Furion

I guess this is supposed to be irony, but I don't get it.
I think you will need to elaborate for this to contribute to the discussion. Obviously this doesn't work as dedicated guilds will have them ready all the time no matter how long the raid lasts while less dedicated guilds won't even have them for the first 2 hours. On top it just encourages chunks of 2 hours at best, not how many chunks of 2 hours you do (just like 2 hour trash respawns).

 

Bismar

One thing that Blizzard does on some bosses to make learning them go faster is reset-leashes. If they implement it sometimes (sometimes as much as the majority of bosses in a raid instance), I don't understand why they are so reluctant to implement it more often. A reset where half the raid lives definitely speeds boss tries.

 

Douglas

Hm... maybe you don't have to preserve actual raid IDs to make this work.

I mean, what really matters in terms of spreading progress across resets? What changes? The big thing is respawns, of both bosses and of trash controlled by bosses, right? There are other little things, like which of the Opera events you get in a given week, but let's for the moment not worry about that. Let's reduce the problem to: prevent bosses from respawning when the instance resets.

Imagine that the person who "owns" the raid ID is given a magic cookie, an "adventurer's pocket journal" (have it fit in your keychain), for the raid ID. As long as the item continues to exist, it will track their progress, and maybe you can actually read it to see what bosses are dead. Every time someone with that item in their inventory is involved in creating a new raid ID, the bosses listed in their journal start out dead already.

Want a full reset of the instance? Just trash the journal. The next time you create a raid ID, it's "fresh". There is no "in between", it's all-or-nothing.

I think that'd take a lot less work to code up and support than actually preserving the raid IDs across resets. I mean, the amount of server storage that would take could grow pretty rapidly, while this other idea would just require the storage of an item with a couple of flags on it.

If you didn't want to tie it to an item in one character's inventory, you could instead maybe make it a function of some kind of guild administration interface. Guild banks show that Blizzard is thinking about guild management tools now. Maybe this could be one. Now, I don't like that alternative very much myself, because all of my raiding has been via guild alliances, but I get the impression that I'm unusual in that regard.

 

Barraind

BWL is the WoW example of why you do not need trash in large numbers to create a fun and challenging environment. See also Tacvi (post fixing of the massive fuckup of that zone) in EQ for another example (Trash harder than bosses in some zones, Boss - pick a side, trash, Boss - Pick a side, trash, boss, previous fork, trash, boss (do other half of the zone if you want), Trash x4, Boss event). See also Inktuta for how to do trash in a zone correctly (Tie it in to your scripts! much like Razorgore, in fact).

This is getting offtopic, but hey~!

I've personally always held the best boss design is a little trash (to get your raid focused and problems ironed out) and a boss encounter thats balls to the wall, full throttle challenging, repeated several times throughout the instance.

In WoW terms...

You approach the Onyx Palace of Jimbob the Unlucky, to see a few packs of Dread Knights wandering the grounds, ordered around by Captain Jimbob the Deceased (poor guy, we hardly knew ye).

Inside the Palace (which was probably a nice little villa before overtaken by whatever is inside), we stumble over a few bodies, fight a few packs of guards and a solo Golem or Haunted Armor before we hit the living room, currently occupied by NotMagtheridonbutclose (evil beings always have long names that you SWEAR you've seen before, but cant quite make out).

Past him (it?), is what appears to be a gigantic kitchen, with some chefs and waiters, handy with knives, or rolling pins, or something similar, preparing food for two visiting dignitaries in the dining room, Lady Resemblesvashj and Sir Notasfruityaskael, each one sitting off in his or her little alcove, because at the moment, they want to kill each other as much as they want to kill you. Something about interspecies breeding producing the sleeper, or other such gobbledygook.

In the garden, trying to organize a rousing game of "chase the peasants with burning torches" is Arkimawnd, whose small court of lesser demons would be more than happy to chase YOU around with burning torches! En'garde!

Sensing you havent quite found the source of the evil inside, you trapse upstairs (because there always has to be multiple floors in these places; Architects have good unions in fantasy worlds) and run into some well-armored, well-visored guys with spears, and swords, and the crazy ones in robes (if that) with the evil eyes you just want to run away from.

Off in the Grand Library (Full of bookshelves 50 feet high, with no ladders or stairs or walkways to access any of those higher than arms reach, making you wonder if anyone reads, has read or will ever read them) is a group of 4 evil looking people who call themselves The Villidari Consulates.

Past them, in a HUGE area of the manor that doesnt exist from the outside (for if it did, you would currently be standing in the middle of whatever body of water is closest to your location in the direction you're looking), is Villidan (<The Plotadvancer>) himself!


Other supervillans could include Overlord Mata'Whatthefuckihatethisfight <Supreme Overlord of Meatloaf, Kittens and other Diabolically Evil Things>, Aten Ha ZZZZZ <Four Armed Thing of That Place That Had More Trash Than A Dump>, The Evil Eye of Kabroom <Allergy Stricken Elder God of Housekeeping> and Vulakisup <Get to TawvNow>


5-6 more zones like this, and you've got yourself an expansion! You'd also run out of sanity, and guilds that "dont have the time" to learn some fights would still die horribly and frequently. You'd just kill fewer things doing it

 

Jaxtrasi

As a "serious business" raider new to Gruul, I've been finding the same problems at 70 as I did at 60, but magnified. Sure, you can clear the trash down a man or two, but you can't start the next attempt until you've moved as slowly as your weakest link. Yes, the correct solution to that one guy who arrives just after buffing every time is to get rid of him, but that isn't always an option.

Is free buffing viable? Is there any reason why Prayer of Fortitude, et al shouldn't be 1) buff the whole raid 2) usable only out of combat 3) cost no mana 4) require no reagent? I've seen one argument here that the current design of buffs, etc makes the game more challenging. Certainly it's true that a degree of discipline is necessary to compete here. Surely, however, anyone capable of mastering the existing process of rebuffing isn't affected by it as a mechanic (and therefore benefits in no way from its inclusion) and any group incapable of doing it in a timely fashion is going to suffer in so many other aspects of the game that really the additional penalty is irrelevant?

 

Anedris

I've always wondered why buffs such as fortitude, blessings, and so on have limited durations instead of simply lasting until the buffer leaves the group or raid (they could even have durations only when cast on people not grouped with the caster so you can still toss them on random people while waiting on the zep). I mean, it's not like you're not going to renew them, so what's the point of having them expire?

(And yes I like the ideas of the elimination of reagents, mana-free out-of-combat buffing, and an AoE ressurection spell. I would still like to be able to buff in combat though for those situations where a tank dies and can be battle ressed - e.g., Leo, Hydross, etc.)

 

◊ Bekah

Buffs are intended to be a responsibility and a choice. The only current game mechanic that touches on group/raid buffs without durations are the paladin auras. I don't believe they have a mechanic in place for raid wide auras- and when the paladin dies, their aura is removed. It might be nice to have the buffer's life be protected to protect the buffs- but it doesn't seem to be a mechanic that they're favoring- if only because it's even *more* of a responsibility than timely maintenance of refreshable buffs.

AoE resurrection, however, would be amazingly useful. I hold out hope that it will come with WotLK.

 

Merple

This is arguably the best idea to allow casual raiding, but it would make "gearing up" on previous bosses difficult. This is the biggest problem I see with it. You would get a lot of people frustrated that they can't blow through a new raid with their current gear. As well as fights over whether or not to trash the journal.

That said, however, it would allow for one or two night a week raiding guilds.

-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.

 

andastra

I think it boils down to that 4 hours is the most amount of time many people can raid without losing too much focus. The problem is that raiding is designed in such a way that you could accomplish a lot more in a 4-hour day versus 2 2-hour days. Part of it is trash. If it takes you 30 minutes to clear trash and it stays dead for 2 hours, a 2 hour raid means you're wasting 30 minutes of boss attempts. There's also the summoning time before the raids, officers deciding on raid make-up, buff assignments, etc. before a raid that takes a bit of time.

 

Nezralix

I just have to elaborate on this point a bit more, because I've suffered from it recently. They need a way to get replacements into a raid faster. Requiring 15 minutes to take a break and go get someone summoned and back to the rest of the raid is a gigantic hassle.

 

◊ Shalas

They probably originally had limited duration to avoid DaoC-style buffbots. Player buffs ended up not being powerful enough for that to be much of a concern anyway, so they could easily remove durations for buffs cast on people in your raid and zone.

The usual way to avoid that is to avoid having to summon the replacements in the first place by having them already at the instance.

 

Imbar

A typical situation is to have a 'wait list', those wanting to raid but not enough room in raid, sitting outside the instance portal, ready to zone in when the RL says so.
Some (maybe most) guilds with this system also give DKP for being ready to go, but not actually getting to raid.

 

songster

Aye, in our group, the rule is that if you sign for the raid but don't get in (i.e. there were more than 25 signed to raid), then you can ask to be put as official standby. That means your toon has to be parked at the instance entrance, with all consumables etc., ready to raid. You can go off on an alt, or log out, or whatever, as long as you're contactable (guild chat, Vent, MSN or even a phone number). If you're an official standby, you get the same DKP as the people in the instance.

 

Nezralix

Okay, thanks for the tips, but I realize that there are ways to avoid spending time getting people to the instance. I just don't think they're very practical in a lot of cases, and certainly don't represent an optimal scenario to require people to leave potentially their only character parked in front of an instance for four hours just in case.

 

pwyll

I'm not sure I've ever raided with anyone who only had one character worth playing. If you're in a raiding guild of any sort, and I mean anything above casual Kara runs, it's a show of commitment to be prepared for the raid days. If you don't get home until 6 server and want to raid, park your toon at the entrance the night before. If you're on backup cause there are 6 mages and it's your week to sit out, go play your omgawesomelowbie for a while. I've raided a large number of toons over the last few years, the most recent switch from druid to lock, and I made the switch to help out the guild.

If your desire is to raid, you should at least have the decency not to make the raid wait while you drop your heroic mech pug to get to SSC.

J'aime les femmes comme l'aime mon café: chaude, noire, et avec un cuillére dedans.

 

deneba

I too would like to see a faster way to bring replacements into the raid. Having a sub waiting outside the instance works, but it's just a workaround to deal with an absent game mechanic that would add a lot of value (and get used a lot) if available to us. Why argue against a game mechanic that would streamline things, and in favor of having people sit outside an instance portal for potentially hours on end?

WoW is interesting and frustrating to me because it's chock full of game mechanics that solve problems that were common in the earlier mmrpgs I played (no camping due to instances, no theft due to secure trade windows, no mules due to banks) but is about as weak as the others when it comes to time sinks. I don't know if this is intentional or not, though I do know that it drives a lot of people away. Raiding in WoW is like a job with a 1 hour commute and hours of paperwork to do anything. It's slow, from the trash to managing roster issues to buffing to wipe recovery. It's full of timesinks that don't test player skill as much as they test our ability to mindlessly do dumb repetitive tasks over and over. I guess the time investment others might brand as challenging, I find to be boring, dull and against the spirit of what is, last I checked, supposed to be a computer -game-. But, it seems that the majority of the raiding population wants raiding to be treated with the rigor of a job, rather than as game, and thus we have complicated attunements, trash respawns, and a dozen timesinks to be optimized.

The good news is that all these people will grow up to enjoy successful careers maximizing employee productivity in the workforce. If it comes at the cost of those of us looking for an evening escape from exactly that lifestyle not being able to raid much past Gruul, I guess that's a small price to pay.

 

Anaea

While I'd agree that sometimes WoW can feel like busywork, I think attunements are especially useful for more casual guilds. The Karazhan key, for instance, was a real blessing for us. One of the largest issues we face as a leveling-turned-raiding guild is dealing with expectations. If the attunement didn't exist, we'd have had people dinging 70 and thinking they could pwn Attumen in their level 67 quest greens. The key quest line, while it certainly can't prepare someone for Kara alone, at least helped us manage the expectations around when one can actually begin raiding. I'd guess that they're somewhat unnecessary at the higher raid levels, except as a progression benchmark (e.g. "shadowpriest looking for guild, have Vashj vial").

Trash respawns can get old fast, and while we tend to use them as "markers" for how much time we should spend on a boss, I agree that they seem to have a disproportionate impact on time-limited guilds rather than the more hardcore players. A two hour trash timer means we might be able to get in another two or three attempts after a second trash clear. It's pretty rare for us to decide that it's worth the effort. A four hour or more raid would have some breathing room on that score, so trash timers become trivial.

We have been pushing our tanks to move faster on trash, so I suppose that's one marginal benefit.

I read Banhammer posts when I'm having a bad day.

 

Akka

Answer seems obvious to me : get rid of these F*CK*NG R*T*RDS SH*TT* RESPAWNS !
I swear that half of my gripes with the game would vanish if only there was NO trash respawn until you leave the instance and it soft resets.
Trash respawns usually takes a large part of our 3-hours raids, because nobody is willing to get back to 20-30 mn of trash clearing when there is only 45-50 mn of raid time. So we usually ends up losing a good quarter to a third of our raid time...

Respawns are the bane of the game, and the most idiotic idea I ever seen when we're talking about "instance", which by definition makes respawn useless (the raison d'être of respawning is to prevent players to find a world emptied by previous players ; in an instance which exists only for your group/raid, there is no other players killing the monsters, so what's the point of making them respawn ?).

That trash respawn once we leave the instance if we haven't killed the relevant boss is ok. It's the principle.
But that it respawn while you're in the same run... It's a pathetic excuse for a "pacing mechanism" and is just pure frustration and idiocy.

I can't understand why Blizzard says on one hand "god not enough people are reaching the end content" but at the same time keep respawning trashs, something EVERYONE hates and which adds NOTHING to the game...

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

xiaoxin21

A prime example of this is mother, if the leash is not implemented, I think alot of guilds will still be stuck at mother pre nerf. A 10 min run is certainly not fun.

For end game, the time commitment is definitely not great as a whole, if no wipes. It is the learning that is making things difficult and slow. Once the learning is done , things can go much faster. My guild clear BT+MH in about 8-10 hours max, which translate to a relaxed schedule now. About 2.5-3 hours to clear the first 5 bosses(exclude teron),about another 2.5-3.5 hours for teron/mother/council/illidan and 2.5 hours for MH.

The focus therefore should be reducing the learning wipe time and recovery time. ZA has a good idea on how this can be done. When you wipe at some bosses, the boss actually disappeared giving you time to ankh, ss up or click off DI and rez people who died at the foot of the boss rather than run back from GY.

 

dakalro

Well, there is a choice, park a char at instance entrance and go alt/watch a movie or just run around the area with the instance killing stuff while getting full dkp. Or don't and while you could still possibly get in, you won't get the (full) dkp.

 

Nezralix

Thanks again for the very insightful tips.

 

Zifna

The comments about flasks and so forth have made me think...

I think part of the problem with the 2 hour flask timers are that most people would agree that the "setup cost" to starting a raid is such that after you're moving 2 hours is too short to go. It's pretty easy, then, to decide to run a 4 hour raid.

What if raids and consumables were designed such to promote three hours of raiding? Most people would put their foot down at raiding for 6 hours. It just doesn't work into most people's daily schedules. But if trash had a 3 hour repop timer, by the time it popped up again, there wouldn't be much gain to clearing it. If flasks lasted three hours, and instances were designed to be completed in three hour chunks.

What do I mean, "designed to be completed"? Look at ZA. You could just get the first boss down if you had a little extra time, but most people wouldn't want to. There's concrete benefit to doing it all in a set. Hyjal is simply short enough that you can complete the whole thing in 3 hours if you're quick about it... but then why not go bump off some bosses in BT with your extra hour?

If there was some concrete benefit to doing the BT bosses in a unified lumps, perhaps this would decrease the average raid time, as people wouldn't say to themselves "Well, we have an hour left... let's get one more guy."

Though it would likely decrease raid time at the cost of flexibility unless done very carefully. That is, if Najentus, Supremus, Akama and Gorefiend are a set, you can't head off to RoS or Bloodboil if you happen to have great comp for those fights online at the time. Not impossible tho... perhaps after you kill Naj you trigger a tripwire. Illidan gets all upset about there being intruders in the castle and tells people to check their areas. You can loot a "damaged communicator key" off of 3 of the bosses, and combine it to form a full one at the Quartermaster guy to lie to Illidan and say that the intruders have been killed. If you do, Illidan will send an easy-to-kill lackey down with a reward for you. If you don't do this within 2 1/2 hours of triggering the tripwire, Illidan insults your incompetence and refuses to respond to the communication.

Etc. It'd take some creativity but it's doable I feel...

 

Mountie

One of the things I liked most about another MMORPG I played was that the number of people in an encounter was somewhat flexible. One of the most aggrivating things about WoW was the hard cap at 10,25 or 40 people for a raid. It wasn't nearly as bad in 40 person content, where you could suffer the loss of a few people and still clear most trash and (at least for the easier instances) some bosses. Enrage timers are the worst thing the WoW guys ever thought of.

With the advent of 25 mans I find there's even less room and you really do need the full 25 on just about everything. I'll give an example that will hopefully explain what I mean. Imagine you're heading into an easier instance like Mag's Lair and have downed the boss 1 time. Say you only get 22 people the next reset of the instance. Do you still go in and attempt? Your 22 people know what their doing, they've killed it before, and Mag isn't a timed fight so there's room to wiggle, you might consider doing it. This one fight is one of the most friendly in the game when it comes to doing it with a few less. Most fights in WoW you NEED 25, even if it's trivial to you, in order to beat an enrage timer or some other artifical limitation.

The real problem that I have, however, is the opposite situation. Say you've just killed Mag and the next reset you get 27 people to the raid. Hurray for sitting people out. It always frustrates me when you're forced to bench people because they've shown commitment to attending. You're forced to punish someone for a behaviour that you should be rewarding. Raid composition is similarily annoying, though even less able to be fixed. I know I've experienced raids that were canceled because 5 tanks and 10 healers show up but only 10 or 11 dps classes. Even if healers and tanks respec to their dps spec it's unlikely they have the dps gear needed to beat an enrage timer(so you cancel a raid where, with no timer, you would raid and attempt bosses with subpar dps).

The guild I was in raids 4 days a week, but my schedule, due to work, is nearly-random in terms of which days I can play. It's not fair to ask someone to sit who shows up consistently to allow me my one or two days a week I can raid. Nor is it fair to me to sit and hope that someone no-shows to get in. Yet, if the raid could accomodate 26 or 27 some days and 23 or 24 on others I would be paying blizzard instead of another MMO company and, more importantly for me, still be seeing the WoW guys and gals every week.

I'm not really sure how you fix the problem in WoW though. In other MMO's you didn't see this problem to the same degree. If 20 people showed up to an event, you just did it with 20. If 29 showed, again just do it. In WoW one of those scenarios you can't even play and the other you have to select who doesn't get to play that evening(yay artifically imposed drama). I would really like to see some more fluidity in the raid numbers, it would certainly have made guild managing more enjoyable and I likely would still be playing WoW.

 

Chilaun

The fastest solution to this problem would be removing weekly resets, widening the gap to 1 month.

It's quite simple: 1 month reset on all 25 men instances with loot quadrupled for each boss of course. Farmed content gets cleared only once every 4 weeks in the normal time it would take you every week currently for the same loot reward you'd get by doing it 4 times over, in rest you dedicate yourself to progressing. It's not like guilds which still have content ahead will have nothing to do, while the ones which are done with all of it can simply clear their instances once a month and enjoy the game in rest, no one likes doing farmed content once every week.

Basically, you'd get your loot coming from farmed content earlier and in 1/4th of the time, as it should happen for bosses already mastered. The impact on progression would not come from getting a bit of loot in advance really, it would come from actually being able to dedicate time to progression, again, as it should happen.

 

• constantius

The once-a-month reset is an interesting idea, but I think ultimately, no-one likes resets at all, and a 1-week is just barely tolerable. I like raiding, and I like being able to farm known bosses for upgrades we didn't get the first <x> times around. One of the biggest things that annoyed me about Karazhan was that we were limited to one kill per week on the bosses we cared about. We knew how to kill them, but they dropped crap ... for months at a time.

What I'd like to see is some modification of the loot system so that once you kill the final boss in the zone <x> times (say 5?), you get a little token that resets the instance for you, up to a maximum of 3x per week or something.

So killed Archimonde 5x? You can now kill Archimonde 3x per week if you want to.
So killed Kael'thas 5x? You can now kill any of the first 3 bosses and/or Kael 3x per week if you want to.

This means that once you get past a certain hump (that, if you've killed him, you certainly will anyway), you get the option of grabbing all the loot upgrades from the entire place *quickly*, so you can stop running it.

It also lets you farm certain bosses if you wanted to : go into SSC on a Tuesday, kill Lurker, Leotheras, and FLK, and then walk outside and hit "Magic Reset Easy Button". Do it again. Do it again. You just got 6 pieces of T5, 15 off-set T5-level epics, and still have access to Hydross, Morogrim, and Vashj later in the week if you want. Or do 3 full clears of SSC that week, and get enough T5 to not have to go back.

We're looking for ways to remove the tedium. Lessening the trash, giving leash triggers, etc. is all well and good, but how many of us were STILL running Karazhan a month ago (pre-2.3 and the badges providing a *reason*) just because one rogue wanted a [Drape of the Dark Reavers] or a [Worgen Claw Necklace]. I know I was. Two of our rogues *still* don't have a cloak with +hit on it. RNG sucks when it comes to completing sets and moving on from an instance. I would have killed for a "reset Karazhan now" button to help us finish gearing up so we never ever had to go back.

We're working on Archimonde, and there are *still* a couple of upgrades left in Karazhan, not to mention Gruul (can we say "DST for 5 more people"), SSC (Tsunami, Lightfathom, etc.), and TK (cloaks and necks from Kael). Being able to farm them quickly would be a godsend for fixing those "weak" spots in people's gear.