoning in after a wipe it could not be exploited that another guild sells you their attuned people for one night or at the start of a night.

 

Oneiros

I thought about this at work this morning and I only really have this to say: Whenever I try to think of whether or not something belongs in the game, I always see how it affects the game in a RP/realism fashion. Attunements are necessary. Just like the old adages "You don't send untrained soldiers into war" and "Don't send a boy to do a man's work," it is necessary to prove one's worth before being granted special boons such as the ability to enter SSC/TK/MH/BT. It is certainly understandable why A'dal/Akama/etc would want our heroes to prove themselves. Getting attuned for TK a couple weeks before they removed the attunement was one of the most satisfying things I've done in the expansion. It was difficult (to an extent), it required me to work together with my friends/guildmates, and it made sense. If we could prove our worth to the Naaru, we could get the key to the Eye to help them in their fight. It also helped guide the logical progression through the game. You hit 70, went to 5 mans to gear up, started Karazhan, then started on the entry level 25 man raids while doing heroics during the day/off nights. I'm not one of those people who play this game every night but secretly hate the game (like guilds who drop SSC/TK at the first chance they get). I realize I am an exception. I love Naxx, I love AQ, I love all of it and I was extremely disappointed when my guildmates wouldn't go back and do AQ for fun when we were very deep in Naxx. But still, I think the only person that removing attunements helps is the people who don't really care anyways. Anyone who cares would be attuned by the time they needed to be and there's really no excuse for not being-- you only really have an excuse if you're one of the first few in the world and you're moving through content at such a breakneck speed that you can't afford to go back and do a one night clear of SSC or a one night clear of the Eye. I guess most people don't see it my way though. I enjoy raiding.

If Blizzard removes more attunements, they're really only doing a disservice to themselves and to the "true" player base. Removing attunements isn't going to help people beat fights they lack the coordination or skilled players for, it is only going to appease the more casual/less skilled raiders for a short period of time, while at the same time removing some of the VERY FEW immersive qualities the game has left.

With that being said, I am also not in a guild that has the problem of needing to attune recruits by doing instances that aren't on our normal schedule any more, so take what I say with a grain of salt, I guess (although I insist I would still want to raid those old zones for pleasure).

 

Prinsesa

I wouldn't say so. The last piece of loot I got was my T4 Glove token 2 weeks ago.

Looking back, I suppose I should've informed my earlier much earlier. In hindsight, it was rather ... selfish of me to wait until the last possible moment before telling people of my intentions.

Perhaps I'm overreacting. I've never liked (and consequently not used to) having to deal with guild drama/politics.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Nuveena

So, I take 40 of our attuned people, invite them all into a single guild (we are a raid alliance), then invite 10 paying customers and cash in 100k gold? They can keep the guild and raid T6.

Now, you will likely reply that if the number of "actually" attuned people drop too low again, the temporary attunements would vanish. Still, then any raid guild in T6 could "rent space" to unattuned people (and many likely would, shall we say a daily "rent" of 1-2 flasks?) to allow people who "don't deserve" to get into T6 to do so.

No such thing as "foolproof". If you put in a way to bypass the Vashj and K'T checkpoints, then people -will- do so, including those who shouldn't.

 

Dustwhisper

This is already done and can be done by renting out spaces in a Vashj and KT kill and several guilds already do this.

 

Brissa

Ok, so its not 100% foolprof (nothing in this game is, everything is being exploited somehow). But it is certainly better than the massive headache that attrition is causing semi-casual hardcore guilds (oxymoron i know, but im refering to guilds in Black temple but who arent raiding more than 15-16 hours per week).

 

Typhon

*nods*

And the people who do guildhop for the wrong reasons soon geta reputation and soon get blacklisted by just about everyone else*. One of the advantages of a server where just about everyone knows everyone else, and there's good relationships between the various raids.

*Apart from the token "Comedy Raid" of the server, which anyone on AD-EU will know exactly who I'm talking about.

 

Nyfe

One way to get around the need to attune recruits without losing raid days that we've looked into is partnering up with a guild in the same situation and running SSC/TK on off days as a semi-alt run. While it's pretty unreasonable to expect 25 people to show up on off nights from your own guild, its not hard with two guilds bringing people that may have missed loot, recruits and some alts. It accomplishes the goal without losing time away from your main focus.

 

Crowl

To reduce the amount of time guilds need to spend attuning recruits, but still have a level of challenge for newer guilds, why not drop the requirement for the vashj vial, but still require the one from Kael. You have an instance that is fairly quick to clear and a testing fight that is realistically the gatekeeper to bt/hyjal anyway these days.

Now obviously there would be issues of guilds getting attuned to BT/Hyjal despite only being 4/4 and 1-2/6, but if they can then progress in the t6 instances then whats actually gained from artificially keeping them in the t5 instances?

 

◊ Kalman

Or even partnering with a guild a little down the line from you and asking if they'd mind taking someone along; the top alliance guild on our server doesn't do SSC/TK anymore, so when they had an app who needed an Al'ar kill, they asked if we'd mind him coming along for it.

I think we might also have given them our TK instance, after we dropped 3 bosses, when we were working on Vashj, so they didn't have a trash clear to deal with and could get a KT keying done.

 

Jitta

Well, let us agree that the reason why they had to have attunements for TBC was because they were giving out a ton of raid content all at the same time and needed to (wanted to) guide the progression through the content. 5 mans to 10 man to 5 man heroics to 25 mans (Gruul / Mag / SSC / TK). They were afraid of people skipping Gruul, and Mag and going right into SSC/TK and finishing before they could get BT/MtH up and polished.

No previous raid zone has required 200 man hours to attune members. MC (5 man quest in BRM), BWL (15 man UBRS run), AQ (event/none), Naxx (rep/gold/mats, 1 man). I think the precedent has been set and the attunements will be changed/removed as the “finish line” gets moved out 10 more yards.

If they do not “remove” them, I do think that requiring 15-20 members in the raid to open access to the BT/MtH each raid as reasonable. Most guilds are still going to need to get at least 1 kill in on the end boss to have the number of attuned core members required to maintain access to the zones. Attrition could still force the guild to return to up their numbers of attuned people to have the 15-20 required. It removes the need for T6 guilds to attune each trial member and keeps T5 guilds from skipping the bosses at the same time. It also removes the period in the middle for T5 guilds where they spend 2-3 weeks getting all the alternates attuned as well. (credit Caducus for the idea)

Would 20 attuned people form a raid just to “open the zone” for a guild that was not attuned yet? What if the process had to be repeated every hour if you had to run back?

I find it hard to discuss ways to make T6 guilds happier with recruits when those same T6 raiders are holding up that they just want it easier for them and don’t want the attunement process to be more forgiving to the T5 guilds. I think the fact that people go from Kael to full time T6 bosses within 2 weeks shows that the peak at the end of T5 is broken in terms of overall progression.

 

Danther

Edit: Strikingly similar to what's been said already.